Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m in a rather large guild which should represent a rather accurate cross-section of the gw2 community. When i look at the roster, i see SIGNIFICANTLY more guardians/warriors than any other class with mesmers/engis being the least popular.

Can i get some reasons as to why these two classes are so popular? I don’t think they’re too OP (if at all) so what could it be o_O?

Thanks

no they are OP especially in PVE – running instances mostly

Warriors – heavy armor + highest health pool
Guardians – heavy armor + they are pretty much immortal so they dont really need high health pool

That heavy armor makes a huuuuge difference.

Every person that has played War/Guard and at least one other proffessions has said it is much much easier to PvE with war/guard. I get the impression most pve is balanced around war/guards – I have yet to play my guard so I can’t give a personal opinion.

Try PvE for a few levels on a mesmer in an area, than try the same area on a warrior of the same level.

The reason should become very obvious.

I understand this but why would people base their “mains” on PvE, when presumably PvE will only lead to the ultimate goal: getting the armor needed to pvp in WvW?

I mean, isn’t PvE only a temporary thing for endgame armor? ._.

I guess i shouldn’t say till i actually test the war/guard for myself…=S

Gear doesnt really matter in WvW since most of the time you are running in zerg anyway. Plust not everybody is interested in PvP. Especially not in PvDoor

Don’t forget that warriors do by far the most damage of any class.

Warriors damage is relatively avoidable in PvP which is why you don’t see them quite so much (Thief and mesmer’s burst combos mixed with copious controls make them better PvP’rs), but in PvE the AI isn’t exactly smart and will happily stand there and take a full hundred blades right in the face without even needing to immobilise it.

Warriors damage is also relatively effort-free. Hundred blades can easily dish out 18k+ to all nearby foes with 1 button press, to do the same thing a mesmer has to chain together at least 9 different skills, and then snap shut the trap hopefully without being countered.

Mainly because people dont know how to play GW2 and think of Warriors and Guardians as Tanks or Damage dealers. You know? They think it’s the same as World of Warcraft. They like to see big numbers of HP and Damage.

But usually people play the class because they enjoy it’s playstyle.
I play Warrior because I enjoy the playstyle very much. But definantly not OP.
I much rather play Engineer at times.

My Engineer and Ranger can destory Warriors in sPvP soo.. Those 2 or my main choices. =P

Some people don’t give two fluffy kittens about WvW, at least not until they add more content to it. Like other posters have said Warrior has everything going for it PvE wise and is ok in PvP. WvW comes down to a portal bomb zerg on my server.

heavy armor
immunity to the nerf bat
ability to get their problems fixed almost immediately even on patch days….
yada yada yadaaah……/shrug

for a while there I was actually thinking they wanted us all to play nothing but considering some of these problems have been in some of the adventurer classes since bwe3…..got some answers recently we’ll see.

I see more Char Engineers than I do any other race/job, hosing down enemies with flames about 5 seconds before my Thief gets to them

Guardian is no tank, more a healer than a tank. They have the lowest health pool but their healing magic and heavy armor makes them top in survive-ability. Love the guardian from the start because I love paladins in the DnD style (magical soldiers).

Many other classes are harder to play because taking damage is more important than doing damage in most cases. However, my guild doesn’t have a bigger proportion of guardians. Maybe it is a coincidence or maybe it depend on you guilds type.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Try PvE for a few levels on a mesmer in an area, than try the same area on a warrior of the same level.

The reason should become very obvious.

Basically this; warriors and guardians are better than any other classes in PVE, at least for leveling. And for the record Taka , some players like me don’t care about PVP; so don’t assume it’s the “ultimate” goal for everyone.

My guess is also that nearly every time when someone comes around and asks: “Hi! I am new. What should I play?” The reply is to start with Warrior since it is so easy to play. (I don’t know if that is true. I’ve not tried Warrior, Engineer or Thief yet.)

As for PvE being… No. WvWvW is something I only do a couple of evenings each month to get the 50 required kills. And PvP I will never voluntarily even try. For some of us PvE is the Game.

