Guild Wars 2

Hi.
I’m an experienced WoW raider, and all i ever did was tank. I love getting beaten, it seems.
My GW2 main was always a guardian. I loved the amount of utility a guard could bring, and just how hard it was to die wearing PTV.

I haven’t been playing since HoT launch, don’t have the expac yet, and i don’t know whether i should buy it, since my favorite pass-time – dungeons, are now less profitable to run, and as consequence – it’s a lot harder to find a group for them.

But since HoT now has raids, i wonder
0) can guardians tank at all? Didn’t see a tanking spec on the metabattle website for guards.
1) is tanking hard? If you can compare to WoW tanking – that would be cool
2) is tanking fun? For WoW tanking – there was personal cd management, raid/save cd management (know when to ask for one), boss positioning, AoE aggro management, taunting off the other tank in time (encounters usually require more than 1 tank) and overall knowing the time when a boss does what (well there’s DBM for that too). What does a tank do in GW2 raids? It wasn’t easy being a good tank, and i loved it.
3) How long does a full clear take for average guilds that manage to do a full clear? How many days a week, hours a day does it take to do that?
4) how hard is it to find a raid spot for a tank (in my case, with no prior experience in gw2 raiding) ? Should i even bother getting the rest of my PTV ascended gear (or whatever is now the tanking stat meta) just to then wait hours upon hours until someone invites me?

Guardians can tank. All you do is slapping valor and one toughness trinket on the standard DPS hammer build though so your soldiers gear won’t really be of use. Also a tank is only needed for 2 raid bosses so far and guardians aren’t really the first choice anyways.

For the other questions:

Tanking is fun at VG imo but pretty boring at gorse.

Clearing a raid takes arround 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on how good your party is.

It would be really hard if not impossible to find a spot as first timer playing a non meta build.
As I said before your PTV gear is not useful so I wouldn’t bother with it.

All-in-all, a bit weird, unexpected and off-putting. Especially considering how much i don’t like being a glass cannon.
Where does a guardian excel in raids? Everywhere i looked people need other classes, for dps and healing as well.
Is this class so weak atm, that i should consider rerolling in order to be competitive?

I only play guardian in raids and pretty much every other content. You don’t need to tank on a glass cannon build, when I first cleared wing 1 it was in knights armour.

Hammer, mace/shield guards bring a lot to raids.
VG
- hammer 5 keeps seekers out of bounds
- hammer 4 for seeker control
- hammer 4 for cc bar
- hammer 3 for seeker control
- shield 5 for seeker control
Gorseval
- hammer 4 for cc bar
- aegis for smash attack
- test of faith trap for adds on split phase
- F1 pull in case one add gets stuck behind during glide phase
- hammer 3 for split phase, line it up properly and can immob 2 adds
Sabetha –
- perma protection
- aegis for cannon shots
- stability for thug knock backs into flame wall
- plenty of cc with dragons maw, hammer 4 p, F1 pull, signet cc and shield 5 for knuckles ( can rip his bar on your own)
Sloth
- reflection through wall and shield 5
- stability for his fear after cc bar
- F3 block and shelter block for his shake
- condition removal through various utility skills and F2 trait in virtues
- plenty of cc for break bar
Pact camp (I always do the mortar for this)
- reflects for the snipers
- hammer 4 for first 2 waves of mortars
- GS 5, F1 pull and trap daze for third wave
Matthias
– plenty of cc for sacrifice
- aegis for time bomb
- stability for storm phase
- reflect

Don’t believe people that say guardians are dead.

Tank : My team actually use a Guardian as a tank there at VG. Either with Knight armor/Berserker Trinkets or Celestial gear for an easier time. It bring CC and protection with decent dps. We continue to use a guardian because we never had problem with it. VG is such an easy boss once you know how to fight it that really any tank can do it. That said, it’s really the only boss where tanking with a guardian is a good idea. There is other boss where the guardian can, but these are harder boss and people prefer a proper tank.

DPS Dragon Hunter : It’s the main build for Guardian. Usually using a Hammer for protection, less burst dps, but higher sustain dps. You can use this build at ALL raid bosses, but it’s better at some boss and less at others.

VG : Don’t bring anything special to the fight, but it’s an easy fight so who care.

Gorsveal : Again, don’t bring much. If you don’t have an engineer the guardian have good CC for the breakbar, but Gorseval move a lot during the fight getting out of your symbol and dropping your dps. It’s less an issues since they fixed the agro system, now he only move when the tank make a mistake or when moving to the wall.

Sabetha : One of the best fight for the Guardian. The boss doesn’t move so you can reach your highest dps, which is in the Top 3 of the game. And the protection help a lot in the last phase.

