Guild Wars 2

edited because “I can’t logic” and asked same thing twice…

Just wondering if team tournament players feel guardian is still meta or not.

If they are, what do you think will change that and why do you think they hold such a pivotal position?

If they are not, then what areas are they lacking that would make them more applicable to the meta again?

If you main a guardian, mention that too please, as opinions and points of view differ based on perspective.

1. Yes it is meta, but not the bad one. It is bunkerish but not making tons of damage as other builds/classes like Warriors or Spirit-Rangers do.

2. AoE spability and good AoE heal / condition-remove

3. I play guardian myself

Personally, I dislike bunker Guardians just because they’re too good at what they do. Healing + Condi removal + Stability and all AoE. They’re overpowered for the Support role but no one seems to mind because they don’t kill anybody. But having such a difficult to kill spec with zero pressure damage-wise just seems like a bad design choice to allow in a control point type of mode. Then again, the capture rules have also felt like a bad design choice from the beginning since it enables low damage bunker and decap playstyles to help with the score rather than just help their teammates get the score.

They’d be better in a mode that focused more on killing for the win rather than killing leading indirectly to capturing for the victory condition.

Guardian overpowered…this is the first time since release of gw2 I hear guardian is overpowered.

Guardian is an perfect bunker but guardian is not OP.

Guardian bunker is a great role to have in the game. A bunker that can support and rez teammates all at once, it’s the only one that has ever been able to do it well enough solo.

The goal should be to make some other classes be able to do what the guardian does just in a different way.

To start off, yes I play guard as my main.

Absolutely they are still the meta. No other class can take the amount of abuse they see and still offer amazing team support in the way of condi removal and boons. AoE stability/prot/regen/might/retal are all great for swinging a fight in your favor. Guards are typically seen as what makes or breaks team fights when in the hands of a great player. Just a bit ago in tpvp we came across a group that’s strategy was “focus the guard” because they wanted me to pop my cool downs and leave the point since they knew how important a guard is in a team fight at keeping the node contested and supporting the team (won’t name names to ruin their tactics but it was a higher level team). Being said, guards will remain meta until a class is able to offer everything guards can.

Bunker guardians seem to be one of the few classes/builds that is actually liked by most sPvPers and is seem as balanced. That’s probably why there have been almost no changes to it in a long, long time.

Phantaram.1265:

Guardian bunker is a great role to have in the game. A bunker that can support and rez teammates all at once, it’s the only one that has ever been able to do it well enough solo.

The goal should be to make some other classes be able to do what the guardian does just in a different way.

Spirit Ranger has its Spirit / AoE-fear with luck, Engi has stealth and knock-backs / stuns, thief has refuge, about warrior we don’t even have to start, eles “were” in the old days with mist-form as effective as guardians were, mesmers have distortion / daze.
Necromancers are the only ones being pretty weak at it, due to the fact of having no stability in viable builds. Only Plague.

Imagine these classes would go full-bunker. They would perform nearly as well as Guardians do. The only difference is instant blocks and stability. The difference in rezzing is balanced in the higher damage-output these classes have.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Phantaram.1265:

Guardian bunker is a great role to have in the game. A bunker that can support and rez teammates all at once, it’s the only one that has ever been able to do it well enough solo.

The goal should be to make some other classes be able to do what the guardian does just in a different way.

Spirit Ranger has its Spirit / AoE-fear with luck, Engi has stealth and knock-backs / stuns, thief has refuge, about warrior we don’t even have to start, eles “were” in the old days with mist-form as effective as guardians were, mesmers have distortion / daze.
Necromancers are the only ones being pretty weak at it, due to the fact of having no stability in viable builds. Only Plague.

Imagine these classes would go full-bunker. They would perform nearly as well as Guardians do. The only difference is instant blocks and stability. The difference in rezzing is balanced in the higher damage-output these classes have.

Thief as a bunker is terrible. They have almost no stability/protection and rely too heavily on stealth, which doesn’t contest points. There’s a reason that a bunker thief has never been a viable spec.

Thieves can reliably stomp enemies, but only when there’s not a ton of AoE cleave damage going on since they can’t tank it like other classes can.

Dahkeus.8243:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Phantaram.1265:

Guardian bunker is a great role to have in the game. A bunker that can support and rez teammates all at once, it’s the only one that has ever been able to do it well enough solo.

The goal should be to make some other classes be able to do what the guardian does just in a different way.

