Guild Wars 2

I’d like to start by explaining that this isn’t a hate post about guardians in spvp. To be honest, I’m a bit new at tournaments and what I’m really hoping is that someone may be able to help explain some strategic counters for when you see 3 or 4 guardians on one team.

One friend suggested a group composition with 3 or 4 thieves, would this be viable or are there better options? What kind of compositions have worked for you in the past when presented with 4 or 5 guardians?

Bringing Thieves to counter Guardians would be suicide unless they are all really good with Shortbow.

Much easier to bring a competant Necro or Ranger in to deal with each Guardian. The only exception to the “ranged kills Guardiant” rule is the spirit weapon Guardian… and they are almost entirely based around CDs, and for each spirit weapon they take, they lose a condition removal, stunbreak, and stability, etc.

Do not bring in melee classes to take down Guardians, and do not bring glass cannons, in case the Guardian is using a Retaliation build (which only kills glass cannon specs fast, otherwise the damage is pretty negligible unless you just auto attack the Guardian the entire fight).

I know as a Guardian bunker good Rangers and Necros always gave me the most trouble, when they wouldn’t even come to the node… meaning that if I went to them, I lose the node, which a bunker isn’t supposed to do, and if I sat there, I just wittled away under conditions and ranged attacks.

Maybe i shouldn’t say this as a guardian, rewealing our weaknes but i want the game to be great, and ppl to not overestimate guardian (coz they got nerf in evry patch :/).
The answer is: condition stacking – DONE!
Like a friend from above said – best if ranged, necro and ranger are great in this aspect and i would add to this group condition engi – they can wrack guardians.
Guardian belongs to prof with lowest health pool, if they are tanky – thats becaus of toughness. Conditions doesnt give a kitten about armor Guardian doesnt have that much that much condition removal if he doesnt make it artificialy (with the help of the runes and sigils) with sacrifice of other great point defending skills.
If u want to counter guardian – make one, see what skills he have, and where are the openings. I see ppl trying to run in to the SANCTUARY without stability and bomping all the time from “invisible” wall – even in tournaments.
Know your enemy if u want to beat him.
Plz… dont use condition on me i hate it

As an engineer I can say that we are good against guardians (at least my build which doesnt even rely on condition stacking).
Basically against one I’m in control the entire fight, can easily knock them off and hold them away from points long enough to decap (timing against stability ofc) and whatever happens eventually I will win (once they exhaust one or two of their bubbles).
Against 2 guardians, well I would honestly send one true bunker, could be Engi, Necro or Ele. All three have enough survivability to comfortably deal with the two bunker guards, and that way you can concentrate on zerging the other two points with a numerical advantage.

Basically 2 guards on one node is a waste because they cant kill a decent player and it means an instant numerical advantage elsewhere.

A Necro with wells and boon stripping. Or a ranged class that stacks conditions.
No boons=free kill.

Necromancers are kind of a natural soft-counter to many of the bunker specs people are running these days.

Sceptre 1 spam means they constantly have to deal with bleeds from range, but then they also have Corrupt Boon (make sure not to cast this when aegis is up), Spinal Shivers, Wells, Plague, unblockable marks (when traited), and constant poison.

The bunker is built to hold a point as long as possible to get points. I don’t know how to counter them in this term. Yes, I might kill them, but, not faster enough.

But, do I have to “counter” a bunker? Do you ? That’s the real question.

Quite doable. We faced this team the previous day too when they had a necro in place of a mesmer. Same result.