Guild Wars 2

So I main a zerk guard/DH and used him with my guild in the raid last night. Best we did was to get to phase 2 with like 2 min left, but really we had no idea what we were doing.
I’d just like to get a discussion going about what rolls guard can play in this first raid fight.
I’ll speak from my experience, but please keep in mind I was in a fairly poorly organized group of guildies who were only just figuring out what needed to be done.

My job ended up being one of the guys running to the green circles. In that roll I felt i needed range, so I tried out both scepter/shield and long bow. The idea with shield was to keep out the red seeker balls with shield 5, but depending on how things were positioned I sometimes pushed the balls into the melee crowd on the guardian. Also, long cooldown on shield 5 so i couldnt rely on it too much.
Longbow with knockback seemed to work ok keeping some of the red balls away, but somewhat inconsistently.
Between green circles i just ranged the guard. I dont like how LB 2 roots you. Mobility seems pretty important in this fight and i had to interrupt myself a time or two to get to the green circle. My concern with LB was I dont know how effective my DPS was. Is a LB DH carrying thier weight DPSwise? I ran full ascended zerk. I’m proficient at LB, but by no means an expert.
I tried different utilities as well. At first I laid down some traps, but couldnt rely on our tank to lead the guy into them, so that wasnt helpful.
I felt I got good use out of retreat, increasing mobility for those needing to get to the green circles and some added defense with aegis.
I tried sanctuary to try to keep out the red balls from the green circle. It was more contained and predictable than shield 5, but again, a long cool down.
I got good use out of merciful intervention (i think its called). I didnt use it too often, but it got me into green circles when i was otherwise not goign to make it, and healing to party memebers is never a bad thing
For my elite I only used feel my wrath which i’d spam off cd, usually when a green circle was ending and I was stacked with others around me.
Other than that I just used bane signet, but again, wasnt sure if it was making any difference in the big picture.

So I’d LOVE to read about other peoples experiences with guard. What worked, what didnt?

In my guild we actually used the Guard as the boss tank, and our best attempt was final phase about 20% ish health left with around 2 minutes left on the clock.

Shield was used for the same knockback pressure relief though that was low priority as we had other team members who would call out their cc’s. Mace was paired with shield to help with healing as well.

I will say our Tank Guard was still gear rather offensively with only Toughness being a priority for aggro-ing purposes.

As the tank I’d assume you would run hammer, zerk gear with a knight’s trinket to get the aggro.
maybe hammer with mace/shiled as the second set?
I can clearly see how traps would immediately become much more effective if you are the tank. The problem with my guild is many running around in tank gear baseline so the tankiest guy got the job just by default. We have a lot more planning to do… but thats part of the fun.

How can you think they are not useful. The longbow is the second highest dps in game behind the engineer along with the vault thief. And dps is what’s needed for vale guardian.

Yea, I’m seriously considering trying a hammer guard as a tank when my guild does our next raid. We had a rabid engi, but they kinda had to semi-kite tank to reduce damage. A hammer guard could probably just sit in one place with perma-prot. It’s so easy to keep up might without fire fields now between guards and heralds, that I don’t think the fire field overwrite really matters anymore.

Beyond a guard as a tank, I don’t think that guards really shine in groups as much as a PS war, chronomancer, etc. However, they’re not bad either since the aegis and such still help to a degree. I’ve only been against the Vale Guardian so far, but I’m sure things like projectile reflection and condi cleanse will also matter later, which should be another boost to a guardian’s usefulness.

I’m not thinking anything isnt useful! Its just hard to tell what my individual actions acomplished in the big picture. I’m asking and looking for info. if you are telling me LB is a great choice, then amen!

I face tanked for our group as Guardian and we had an Elementalist healing.
I wore a few pieces of soldier’s armor, and the rest was zerk.

Because my tanking role was completely last minute, I just had to go with the few pieces of alternate gear I had on me, which was FAR from ideal.

