Guild Wars 2

My first Raid run made me think why should I even bother with it.

After I’ve seen Ghostly infusions I’ve decided to give Raids a try, so I wrote this in LFG:

" LF training guild for raids "

a few moments later I was invited to a squad party, where they’ve said I will do VG with them and that I do not worry, they will explain me all.

fast forward first 2 small bosses, we group up for the last one. Then the comments come:

“if you plan to do raids, don’t play a Guardian”
I said, “umm…oke?”

the vote to start the last boss started, I was instant killed. Some laughed, and some said: why did you stay outside the boundaries. Then after me saying I do not know what happened, they’ve explained that you get instantly killed if you aren’t within a circle, ending with “haha, now you know”.

I mean okay…let them have some fun, I guess…

Ok, boss started, first part till 66% was all good, 2nd part started, VG got out of a group somewhere ahead of us, 6 of them got instantly downed, I died on purpose also cuz it’s “/gg” right?

After it they started asking me what was my toughness, like 2-3 times in a row in a second, I answered 1000 toughness. And I was kicked.

I have exactly build from here, full ascended, runes, sigils, food: http://qtfy.eu/build/guardian – Scepter/Torch + Greatsword Guardian build
…and I am following the rotation explained there

…and yet I get comments like why am I playing a guardian, then a blame for their mistake (but I guess they had to blame someone) and just completely rude experience even when I was only looking for a raid guild to teach me raids.

If you guys are like this, I do not want to be part of it.

They’re morons
First of all, Guardian is great for training groups
Depending on the build of course, you can give great to perma protection uptime, making things so much easier on tanks and healers alike. You can apply aegis and stability to trivialize or ignore some mechanics. Then there’s signet of courage which has an active that full heals your entire subgroup without healing power.

And this is just BASE GUARD!
DH can do really fair dps and has potential for high consi bursting if you ever wanted it.

So yes, that group was stupid. Many groups are.
They think dps required is something like 30k for each player or something like that.

But after some lazy math, VG only needs MAYBE 10 to 12k.

Before start raiding maybe see some videos for boss tactics.

For groups with no experience if they take a guardian is perfectly fine.
Ppl say no to guardians now coz seaweed salad was nerfed, guardian still does a good amount of dps, enough for every raid boss if played properly.
Only for groups that want to speed clear raids and want max dps shouldn’t take guardians.
For a training VG group is ok to take guardians, is ok to take necros, is ok to take revenants, etc..
Some players are just stupid that’s all

Those people are half right. Guardian in general is weaker than other classes at filling the dps role. As such, groups don’t want guardian as much, and so telling a beginner not to raid with one is a good idea. It will be much easier to join raid groups as a condi ranger.

However, vale guardian has very low toughness, and as such heavily favors power builds (note: not many other bosses like this). What classes can run good power builds? Ele, thief, guardian and engi. On small hitbox, guardian is notably the weakest of these 4. But on large hitbox, guardian is 2nd place.

VG is medium hitbox, so all 4 are probably pretty close would be my guess. So at VG, guardian is perfectly fine. But there are also fights where it is bad, such as sabetha (where condi ranger/ele/thief will obliterate guardian).

I’d bet that they thought toughness when you answered armor…
The correct answer was 0 toughness since 1000 is your base armor value.

maybe watch some videos of the boss kills so you’re not completely clueless and then find some friendly group. alternatively stop being so touchy, its the internet.

Dadnir.5038:

I’d bet that they thought toughness when you answered armor…
The correct answer was 0 toughness since 1000 is your base armor value.

Erm no, 1000 is base toughness. Base armor is somewhere >2000 with ascended gear.

Sublimatio.6981:

maybe watch some videos of the boss kills so you’re not completely clueless and then find some friendly group. alternatively stop being so touchy, its the internet.

that’s completely useless comment for that situation that happened to me, I was only looking for a guild to start raiding and it happened that I was invited and being told they will tell me all the mechanics. Then they did what they did.
As a matter of fact, I even did watch the encounter for that boss. Nothing I did was wrong, except the fact it could have been mechanically better…but it’s a matter of muscle memory.

And even here I am seeing comments from people who are trying to put the blame on me by saying toughness isn’t 1000. And that guardians shouldn’t be played even if he has complete meta build.

That being said, should I really go level up completely new class, grind HoT to get Elite, to be able to kill bosses few seconds faster? And when a new patch comes and another class becomes top at DPS I should do the same thing again?
I didn’t think we are setting the new speed records in raids.