Warriors are easy to learn and play. No matter you go for straight damage, for a huge health pool and defense or for conditions, either way you still win, because either way, even with a bad build, you still deal enough of damage.
Now try screwing up a mesmer’s or an engineer’s build… Yeah. No good.
To those talking about WvW – warriors are good there too. One warrior can retake supply camps on his own, because only AI is protecting it. So essentially they can score more points than any other class.
Now not saying that other classes are bad (I love my main ele. Other than that I have a necro, ranger and a thief), but with those classes you have to think what you’re doing. You can’t run in with a thief into a bunch of enemies and start slashing left and right… Unless you are suicidal that is. But you can jab and run. A lot of other classes are really dependent on a good build too.

Also, never underestimate the therapeutic value of hitting something with a very large axe (or two) after a bad day at work

TakaEagle.9486:

Hi,

I’m in a rather large guild which should represent a rather accurate cross-section of the gw2 community. When i look at the roster, i see SIGNIFICANTLY more guardians/warriors than any other class with mesmers/engis being the least popular.

Can i get some reasons as to why these two classes are so popular? I don’t think they’re too OP (if at all) so what could it be o_O?

Thanks

Of all the classes they are the most balanced and work properly of the lot. The rest are so broken or unbalanced its not funny..

tigirius.9014:

heavy armor
immunity to the nerf bat
ability to get their problems fixed almost immediately even on patch days….
yada yada yadaaah……/shrug

for a while there I was actually thinking they wanted us all to play nothing but considering some of these problems have been in some of the adventurer classes since bwe3…..got some answers recently we’ll see.

Uh yeah…no. Out of all the issues and outright broken things with the warrior class a grand total of 0 of them have been fixed since launch.

I’m not saying other classes don’t have their issues, however. What I am saying is that nothing you said is true.

Also if you are dieing repeatedly to 100b in spvp that’s a l2p issue.

I’m going to come at this from a completely different angle. I’m sure warriors are by far the most popular because they have the strongest archetype, fluffwise, in the game. No one without in-depth knowledge of teh game lore really has a solid grasp on what a “mesmer” is and a lot of people don’t like the relatively high tech flavor of the engineer. The warrior, on the other hand, is a universal archetype you see in every game you’ve ever played since the exist in real life and are thus the easiest to identify with and understand right away.

I was completely unfamiliar with GW when my friends got me into GW, and didn’t know a kitten thing about who was OP or who did the most damage or anything else mechanically. I did know what the concept of “warrior” meant sight unseen and went for that quick and easy decision just to jump into the game.

You also see the “warrior” archetype being incredibly popular in other games too. Right now there are beta testing the new Dungeons and Dragons rules, and the developers have revealed that there research shows that fighter has long been the most popular class in the game, despite being considered underpowered (and even bottom tier) in a few editions.

I dont think it mostly has anything do to with mechanics. Its just the people get what a warrior means and it easy to identify with the concept from the fluff perspective.

Everybody wants a guardian (or two) in the party for a dungeon run. They’re a fantastic combination of survivability and group support.

Warriors are popular largely because of one ability, Hundred Blades, which is why you see most using greatswords. It’s easy to use, does tremendous damage to AI critters (or inattentive players) and has a short cooldown. Along with a thief heartseeker build, it’s probably the easiest build in the game to be competent with.

At low level PVE: Guardians and Warriors are awesome.

At higher levels of PVE: Guardian is still going strong. Warrior starts falling a little behind how ever.

Yet I still prefer my thief for any situation. Why take hits when you can evasion/blind tank solo and usually be the savoir in group PVE?

Archetypical classes like Guardians (aka. Paladins) and Warriors are always very popular classes in every MMO. It has always been this way.

Performance doesn’t really affect class popularity as much as people here seem to think.

That said, Warriors deal by far the most damage in this game. They easily boast twice the DPS compared to any other class.

Guardians on the other hand are invaluable supporters on PvE. They make every encounter significantly easier and provide the largest arsenal of support abilities.

I mained a Warrior after trying a few other classes out and finding them lacking. I leveled my warrior to 80 and decided to make an alt. I tried everything out, and honestly felt they all lacked except for the Guardian.

Call it easier if you will, but the Warrior and Guardian felt EPIC. The other classes… not so much. Especially when you’re stood there pinging a 100 arrows in to a mob to have it finally die.