I messed with my build after just about every attempt trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. Here’s a few things I learned:
1) There are a lot of tiny little hits all over the place that will eat up your blocks and aegis, but with some practice you can time Mace3, Shield4, and Focus5 to block a lot of the boss’s melee attacks.
2) You can circle strafe him in a tight circle and stop him from attacking entirely, but it’s very tedious and if you mess up a single time, you’ll get all your melee dps cleaved so I wouldn’t recommend it (unless maybe you’re running with all ranged dps).
3) Protection + Signet of Judgement + Hunter’s Fortification was pretty effective.
4) Invigorated Bulwark + Writ of Persistence was basically mandatory if you want to full-on face tank.

90% of face tanking the first fight with Guardian revolves around keeping regen and protection on yourself, positioning the boss properly, and dodging the teleports.

For the first fight Guardian only shine a the tank. But that said, you don’t have specific role for all 10 people in the group. DH have a good dps with a simple rotation while they bring aegis and quickness which is good for the melee group. They also have great mobility for reaching the Lightning circle and can use F2 to protect everybody when in there if needed. Do they seem the best for these two roles? Maybe not, but they do a great job at it.

Pregnantman.8259:

I haven’t done the raid yet, but for those who did and used a guardian as tank – did you feel that you need the toughness for survival or just for aggro? If it is mostly for aggro can one get away with using full zerk but with toughness infusions and/or toughness consumables?

Aggro only. Especially if you use hammer. The problem is that without high toughness, you stand no chance of holding threat unless you are in an organized (and honest) group.

Pregnantman.8259:

I haven’t done the raid yet, but for those who did and used a guardian as tank – did you feel that you need the toughness for survival or just for aggro? If it is mostly for aggro can one get away with using full zerk but with toughness infusions and/or toughness consumables?

If you have a dedicated “healer”, then all you need is about 100 more toughness than the next highest person. I think the ticking AOE damage ignores toughness anyway.

With full on Nomads, you might be able to self-sustain and get rid of the need for a healer altogether as long as everyone else brings enough sustain for themselves and avoids unnecessary damage… But I’m not sure the total raid dps would actually go up in that scenario since your tank dps would be utter garbage and everyone else would waste little bits of time here and there on their own healing. Requires more testing.

I am going to try a mix of knight’s and cleric’s tonight. I will post results.

I find myself to be very useful. Longbow does great ranged dps. It allows me to get to green circles and continue pumping good dps. Traps also help with the Vale Guardian’s bar in phase 3. I can also stop seekers in their tracks either by dazing or pulling them, or barring their movement with a barrier.

I use a mix of marauder/berserker armor.

I don’t feel useful as a Guardian, Druid, Herald, wearing full Ventari’s. A Healing/Tank Druid only causes the player to constantly spin the boss in circles. I should say sorry and give people barf bags.

Ventari’s Guardian… With how raids are it completely ignores all the interesting builds that can be created with professions. This causes players to cherry pick the stat & build combinations that are going to work specifically with what Arenanet designed. Movement is deeply mixed with GW2 combat, standing still is what people shouldn’t do, dodging is valuable. We all know this but do you see these concepts flawlessly placed into Raid Mechanics? Being a Tank in raids is punishing having the boss aggro will cause people to maybe yell at you. When in the first place they wanted to assign tank roll to someone else. There is a reason I call myself a Tank, that’s all I am damage isn’t interesting to me. Keeping allies alive is more useful imo. Getting through tough parts of a fight sounds more exciting. I want my build pushed to its limit and at the end I’m on top for being a great player. But no! Being a pure survivalist in GW2 is stupid and considered as “Cheesing” (or other for Cheating) though content. In the first place Arenanet doesn’t know their professions anymore and they don’t know how to make content that counters players professions to properly make difficult content. If this type of Play-Style for professions should become utterly useless in Raiding there is no point in giving professions the ability’s to do other things other than Damage and Control affects. What The Kitten Kitten Kitten? Puppy’s too!

I think the whole game is becoming useless. It is hardly the game it used to be, destroying its own ideals month after month and years. It’s not quite like Wildstar but I highly doubt Arenanet will publicly admit to slowly destroying their game. Not everyone is enjoying the Game-Play nor will a mass of players want to flock to this game like the first idiots did (I’ve played from the start of GW2, I’m calling myself an idiot too). It’s just another MMO from this point on.

No, my Guardian technically is not useful in Raids. Doesn’t fit any of the Meta standards.

