Guild Wars 2

I’ve Never felt underclassed untill today…

I Just saw a Warrior swoop in, burst down two gate guards, then flew away because he looked bored. All the while, Thieves were dancing around me like I was a hat. Rangers were sniping further than the treb could fire and air Ele’s have a 1 shot wonder macro that gets me every time. I’m turning grey from all this walking, curious if that Warrior will turn into an unstoppable Rampaging brute at Mist Essence; of which, seems to eat CC’s for breakfast.

Now i’m beside myself with this wacky trait line, deciding whether I should stick with Sanctuary or Staff because causing NPC’s to smash their faces into walls seem to be my signature move.

Will Guardians get some love any time soon? rhetorical
It would be nice if I could get a bow that shoots flaming arrows while also enabling me to permanently chain myself to another human being. Now THAT would be quite useful.

Yup.

Mobility is incredibly important in any form of warfare that doesn’t involve sitting on a point you know your enemies will have to attack sooner or later.

You can get enough mobility with travelers and greatsword is just amazing to group up and kill the enemy npcs. Now if you wanna roleplay condi guard then that’s another story.

Ehecatl.9172:

Mobility is incredibly important in any form of warfare that doesn’t involve sitting on a point you know your enemies will have to attack sooner or later.

Heck, mobility’s still important in that context, since whichever side can move from point to point faster and more effectively has an advantage in determining who is fighting where.

Basically: mobility is always important, it’s just often tricky to define.

Yeah these stronghold builds are turning out very different than conquest. A good comp seems to look like this so far:

• 2 offensive pushers with AoE nukes – they won’t need peeling power
• 1 main peeler who is unstoppable like a GS/Sword warrior or a S/D Thief
• 1 supply runner/doubles as 2nd peeler – Mesmer with portal is best
• 1 gate defender – Turret Engi looks to be the best

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Yeah these stronghold builds are turning out very different than conquest. A good comp seems to look like this so far:

• 2 offensive pushers with AoE nukes – they won’t need peeling power
• 1 main peeler who is unstoppable like a GS/Sword warrior or a S/D Thief
• 1 supply runner/doubles as 2nd peeler – Mesmer with portal is best
• 1 gate defender – Turret Engi looks to be the best

Scratch Turret engi off the list.

Turret engi is best as supply runner because they can leave turrets at mid and then continue running supplies. However, Shoutbow does a better job at that.

Defenders should be a zerker build because they can kill enemy creeps really fast before they do any damage to the door.

runeblade.7514:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Yeah these stronghold builds are turning out very different than conquest. A good comp seems to look like this so far:

• 2 offensive pushers with AoE nukes – they won’t need peeling power
• 1 main peeler who is unstoppable like a GS/Sword warrior or a S/D Thief
• 1 supply runner/doubles as 2nd peeler – Mesmer with portal is best
• 1 gate defender – Turret Engi looks to be the best

Scratch Turret engi off the list.

Turret engi is best as supply runner because they can leave turrets at mid and then continue running supplies. However, Shoutbow does a better job at that.

Defenders should be a zerker build because they can kill enemy creeps really fast before they do any damage to the door.

Indeed. Turret engineers are really poor defenders from what I’ve seen as any half decent attacker can just kite the guards away from the turrets, completely invalidating the entire build. After that the turret engineer then has to spike down the doorbreakers which is… Unlikely.

You want high damage output for defenders and high sustain for attackers.

Have no problem on my guardian OP.

no.

Saiyan.1704:

I’ve Never felt underclassed untill today…

I Just saw a Warrior swoop in, burst down two gate guards, then flew away because he looked bored. All the while, Thieves were dancing around me like I was a hat. Rangers were sniping further than the treb could fire and air Ele’s have a 1 shot wonder macro that gets me every time. I’m turning grey from all this walking, curious if that Warrior will turn into an unstoppable Rampaging brute at Mist Essence; of which, seems to eat CC’s for breakfast.

Now i’m beside myself with this wacky trait line, deciding whether I should stick with Sanctuary or Staff because causing NPC’s to smash their faces into walls seem to be my signature move.

Will Guardians get some love any time soon? rhetorical
It would be nice if I could get a bow that shoots flaming arrows while also enabling me to permanently chain myself to another human being. Now THAT would be quite useful.

Yup.

One of the best classes I fought against last night was a guard. I’m not sure what build he was running, but he had a great balance of being tanky enough to survive, able to put out enough damage, and was also able to heal/support guards with staff.

Yes, some classes like war are super mobile (I was one of those people swooping in, blowing up guards, then flying away), but I did see that if a guard played well, they could be just as competitive in their own way.

