Guild Wars 2

I recently started playing Guardian about a week ago, got it to level 80 and found the build I find fits me the most is Medi Guard cause it reminds me of playing Thief in a weird way.

I’m doing really great at beating other Guard build builds and almost all other classes. But Ele’s always wreck me. I don’t know if I’m just noob at Medi guard, or unlucky with the Ele’s I run into. But what is the best way a medi guard can beat ele’s? If there is even a solid counter to Ele?

generally speaking no medi guard cannot beat a good elementalist because they an survive strong burst.

If you have an ally to lock them down however with multiple knock downs, dazes, stuns then you can take them down quite easily.

If you want to take them on solo however I sould suggest a medi burn build. You don’t bring burst like regular medi does but you bring strong pressure.

The reason why ele’s generally counter guardians is because of their mobility along with their resilient regen upkeep. We can knock them down to 20% health but once our cd’s become exhausted they’ll simply float away, heal back up and there’s nothing can do about it. Any ele (class) who knows how to kite will counter a guardian. It’s one of the reasons why i’ve been frustrated with the class as of late. I’m hope our “specialization” changes things…

Ah right, good to know it’s not just that I totally suck then :P

I always thought waiting for them to go into Air then dropping heavy burst would counter them.

So would a Hammer be better at taking them out in that case? Cause of the Ring and Banish?

There’s like, one in a million chances of connceting Banish with elementalist. xD
And they’ll probably just walk out of your ring with stability or port out.

Yes you can beat most eles , fresh air eles, staff zerker, condition.
But when it comes to D/D celeste eles it can be harder. They are the profession that benefit the most of that amulette.

At the end of the day it depends on your skill and the D/D ele too.

Nope. Just nope. The cele ele D/D meta, played by any player worth his or her salt is going to hard counter even the best med zerk guardian. As someone who is obsessed with being able to win, or make the opponent retreat in 1v1s, and has had countless duels with eles in both spvp, and wvw, I have to say that you CAN beat an ele who isn’t running the meta, and you can do so pretty easily so long as you avoid certain attacks (fire grab, and burning speed, earthquake, ride the lightning/updraft combo for D/D eles) I’ve beaten cele staff, and zerker staff eles, but not once have I claimed victory over a decent cele ele D/D. They have too much regen, protection up time, and damage (their range is greater than yours, they can kite you, and put on quite a few conditions every time they’re in earth attune).

I run a pretty standard med zerk, using either GS and Sw/F, GS and H, or H and Sc/F. H and Sc/F does the best against eles; guardian scepter is a pretty good tool against those people who think they’re just going to kite you around all day lol. It’s funny to see them eat your slow moving auto attacks, not thinking that they’re going to have to heal any time soon at which point it’s practically too late for em. If you want to run med zerk guardian, you might have better luck trying Hammer or GS paired with Sc/F vs. an ele. GS and Sw/F just does not cut it…

A small anecdote (no good news): I introduced my friend to guild wars 2, and he started playing about 1 month ago. He really liked D/D ele. I showed him meta battle, and he took the standard D/D ele, except with ether renewal over signet of restoration. I can’t say he was very good at pvp, but I could NOT kill this guy…. and I was running the typical metas for med zerk guard too. Even a nooby elementalist has enough sustain to make the fight long and drawn out, and then a good one is going to know his/her rotations inside and out, and be able to out-pressure your heals. Once your skills are on CD, you’re done for. Note: I DID beat my buddy…. after 3-5 minutes of fighting… he made a slip up, and it costed him lol.

Sorry, I tend to be one of those long-winded forums posters, but as a final word: Yes, try the burning guard. I did spvp with a burning guard hybrid (6/0/6/1/1) the other day, and I had two essentially 1v1 situations with eles. One was with a fresh air, the other was with a D/D ele who was okay (at best) in pvp. I beat both of them. The constant burning ticks really made a huge difference, and they didn’t get cleansed often if at all because it was just a single condition. The eles both probably thought I was a typicall med zerk lol. Hybrid or condi guards might have better luck against eles than a typical med zerk.