I’m a main Guardian/Dh user. The first time I’ve enetered the raids was like this:

0: See some videos about raids to know what will happen, how you suppose to deal with it.
1: Get into a raid with those who use TS
2: DH is good against Green Guardian (to survive here use more time dodging, Longbow with Mace/Focus, if you are good use Greatsword—> more dps, traps for skills, and elite skill Monk’s focus, verry usefull to survive, and provides virtues again)
3: DPS is a must for DH, so you must learn when to dodge, when and were to press F2( the best time to use it when jumping to lightning field(the green circle), more members there..and they don’t get in downed state there—> because of you healling them)
4. DH is a CC king, use F1 and traps (with daze) when it’s needed, in 2 sec the CC bar is down
5. Anybody who wants to play Guardain/DH as main must not forget, that learning it is verry long time run ( I have +2-3 year experience WvW, PvP, PvE ) and still learning DH … once you learned it, you become pro, you will not need to be a tank, you will run full zerk and kitten everything
6. Lots of ppl are sceptical against Guardian/DH, but every time you should see the person playing it, it’s the same on every profession.. I’ve seen a video that in raids Reaper was the best DPS class, did 20-28k dmg constantly, sometimes 32k dmg.
7. In case that the majority will be against DH I’m making myself a Reaper ( lvl 80, and 70HP to go to full Reaper )
It is better to have 2 professions than one, you have more chance to get into a raid… in your 400 group member guild you will have more chance that your guild wants you in raids.

ZERONIX.5873:

How can you think they are not useful. The longbow is the second highest dps in game behind the engineer along with the vault thief. And dps is what’s needed for vale guardian.

This isn’t remotely accurate. DH sustained DPS is probably bottom tier. We have a huge burst with feel my wrath/spear/true shot/trap stacks, but after that we’re out of gas for 20-30 seconds. I can put out a level of DPS with Reaper that my DH could only dream about, I mean they’re not even in the same ballpark. Its made DH practically unplayable for me.

logan.5846:

This isn’t remotely accurate. DH sustained DPS is probably bottom tier. We have a huge burst with feel my wrath/spear/true shot/trap stacks, but after that we’re out of gas for 20-30 seconds. I can put out a level of DPS with Reaper that my DH could only dream about, I mean they’re not even in the same ballpark. Its made DH practically unplayable for me.

Please tell me this is a lie.

I’m trying to decide whether to main my guard or rev as a tank/healer if anyone has any opinions on that.

I have to be honest I’ve just hit 80 on my guard and am rocking gs/lb and seem to find lb tickles mobs whereas gs destroys them. I’m honestly torn between my rev, necro and dh right now as dh isn’t seeming too great for raids

gin.7158:

logan.5846:

This isn’t remotely accurate. DH sustained DPS is probably bottom tier. We have a huge burst with feel my wrath/spear/true shot/trap stacks, but after that we’re out of gas for 20-30 seconds. I can put out a level of DPS with Reaper that my DH could only dream about, I mean they’re not even in the same ballpark. Its made DH practically unplayable for me.

Please tell me this is a lie.

I wish, but no. DH is a total one trick pony, and once that one trick gets nerfed thanks to all of the PVP crybabies, the class will have nothing left.

Skip to 11:25 in this video to see a comparison of target dummy kill times between various classes. DH is by far the worst. Like I said, after our big opening burst we’re completely out of gas while everyone else is pumping out steady DPS.

Yea it sucks but I learned the hard way. The only real position a guardian has in raids is as a tank but honestly even an ele or revenant can do those while still outputting more dps. Dragonhunter is strong in pvp due to its burst but raids require high damage throughout not spikes and lulls in damage. Combine this with the fact that max guardian dps requires the enemy to be tethered and standing in a symbol. Even then this damage barely reaches the damage something like a revenant is putting throughout the entire fight. Atm, there is no benefit for taking a guardian.

