Guild Wars 2

Guardians are arguably too effective at what they’re designed to do. From what I can tell it hasn’t been said much but it’s largely the case, and it has been having a tremendously negative impact on tournaments (and hot joins to a much lesser extent).

When a player of average skill can hold off two or three other players for what seems like an eternity and provide constant healing and buffs to his teammates, something must be wrong.

From my experience over the last couple weeks a team without a guardian is at a moderate disadvantage against one with a guardian. When a team without a guardian is faced against a team of average skill with more than one guardian it’s basically over, assuming they’re even slightly tanky. I’m sure people have had similar experiences, and frankly I don’t want to go back to the classic rock-paper-scissors arena style we all are so familiar with, this problem has to be addressed.

Warriors counter Guardian point control. And Guardian point control only really matters on 1 of the nine points in tPvP, the clock tower.

Guardians are fine.

Guardians are not fine, and if you have more than one good guardian you can easily lock down two points if there team supports them well. Please don’t comment if you don’t have experience facing such builds/teams.

Hyeena.4286:

Warriors counter Guardian point control.

… How? Just dodge the bullsrush/HB and warrior class has been neutralized regardless of class or spec.

I believe this is one of the most silly things I have read on this forum. Warriors, Necros, and Rangers all counter my Guardian by a mile. Any other class can also if they know the class. Mesmers are so difficult I dont even want to mention them. We have the lowest health pool of any class, and if you just stack conditions I am toast.

I know it is harsh but Learn 2 Play before you start crying nerf. I am sick of playing MMO’s where it is a constant game of FOTM because of people crying on the forums.

guardians are fine, become an engineer and plant some conditions on his face. Even the most condition removing guardians have trouble surviving then for some reason

Conditions > Guardian. Simply because even condition removal specced Guards have to make decisions as to when to cleanse the conditions as well as most of the cond removal seems highly random. It’s annoying removing the blind and have the 15 stacks of bleed still ticking. If your having problems removing Guardians from points its a playstyle issue on Khylo the map where having a Guardian middle seems most important you even get a secondary mechanic that completely demolishes Guardians. Honestly I haven’t had trouble with them. And seeing from both sides of the spectrum well coordinated teams shut out Guardians quickly and easily.

Best way to deal with them is condi-dmg builds that have high poison uptime. Necro, Engineer, Ranger, and maybe a few others can do this very well.

Titus.9705:

From my experience over the last couple weeks a team without a guardian is at a moderate disadvantage against one with a guardian.

What? I was in a team without a guardian, and literally every team we went against had a guardian, and we won them all.

Did you try and kill them? I tried and succeded.

All this talk about how conditions demolish Guardians. Its as though we don’t have 2 passive condition removals, a skill that turns them into boons and a trait that turns all 5 available signets into condition removers.

Granted yes, not every guardian will have those skills, but the guardians you’re going up against in those situations will.

The Guardian’s condi removal can be overloaded. As my Engineer I destroy bunker build Guardians with the sheer amount of Chill, Poison, and damage conditions.

I mean, I tend to agree that Guardians need to be toned down a little in this aspect, but it is possible to deal with them in the meantime.

Someone is upset they cannot HS spam a guardian to death.
And Yes killing Mesmers is the ultimate skill test of a Guardian, Engineers a close second.

I’d agree that guardians are in the top tier of classes along with mesmers, thieves, and engineers. I wouldn’t say they are any stronger than those classes though.

I will admit that 9 out of 10 requests for a player in THOTHM is looking for a guardian.

This game is turning into a nerfest cry for every class. Mesmers are too powerful! Thieves kill me too fast! Warriors bash me! I can’t kill guardians!
For God’s sake, I don’t say this often but learn to play or find another game.
Judging by the trend on this forum, all classes are OP but the ones you play.

I’d like to see DPS Guardian’s become viable. Not fail safe/face-roll/vitality + toughness/pub-stomper/anti-fun build.