Arcaedus.7290:

Sorry, I tend to be one of those long-winded forums posters, but as a final word: Yes, try the burning guard. I did spvp with a burning guard hybrid (6/0/6/1/1) the other day, and I had two essentially 1v1 situations with eles. One was with a fresh air, the other was with a D/D ele who was okay (at best) in pvp. I beat both of them. The constant burning ticks really made a huge difference, and they didn’t get cleansed often if at all because it was just a single condition. The eles both probably thought I was a typicall med zerk lol. Hybrid or condi guards might have better luck against eles than a typical med zerk.

Pretty much what you’ve said. Burn Guardians should have a better chance at beating Elementalists but we very much get hard countered by them….

I think Dagger/Focus Ele gives us the biggest issues, for Guardians in general. They’re uncommon in PvP but they’re twice as tough as your average D/D meta, able to render your scepter useless for 6s, as well as Magnetic Wave – Cures three conditions and reflects projectiles for 3s.

I never had a more frustrating fight… It’s not fun knowing you simply cannot win =/

just cleanse burn <1 second after its applied and ele loses too much damage to kill you.
people underestimate cleansing when fighting non condi builds

burn guardian has to be played extremely tightly to beat ele in comparison since they run so many cleanses… you really can’t afford to whiff JI or torch activation… or even burn on heal proc (which they won’t expect the first time anyway)

Depends on the ele…

The only sort of Ele I can’t win against is cele d/d… Every other ele drops just as fast as a zerker thief/mes

My guard build is 21614 – blind spamming mediguard.

Pretty much every fight I’ve had with a good D/D ele has ended with both of us bowing to each other and going our seperate ways after a good 3-5 minute exchange.

The eles that I do end up killing still take a 3-5 minute exchange just so I can learn their rotation so I can get the burst in at the right moment to finish the job. My usual way of dealing with an ele is to just drop a huge burst from the get go and pray to Balthazar it was enough to 1 shot them. I tend to lose to eles the most because of the length of the fights and me making a stupid mistake.

I like using a hammer to start the fight since if they’re not experienced it can freak them out if you use the below rotation:

Judges intervation → Ring of Warding → Banish → Smite Condition → Mighty Blow → Zealots Embrace → swap to GS → Whirling Wrath

The amount of high mobility classes I’ve killed in PvP with that combo is a fair amount since they just react to slowly to the chain of CC.

It is possible, if you change your build around. I can confidently 1v1 a d/d cele ele on point until the end of time with neither of us coming out as the winner, although I would always be pressuring the living crap out of them. If you can avoid some of their key skills (rtl+updraft, burning speed, fire grab) then you’ll be fine for the most part.

SlayerSixx.5763:

It is possible, if you change your build around. I can confidently 1v1 a d/d cele ele on point until the end of time with neither of us coming out as the winner, although I would always be pressuring the living crap out of them. If you can avoid some of their key skills (rtl+updraft, burning speed, fire grab) then you’ll be fine for the most part.

I’ll vouch for this. I saw a ham guard do just that in a dueling arena. Though I think the Ele still came out on top, I was quite impressed with the results.

Hi,
I currently play Ele and Guard in pvp.
Cele D/D ele is the hard counter for Medi Gaurds just like Medi Guards are hard counter for s/d thiefs. The main reason is the regen and protection upkeep.

There is very little to complain as every time I play fresh air I lose to most med guardians while massively outplay them, there is frustration there also

-Bait shield of wrath and shelter

-A phoenix/double sigil proc, double air burst…to bring med guardian just below the 60% HP level

-Med guardian meanwhile doesn’t use a single dodge…just a couple of med skill or maybe one resolve + med skill..and ….ta-da, med guardian back to full HP while barely using 20% of his skills..

-Me? I have just used my surprise burst, now have to wait at least 30s for a full burst..meanwhile med guardian can advance with easy, having huge dmg coefficients even on the auto-attack be it GS or hammer.

-I have 1/5 of their healing with fresh air…I use my 50s CD invulnerability to buy some time

-I try to burst them down again….it’s useless they heal back to full with no problem and I have nothing left to defend myself for another 50s

-Only arcane shield left…but haha, simple auto-attacks to bring it down, np the dmg didn’t even scratch the med guardian

-I’m downed….

I say “kitten this” and I’ll go sustain route to fight sustain route…I’m suddenly considered OP….

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/e7/1e/bc/e71ebc217063c4bc54a46851ee78cee9.jpg

No one is denying that a meditation guardian is strong, but a cele d/d is op because of how absurdly versatile they are. Also, you mentioned outplaying the guard. Trust me, if you actually outplayed him, you wouldn’t have made that comment.