Now, I did also see some guardians (particularly some tanky mace guards) that accomplished much less, so I think you may just need to find the right build/strat.

You guys are misunderstanding what I mean by the gate defender turret engi ^^ His job is not to kill bombers/heroes, that is for the peelers and treb players. The turret engi simply turtle-necks in and out of the gate door and abuses the kitten out of his ever-cycling knockdowns and knockbacks to stall any and all actions made near that gate. This is also extremely heavy support when the peelers show up to help defend while the opponents are stuck in a state of perpetual CCs. Not to mention the water fields and blast finishers launched from the turret engi “which significantly enough, heals NPCs”

The idea is that the turret engi is the one class that can do all of this from behind a gate/door and rarely needs to risk dying.

Can’t guardians bunker the supply depot? I think it would be strategic to hog the supplies. It benefits your team just by spamming NPCs while the other team is denied any.

nastyjman.8207:

Can’t guardians bunker the supply depot? I think it would be strategic to hog the supplies. It benefits your team just by spamming NPCs while the other team is denied any.

Trebs and the sheer size of the supply depot make it extremely difficult for a Guardian to bunker there and deny the opponent. Plus, bunker Guards don’t put out enough damage to dissuade people from just channeling anyway.

i didn’t move anywhere on my guard; just sat at the supply and fought players for the whole game. We won easily as their supply was limited.

If a bunker guard was at the supply depot, you could just pop stability, grab supply, lol, then prance away. =P

You’d need some boon stripping for there to be much threat.

Only change I made on my power ranger was to swap for movement signet. It’s great for defending against NPCs (aoe cripple, ranged, fear, knock back, raw power) but is plenty mobile enough with movement signet and GS to immediately move to reinforce any other part of the map. And of course it excels at taking out enemy NPCs, since it can just pew pew them from afar. Same movement abilities can alternatively be used to run supply.

Also works as natural counter to turret engis, punishes many roamers and all in all is about as effective against players as it was in conquest. The only thing I’m concerned about it the possibility for an increasing thief meta, since a skilled thief can down a power ranger quickly.

All in all, this game mode is a nice boost for power ranger, which feels somewhat lacking in conquest.

Map mobility is certainly important, but there are some interesting options for you to explore as a guard. Of course, you have Judge’s intervention to help you blink around, but merciful intervention certainly deserves consideration here. With all the npc’s running around, this gives you more targets to blink to, and that heal isn’t trivial.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

You guys are misunderstanding what I mean by the gate defender turret engi ^^ His job is not to kill bombers/heroes, that is for the peelers and treb players. The turret engi simply turtle-necks in and out of the gate door and abuses the kitten out of his ever-cycling knockdowns and knockbacks to stall any and all actions made near that gate. This is also extremely heavy support when the peelers show up to help defend while the opponents are stuck in a state of perpetual CCs. Not to mention the water fields and blast finishers launched from the turret engi “which significantly enough, heals NPCs”

The idea is that the turret engi is the one class that can do all of this from behind a gate/door and rarely needs to risk dying.

Why are you fighting enemies right by the door? The peelers will have to leave the turrets to attack you if you choose to not fight in the turret’s range, making the engineer a non-issue. At best the turret engineer allows the peelers to kill a group of NPCs before they start getting sniped by long range attacks.

Since Stronghold doesn’t revolve around tiny circles the staff elementalist is also in a far better position as they can freely kite and use terrain to make them less doomed if attacked, which makes them more viable. A single Meteor Shower can wipe out the entire batch of turrets with one go. With the environment of Stronghold favoring the staff over daggers you’re bound to see far more staff elementalists roaming around than in Conquest, which means the turret engineers will get stamped out by their natural predator.

Teamfighting is key in stronghold, and if you bring mobility you give up teamfight strength.

I was running a zerker GS/staff shout gar and while I didn’t have enough mobility or lockdown to kill a nike warrior, I had much more teamfight presence than them while retaining enough mobility to get around.

I see guardian and necros being the weakest in this format. Mobility & burst or gtfo.

robertul.3679:

You can get enough mobility with travelers and greatsword is just amazing to group up and kill the enemy npcs. Now if you wanna roleplay condi guard then that’s another story.

qft

MailMail.6534:

I see guardian and necros being the weakest in this format. Mobility & burst or gtfo.

Not so much. Necros have very strong burst abilities, especially against NPC’s with double well + Death perception. They can defend a lane very well (doesn’t require much mobility).

Guardian Staff is crazy strong in stronghold (AoE swiftness, heals and barriers that hang up NPC mercs quite nicely) and every class has access to +25% speed runes.