I play a very tanky guardian. Generally, I am very difficult to kill. I’ve had my fair share of holding off 3v1 at clock tower. However, my biggest strength is that I realize what can kill me and know when to and how to avoid it. Conditions beat the crap out of me, assuming they use them intelligently. And massive well-timed shutdown kills me.

I must admit though, I do think guardian can be a little bit on the too much side. But, guardian is quite close to being balanced.

The best way to beat a guardian is simply by being coordinated. There is no sense in sending one person to 1v1 a guardian. Them living with a build that is supposed to cause them to live is working exactly how it should be. Perhaps try a collapse on a guardian to knock them off a point. Against teams with a lot of defense, they tend to lack the ability to do damage. So, once you get your hands on a point, if you’re competent, you ought to be able to keep it from them. This argument, btw, works with any tanky specced class. Whether it be necro, engineer, or anything that is controlling a point you can’t take 1 on 1. Just collapse, take control, and hold.

dragoshan.7904:

This game is turning into a nerfest cry for every class. Mesmers are too powerful! Thieves kill me too fast! Warriors bash me! I can’t kill guardians!
For God’s sake, I don’t say this often but learn to play or find another game.
Judging by the trend on this forum, all classes are OP but the ones you play.

I’ve never played an MMO where this was not the case. I honestly don’t care that people consider some classes OP/UP/broken right now because the game is only 2 weeks old. Anet -needs- to hear criticism from all sides right now so they can get their game balanced well, an MMO’s first 2 months are where the initial changes are made to make things balanced after appropriate user input, and I think after that is when we’re gonna have to call Anet out on OP/UP status.

If they’re officially recognized as an E-sport, expect this type of thread literally every single day, for probably every single class.

Just played against 4 guardians and a warrior in a tourney game, all 4 guardians had spirit weapons and a HB warrior. They just zerged points with so many spirit weapons it was silly. :P so that + perma retaliation was a pointless fight

yeah gaurdians are a bit op

the “they’re not op i can kill them with x” claims are from people playing vs bad guardians

these bad guardians still beat most people

i play guardian btw

if you send 1 person, i’ll kill them. if you send 2, i’ll stall long enough for roamers. if you send 3, the roamers will take another point

One word . . . . . . . Balance.

Whatever happened to the so called all hail “balance” in GW2. I mean referring to some posts in this thread about the guardian being able to “tank” 2 even 3 players. . . . .is that balance?

Ok so say the guardian has purposely been designed to be this way, where is the balance for say, the seriously underwhelming ele’s or the lackluster necromancers to in some way match the tankiness of the guardian or buffs in some way to at least scratch that tanky guardians HP. There is in no way, shape or form any balance in this game between the professions.
If it was upto me i would make all professions have of course their own skills etc but for each profession the dmg from skill# 1 – 5 is the same, with the same CD and Utilities for each profession also have same CD. This way every profession is equal and “balanced” and comes down to the actual player skill, when to use certain skills, utilities etc etc etc.
The only slight edge 1 player should have over another is how he is traited/runed/amulet for his profession.

People preech balance, they need to understand the meaning of balance before they do!

my 2 cents!

Braxxus.2904:

Hyeena.4286:

Warriors counter Guardian point control.

… How? Just dodge the bullsrush/HB and warrior class has been neutralized regardless of class or spec.

It has absolutely nothing to do with HB, and I’m talking about point control.

I play in tournaments a lot with my guild and the op is right, a guardian is a huge advantage to have so they can bunker down on a control point ( usually the one closest to the enemy spawn), it will take usually 2 or 3 people to take him down leaving you free to cap the others, and when they eventually kill him he simply goes back and rinse and repeat. If they do decide to leave him alone then you only have to concentrate on keeping 1 other point and it’s an easy win.

However if the other team employs the same tactic it can get fun lols. And the guardians can do no damage while built that way.