Is Warrior viable? Or Thief? Cuz I am not gonna play spellcasters ever, I only like melee.
Should I maybe also buy a new mouse and a keyboard for more precise movements to get 0,2% more DPS?

I wouldn’t care a lot about finding an “optimal” class with regard to the current meta, since all classes are viable and (parts of) the meta change regularly. Rather try to find a proper guild/group, that will likely be more useful in the end.

The sad thing is, while GW2 raid encounters in general are pretty easy (yes, that includes stuff like Matthias), a big part of the raid community has ridiculous expectations with regard to classes and experience. Expectations which most of those people probably won’t fulfill themselves, but who cares …

Mikali.9651:

I was only looking for a guild to start raiding and it happened that I was invited and being told they will tell me all the mechanics. Then they did what they did. …
Nothing I did was wrong, except the fact it could have been mechanically better…but it’s a matter of muscle memory.

So, you met a bunch of jerks, happens from time to time to anybody pugging (joining random groups) around. I bet they weren’t even a complete guild group otherwise they would have killed the boss with 9 men and rezzing you afterwards. Most likely this was a random squad and almost all of them overestimated their skill level.

Btw. in the 2nd phase (split) toughness doesn’t even matter, so if they were rly asking you about your toughness while you were at red/blue/green VG they had no clue. The phases where toughness matters are the ones when the big VG is there (phase 1, 3 and 5) because then he will follow the one with the highest toughness and only then it is a problem if your group has a chosen tank but VG will follow another player that has more toughness than the original tank.

The best thing is to forget about them and keep going. Everything else is a waste of time. If it bothers you extremely, shut down the pc and take a walk/run after being kicked.

Mikali.9651:

And even here I am seeing comments from people who are trying to put the blame on me by saying toughness isn’t 1000.

The poster you are referring to made a mistake, nothing else.

Mikali.9651:

That being said, should I really go level up completely new class, grind HoT to get Elite, to be able to kill bosses few seconds faster? And when a new patch comes and another class becomes top at DPS I should do the same thing again?
I didn’t think we are setting the new speed records in raids.

Is Warrior viable? Or Thief? Cuz I am not gonna play spellcasters ever, I only like melee.
Should I maybe also buy a new mouse and a keyboard for more precise movements to get 0,2% more DPS?

You don’t need to level up a new class but insisting on playing a guardian only can limit your choices to get into a group. Most pugs and not few raid guild groups are following the meta and want to have clean & sober kills with a good speed. A guard can be pretty useful but you don’t need him with the actual balance situation that’s why ppl prefer other classes.
Warrior is viable but atm almost exclusively in the condition ps version with sword + torch / long bow but yeah, you would also fight at melee range, same goes with thief.

Just because your first and only experience with something was bad doesn’t mean you should just quit on it entirely. Show some grit.

Mikali.9651:

that’s completely useless comment for that situation that happened to me, I was only looking for a guild to start raiding and it happened that I was invited and being told they will tell me all the mechanics. Then they did what they did.

Oh I’m sorry if my comment is useless to you, I didn’t realize we were having a pity party.

Mikali.9651:

Is Warrior viable? Or Thief? Cuz I am not gonna play spellcasters ever, I only like melee.
Should I maybe also buy a new mouse and a keyboard for more precise movements to get 0,2% more DPS?

The ‘elitism’ over dps might seem a little overboard, but try thinking about it from the viewpoint of the average PUG. They only want to get the content done in the time they have avalable, and of course any failure can not be their own. Such people don’t have the time to sit down and measure out group comps – so they leave class compositions to the people that seem to know a thing or two (like Qtfy or Metabattle).

It just so happens Dragonhunter isn’t on that list, which means you might be better off finding a more static group that can build around that. Nobody can build for a team comp they neither know nor have experienced.

Many of the “Caster” classes you’ve so readily denied do indeed have melee options (in fact, meta chronomancer is prodomenantly melee). Elementalist has a dagger (which shoots cool lightning whips), and Reaper has a kitten scythe.

The problem is on their end for inviting a person who is asking “training guild for raids”, as a guardian, and then kicking you. That is not the expected behavior for a training raids or a training guild, for which I have had some experience in helping.

I suspect this group was looking for more players to beat the boss rather than train, and in failing to find people they picked up you. Thats on them.

As for the class choice, guardians is currently the least wanted class in raid. Like anchovies on pizza you either need to find a group of people who wants it or level up a more mainstream choice. Alternative you could wait for the expansion and hope that anet changes the dynamic in raids.