SlayerSixx.5763:

No one is denying that a meditation guardian is strong, but a cele d/d is op because of how absurdly versatile they are. Also, you mentioned outplaying the guard. Trust me, if you actually outplayed him, you wouldn’t have made that comment.

Fact is the majority of players (90%+) who face an ele, have actually no clue on how the profession even work, I personally explained the med guardians in my guild how ele works.

You know what was the first thing they said after my explanation?..have a guess..

“Oh I always rush burst them as soon as they’re in range”

Problem is before you can hope to beat anything in this game, you must first know what you’re facing. At equal skill level (basic understanding) I can beat your “OP” cele build on a LB/condi ranger, hambow and condi rabid engi….and can have a good shot even using a s/d thief; and you know why?

I know exactly how ele works, when they will use their skills and how
I know traits, animations and CD…..everything, and can say the same about med guardian build ( be it GS or hammer variant)

I know the CD of your shield of wrath, your valors, your med skills…because I have a med guardian too as alt ofc, can I say the same for most players using a med guardian?

I think not….

I can confidently say that 90% of players using ele are bad, the majority will use skills out of rotation ( ex use shocking aura after frost aura immediately even if at distance and the enemy not hitting at all ), they only have an untelegraphated skill….and it doesn’t even deal dmg ( updraft ), rest can be dodged by my dog…if I’d training him for a couple of weeks.

Rest is simply burn dmg if they manage to land ring of fire and few ticks from drake’s breath and a couple secs of bleed from ring of earth…that can’t be enough to bring down any decent med guardian, am I wrong?

Now about the fresh air vs med guardian, I’ve explained in details how it is…feel free to point out my mistakes during the encounter

From personal experience, there’s a decent chance against being a Fresh Air Ele due to their relative squishiness vs say a Cele D/D. Quoting SlayerSixx in that their versatility is overwhelming. There’s only so much you can avoid.

You’re not going to be able to avoid/mitigate the burning to to the low cd of drake’s breath/Ring of Fire.

The sheer amount of protection/vigor uptime makes relatively impossible to setup your burst and even if by some chance you do land it, their CC comes into play to keep you at bay and regenerate.

This is a broad example of the issue’s I have with D/D elementalists.

Edit:

Fresh Air is easier to deal with but their instant ranged dmg makes it even more of a pain in the kitten sometimes.

Yes you can beat most eles , fresh air eles, staff zerker, condition.
But when it comes to D/D celeste eles it can be harder. They are the profession that benefit the most of that amulette.
Godric.3012

So let’s see how many builds ele can use : signet condi build, zerker staff, fresh air, earth tank…

All of these get trashed by almost every profession…all is fine, ele is balanced and if you try to contest this on the forum…you’re deemed a noob, a med guardian will walk all over you if using one of those builds….

But god forbid an ele goes and use a d/d 30 water/arcana build, now the profession is OP and should be nerfed for the simple reason that : you can’t walk all over an ele using a d/d build..makes perfect sense

No one is blaming you for using the only viable build in higher levels of play, but its clearly too much. You want people to call you good for playing your nearly immortal character? What’s your argument right now? I faced an ele using the meta build but had a zerker amulet instead and was good at their rotations. Those fights were unreal. If you can pull that off, hats off to you. People usually associate d/d with cele and cele is the real offender in my opinion. If they removed either the power or the condition damage from it, it would suddenly become a much fairer amulet. As it stands, cele builds make up for their lack of power with the condition damage they can push out and since the meta elementalist build can make use of the amulet to its fullest, people cry about eles because, as you stated, not many people know what they’re facing.

SlayerSixx.5763:

No one is blaming you for using the only viable build in higher levels of play, but its clearly too much. You want people to call you good for playing your nearly immortal character? What’s your argument right now? I faced an ele using the meta build but had a zerker amulet instead and was good at their rotations. Those fights were unreal. If you can pull that off, hats off to you. People usually associate d/d with cele and cele is the real offender in my opinion. If they removed either the power or the condition damage from it, it would suddenly become a much fairer amulet. As it stands, cele builds make up for their lack of power with the condition damage they can push out and since the meta elementalist build can make use of the amulet to its fullest, people cry about eles because, as you stated, not many people know what they’re facing.