But this only seems prevalent in Tpvp as Spvp is just a Zerg fest and tactics don’t matter as much.

i recall a game of structured pvp where i got a horrible roll and ended up on a team vs 6 guardians…the score was about 500-50 for there team, i was condition engineer and i can take 1 guardian on but when your trying to take a point and theres 3 of them you get CCed to hell then 1 will elite heal all of them which sucks becuase there tankiness is ridiculous…and if we managed to even down 1 of them the others would shield push away and do a bunch of annoying cc junk and we couldnt finish any of them…it was terrible…guardians are so op in groups its stupid fighting 6 guardians is like fighting 30

I always read that necros counter guardians sooooo hard. Seriously, corrupt boon doesn’t work most of the time because it is hideously bugged (no, I don’t speak of Aegis) and if you cannot find what seems gazillion heals/regeneration on your bar or forget to put some there while the low damage dots tickle you to death…well…then you deserve to lose… wait or are you the ones who sit in the weird cirlce on the ground which a necro put down?

I won’t argue the point that a team with a Guardian(s) against a team without are facing a serious uphill battle, but if you aren’t geared for dealing with Guardians in your team comp then that’s your own fault.

People don’t like Rangers much in tPvP play, but I’ll tell you what, the crew I role with decided to add one into our comp specifically for dealing with Guardians. With them being so prevalent in tournament play right now it’s extremely viable.

Stacking 25 bleeds in 3 seconds from range drops a Guardian in record time.

I don’t particularly think Guardians are that out of whack, but a Ranger Shortbow build stacking 25 bleeds on a Guardian is a bad idea if they have Retaliation up. A Trap build, or Engi/Necro with chill and poison can take care of Guardians.

Ayestes.1273:

I don’t particularly think Guardians are that out of whack, but a Ranger Shortbow build stacking 25 bleeds on a Guardian is a bad idea if they have Retaliation up.

Er, um, yeah it is. Which is kinda’ why you make sure they don’t have it up before you unload your burst rofl.

They are so op u cant 1 shot them :///

Braxxus.2904:

Hyeena.4286:

Warriors counter Guardian point control.

… How? Just dodge the bullsrush/HB and warrior class has been neutralized regardless of class or spec.

He is not talking about counter as in killing ( unless he thinks a warrior can 1v1 a guardian lol) he would mostly be talking about a hammer warrior can neutral a point, but even that is not a counter because its still not a sure thing this warrior is gonna out push a bunker guardian…….

WhiteCrow.5310:

Ayestes.1273:

I don’t particularly think Guardians are that out of whack, but a Ranger Shortbow build stacking 25 bleeds on a Guardian is a bad idea if they have Retaliation up.

Er, um, yeah it is. Which is kinda’ why you make sure they don’t have it up before you unload your burst rofl.

Well, =) good luck with that my main is a guardian and you can not keep retal off of me you can strip my boons over and over and over and over again i will keep retal up 24/7 very easy and the retaliation boon is an after thought in my build. I’m not even specing heavily for it. aegis removal give you 10 sec of retal base if you get 10 points in virtues you can even get 25% extra retal bur + the 10% boon in that line making that retal 13.5 sec

so that first tier 1 Wrathful Spirit trait can give you MASSIVE retal

first hit in a fight pops aegis 13.5

then i pop save your self that give me another 13.5

PLUS Save yourself give you another agies thats another 13.5

then you can pop your aegis virtue thats another 13.5

then in my build i use stand your group thats another 6.2

that can add up to 60.2 sec of retal if i wanted to pop it all at once or pop it as need to i can be immune to boon removal. to make this work you only need 10 point in honor
and take Wrathful Spirit trait.

Guardians need two things to be killed effectively, near constant poison application and applying damage.

Guardians tend to have higher armor but lower hps than other bunker builds. This makes them susceptible to condition damage. As others have stated though, nearly every guardian will have condition removal. That is why it is important to stack a wide variety of conditions forcing the guardian to burn all their removal.

Yes they are a pain in thekitten to kill and they often take a while to bring down but they are not OP and can be countered.

guardians are op in my opinion as well. they can be too tanky for the amount of condition removal / buff application as well.

the guy who mentioned above that rangers coutner guardian is just a terrible guardian. good ones i’ve seen keep the retal on at all times and as the fastest attackign class in the game, this is trouble.

