Guild Wars 2

As a guardian player I often feel a little impotent when I run up against a engineer or elementalist that is clearly bunkering a fight better than I ever could. Can somebody do a comparison between the strengths of different bunker classes? I hope this will also help clear up a some of the vagueness inherent in the recently popular bunker hate-threads.

eg. Guardian spirit weapons can let them excel at bunkering 1 on 1, or vs ranged (30 second ranged immunity, anyone?), but lack any serious group CC.

Guardians
Probably the easiest of the bunkers to play at a “passable” level. They tend to be built with good armor and hp pools and bring condition removal and protective buffs to the fight.

Elementalist
Probably the best condition removal of the bunkers and brings the most combo fields. Probably the most susceptible to burst of all the bunkers. Brings a lot to team fights.

Engineer
Has the least group buffs and condition removal, has the best CC access. Can be built very tanky. Very strong in bunker vs bunker scenarios (although those are very rare).

Warrior
Has high base defenses/hps but low sustainability and a lack of defensive buffs. Can get decent condi removal but nothing special. Good cc potential though.

Necro
Doesn’t provide many buffs for the team but has good survivability and team fight presence.

Pretty short descriptions but i think it hits their main points.

I play a 4 kit rifle bunker engineer (med kit, flamethrower, elixir gun, tool kit) in solo-queuing tPvP.

* Lots of knock backs on short CD
* Two leaps on short CD
* AE condition removal when you consider Elixir Bomb (Light Field/Projectiles) + heavy uptime w/Kit Refinement
* Lots of snares/immobilization on short CD
* Decent self-healing when you make aggressive use of Med Kit and kiting
* Pull interrupt (magnet) and blocking (gear shield) on short CD

This is just one way to bunker an engineer. Probably more popular is pistol/shield w/bomb kit and elixirs. I like the above because everything is on a short CD.

This all said, I’ve fought some amazing bunker guardians and I believe a well-played guardian is a better bunker than engineer can be. They have a lot more AE control as well stability. Engineers really lack guaranteed stability.

Yep engis lacking good access to stability is probably the biggest downside of the class. Especially in a bunker role. You are also kinda hosed when you fight an attacker with stability because most of your bunkering tools don’t work any more.

Necro is probably the only aggressive Bunker out there. Necros do not provide any buffs to the team at all but they can strip boons at clutch moments (Spinal Shivers, Well of Corruption), keep the enemy bunker poisoned via scepter 1, and transfer conditions to the enemy Bunker (Deathly Swarm, Putrid Mark) making it easy for your roamer/carry to do their jobs.

Focusing a 3.2k toughness 0-10-30-30-0 Necro in team fights can be really dumb if they have wells (Blind, Condition convert, and Boon convert wells) AND specially if they can use Plague in-case of emergency. They can deal with both burst and condition damage. Comparing a Necro to a Guardian? You decide which is better. I simply prefer Necro because I don’t consider myself a passive little girl.

I agree with the above posts, if you want to just sustain constant damage in the face, Guardian or Ele are better options.

If you want to keep other players locked down or knocked back and still carry enough damage to kill with consistency, Engineers so far seem far superior. Their number of knockbacks is astounding, and on VERY shord CDs. They even have an elite that is basically nothing but 20 seconds of hellacious knockbacks and knockdowns. They are great for actually keeping the point uncontested, but they suffer a bit from good lockdown specs. Most of their stunbreaks don’t fit well into kit builds or turret builds.