I’m a new player and have tried warrior, elementalist, ranger and mesmer (all only up to about level 20). The other day, a saw a guardian solo a champion with at least 4 adds in a level 15 area. I couldn’t tell what level he actually was, but he was being leveled down to 15 just like me. I have never been able to solo a champion. Heck, I can’t even solo a veteran if there are adds. He took them all down without even breaking a sweat.
Is it fairly typical for guardians to be able to solo champions with adds for most areas? Or do you think he was only able to do this because he was much higher level than the area and kept his skills and gear stats? Or maybe all classes can do this to some extent when they get good enough gear and stats and wander around lower level areas?
Just curious, because he made me want to roll a guardian.
All depends on the spec and such, a defencive guardian with lots of self healing could probably solo quite a bit, just slowly.,however an offencive one would probably die to fast.
Most classes can solo fairly well in specific specs, I do well on my ranger and have seen warriors solo stuff that id not touch
but yes it is easier if you come back at a higher level.
Same as a lot of other MMO’s, there’s usually a class that can solo Champ/Elite all day long but it just takes a long time to do!
I’m specced at lvl 65 (still leveling) full Honor with all of my symbols maxxed (size, duration and heals) and have 15 points in Zeal so the symbols vuln. I just pull out a hammer, autoattack (I press 2 when it’s up for retaliation) and circle strafe around champs for 10 or so minutes and they eventually die.
Quite boring spec but it’s great for PBAoE farming and for taking down champs that don’t have PBAoE death rays.
WvWvW, well people just kite me or run out of my symbols, if they are silly enough to toe to toe with me then they deserve to die.
to be honest, and after beta, and release played most classes to lvl 30+, I can tell you the guardian is the best melee class, blending very good resilience, high sustained damage, and good team support.
The downside is our offensive ranged options TERRIBLY suck.
Now if the game (dungeons, pvp) were more friendly toward melee builds, I wouldn’t care. But currently we only have 2 strategies versus ranged mobs/ppl:
- close in as fast as possible, with the risk of being kited,
- or dodge your way out.
If played well any class can solo a champ. As for guards, I’ve been playing them since beta and I can tell you they would have an easier time soloing alot of content. Even in an offensive build if you spec into toughness, power, and crit you could solo champs with timing.
At higher levels with a support spec you can do some fairly crazy things.
A champion with adds are definitely doable with the right traits and weapons equipped – although if the champion is resistant to blind it gets much harder.
Champion attacks tend to be slow and predictable, so between blind, block and evade you can avoid most damage it throws at you.
Since blind skills also tend to be AoE, adds get taken care of at the same time. We also get some fairly insane shields for mitigating ranged damage aswell.
PvP/WvW is another matter, but even there you can pull off some pretty surprising feats against multiple opponents if you time your skills right ( and happen to be equipped with the right utilities for the situation )
Personally, I’ve rolled my traits/skills for maximum blind, teleport and evade potential ( enhanced vigor with energy recovery sigils ) and try and keep as mobile as possible in the battlefield
For the record, yes, high-level characters get downlevelled but it’s not a straightforward process. I was running around clearing Plains of Ashford on my level 80 Guardian and 2-shotting stuff with GS.
Secondly, I think anyone could take down a Champion with enough patience. I’ve done it with my Thief. The sad part of the story is, the reward is not guaranteed to be worthwhile. You could run an event or sometimes two in the same time and get much more in the way of rewards. NPC enemies are slow to attack and signal their heavy hitters well in advance.
I have a low level engineer that is capable of soloing champions with some adds. Not all champions are the same though. Some don’t seem tough at all while others can melt you in seconds, so it’s tough to judge a class based on simply viewing that.
SoR – Nethernoz (Necro), Zealot of Pain (Guardian), William The Butcher (Ranger)
I concurr that when fighting slow swinging champions like ettins, you do have enough time to dodge out attack, and then the combat morphes into an action RPG ala Vindictus. Suffice to say it is the most enjoyable combat situation as a guardian.
On the other side of the fun spectrum are fast ranged mobs/people, which is really pain in our kitten
If anything, Anet should buff melee protection versus ranged projectiles, or offer more cripple options, as it is currently too easy to kite as a ranged character.
I’ve avoided trying to take out champions on my own, but there’s usually other players around me to play with. And like what kidbs mentioned, not all champions are the same. I have no doubt that a Guardian can do that with time and skill. I just play more erratic than most. I always pull out my Spirit Weapons and dogs (Elite) and they help me out a lot by finishing things even when I’m down (and I rally as a result). Some champions I can take on my own and some I just can’t with the way I play.