I’m the guy who made a whole thread about nerfing celestial, even made a poll asking people what they’d prefer between cele or more nerfs on the profession..the answer was obvious for the majority: nerf the amulet.

The profession doesn’t really need the amulet to be 100% viable, that’s what I believe, yes many would fail on the ele without using this amulet…but

Those who are able to use ele regardless of the amulet still see their worth not recognized by the masses, still labeled as OP..even if you win by using a zerk amulet, these type of thread will still appear.

So it’s fine to nerf celestial..but things won’t change and people will be back to ask for more nerfs after the amulet of this I’m sure

Cele ele rip guard 10/10 kiting 2stronk

Supreme.3164:

All of these get trashed by almost every profession…all is fine, ele is balanced and if you try to contest this on the forum…you’re deemed a noob, a med guardian will walk all over you if using one of those builds….

Ele vs his counter – Shatter Mes: Ele has to play very, very, well to win.
Guard vs his counter – Ele: No possible way to win. Ever.

That’s the difference between OP classes.

Ele and Engi are the most imbalanced classes in the game. That’s all thanks to their Celestial Amulet. The performance gain with this amulet/trait set up compared to their Zerker counter part is Very noticeable.

Yes, Eles do have trash builds until he goes Cele. That doesn’t make them ok and that definitely doesn’t make the class balanced.
A balance class is a class who can constantly interchange his traits/sigils/runes/amulet and still find it hard to decipher which build is best.

Guardian will win BUT……… if the ele plays thief strategy(cowardly mode) hard chance to win sadly, play as a thief strategy is getting the ele to 30% there you see the ele running (trying to escape) if you let him he will return almost full heath, near all boon spawn on you and he will not run far just to spam some 1-2 skill to heal alone

Supreme.3164:

-Me? I have just used my surprise burst, now have to wait at least 30s for a full burst..meanwhile med guardian can advance with easy, having huge dmg coefficients even on the auto-attack be it GS or hammer.

I stopped reading here. If you’re playing an ele and you’re complaining about guardian skills having huge damage coefficients, you need to turn off the computer and take a walk outside.

I got a build that duels pretty much any class. I only lose to hunters because I’m a noob and I have targeting problems so their stealth + their pet + their kiting screws me over (and I still do extremely well against them)

not gonna waste telling you specifics because it’s going to be useless when that expansion thing comes out. I do go 20660 and I got zerks and eagle rune so my damage is still really nice. gs + sword foci

Supreme.3164:

SlayerSixx.5763:

No one is blaming you for using the only viable build in higher levels of play, but its clearly too much. You want people to call you good for playing your nearly immortal character? What’s your argument right now? I faced an ele using the meta build but had a zerker amulet instead and was good at their rotations. Those fights were unreal. If you can pull that off, hats off to you. People usually associate d/d with cele and cele is the real offender in my opinion. If they removed either the power or the condition damage from it, it would suddenly become a much fairer amulet. As it stands, cele builds make up for their lack of power with the condition damage they can push out and since the meta elementalist build can make use of the amulet to its fullest, people cry about eles because, as you stated, not many people know what they’re facing.

I’m the guy who made a whole thread about nerfing celestial, even made a poll asking people what they’d prefer between cele or more nerfs on the profession..the answer was obvious for the majority: nerf the amulet.

The profession doesn’t really need the amulet to be 100% viable, that’s what I believe, yes many would fail on the ele without using this amulet…but

Those who are able to use ele regardless of the amulet still see their worth not recognized by the masses, still labeled as OP..even if you win by using a zerk amulet, these type of thread will still appear.

So it’s fine to nerf celestial..but things won’t change and people will be back to ask for more nerfs after the amulet of this I’m sure

People would still cry if celestial was nerfed and most D/Ds went back to zerk? Probably. Would they actually get nerfed just because of a specific trait setup? I highly doubt it. If you whoop people’s kitten on zerk using the 00266 build and they still complain, move on. People get salty sometimes and that’s a fact.

It’s because the real problem lies within the skills/traits, not Celestial. Celestial just accentuates the problem, it’s not the core issue.

Can Medi Guardians counter Eles?

Yes.

How?

You need to change your build’s focus from Power (2/1/6/1/4 or 0/1/6/1/6) to Condi (6/2/6/0/0).

You will never have problems vs D/D eles again