Guild Wars 2

So recently I was wondering which Melee class is better at soloing PvE content: Guardians or Warrior (No not asking any thieves or engineers). I went online and there were so many people arguing this point saying the warrior is actually better? My question is how? We are not talking about kiting, running around while trying to kill an elite. We are not talking about killing one in 9 seconds because you have ridiculous out geared the elite. We are not talking about if you “know” how to play your class situations here. We are talking about a scenario where you stand toe to toe with an elite looking him in the eyeball while bashing the crap out of him. Sure you will avoid any major attacks like charge attack that can kill you in two hits if you were to just stand there.

In this case I think Guardian is by far the best in no bs soloing. The skills themselves tell you everything you need to know. Soloing/tanking an elite means being able to soak up the damage and REPLENISH your hp. Just look at only the skills, no specialization, armor enhancements etc.

Defensive/Healing skills for warrior:
Backbreaker: Knock down your foe. (This is a hammer skill however).
Shield Stance: Block attacks for 3 seconds.
Plus any 1 healing skills.

Now what about the Guardian?
Virtue of Resolve (passive/active): Regenerates health/Heal yourself and nearby allies.
Virtue of Courage (passive/active): Grants aegis every few seconds/Grant aegis to yourself and nearby allies.
Faithful Strike: Hit your foe with a final strike and heal nearby allies.
Symbol of Faith: Smash a mystic symbol onto the ground that damages foes and regenerates allies.
Protector’s Strike: Surround yourself and nearby allies with a shield. Damage foes that strike protected allies. Grant protection to yourself and nearby allies if you are not struck.
Ray of Judgment: Pass a ray over foes and allies. Foes are damaged and blinded. Allies gain regeneration and cure one condition.
Shield of Wrath: Create a shield to block the next three attacks. If the shield is not destroyed, it explodes and damages nearby foes.
Shield of Judgment: Create a shielding wave in front of you that damages foes and gives protection to yourself and up to five allies.
Shield of Absorption/Shield of Absorption: Create a dome around you that pushes foes back and absorbs projectiles/Detonate the dome to heal nearby allies.
Plus any 1 healing skills.
AND elite healing skill that heals you back to 100% in 4 seconds while giving you passive heals.

So if you want to know, who has the highest survivability in terms of melee class, ask yourself, who can stay alive longer and you will quickly see it’s the Guardian. He may not kill them as fast but he will live to finish the fight he started. Also everyone loves a guardian…
If you think it’s the Warrior please explain to me how (what skills) the Warrior will use to survive a long encounter?

Warrior all the way. The base stats are just so much higher. The Guardian needs all those defensive abilities because it actually is a squishy class in comparison. Meanwhile the warriors heal sig regen, combined with skilled use of your dodges keeps your HP up. Toss in a Candied Dragon Roll consumable and you’re even harder to kill. If you look on youtube for dungeon solos you’ll find them primarily for warrior, but very few for guardian.

The warrior is the perfect class for solo content because you’re also able to might stack yourself to extremely high amounts making these long encounters much shorter. Whirlwind attack can also be used as a third evade, and then swap to sword for riposte on certain boss attacks and you’ve got another block, by then your dodge is up, and your HP is back to full.

I’m not saying Guardian can’t do it either but, the Warrior is not to be underestimated, and those that know the class inside and out know its able to solo just about any content in the game.

Is warrior better in solo pve? Yes for sure. But in my opinion warrior becomes the most boring class later on which is why I stuck with guardian. Just wish they had permanent swiftness

This title and question and your answear to the question you asked has more than 1 meaning.

This is how i look at the 2 classes:

Both Guardian and Warrior have:
-heavy armor
-regen
-can be bursty and even condy now
-can be tanky
-have lots of condy clenses

Guardian has/can have:
+more utility and boons to offer to himself as well as to the entire party
+more “spamable” aoes (symbols)
+more ways to heal himself and others
+more ways to block, protect himself and others

Warrior has/can have:
+waaay higher health pool than a guardian can (even with the guard trate)
+superior health/second (HS,adrenal health,vigorous shouts)
+superior offensive buffs for himself and everyone around him
+better bursty/sustained dps?
+more imunity to damage/condies
+8s cd for counterblow block (1 attack) and 12 s cd for riposte blocking(1 melle attack OR infinite ranged attacks) as well as 24scd blocks on shields (all attacks).
*Note that you can stand in front of someone with riposte or shield stance and block all projectiles this way
-banner of discipline,strength and empower allies give party wide +320power +170prec,con dmg, ferocity and can be “moved” along with the players.
*Also constant might stacks from Phalanx strength.
*Also 3 signets that grant +180power/prec/tough to self
+Lots of movement skills, leaps,dashes, 25%MSp trait

I probably missed something for someone but lets get back to the question now that we have a small list of things that both can do and what can one do better than the other.