Slothazor : The reflect, CC, condi removal and stability of a Guardian here is really good. You can also use a GS to to pull grubs in the group to cleave them. It’s one of the best fight for the Guardian with Sabetha.

Trio : High surviability with good CC make it a good option for both saboteur and mortar, but other profession can do the same job. DPS wise the hammer won’t help you much here since the first two bosses are easy and mobs are all over the place. I prefer the GS to pull mobs together here. The Guardian bring several sources of burnign which is good for the last boss. This profession is decent at trio, but other profession can replace it easily here too.

Matthias : Reflect is important for this boss, but Mesmer do a WAY better job. No particular reason to bring a Guardian here.

Ok, thank you all for your feedback, i’ll try to find a raiding guild, let’s see what happens

Thaddeus.4891:

Matthias : Reflect is important for this boss, but Mesmer do a WAY better job. No particular reason to bring a Guardian here.

Aegis for the timed bombs is so good though, protection let’s you survive things that would 1 shot you otherwise and a backup reflect in case the mesmer cant reflect for whatever reason is nice to have.

I mean sure you can do it without all that but it definetly makes the fight easier and makes mistakes a lot more forgiving.

@Thaddeus I cannot agree with that half of what you said.

Doesn’t bring anything to VG, your f3 block can negate the blue circles during phase one not just for yourself but anyone standing in it. You can cc the seekers so others don’t have to which saves cc for when there is a seeker near a green circle or the cc bar.

Gorseval moves to much? His AI was fixed so he doesn’t move outside of when you take him to the wall and when he teleports to the middle to start cc phase. The adds during the split move sure but as I said test of faith will rip the adds to pieces.

Bandit camp there isn’t much to do for most classes. The only requirement I see is having 3 necros and then let the environmental effects kill the bosses.

Unless you have a really good Mesmer that never dies or never forgets a reflect you will need a guardian for a back up reflect. The cc we bring is also valuable, the amount of times I have had to use my signet or f1 pull for that last bit of cc is to much for me to count. Protection will also save people from he haduken attack and aegis blocks time bomb.

Sird.4536:

@Thaddeus I cannot agree with that half of what you said.

Doesn’t bring anything to VG, your f3 block can negate the blue circles during phase one not just for yourself but anyone standing in it. You can cc the seekers so others don’t have to which saves cc for when there is a seeker near a green circle or the cc bar.

Gorseval moves to much? His AI was fixed so he doesn’t move outside of when you take him to the wall and when he teleports to the middle to start cc phase. The adds during the split move sure but as I said test of faith will rip the adds to pieces.

Bandit camp there isn’t much to do for most classes. The only requirement I see is having 3 necros and then let the environmental effects kill the bosses.

Unless you have a really good Mesmer that never dies or never forgets a reflect you will need a guardian for a back up reflect. The cc we bring is also valuable, the amount of times I have had to use my signet or f1 pull for that last bit of cc is to much for me to count. Protection will also save people from he haduken attack and aegis blocks time bomb.

VG : Can you go read my post again pls. I said, that guardian doesn’t bring something -special to the fight. I didn’t say that he bring nothing. It’s a good choice, but there is no particular reason to bring a guardian to this fight over another profession. What you said is true, but it’s not the only profession that can make them and it’s not the best option either. I can just press ’’S’’ on my keyboard and get out of the blue circle, a engineer can do a better job against seeker, etc.

Gorseval : Again can you please read my post again. I specifically talked about the agro fix, saying that the problem is not as important now, but he still move between the wall and the center. Which is true. The fact is that Gorseval move more than sabetha. The Guardian is the 3rd best dps against sabetha, it’s not as good dps wise against Gorseval.

Bandit Camp : Jesus man, again. Where did I said, it’s a bad option. I said what where the strength of the profession was and that’s it. The fact that not a lot of profession have particular strength for this boss doesn’t change the fact that the guardian doesn’t have any particular strength for this boss.

Do you understand the difference between a profession that is able to do a task and a profession that excel in that task? For exemple, at slothazor the guardian reflect is better than the Feedback of the Mesmer. By saying that fact does this mean that I’m saying that Mesmer Feedback is bad and should be used? No.

By saying that Mesmer Feedback is a better reflect than the Guardian wall at Matthias doesn’t mean that a Guardian reflect is useless neither.

If the discussion is about what profession can do, the answer is simple. Pretty much every profession can do almost anything in a fight and you can complete all boss with almost any composition of any profession. But don’t you think this discussion is a bit pointless? Yes you can bring a Guardian in any fight and it will be able to do part of the job.