Especially enjoying my Guardian with his cool blue flame effects and awesome bubbles etc.

TakaEagle.9486:

Hi,

I’m in a rather large guild which should represent a rather accurate cross-section of the gw2 community. When i look at the roster, i see SIGNIFICANTLY more guardians/warriors than any other class with mesmers/engis being the least popular.

Can i get some reasons as to why these two classes are so popular? I don’t think they’re too OP (if at all) so what could it be o_O?

Thanks

Contrary to popular belief you are correct in that they are far from being OP compared to the other classes and skills.

Its all down to the class based mechanics im sure. These are 2 of the easiest classes to get to grips with based on skills and playstyle, yet thery are also the hardest to master.. This is the reason they are the most popular here and in every other game ive ever played mmo wise…

warriors are heavy armor+ utility+large HP pool+ good melee +good ranged all in one class jack of all trades and master of all.

not for nothing the game is named : guildwar(rior)s2

guardians are immortal group saviors clad in steel, with extra coolness factor.

rest of the classes are situational niches (thieves for sPVP, mesmers for WWW, rangers for bots, elementalists for masochists, engineers for furry lovers, necros completely forgot about them etc…, )

One of the things that I love about the Warrior and Guardian is that they have a buff via a skill that gives them X amount of HP per Y seconds, this in combination with heavy armour and high damage, makes those classes a great leveling professsions.

Funny, my guild has few Guardians or Warriors but a ton of Elementalists! (I play a Guard myself, btw. Suits my style of play. Run up to an enemy and smash it in the face.)

Even with a very defensive set-up, my guard has better kill-speed than my ranger.

And nothing can match a warrior for kill-speed.

Both are strong professions, and heavy armor looks pretty good. A common misconception is that armor value is a lot more for heavy. Unlike most fantasy games, here the diff between tiers is about 10%.

TakaEagle.9486:

I understand this but why would people base their “mains” on PvE, when presumably PvE will only lead to the ultimate goal: getting the armor needed to pvp in WvW?

Probably because for most the ultimate goal is only PvE based and not WvWvW. But even if WvWvW was the goal, people would assume Anet has the game/classes balanced properly for PvP when the time comes.

Horrorscope.7632:

TakaEagle.9486:

I understand this but why would people base their “mains” on PvE, when presumably PvE will only lead to the ultimate goal: getting the armor needed to pvp in WvW?

Probably because for most the ultimate goal is only PvE based and not WvWvW. But even if WvWvW was the goal, people would assume Anet has the game/classes balanced properly for PvP when the time comes.

Well WvW is really not very good in GW2. But the gear isn’t hard to get and wvw isn’t very gear-oriented (unless you count siege). Certainly no reason to pve for armor if you’d rather wvw.

Post launch, you have to see the game is intended for pve. wvw has only had things taken out of game for it, and pvp is still not quite ready for launch.

Gandolfi.1507:

Also, never underestimate the therapeutic value of hitting something with a very large axe (or two) after a bad day at work

So true! In my case, it would be a very large hammer! I catch myself chuckling when that hammer slams the ground and sends shock waves through the mob! VERY therapeutic indeed!

I just rolled a warrior for the first time last week and he is simply epic in PvE. I have an engineer and thief, both at level 80. I love them both and still play them quite regularly. However, it took a fair amount of time beyond level 80 to fully refine their builds. With my warrior, I am going with pure tank for the duration (power/toughness/vitality) and a hammer/dual mace swap. I keep a rifle stowed in case I need range.

I enjoy the play style of my guardian and how heavy armor looks.

Also WvW is not end game it is just another option, and one that I avoid when ever possible because it is terrible.

I donno why there are so many warriors. I think it’s a noob thing. Or they’re just fun to play. I’m enjoying playing my warrior very much and it’s only lvl 49. I have a mesmer, guardian, thief, and necro at 80. Warriors probably the most fun to play.

I think Guardian is boring, they are just good support characters and can take a beating. I personally find them boring. Not enough damage and slow attacks. No matter how I spec, I still feel like a tank.

Dee Jay.2460:

Archetypical classes like Guardians (aka. Paladins) and Warriors are always very popular classes in every MMO. It has always been this way.

Performance doesn’t really affect class popularity as much as people here seem to think.