Whos doing solo better in pve?
I assume we are talking just general open world leveling,events and farming (dungeons arent solo….and pve and wvw isnt pve)

when it comes to damage i believe warrior can kill mobs faster, even an elite, as well as a large group of monsters at the same time. The large health/s, health pool,tons of power and fast ways to kill groups of mobs just make him better at current pve

Guardians can tag more mobs at once cause of symbols and staff 1.
They can also burst down elites and groups of enemies but it feels that the rotations are much slower than on warriors.

In case of a tough time, or a time where a guard/warrior has to fall back or heal or is low on health and has to do something about it we have these scenarios:

Guardians will most likely:
+pop all 3 virtues and go into renewed focus and start spamming skills that grant healing/regen and also rely on their virtue of resolve passive to get them back in shape.
+Those main things have great singergy with their traits that grant numerous boons as well as more healing (AH)
+They spend this time healing,but also dmging the enemies around (symbols heal and grant boons as well as deal dmg)
-However during this period they will enter in a new rotation of defense and self healing, and their dps will run low

Warrior will:
+Use his passive regen/high health as well as some traited skills from the start of the fight to sustain himself trough the entire fight, from start till end
+This allows him to focus on damage the entire time
+In case things go very ugly,he can disengage the fight and get back in withing seconds,again because of his superior health/s
-He deals no damage most of the time within those few seconds of disengaging

Another note to look at is the downed state

Guardians will:
+Try to focus on 1 target with lowest health, their skill 1 can hit 3 targets
+Has a “back off all of you” skill to give himself a bit more time untill…
+…He activates signet of judgement. It heals the guardian and also deals nice aoe dmg around him that should kill off a enemy and rally him
+If not it might give him enough health back to bandage himself within seconds
-If that doesnt work….well…its kinda over for him..unless he is able to try that again

Warriors will:
-Throw rocks at the closest enemy (its a physical projectile, cant get pass the big guy to hit the small guy behind it that has low health)
-/Has a 2s knock down, nice to delay his 3rd skill..but also works only on a single closest target
+/Vengeance makes you rally for 15s during which you may use all your normal skills to take down everyone around you. has a 25% (100% traited) to fully rally you when you kill someone.
*Vengeance is like being in a downed state but able to use all of your skills and move around freely.

Now about the actual “gameplay”:
I played both of them for a long time and ill be telling about my exp with them in pve:

Guards:
+Standard bursty rotations with staff to give me swiftness for moving around
+if things get hard i go defensive rotations with healing/boon skills
+if i go down while overwhelmed i mostly go down for good.

Warriors:
+"standard" bursty rotations supported by tons of power ,might and prec
+most of the time it takes longer to get to the “hard times” due to the fact that im constantly healing my self for quite a lot
+if things do get bad i back off,kite and wait till i have enough health to engage again and finish them off
+if i get downed while overwhelmed i still manage to activate vengeance and im mostly able to kill and rezz my self

NOTE:
Warriors are very simple. They deal dmg and buff allies with simple stats. Sometimes they also clense condies and buff their offensive abilities.

Guardians are a hybrid. They go melee range but use magic to attack as well as defend,buff and share boons, condi clense and protect with wards that enemies cant pass. They can also summon spirit weapons (yeah), teleport them selfs, reflect projectiles and give permanent aoe protection.

This makes the guardian more complex, party oriented as well as simply more interesting than the warrior…but we are talking about comparing how guards and warriors face the entire pve world on their own….

PS: I was doing a “leveling trough the shiverpeaks with 0 deaths challenge” (i made it up for my self) and at one point i got under leveled. I was doing it with a norn guardian and i can tell the enemies get quite brutal and i really did use all my blocks,heals and blinds in order to bring them down. I dont know if i could have made it with a warrior..tho i didnt check.