Spirit Ranger has its Spirit / AoE-fear with luck, Engi has stealth and knock-backs / stuns, thief has refuge, about warrior we don’t even have to start, eles “were” in the old days with mist-form as effective as guardians were, mesmers have distortion / daze.
Necromancers are the only ones being pretty weak at it, due to the fact of having no stability in viable builds. Only Plague.

Imagine these classes would go full-bunker. They would perform nearly as well as Guardians do. The only difference is instant blocks and stability. The difference in rezzing is balanced in the higher damage-output these classes have.

Thief as a bunker is terrible. They have almost no stability/protection and rely too heavily on stealth, which doesn’t contest points. There’s a reason that a bunker thief has never been a viable spec.

Thieves can reliably stomp enemies, but only when there’s not a ton of AoE cleave damage going on since they can’t tank it like other classes can.

True, but I just made a hypothetical comparison, not pointing out, that most of these classes don’t even have any viable bunker-speccs.

personally i think it’s decent while also it’s pretty bad as well.

bunkering node is girly job beside that it’s pretty weak in other aspects 1v1, Dps…

but one of the best class for the skyhammer though.

Guardians are basically Holy Trinity in one toon. Heal, Tank, and some dps.
Needed in every game mode, every group since release.
Yes, they’re meta all-around as hell

In any major tournament/any serious team comp, Guardians have had almost 100% class representation.

If GW2 were any other game, Guardians as a class would be considered significantly overused, perhaps bordering on Broken/OP, and instantly banned from picks, etc. due to being over-centralizing and thus unhealthy for the competitive spirit of the game.

And while its true, Guardians are not exactly “overpowered,” relative to other classes in the game, I am curious if anet considers the over use, if not absolute dominance of Guardians in the meta since day 1 of GW2 an issue to be remedied, or not.

Guardian is the one thing since day one that has been balanced. Phanta is right, literally the only balance policy that should be happening at ANet is “how do we make all classes like guardian, because they are, and always have been, in a very good spot”

Guardians have been the single most overpowered meta spec in the game for a long time.

They are an absolute must for organized competitive play because they spew AoE boons from every orifice and work basically as repeatable rez bots while being able to stay on point better than anyone else in a team scenario while maintaining maximum effectiveness.

Is Guardian balanced? No. Of course not. It’s just a spec people have accepted because shiny white particle effects = must have lots of healing and spew boons and res teammates instantly.

If Guardian was balanced, you would have a choice to take one or not at high level play. You don’t have a choice. And before some noob comes and says “Oh warrior is tankier and better bunker”: No, it isn’t.

What are you talking about infantrydiv, do you even know what balanced mean ?
Guardians can offer team support and take massive punishment with a bunker build OR dish out an acceptable amount of damage with a meditation build.
Both builds are killable in 1v1, both builds renounce to something to get something else.
Things like hard counters or thieves locking out every other berserker build from the game are unbalanced.

Well yes it was and still is meta, I do play guard and what is sad for me is the fact that since hmm… always there is only one playable build on competitive level and its typical bunker noone else. Comparing different bunker builds I can say most popular and tbh most effective one on team arenas is 0/5/30/30/5 with mace/focuse+staff, and well tbh shield is weak in my opinion, but theres no way to replace guard in party atm.

Lachanche.6859:

What are you talking about infantrydiv, do you even know what balanced mean ?
Guardians can offer team support and take massive punishment with a bunker build OR dish out an acceptable amount of damage with a meditation build.
Both builds are killable in 1v1, both builds renounce to something to get something else.
Things like hard counters or thieves locking out every other berserker build from the game are unbalanced.

Being forced to take a certain class because that class is so good is the opposite of balance.

I do agree that being forced to take a class is a measure of it being too good at something.

We do also have to realize that players drive the meta. Perceptions and opinions are hard to break, so even if there is an alternative, we don’t like change and like to stick with what we know.

I play a guardian as well, and I am on the slightly differing opinion that guardians are continuously falling further and further behind. I also think they are not “as” good as people say, and meditation guard is “ok” but I am never afraid of one as I am with some other classes.

Bunker is one of the few things guard can do well, but if it is the best is up for some debate.

Maybe it is an instance of seeing everyone else changing and advancing versus guards staying stagnant for so long. But the popular opinion is that is a good thing because it shows we are “balanced”.

I do see lots of things wrong with the traits and synergies of a guard though, but I’m sure these are abundant in all the other classes too.

The best reason I heard why guards are still so stable was the group utility such as a ready supply of group: stability, might, condition cleanse, and retaliation. Others can bunk as well, but they tend to be more selfish bunkers versus team bunkers.

