We all know Guildwars 2 has slightly alleviated the holy trinity, however, when I command (Engineer), players will ask me who the better tank is between Guardian and Warrior.
(In World Vs World Vs World)
So I have made this post to discuss the advantages and disadvantages between Guardian and Warrior tanks, particularly for new players looking to build ‘tank’.
It seems to be a common misconception that Warriors are all round ‘offensive fighters’ whereas the Guardian is a ‘tanky healer’, from my experience, this is not the case.
Here is a small list of what I have found (in my experience):
Warrior
Advantages
- Much higher health pool (1.8x as much/nearly double) providing much safer protection from conditions, almost 6x base hp of a guardian when using Rampage
- Better blocks (channeled blocks and defy pain can block unlimited number of attacks)
- More mobility
- More stuns/daze/interrupt/fear/knockback/weakness
- Easy access to stability
- Better self sustain
- Can be made godly with a ‘booner’
- Can’t strip the tankyness from the warrior
- Can heal and attack/control simultaneously
- Can have high hp and armour
- Can instant self resurrect even under focus (good for quickly getting back to tanking)
- Can instant AOE resurrect using an Elite
- Hard to instant kill
- Survivable against siege
- Better at damage mitigation once it hits
- Shouts give high condition removal combined with low cooldown high burst aoe heals
- Banner buffs apply on top of other class buffs/boons and provide good regen
- Still capable of one-shotting glass cannons with rifle offset when full tank
Disadvantages
- No way to allow team mates to block attacks
- No area denial lines/circles
- No projectile deflectors
- Lack of sustainable boons for party
Guardian
Advantages
- Can apply boons to entire party (including Aegis)
- Can allow the team to block using shield 4 or aegis
- Several projectile deflectors
- Area denial lines/circles that knock down any enemies who cross
- Strong party wide burst heals
- Strong party wide regeneration
- Good condition cleanse
- Can self res quicker when not under focus (good for getting back to healing/supporting your team)
- Can fully restore hp of entire party in one go
- Lower cooldown (Albeit single target) ressurect in a utility
- Good passive support
- Weak against siege
- Better at damage prevention
Disadvantages
- Poison greatly decreases the survivability
- Reliant on party for damage
- Cannot have high hp and armour
- Extremely vulnerable to boon stripping
- Can not be improved by bringing a ‘booner’
- Lack of stuns
- Lack of mobility
- Aegis only affects one attack
- Easily ambushed and instant kill (even the thief’s back stab is unaffected by aegis as it does not reveal them)
- Reliant on other players triggering symbols.
- Lack of range
Comparatively the warrior is a much better ‘selfish tank’ capable of taking infinitely larger amounts of damage than a similar Guardian due to the abundance of channelled blocks.
The Guardian is still a reasonable tank in <3v3 battles but will excel by massively improving your party’s efficiency.
Ultimately, warrior has better survivability, guardian is better at improving party survivability.
For those interested in group composition, a good setup would be to have a ‘booner’ off tank guardian with a ‘shouter’ main tank warrior.
As always, I would love to hear the communities thoughts on this matter.
(edited by Fragment.2793)