PPS: This is a thing where you are facing mobs that are 3-5+lvls above you. Once you get to lvl 80 there arent many areas in the game that has such things…

Warriors are extremely boring. After 3 years I still didn’t level mine to level 80…. boring boring boring.. even in PVP

I have a warrior at 45 and guardian at 50, so they are both high level, and both very similar levels. To my experience, they are too similar to recommend one over the other. Both have lots of weapons avaliable, so already right there, they cross over into each other’s territory. A guardian with a sword and shield will be better at survival than a warrior with two axes, but a warrior with two axes are probably much better at surviving than a guardian with a staff. But that’s why we have weapon sets.

I think the only way to really compare the two classes if you get both to max level, figure out how you want to play either of them, and then deck them out with the best gear you can find, that you actually want to use. What use is an exotic staff, if you want to use a greatsword? So decide what playstyle you want with both classes, get weapon sets for both classes and get them both to max level. It’s the only way to truly know which one you find best. Asking people on the forum is pointless. Roughtly half will say the guardian is the best, and the other half will say the warrior is best. Either way, it doesn’t have to mean anything, as you can have an entirely different playing style. The “best” class is the one you prefer, not necessarily the one with the most DPS. Again, it doesn’t matter if you find a rifle that does 400 damage, if you prefer using two axes that does only 170 damage each. They will do less damage overal, but with different skills that makes them a lot more fun to use, who cares? Stick to what you prefer, and kitten what everyone else says.

Mortifer.2946:

Warriors are extremely boring. After 3 years I still didn’t level mine to level 80…. boring boring boring.. even in PVP

Even with the swinging greatsword attack?

Well I am currently leveling a Guardian and I am having a blast doing so. I have been using great sword/mace torch. I am currently level 23 and I have been searching and searching for a leveling build and or a open world solo build for pve and I have found nothing at all.

Does anyone have one willing to share or know of a link that is a good guide. Thanks in advance.

DarkAngelo.5894:

Well I am currently leveling a Guardian and I am having a blast doing so. I have been using great sword/mace torch. I am currently level 23 and I have been searching and searching for a leveling build and or a open world solo build for pve and I have found nothing at all.

Does anyone have one willing to share or know of a link that is a good guide. Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately, ever since NPE, most vet no longer level their character the old fashion way(unless it’s for funs and giggles, which is not very efficient), and most old guides are outdated due to new specialization.

As for OP, since we are talking solo pve here….which I can’t think of anything other than PS and map exploration, I’d say warrior is hands down better, simply because wh4+signet of rage is better at maintain swiftness than retreat+staff3.

…also, why the mention of shield in solo pve, just pick up a greatsword(for both war and guard).

I keep hearing about the huge hp difference btw War and Guardian at 80, with similar high end gear, lets say Berserker or Ascended, both DPS specced gears what’s the actual numbers anyone know?

DarkAngelo.5894:

Well I am currently leveling a Guardian and I am having a blast doing so. I have been using great sword/mace torch. I am currently level 23 and I have been searching and searching for a leveling build and or a open world solo build for pve and I have found nothing at all.

Does anyone have one willing to share or know of a link that is a good guide. Thanks in advance.

As mentioned before, there are numerous ways of leveling now other than exploring the pve world.

But a efficient guardian way of exploring the world more efficiently is using a greadsword and staff. you can group lots of mobs with staff 1, place a ward between you and them, cast symbol of swiftness on them (and your self) while channeling empower.
Then switch to gs, leap for light aura and aoe blindness, SoW and WW. This should make them dead.

The traits are set up in a way that you will be spaming F1 all the time..like…mashing that F1 constantly.

It blinds (applies vulnerability on blind) and grants you a short 3 might as well as retaliation that grants you dmg modifiers . All that is aoe.

here is a link of the build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARWlsAhShY1QwQIwPEHxDVNAag61GC57jmXxXsKA-TRBEABMp8rNdBA8AASU9ntUCCA-e

As for OP.
All classes have the same base stats at lvl 80 except 2.
The base armor (light,medium and heavy) and base health pool.

For example,the numbers are as follows:

Elementalist: 11 645 hp
Mesmer: 15 922 hp
Necromancer: 19 212hp

Warriors have 19 212 hp and guards have 11 645 health at lvl 80 with out any vit on gear.
Guardians can use a GM trait in honor that will grant them +300vit, resoulting in +3k health.
This is why the guardians are equiped with more utility(wards,reflect,condi clense),boons (regen and perma protection) and lots of blocks than a warrior.

PS: i was in TA once with my team on a cleric guardian, i belieave i had mace/focus -staff. and on the final boss of Aether blades path i was the last man standing. I was actually able to kill it alone by protecting my self with blocks, heals, dodges, aegis, and i was slowly able to kill the last 25ish % of his health.