Nearly 100% of competitive tournament teams currently have a guardian and mesmer – guardian for point defense, mesmer for portal/trebuchet and just general mesmers being ridiculous at PvP.

You’ll also very rarely see a team without a Warrior (due to their high survivability to damage ratio) and thief (due to their insane burst, stealth/survival potential, and mobility).

That leaves one spot for openings – often used by another one of the classes above, occasionally replaced by, say, a bunker engie or an elementalist or something.

The game isn’t broken but the metagame isn’t very balanced currently, guardians and mesmers are significantly more powerful than the other classes out there.

As a bunker warrior I can effectively counter a guardian point control. He spends all his time trying to get me off the point. I have two easy stun breaks and can get as much as 22s of stability in a row. When a partner rotates to me he DIES quickly because my hammer is designed to lock people down. When his partner rotates to him I live a while longer because I’m fighting a 1v1.5 because he sacrificed everything for survival.

I play both guardian and warrior bunker and I can say that guardian has the leg up in survival while warrior has the leg up at making sure the target quickly dies by removing their ability to fight back for 5s while partner kills them unless they have stability. (and even then that’s useless against a mesmer or necro roamer)

BLOODBIRD.9386

Cry more noob
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Hey, look, all of a sudden we’re on the [QQ] forums. Useful reply, dawg!

As a Guardian, I can agree that there are some areas that we’re very strong. However, there’s plenty where we can be exploited. Let me explain.

We have very good condition removal, there’s no disputing that. I do see that even though we can dispel many, the long cd’s make it tough to keep them off of us initially. If we spec into damage, our damage is pretty good but at the cost of not only vitality(which is low already) but toughness. There’s quite a few weaknesses to this class such as the lack of stuns, cripples and quick CC. And what I mean by “quick” cc is that a lot of our crowd control abilities have some pretty noticeable telegraphs.( binding blade and banish for example) We do have shield of judgement which can be excellent to help the team with some breathing room but it’s negated by stability. So while we have quite a few gap closers, we have no way of actually keeping you within range after that. And since our burst damage isn’t the highest, it’s very difficult to keep the pressure on when you’re crippled/chilled and your opponent/s continue to walk freely around you. There’s a few other weaknesses but it’s just my opinion.

Edit: Also to ad don to my previous statement about shield of judgement, it seems counter intuitive to have a push-back for a class that has a tough time keeping targets close.

the biggest problem is that a guardian’s natural and most dangerous enemy are necromancers

and necromancers are so utterly bugged, and even without they bugs they are so ridiculously underpowered and underwhelming at every-effing-thing but dealing with guardians, that practically noone plays them

so guardians dont have to worry about their natural counter, since there is none around the vast majority of the time

Necromancers seem tankier than guardians.
A fix without any class changes would be increase of players in tPvP so the fights are not 1v2 so many times or allow neutralization of a point when another is defending. Or allow capturing when two players are on the point against one defender (or 3 players attacking 2 defending etc.)

It is the gamemode that is broken in my opinion. Many classes can build tanky.

The real issue here is guardians can do something that Anet stated they didn’t want, which was for a single player to just tank damage from multiple players for extended amounts of time without dieing. In beta necro could do this pretty easily, and that’s a big reason why deathshroud is the way it is now in terms of damage absorption.

No one has a problem with a guardian holding off several players for a short while to buy time. People do have an issue with the fact you can sometimes have 3 people pounding on one and it takes a rather long time to down them. Personally, I think that the fact you can’t interrupt shelter is such a big issue as it’s a free heal that just absorbs incoming damage. Sure signet of resolve heals for more, but that can at least be offset by just continuing to damage a guardian during the heal to offset it.

The real issue here is guardians can do something that Anet stated they didn’t want, which was for a single player to just tank damage from multiple players for extended amounts of time without dieing.