Good feedback though, I appreciate it.

Team wide instant 2500 pt heal triple condi cleanse regen… x2
Some guardian abilities are just through the roof on power level compared to any other profession.

Too bad almost nobody enjoys playing it

I think that Guardians are currently in very bad shape, and the gap will be wide along the time. Some reasons:

- Since the Summer the patches favoured more and more the condition builds, and Guardians don’t have any reliable build based on conditions. Condition builds only need one stat (condition) to deal solid damage, so they can asign the other two to vitality and thoughness, so they are very tanky in terms of stats and can achieve high sustainibility based on the weapons and skills they chose.

-These changes heavily counters the Guardian bunker meta game: condition damage ignores armor, and Guardians have a very low HP. Blocks and blinds have very low impact against a foe which uses a constant stream of conditions through autoattacks. Those constant reaply of conditions also diminishes the usefulness of the condition cleanses.

-The perfect nemesis that summarizes how the current meta hard counters Guardians are the Necros: they can turn all your buffs in a debuff with a single skill, they can fill you with conditions and stacks of them in matter of seconds and they can use a ton of soft cc (fear, cripple, chill…) while their conditions keep working melting your HP.

I think that currently organized teams based in the use of 1-2 Necros and 1-2 Warriors works much better than any combination which involves Guardians. Guardians are also a very narrowed in terms of viable builds, making them really boring compared against other classes. I say this as a player which mains a Guardian but which is having much more fun/success just using their (I have two ones) Warriors.

infantrydiv.1620:

Lachanche.6859:

What are you talking about infantrydiv, do you even know what balanced mean ?
Guardians can offer team support and take massive punishment with a bunker build OR dish out an acceptable amount of damage with a meditation build.
Both builds are killable in 1v1, both builds renounce to something to get something else.
Things like hard counters or thieves locking out every other berserker build from the game are unbalanced.

Being forced to take a certain class because that class is so good is the opposite of balance.

In GW1 ppl were forced to take Monks with them. Does this mean they are overpowered or unbalanced? What kind of logic is that, you argument with?? silly . . .

A Guardian is taken due to the massive support in teamfights and especially the AoE-stability. In little skirmishes like 2v2 and 1v1 he is a total disadvantage for the team. No class is as good as the Guardian at supporting allies. That’s why he’s taken. Doesn’t mean it’s by any point overpowered or unbalanced.

I mean is a thief unbalanced because he can roam faster than any other class?

the reason why ppl don’t enjoy playing this is coz ’’it’s boring’’ for many ppl and it is not that easy to play guard on decent lvl llike most ppl think, it was the same with monk in gw1.

infantrydiv.1620:

Lachanche.6859:

What are you talking about infantrydiv, do you even know what balanced mean ?
Guardians can offer team support and take massive punishment with a bunker build OR dish out an acceptable amount of damage with a meditation build.
Both builds are killable in 1v1, both builds renounce to something to get something else.
Things like hard counters or thieves locking out every other berserker build from the game are unbalanced.

Being forced to take a certain class because that class is so good is the opposite of balance.

It’s like that with every game really, other mmo’s healer = must. Guardian is no different in this game. Guardians are actually balanced in my eyes cause all they offer is team support and being able to stand on a node, it’s not like they can deal insane amounts of damage while being able to sustain themselves for a long time like warriors.

Either they spec into defensive trees to gain more survivability and team support, or they spec into offensive trees to have more offensive power and way less sustain. Every class should be like that. Sarcrafice something to gain the other, not have both at the same time.

Guardians are not OP as bunkers, as they give up the vast majority of their damage to bunker.

But they make the game a lot less fun. Running in circles chaning your bunker cooldowns isn’t particularly skillful or entertaining and there’s no trick or twist to somehow burn down Guardians fast. You simply have to wait for their cooldowns to run their course which gives there team-mates more than enough time to assist.

Guardians are fine, but I think the extent to which they (and other classes) can bunker isn’t good for the game.

Less extremes overall (less instant-gibs and less excessive bunkering) would do the sPvP meta-game a lot of good.

CMF.5461:

edited because “I can’t logic” and asked same thing twice…

Just wondering if team tournament players feel guardian is still meta or not.

If they are, what do you think will change that and why do you think they hold such a pivotal position?

If they are not, then what areas are they lacking that would make them more applicable to the meta again?

If you main a guardian, mention that too please, as opinions and points of view differ based on perspective.