If i was a cleric warrior with mace/sword – Mace/shield im not sure if i could made it back then (maybe now i could with the new traits?)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJAnXjMdQdH23BOeAnIG+BKNN6+ywWgAoAwb/wrBA-e

You can use what ever in pve solo. Here is facerolling dual axe warrior just spam 11111(full passive skills). High dps. Gears can go full PVT to Full Zerker(all works). Peoples may not like dual axe warrior in dungeon. But its still good.

My guardian dies practically everywhere. My warrior on the other hand is probably my most durable characters in PVE, although probably neck-in-neck with my ranger in some cases.

well currently in pvp i usually kitten warrior 1v1 as a meditation guardian. im currently switching between gurdian and warrior. and for some of the post ive read its true that guardians are more squishier, but they have more healing to keep up with that. and in team fights in pvp, as a guardian i can tank the kitten out of people in a team fight, and stay in the heat for a very long time, even as a meditation guardian. but as a warrior i can sustain alot of damage but not stay as long in the team fight as my guardian, i find it very often as a warrior i have to run away as a kitten to regen some health. it might be the playstyle of a regen warrior, but i feel it kind of destroys the feeling of a smash and bashing warrior . i am curently enjoying more playing on my main guardian than my alt warrior. maybe berserker warrior will be more fun in hot now thats its going to be based on more sustain

I like them both. Right now exploring world map with my guardian and he’s so good vs large amount of mobs. Great AoE + survivability, just sweet. Bosses are also easier on guardian in my opinion. Warrior has to dodge, cause he hasn’t got any defensive abilities, just armor, large health pool and regen. As guardian I have so many blocks, regen, reflects, blinds etc I don’t even look at my health, it’s full pretty much all the time. So if you are dying on guardian cause of low HP then you should change your class or learn to play, peace.

The title says PVE, don’t derail the topic talking about PVP.

I play both professions, and depending on your build, traits, rotations and player skill both work very well. PVE is not that hard to begin with, it’s just a matter of playstyle preference.

Warrior is the best solo class. Warrior never stops attacking, not even to heal, Guardian does. Everything Warrior has is to help it kill quicker, guardian is to survive longer. Warrior naturally survived much longer anyway.

Funny thing is, Guardian does more damage and makes team more defensive. Warrior does less but makes the party do more damage

Mortifer.2946:

Warriors are extremely boring. After 3 years I still didn’t level mine to level 80…. boring boring boring.. even in PVP

I disagree, Guardian is the most boring class in this game. My warrior has over 500h played, while the guardian only 92h, and the only reason I haven’t deleted him yet is because he’s a grandmaster armorsmith.

I have 2 guardians and two warriors…. both warriors are zerker, and one guardian is nomads and the other is zerker.

I find the zerk warriors much more fun to play than the zerk guardian.

The nomad’s guardian is really fun to play …. but you kill things so slowly that it is really more of a “stop and smell the flowers” thing. Which can be nice if you just like exploring and taking your time.

The zerk guardian is my second favorite class to play in general pve…. but on my list it still falls behind the warrior.

The only thing the warriors are missing that I really like about the zerk guardian is the shadowstepping. …but the warriors mobility and power easily make up for the shadowstep gimmicks.

I main a zerker Guardian but love to play on my Warrior (mainly PS/EA). Both classes are great, Guardian can be a bit more challenging for solo PvE because of low HP pool but Warrior is usually faster to clear content with.

If it’s your first time trying to solo I suggest Warrior because of mobility, regeneration, invulnerabilities and DPS and extra dodges on GS #3. After getting the grip of content and solo tactics switch to Guard and keep the one you like the most.

IMHO Warrior if you prefer burst, Guardian for a more strategic and a bit harder approach.

Warrior gets around faster, so I think warrior is better for solo pve. Warriors also have lots of natural passive defense if needed.

Solo loot stick guardian is the best solo farmer in the game., nothing beats it. Ele 2nd best for solo pve farming.

You are asking about map completion and map pve farming solo correct?
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Staff_Farmer works even better after the June patch.

Melee is not very efficient solo farming in maps. Symbol of swiftness and retreat is plenty to gain almost perm swiftness to roam around spamming your lootstick collecting that $$$

Your just gimping yourself and slowing yourself down farming as melee. I would still choose as Hammer/sword/focus guardian if you really wanted to melee farm over a warrior anyday.