Exotic armors and weapons do help even when the player is leveled down in the area. Killing stuff is much easier when I go to lower level areas now.
I was in Diessa Plateau, I am full exotic lvl 80 guardian was 100%ing the map. Then the champion giant spawns. I run up and all I see are about 10 dead people. I tried to res a few, but they keep going down. Then I just tanked/dpsed the champion on my won till he was dead.
Not one character in this game can soak up the dmg. It’s all about dodging. Most champions have slow animation to demonstrate the skill they are performing. most of those hits will take 1/2 -3/4 your life. So soaking up the damage is almost impossible.
I was able to dodge out of the way and heal through the missed hits. To uneducated or newbie eye, those who were wiping the floor watching me, I am sure it looked like I was unstoppable Guardian, but in reality, I was just good and lucky with dodges.
Aye the giant is all about dodging and was just as easy at lvl 45, provided you didn’t get whacked. I spent half the fight res’ing people aswell. There’s something quite satisfying about wading into the action and successfully revive someone whilst 1 or more foes uselessly beat you over the head.
We also have a few ways to break stun/cc and remove fear, which helps against the tougher bosses.
Any profession can solo any champion AS long as their attacks are avoidable. Some champions are meant to be kited or avoided, because they weren’t made to be tanked.
Easy champion mobs to solo, usually, are Ettins, Spiders, Trolls, Giants, anything melee. The hardest ones are fast attacking melees, and rangeds (wizards, omg!).
Your profession doesn’t matter because you’re not soloing these champions by withstanding their damage with heals or something, it’s because you’re avoiding their damage somehow.
A guardian have plenty of ways to avoid damage (blocking), but so does other classes, with different mechanics. You just have to find some combination that works for you!
So far there has been very few encounters that I could not heal/dodge my way through. Granted my damage is ****, but I can take a beating like a champ!
There are many ways to shut down a guardian. Here’s a few:
Kiting- guardians have no cripple and short duration immobilzations(2 seconds)
Conditions- Yes, we have multiple ways to dispel but there’s plenty of ways to reapply faster than we can get rid of.
Burst- Since the health tier of the guardian is so low, you can probably burst them down with a combination stability(avoid the shield push and ring of warding.)
The main thing is probably kiting, no cripples to keep you where we want you so you’ll have free reign to do what you wish.
oh and to answer your other query – if you are level 80 with exotics in a 15 zone you will be like a demigod despite the drop in base stats
I was about to say. Although I haven’t had problems with champions closer to my level, in areas for level 15s and under the only thing that’s given me trouble are bosses specifically designed to be horribly overpowered. Equipment affects gameplay in this game a lot more than the developers would care to admit….
My mains are Guardian and Mesmer, both spec’d for solo’ing champions. It’s a bit easier on my Illusion/Staff/Condition damage Mesmer, though. Keep 3 clones up at all times, keep conditions up on boss, stay at max range and kite.
Guardian requires more skill, especially when it comes to dodge/evasion.
And I’ve seen a good warriorr solo a Centaur champion I wouldn’t have thought possible for a melee class, and there was a video a while back of a thief evasion-tanking soloing a 5-man boss, and a Necro minion-soloing a 5-man boss.
So I think most classes can solo champions if you know the game mechanics really well, have good timing on your evasion moves, and not terrible latency.
That’s unsurprising. Guardians are by far and away the best PvE class in the game. They have the best DPS, best survivability, best support skills, and best control. Try running any dungeon with 5 guardians; it’s hilariously easy. You kill everything in seconds and no one ever takes a scratch.
I always laugh when random pugs think guardians are supposed to be a low-DPS tank.
While guardian dps is quite respectable, there are other professions capable of dishing out larger bursts than guardians ever will. It is a trade off for having some of the best utilities in the game.
Guardian are pretty legit if you know what you are doing. I can solo a supply camp in WvW as long as the supervisor doesn’t have Righteous Indignation.
All classes are good. Some lean a bit more towards damage, others such as the (most obvious ones) guardian and engineer more on defense and support but they can still deal good damage if specced for it.
It’s a matter of what you spec your build and gear for.
It depends on the champion. As you go up in level they become less soloable. Also many regenerate more health than we can do damage. Took my friend and I 30 min to kill a troll Champion once.
Any champion that can be kited can be solod by many classes. Ranger especially.
We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional
As a GS guardian I have never been able to completely solo a champion. However I did see this champion which was mace/shield so full tank and it took him abt 4-5 minutes to take down a champion w/ adds. When his health dropped low he healed himself to max again and I was surprised of this.