I was only saying what are the strength of the Guardian, where is excel, where it,s the best. Where you want specifically a Guardian over another profession. I wasn’t talking where a Guardian can do something in a fight where pretty much any profession can do the same.

To the OP,
In regards to tanking, I to was like you in WOW, its all I did. Had a Blood DK and loved it. I loved what tanking meant and the challenges you had to do. Sadly this game doesn’t believe in the same concept (which is ok, its not a WOW clone) but tanking VG is really just about avoiding blue circles and then kiting him around, not much else. Disappointing to those of us who are “old school” but I think the GW2 community in general likes it.
I would LOVE to see some actually tanking be needed in this game but the Bosses and the game don’t have the same aggro mechanics of WOW. That said, the raids do require a healer, so maybe its a start? One can hope.
Its still an odd concept or raiding and one I still struggle with but am keen to get it down, hang in there! And yes, Guardians can tank for sure.

Yes! Blood dks FTW!
And as far as i can see, there aren’t many guilds that make the emphasis on raiding, it’s mostly guilds which do a bit of this and a bit of that, and the guilds which actually have a more or less serious approach on raiding, they need experienced people, mostly with multiple geared alts, so i would have to pug a lot first.
And trying to pug isn’t my thing also, been there done that in WoW, wasted a lot of time trying to get into a pug when gearing my alts, then after 1-2 wipes everyone left, and had to wait again. Rinse and repeat. And don’t even get me started on the ridiculous pug requirements.
A very boring process, but needed to get into a raiding guild, i guess.
This is a dilemma for most new players that want to get into raiding, and don’t have friends that would help them with it.
Really don’t want to go through this again.

Oh well… chest farming it is

Mate, I’m on Janthir and if you are as well you are more than welcome to join our Guild! At the moment we are stepping into raids, Vg down and some have Gors and Sab but as a guild we still struggling/trying. Very CASUAL so come along!!

I’m on Desolation EU, and Janthir is on US?

Not sure how megaservers work, but i think i won’t be able to join you guys, though i’d be more than willing.

@Thaddeus

The thing is that you don’t need anything special from any class, I guess that was what I was trying to get at. There was a 10 man guardian VG kill so it comes down to 10 people just knowing what they are doing. Every class brings something of course but as I always say skill > class. It’s a shame pugs see guardians as ‘bringing nothing special’.

Sird.4536:

@Thaddeus

The thing is that you don’t need anything special from any class, I guess that was what I was trying to get at. There was a 10 man guardian VG kill so it comes down to 10 people just knowing what they are doing. Every class brings something of course but as I always say skill > class. It’s a shame pugs see guardians as ‘bringing nothing special’.

Just to be sure and I’m sure I said it several times, but when I say bring nothing special, I mean that Guardian doesn’t bring something that the fight specifically need in which the guardian is the one of the best option. My group usually have a Guardian in most boss when we raid, but we won’t make sure we bring guardian in all boss. If we end up with a Guardian at gorseval I won’t care, but if we don’t have enough tempest at gorseval, I’ll probably ask a guardian to swap. But it will be the other way around for slothazor for exemple.

Guardian tank for VG is the safest bet. Don’t believe people saying you just need to swap one toughness trinket. It is good just for elitist speed clearers. In our guild, our tank is always guardian with over 2200 toughness. It makes it easier to move boss on next platform in time before next green AoE.

For gorseval the tank should be engineer since he can solo CC him. Guardian is always good with hammer for extra protection and GS and feel my wrath for burn phases. GS skill 5 and F1 pull for clearing minions before gliding phase. For sabetha you need to just spam hammer 1.
We didn’t try wing 2 yet, but I guess condi remover and secondary projectile reflector would be your role for Slothasor.

While you indeed shouldn’t use soldier’s gear in a raid, I still wouldn’t recommend going full glass cannon with 1 toughness trinket as the tank. There is really no reason at all for doing that. I suggest using a mix of crusader’s and marauder’s gear.

CasualWanderer, I know this is already beaten like a dead moneky but! 2 things I love guardian tank and was sad that I had to make a Chrono. After a while my guild and I have been playing around with Guardian tank mostly to make me feel better lol! here is a video of both my hammer tank and my Mace and shield (M&S just feels good ya know hammer is boaring) they have my builds and so forth in the discription. But I have done KC, GORS, Xera and VG on those 2 builds now. I do still think that Chorno is of course Meta, but its fun to do stuff like this. You just need a good group. the Mace one was with 3 people that hadn’t done a raid before lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofDGrnda_-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMPZiDykD7g&t=55s

As long a chronomancer boons are so demanded and chronomancer damage is absolutely abysmal, pretty much any other tank is going to live in their shadow.