That said, Warriors deal by far the most damage in this game. They easily boast twice the DPS compared to any other class.

Guardians on the other hand are invaluable supporters on PvE. They make every encounter significantly easier and provide the largest arsenal of support abilities.

I don’t think so. While it is true that warrior is a very popular choice among games, if they nerfed or increased the complexity of a warrior to the point of an ele, I doubt many people will still go for it. I think it’s a strategic move made by the devs, since they know even without playing the game first, alot of people will choose warrior, they made his usage simple enough to learn and very direct. This way, more user-friendly = easier to attract new players.

Jezath.7395:

TakaEagle.9486:

Hi,

I’m in a rather large guild which should represent a rather accurate cross-section of the gw2 community. When i look at the roster, i see SIGNIFICANTLY more guardians/warriors than any other class with mesmers/engis being the least popular.

Can i get some reasons as to why these two classes are so popular? I don’t think they’re too OP (if at all) so what could it be o_O?

Thanks

Contrary to popular belief you are correct in that they are far from being OP compared to the other classes and skills.

Its all down to the class based mechanics im sure. These are 2 of the easiest classes to get to grips with based on skills and playstyle, yet thery are also the hardest to master.. This is the reason they are the most popular here and in every other game ive ever played mmo wise…

Not to be contentious here, but blanket statements like “yet they are also the hardest to master”, are going to always be wrong. I would say if you asked anyone who has played a mesmer and warrior extensively, which of the two is hardest to maximize potential or master, it wouldn’t be warrior in the majority of cases. When you have to carefully and timely use all the F1-F4 keys, that’s no simple task.

All the classes are hard to “master”, but given the nature of how effective warriors can be without being mastered is why they are so popular.

Personally I’ve always been drawn to heavy armored melee classes in video games. So it’s no surprise that in GW2 I selected one of the two choices. Personally I settled on Guardian initially because of the concept was cool and the abilities are rad (as someone stated above blue flames lol). I have stuck with the guardian for the long haul because of my second favorite play style is healing/support and well it just feels right.

The other classes I’ve played like the engineer are cool and fun (dual pistols makes me feel like boba fett blasting things and torching them) but do seem to lack a certain potency in low level pve, which makes them seem less epic. I can’t speak much for the higher content because all of my alts are around lvl 20 haha.

I dislike playing either class simply because there are so many. I am happy my main is, at least at one point, the least played class (mesmer). I get both happy and sad when I group with one.

I started out as a Necromancer but after getting facerolled repeatedly in PvP because it demands absolute perfection of you at every instant I decided I’d prefer instead to do the facerolling for awhile.

So now I play a warrior and a guardian and basically just slap randomly at the keyboard and watch my enemies fall like dominoes in both PvE and PvP when I feel like winning with little to no effort and I play the necromancer when I feel like having a huge challenge.

On a more serious note, that really is the reason I created both those characters: compared to my necro main they’re godlike right now.

Warriors and Guardians are OP, that’s why.

I mean. My guild group used to only have something like a 60% chance to kill lupi on the first try.

One of our team switched from ele to guardian. He put less than 30 hours into that guardian getting it to 80. And then we immediately went to arah.

We’ve never failed a lupicus since. Not even the time we had to 3 man it.

Warrior on the other hand is just
1. easy to play
2. very forgiving (heavy armor + highest base hp)
3. strong (In melee, range, and even underwater, the warrior has one of, if not the strongest DPS kits)

Because they’re faceroll compared to any other proff.

Warrior damage is extremely overpowered compared to every other class in the game. And it wont ever get nerfed because both the developers that deal with balance main as Warriors. Roll a Warrior.

I don’t play Warrior for the ease of it that people find. I do it because if you’re also playing as hard as you would when playing a different class, your potential is enormous. I usually play a mage in games, but I enjoy the warrior class in this one. I want to feel like a powerful hero and Warrior delivers.

fellyn.5083:

tigirius.9014:

immunity to the nerf bat

for a while there I was actually thinking they wanted us all to play nothing but considering some of these problems have been in some of the adventurer classes since bwe3…..got some answers recently we’ll see.

Uh yeah…no. Out of all the issues and outright broken things with the warrior class a grand total of 0 of them have been fixed since launch.