I’m amazed to read such positive comments about Guardians. Mindboggling!
That’s because no-one else is living in your dream-world, where Guardians suck at everything.
Guardians are really good at what they do well, and can still perform adequately at the areas they’re weaker in. As long as it’s not at range.
Long story short, Guardians are good. Good Guardians can be amazing.
Can just agree with you Ynna.
A guardian is a beast if played correctly. On the other hand guardians isnt as forgiving as a ranger for example. Bad guardians are really bad and based on the stuff Svarty posts he his one of those bad ones.
I dunno, I find Guardian rather forgiving. You’ve got passive defenses that make you die less easily and a couple of straight-forward, easy to use weapons and abilities. Virtue of Resolve helps a lot in covering mistakes.
I’ve never managed to get a champ alone long enough to solo it but i’ve managed to get one down to 15% or so before others got there. So yes guardian’s can do this. Never managed this on my other characters. Not even close.
As for your talk about vet’s i’ve taken out 2 vets with 6 normal adds without dropping below half hp.
In closing. Guardian if it has the right gear and traits is very very powerful when it comes to solo.
I can solo most champions. My guardian dose about as much damage as my elementalist. My guradian also does as much AOE as my elementalist, it’s just mostly POAOE (Point of origin) rather then AOE.
I’m a new player and have tried warrior, elementalist, ranger and mesmer (all only up to about level 20). The other day, a saw a guardian solo a champion with at least 4 adds in a level 15 area. I couldn’t tell what level he actually was, but he was being leveled down to 15 just like me. I have never been able to solo a champion. Heck, I can’t even solo a veteran if there are adds. He took them all down without even breaking a sweat.
Is it fairly typical for guardians to be able to solo champions with adds for most areas? Or do you think he was only able to do this because he was much higher level than the area and kept his skills and gear stats? Or maybe all classes can do this to some extent when they get good enough gear and stats and wander around lower level areas?
Just curious, because he made me want to roll a guardian.
I think every class I have played is able to take out a veteran and friends once you get the right gear/traits put up.
High level players in low level areas (1-15 areas, specifically) will basically two shot most monsters there, also. There is downscaling of course, but they are still very strong.
What sever are you on? I’m curious if this Guardian was me, lol. I solo DE champions pretty regularly just to test myself and people keep whispering me about it. Maybe I should stop so we don’t receive any more nerfs.
i haven’t really played other classes to much extent. i’ve happened to stick by my Guard because i fell in love with the way you get to play ‘em. that being said, i’d say i didn’t feel he truly started to shine or i relaly strated to learn wo to play the class right by lvl 30-ish (when you start to unlock more skills).
after hitting 80 and getting better gear, i was able to ssurvive a lot more. i find myself rezzing people a lot more rather than being rezzed (in the beginning). so a lot if it IS practice as well. and i’m sure other classes can manage the same. i want to say there is NO one class that will do everything better than anyone else. but there will be classes that will be better in certain situations.
the Guardian i want to say is quite versatile though and really helps with survivability. in WvW, i’ve had groups of 6 – 7 chase me down on numerous occasions (maybe i need to learn to retreat! more often at the right times) and i’ve been able to sneak away even with a lot of CC on me, by using the right skills at the right time and getting really lucky. once i even got downed, 5 people surround me and i was still abel to rally and get away! whew. that made me glad i was playing a guardian.
just know SOME weaknesses i feel may be – speed, ranged combat, and really only burning as condition dmg. i only say that because i love being quick, and i wanted to spec for condition dmg.
Akaimon | Jolly Good Guardian
Akaigi | Warrior Made of Wood
[CDS] – Sanctum of Rall
Guardian are good in terms of pve because we have utilities that cancel condition, but as for pvp because we are good at canceling condition, Anet balanced or nerf our guardian.
They took out our escape/mobility, stun, cripple, poison, chill utilities and gave us lowest hp in all classes. They gave us useless traits and nerfed every patch our only defense against harass “retaliation”
Honestly I dont know what to do on my guardian, they are good on pve, but on pvp it only leaves me one build and thats to be meat shield because w/o retaliation its hard enough to kill.
oh yea you can survive long with a meatshield character but if you decide to kill, you will die sooner. For example a glass cannon thief vs tanky guardian. Theif can hide stealth evade while doing tons of damage, but guardian you do little damage so little that he can out heal your damage. guardian used utilities to cancel condition but poison still keep coming you healed, but it only gave you half of the healing (poison – 33% healing) sooner or later you decided to run but guardian dies. same concept other classes. the difference is they can escape while guardian cant.