Actually a guardian can’t take a beat, even with full defensive spec, on his own against competent players. He can pop bubbles, protection boons and stuff but still, all of this is related to cooldowns and once again, kind of pressure you can apply.

Guardians:

-worst ranged skills in the game

-lowest health (conditions ignore armor)

-low tier damage unless you’re just a really bad player against them

-a series of well timed stuns bring them down as easily as everyone if they can’t pop a CD

I won’t get into the argument about what’s OP and not, what’s easy/skilled and not anymore, because I realize people will always complain about anything they struggle with. But these traits are fact, and if you use them to your advantage… dead guardian.

The difference is, you can’t just rush in and try to melee a guardian down, period. A good one will always kill you. And MOST people in pub play/pug play try to do this. It’s why Thieves are so popular and so complained about… people want to jump in quick and blast a guy down in seconds, and this is one class that can easily say “no sir”, and so it will always be branded OP, even though their defensive mechanics are the least OP thing about them.

I do, however, understand the complaints about stability, because it’s difficult to counter how easily and often they provide that, but most of the other complaints are rather silly in the context of what other classes can do in competent hands, forget how easy a class is to play, you always balance by what they can do at top level, period, not casual pub play.

This doesn’t change the fact that bunker guardian is so strong in tournament that you’re kittening yourself by not taking one on your team (or taking bunker mesmer in it’s place). That’s a problem because nothing should feel required to win.

Guardian, Mesmer, Engineer… you could even argue Elementalist in survival mode… Guardians are just the easiest to bunker with. Are you saying easy to play = OP?

I just ask because I don’t consider the two things to be the same.

No I’m saying they would be the best choice for it, and are very strong in team. Don’t put words in my mouth (so to speak).

I can’t believe you all are ignoring the details I pointed out to exploit the Guardian. It feels like i’m talking to a wall. Here, let me make it easier for you all with bullet points!

. No ranged
.No cripples or stuns(Knock back/Knock down are not stuns so don’t even bother)
.Low health
.Sub-par elites(good luck trying to use the tomes) and for those of you who say, “just combine stability with it.” Tell me any other elite in the game that requires you to use another skill just so you can utilize your elite.
.Decent damage and great condition removal and shouts are nice
.No escape mechanisms(can’t run out of combat once committed)
.Most of our heavy hitter skills have noticeable telegraphs

I mean need I go on? Get your heads on straight before making accusations. I’m not saying the Guardian isn’t strong, but it’s far from OP especially with the recent nerfs.

I wouldn’t disagree with this one.

Schwahrheit.4203:

I wouldn’t disagree with this one.

I’m all for debates/discussions on what is and what isn’t overpowered. I just pointed out facts, that’s all.

I have to agree with the OP. Condition builds fast stack conditions aka attack many times and retaliation just kills them. IMO ridiculous retaliation up-time is really the problem.

I shouldn’t take 2 people to kill 1 and it shouldn’t be impossible to kill a group of guardians. Both I find to be the case in tPvP.

I think even D/D roamers should be able to kill a guardian over time but, no.

As i see it Guardian is just soo strong in what he should do. One specific role – and thats is “hold the point”. Once he get the point under his control.. you need to send at least 2 your DPS to take him down. For most classess °1v1 vs Guardian is impossible which is the basic of counquest.. you actually have lot of 1v1 and 2v2 fights. If you have one guardian in team his role is mainly hold middle point. If you actually have 2 guardians you can easily hold 2 points.
Guardian is so strong not because its OP.. but because it takes muuch longer to kill him, it also require to have specific build against him (like conditions builds). And while you fighting him.. he is allready telling his teammates for support. If you face good team you will never be able to outnumber him or only for short time.. giving you once again no chance or much less chance to kill a retake the point.

just for yesterday i played all together about 20 tournament games.. out of these 17 teams had double guardian in rooster.
To be honest i dont really care that sometimes i lost the game.. but to me it starting to be too much about holding and only defending and much more less about killing which is also related to Conquest mechanic.
So in my point of view CONQUEST + GUARDIAN = thats the issue