@OP: Find a raiding guild in the forum dedicated for finding guilds instead of the LFG, which is for finding a group.

Main problem, that there is no entry barrier, like high level fractals do have.

By the moment you reach tier 3-4 in fractals most likely you would have most optimal, build, gear and exp. Making tier 1 fractals most hard for pugging, and tier 3-4 most
enjoyable.

In LFG raids… well even if you know encounter, have optimal build, gear, and know you rotations… you have 9 ppl that can be bad, would die, do stoopid things, and would slack their rotations with high % chance. They would give up, blame other people around them and kick/leave instead of improvement.

That’s why 10 man group is way worse for LFG, than 5 man group content.

Mikali.9651:

Sublimatio.6981:

maybe watch some videos of the boss kills so you’re not completely clueless and then find some friendly group. alternatively stop being so touchy, its the internet.

that’s completely useless comment for that situation that happened to me, I was only looking for a guild to start raiding and it happened that I was invited and being told they will tell me all the mechanics. Then they did what they did.
As a matter of fact, I even did watch the encounter for that boss. Nothing I did was wrong, except the fact it could have been mechanically better…but it’s a matter of muscle memory.

And even here I am seeing comments from people who are trying to put the blame on me by saying toughness isn’t 1000. And that guardians shouldn’t be played even if he has complete meta build.

That being said, should I really go level up completely new class, grind HoT to get Elite, to be able to kill bosses few seconds faster? And when a new patch comes and another class becomes top at DPS I should do the same thing again?
I didn’t think we are setting the new speed records in raids.

Is Warrior viable? Or Thief? Cuz I am not gonna play spellcasters ever, I only like melee.
Should I maybe also buy a new mouse and a keyboard for more precise movements to get 0,2% more DPS?

To be honest your attitude is pretty terrible as well.

Sadly this is the way things are in content where that little percentage of damage matters.

Also, no one was blaming for because you said your toughness was 1,000; the way you are reacting to comments actually made me wonder if you were kicked by reasons other than playing a Guardian…

Just because qt has a raging kitten against guards tht doesnt mean the class is bad. These ppl acted like morons sorry for you experience but not everyone is like that.

DH for dps isnt bad. But you have to be a good dh. So its not really a good profession for beginners.

Mikali, you dont want to be laughingstock in training runs? Its quite easy to solve. More prepartion, more commitment.
1. Tekkit’s and Woodenpotatoes’ explain videos are quite good to get a good start.
2. Decide which role you want to fill in raids (Druid, DPS, Chrono, PS)
3. Get proper builds for those roles and go training golem until your dps is close to qt benchmarks
4. Back to watching videos, this time your build at every boss. Take note of little things (like chronos casting avengers on sloth by stepping in green with shield block) that help you a lot.
5. Get on training raids.

Just putting up a lfg and waiting for people to spoon feed you every little detail… thats kinda really lazy.

elitism in a nutshell

Incidentally, most (possibly all, but can’t remember at the moment) of my VG kills included at least one guardian. And the last balance patch didn’t change it in the slightest.

Find a better group (yes, i do realize that it sounds much easier than it actually is – finding a decent group is likely the hardest part of the raid difficulty after all).

Astralporing.1957:

Incidentally, most (possibly all, but can’t remember at the moment) of my VG kills included at least one guardian. And the last balance patch didn’t change it in the slightest.

Find a better group (yes, i do realize that it sounds much easier than it actually is – finding a decent group is likely the hardest part of the raid difficulty after all).

Same, DH is very handy and dps is on par with others. And the 2nd paragraph about groups is spot on! That truly is the hardest part. Find a good (hell just friendly, good comes naturally)group and your raid will be heaps fun!

Ok first of all, you will encounter endless amounts of stupidity in raids, but that’s to be expected. Best thing to do is just laugh at those people and their inability to learn anything after killing each boss dozens of times.

Now to your question: Guardian is completely fine, you might not reach the dps of an elementalist/engi but it’s decent, fairly simple and offers a lot of utility in form of protection and aegis, which makes it a great class to start on. I’d advise you to just browse the “Looking for” subforum and the guildrecruitment reddit a bit, a lot of guilds offer raid training, and those are generally very experienced and patient players willing to explain the mechanics in detail. And when you’ve gathered some experience on most/all bosses on guardian, you can start thinking about learning a seconds class, as each class has its own little tricks on most bosses.