Guardian is the only one left from old metas…and probably the more balanced “meta” spec so far..since everything else revolves around necros spamming, wars spamming, engis spamming and rangers spamming (Autoattack lol) in comps like 2 wars (Or 1 war 1 nec) 1 ranger 1 decapper and guardian bunker that guardian is the only one who actually have to l2p in order to do something…and i can play every “meta” spec (Yeah so hard…lol) aside from engi (But going to make one soon) and bunker guardian is the hardest to play “good” hands down…that’s why you can also get as many wars as you want (Or spirit rangers or necros with an increasing number of decap engis too cause ppl started to figure out how op it is) but good bunker guardians are pretty rare stuff atm…if you just pick up a build and go in mashing buttons (Like pretty much 90% of pvp community do atm) you’re going to fail really hard, and fail guardian = fail team

…oh and i miss shatter mesmer so much…

Guardian is like the Monk in GW1. Required not because it’s “overpowered” (even so, I would say some of its skills/ traits are slightly too strong), but because it’s the best at its role.

“Stand Your Ground!” is crazily overpowered, though. At least when compared to its competition from other professions. I’m surprised how far Anet went to nerf bunker eles, without touching Guardians much.

I do agree to some extend that bunker builds are a little frustrating because they promote stalling and are extremely boring to face, but I think in a team game it’s normal to have one tanky class that can hold points while others focus on another point. Also, bunker Guardians can easily be shut down with 2-3 people and will still die incredibly fast if you CC them well enough. Also, I believe Warriors are better bunkers, though of course they don’t offer the overwhelming support Guardians do.

However, I think the main problem with the Guardians being so over-used in team comps is mostly that they offer unrivaled support. I would actually love to see other classes/specs offer such strong support – I think Staff Ele’s Water Attunement would be a good place to start. If other classes could offer similar support to what Guardians do, I think we would naturally see a change, because all in all, Guardians are definitely not overpowered by any means. They simply offer something very valuable which others do not.

I guess I just find it distasteful to have any class be so hard to kill while also putting out so much support. It feels unbalancing for the game mode and is part of the reason why the meta has shifted to what it is now (more classes running tankier builds so they can approach the point holding ability Guardians have, and more classes running conditions to help deal with both Guardians and other tanky builds).

Edit: To put it another way, when a build is made to maximize offense and therefore its effective potential in a fight, you want it to be easy to put down. The inverse should be true; becoming more tanky/survivable should lower your effectiveness in a fight. But Guardians get to be survivable and keep a high effectiveness in fights (albeit team fights) because of their support ability.

Support should be considered on that balance scale. Building for support should limit both your damage and survivability rating.

Proven.2854:

I guess I just find it distasteful to have any class be so hard to kill while also putting out so much support. It feels unbalancing for the game mode and is part of the reason why the meta has shifted to what it is now (more classes running tankier builds so they can approach the point holding ability Guardians have, and more classes running conditions to help deal with both Guardians and other tanky builds).

The reason why setups are more tankier than back in the days is not caused by Guardian or anything that has to do with the class. The reason is constant buffing (damage and sustain) by A-Net, which leads to the fact that a warrior can be nearly as tanky as a bunker, while putting out tons of damage.

Short: Power-creep is the reason, not Guardian . . .

I didn’t say it was the be-all end-all reason. I’m just saying it’s part. There has been power creep in all sorts of builds but the main ones that make it into conquest are the ones that can have an impact on the mode, of which Guardians are a staple.

Proven.2854:

I guess I just find it distasteful to have any class be so hard to kill while also putting out so much support. It feels unbalancing for the game mode and is part of the reason why the meta has shifted to what it is now (more classes running tankier builds so they can approach the point holding ability Guardians have, and more classes running conditions to help deal with both Guardians and other tanky builds).

Edit: To put it another way, when a build is made to maximize offense and therefore its effective potential in a fight, you want it to be easy to put down. The inverse should be true; becoming more tanky/survivable should lower your effectiveness in a fight. But Guardians get to be survivable and keep a high effectiveness in fights (albeit team fights) because of their support ability.

Support should be considered on that balance scale. Building for support should limit both your damage and survivability rating.

I don’t feel like guardians caused the “shift” in the meta to more bunker like builds. Players started this because they realized they could run a safer and less volatile lineup that can yield results and now others are jumping on the wagon. Condi builds arose as they became more useful than power builds and were found to counter bunker builds easier due to the boosts they got which then started a condi heavy meta since they could outperform power builds.

