I love guardians/dragon hunters. I love my staff on my guardian even though it’s not a useful weapon. I spend most of my time supporting groups in DS with huge empower buffs and symbols to kill mobs faster and progress through the event as quickly as possible.
In my opinion, it really seems to me when I’m on my guardian with her staff and empowering the group and increasing damage with my swiftness symbol and symbol of wrath and traps, the mobs die noticeably faster.
I think my guardian is useful. (My guardian killed a smokescale mob (admit, it wasn’t a veteran smokescale) in Tangled Depths with just her empower buff and symbol of swiftness. That’s way cool.)
All of the things you mentioned are done much much much easier by a warrior, rev, ele or even scrapper.
They also have much greater DPS potential while doing so, as well as more mobility as well as one or more of the following
1: Reflects
2: Condition pressure
3: Better boon support in other areas _(fury, regen etc…)
4: Control effects _(dazes, stuns, knock downs, launches etc..)
And none of it requires them to or their allies to stand still for 3-5 seconds at a time (Something the game is literally designed to punish you for) to get the most of a skill that places a symbol on the ground or requires them to become a statue.
Honestly you could join the numerous other people making suggestions for how to fix this for guardians or you can realize something.
That something is that these problems have existed since launch, people have complained about it since launch and Anet has done nothing.
After that you realize that its just better all around to forget about the guardian even existing & roll a scrapper, ele, or rev which can fill all the same roles better with more flexibility of role at any given moment even in the same gear.