I’m not saying other classes don’t have their issues, however. What I am saying is that nothing you said is true.

Also if you are dieing repeatedly to 100b in spvp that’s a l2p issue.

Soooo I guess I am going to have to show you evidence to the contrary of your statement.

Warriors are immune to nerfing Here we show ten items all of which are buffs only. Increase in damage, and improvements all around.even warriors are asking why warriors aren’t getting nerfed

Look at engineers. Half of the things we have on the long list of bugs and misses that prevent this class from being played properly on land with it’s biggest list of problems being issues with kits not working with the basic functions of most weapons of other classes which we just yesterday finally got a dev to respond to anything in our forums after two months of waiting for someone anyone to say something.

When you are playing an engineer and you are using grenades and you throw out 12-18 or so grenades to kill and enemy in Orr and you see a warrior run by even with sword and board and outright faceroll everything in it’s path, you know there’s an issue. No other class other then guardian kills that quickly. And that’s what I meant by the immunity to the nerfbat.

Sure warriors have a few issues here and there making some aspects of their builds not work properly, but at least you have weapons that work for you and you aren’t pigeonholed into a single spec because 90% of your weaponry is ineffective like it is for engineers.

Engineers miss constantly on their cone attacks making p/p/ft/eg useless. We are nerfed to crazy oblivion in pve where we have to literally throw out 12-16 grenades to get the same function out of our damage builds as other classes that have similar specs and builds. Pistols are about as useless as we have to literally shoot 25-30 bullets per mob to kill anything, Rifles really don’t work well as the inbetween rifle/shotgun approach as seen by soooo many who play with rifles compared to the Warrior Rifle (when engineers can prepare and instakill people like warriors and thieves do all the time, let me know will yeah? I’ve watched countless videos about how others play this class worked on multiple builds have two sets of armor with completely different stats, it just doesn’t happen for engis.)

So sure they’ve taken just as long to get back to you as they have us engis but at least your class isn’t broken. yeah…..you can actually play your class even in 1 spec. Engis not so much (unless you include the tankcat spec which doesn’t do much damage btw because you sacrifice everything for survival, and usually isn’t used for pve because both of our equipable weapons are generally ranged.)

I’d like an explanation of where exactly was I wrong in my assessment? It was solely pve assessment btw.

Southern Lord.7254:

I see more Char Engineers than I do any other race/job, hosing down enemies with flames about 5 seconds before my Thief gets to them

Usually that’s when the FT is perfectly centered in the screen with only a 0.00001% tilt. Any other movement makes it miss miss miss miss miss miss miss …try it, you’ll see what were talking about.

my choice was purely based on coolness factor.

guardian is my first and only toon. i had no clue at all about the game when i started.

but i love “divine magic” type characters.

Heavy armor and large weapons.

A lot of people prefer metal-encased toons with massive blades over guys in their bathrobes shooting light out of sticks they wave around.

I had been running the Ascalonian Catacombs all day with various groups. No real problems, but always a death or two, sometimes taking a long time to bring down Kholer, etc. This was various combinations of professions and levels.

Then I ran it with two Warriors and two Guardians, and me, a Ranger.

Smooth like buttah. One death (me) and hardly any time spent on the floor.

Partly it was the players – but a lot of the people I’d had way more trouble with earlier in the day had also been experienced players who knew the dungeon.

There’s no denying that these professions make certain kinds of content a LOT easier.

mulch.2586:

Even with a very defensive set-up, my guard has better kill-speed than my ranger.

And nothing can match a warrior for kill-speed.

Both are strong professions, and heavy armor looks pretty good. A common misconception is that armor value is a lot more for heavy. Unlike most fantasy games, here the diff between tiers is about 10%.

My ele will outdamage my war any day of the week. So that is completely false. And in most cases will out survive teh warrior as well.
That said it was ALOT harder to master playing the Ele than the Warrior.

Wars and Guards are just easy to pick up and play with. Both are good classes but I think alot of peopel are butt-hurt over them for some reason and like to reguritate some nonsense they heard on the internet about them being OP.

If Anet would get off their kitten and fix the mountain of bugs that plague this game, many other classes would be alot more powerful than either of those without having to buff anything about them.