As for toning down survivability… Guardians are in essence created to support. That is what their play is revolved around. It doesn’t make sense that a class with skills that happen to give buffs should be weakened when they choose them (also the hp pool is terrible which is enough of a downside IMHO. If thy had like a warrior health pool then yea. I’d agree they are OP). That said, if guard is so easy and OP as others state, why doesn’t everyone play it? Why are good guards hard to find? Why not just run 2 guards and laugh as you win every single match since they are so OP? It’s not just the class being “too strong” when there has to be a well skilled player in the driver seat.

Guard is in a much beter position then before, balance wise, they do what their class is designed to do very well, support and tank.

Yes to meta

First, I said it was part of the reason. Not the primary reason or even close to the top of the list. I’m just noting that almost every build that has entered the meta since last summer has been a build that can take out a Guardian or bunker near as well as a Guardian while still being able to have an effect on a team fight. The closest thing to an exception I’ve seen is decap Engineer, which can still at least take a point out from under a Guardian. The point is that no build makes it into the meta unless it can do something about Guardians or is guaranteed to do something about the other 4 players no matter what they’re playing.

Second, just because healers and tanks in every other holy trinity game may have been harder to play than other roles didn’t mean you couldn’t have a healer that outshone every other healing build or a tank that made every other tank spec looks subpar. I never said Bunker Guardians were easy. I only said that they were OP for their role. If you want to disagree that they’re OP at Support because of their added survivability then you can at least admit they’re in the “apex predator” position like Phanta did above.

Survivability doesn’t equal Support. That’s what half of the other classes in the game are forced to learn. But Guardian’s level Survivability + Support mean that I can’t see any other class, or even any other combination of classes ever becoming a viable alternative to running a Guardian + other guys.

I can’t even append “at least in conquest” to the end of that last sentence because their only real weakness seems to be swiftness. But if some other team mode required Guardians to be more mobile then between Staff and teammates they’d easily be mobile enough. People would just adapt the rest of their team’s comp to keep the Guardian. They’re just that good at what they do.

What is the definition of something being overpowered? When it can do a job better than anything else can even when that job is supposed to be accessible to others. Warriors are overpowered because they can bunker + kill too well. Some people are calling Thieves overpowered because their mobility + killing power pushes Mesmers and Elementalists off the table. And I’ve always considered Guardians overpowered at the role of Support. Being overpowered doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be nerfed, but usually a nerf is chanted about because the alternative is power creep. At least in the case of everyone else’s Support ability power creep wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

I do agree that Guardian is both OP and UP at the same time.

Bunker Guardian could stand to have a little less survivability for the support it gives. This occurs because most of the Guard’s survivability tools are also shared. They are kind of like old bunker ele, but if cantrips weren’t purely selfish. Reduction in vigor is a good start to bringing down the survivability a bit. Giving SYG shorter access to stab or on a longer CD could work too. It is the most OP skill in the game. I agree with Proven that having the best support and survivability together is really strong, especially given the tanky meta we are in now.

That being said, dps guardian could use a TINY BIT more love, perhaps in terms of mobility or active defense to stay in the fight more.

Edit: Proven’s suggestion of improving the support capability of other classes is good too.

I do see Proven’s point about survivability and support together is powerful, but I am tentative to say that it is overpowered.

Guardian’s enable others to perform better, but don’t exactly perform themselves. That becomes a hard thing to measure as far as effectiveness when playing the guardian because all you do is stay alive and you don’t know if it is helping or not (for conquest it helps for sure as the goal is to contest a point).

I am afraid that the guardian would just get rolled way to easy if some of those suggested changes were made as far as the condition removal and the lack of stability, because without survivability the guardian pretty much has nothing.

The side effect is that every ability the guardian tends to use is all group related. Even the signets which no one uses, have group related effects on use.

As far as offensive guardians, I am yearning for real improvements to be made to make them useful. Yes they can do damage, no they can’t stick to anything (mobility), and they lack almost all survivability possible to obtain that dps, partly due to class mechanics and low base HP.

If the guardian offensive build became more viable to meta, do you think we would see less bunker guards as options open up? Or is the specific role as a guardian with stability/condition removal and some group healing the one and only reason people want guardians.

I see guards have a role, but I feel forced into that role by trait and class mechanics and when you try to expand yourself it often times falls short of the mark that everyone else is at.

So we seem to be at a point where either buff others to be as good as guardians or nerf guardians to allow others to be as good as guardians.

But without this role, I really feel guardians have nothing at all…yet I don’t see them being compensated at all, based on all the class changes and patches over the last year.