Chronomancers can cover the quickness, do more damage, and can provide alacrity.
Tempests provide high might stacks, strong cc with ice bow, high dps, and are important in the 2nd fight to kill orbs without sacrificing too much dps (lava font).
Revenants are extremely high dps and strong boon application.
Berserkers just do good damage and phalanx strength to spread might (Guardian got their might sharing trait butchered)
Daredevils are useless but venom sharing thief has some use in breaking bars
Druids are insanely strong with heals, literally spike heal bars through aoes.
Scrapper, Reaper, and Dragonhunter are essentially the bottom of the barrel. They still do stuff but you are just gimping yourself by taking those classes in a raid.

edit: DH would have more value if reflects or damage migitation mattered but the raid bosses use unreflectable projectiles and near oneshot/insta death mechanics that makes aegis/protection useless. Druid spike heals > regen.

DH/guard contributes pretty kitten dps to vale guardian with the amount of mandatory dodging/moving the fight requires.

the zerk guard meta requires you going through your rotations on a stationary target, raid fights don’t give you that luxury.

I would argue that the same is true for most of the professions though. Staff elementalist is the first example that comes to mind: it also loses a decent amount of dps against moving targets. I would have thought guardians provided a nice amount of relevant cc and decent damage with off heals for the raid. And I expected all our damage mitigation to be at least a little helpful. But it sounds like that’s not the case? (I haven’t tried it on a guardian yet)

I felt extremely relevent in the VG kill i was a part of last night as the ranged seeker wrangler and extra lightning guy in case one of the four failed.

I ran a radiance honor dh berserkwr build with longbow and scepter shield.

The shield recharge reduction trait is critically important for pushing back the seekers if they clustered. I would auto seekers with either weapons auto attack, then i would run them away from the raid while damaging the boss. The immobilize on scepter three and traited f1 was super useful, as well as the pull. The knock back with longbow is very unreliable and i hope they move it to longbow 3.

All in all i was able to significantly reduce the damage the raid took while dealing decent damage. I would go blue on split and used the elite signet after split to heal up people to full.

logan.5846:

Skip to 11:25 in this video to see a comparison of target dummy kill times between various classes. DH is by far the worst…

You do realize that is using PvP stats with no group buffs, some of them are using food and others aren’t, and that different classes scale differently when you add in those extra PVE stats… right?

Using that video to come to the conclusion that “DH dps is bottom tier” is naiveté.

phor.7952:

logan.5846:

Skip to 11:25 in this video to see a comparison of target dummy kill times between various classes. DH is by far the worst…

You do realize that is using PvP stats with no group buffs, some of them are using food and others aren’t, and that different classes scale differently when you add in those extra PVE stats… right?

Using that video to come to the conclusion that “DH dps is bottom tier” is naiveté.

The guardian and revenant parts are taken from my guide with no permission given. I use the test dummy to show rotations and go for the highest precision possible since there have been things that proc off crits like radiant fire. For both guardian and revenant I am using ranger runes, rabid trinket, and a sigil of accuracy. I don’t use food. I use the golem to show how to do rotations and plug them into a spreadsheet to find the optimal one after trying many different things and ignore the dummy. I don’t get the point of pvp golem tests for pve. It would be nice if they added some in pve land.

phor.7952:

logan.5846:

Skip to 11:25 in this video to see a comparison of target dummy kill times between various classes. DH is by far the worst…

You do realize that is using PvP stats with no group buffs, some of them are using food and others aren’t, and that different classes scale differently when you add in those extra PVE stats… right?

Using that video to come to the conclusion that “DH dps is bottom tier” is naiveté.

Feel the same way. Guardians have okay levels of fury, but we have no might stacking, and our vulnerability stacking is linked to Spear of Justice. Put a guardian in a raid where you have constant 25 vulnerability, ~25 might, 100% cripple, and bane signet and that is at least a 40% damage increase. Sure, some of other classes benefit heavily as well, but guardians would be back up in mid level DPS not a distant last.

phor.7952:

logan.5846:

Skip to 11:25 in this video to see a comparison of target dummy kill times between various classes. DH is by far the worst…

You do realize that is using PvP stats with no group buffs, some of them are using food and others aren’t, and that different classes scale differently when you add in those extra PVE stats… right?

Using that video to come to the conclusion that “DH dps is bottom tier” is naiveté.

I didn’t use the video, I used my own experience. I have a DH, Scrapper, Reaper and Herald at level 80, and of those 4, DH does the lowest DPS, and it isn’t a very close race.

Guard/DH is my main, so for a long time I simply didn’t know any better until I burned some tomes and leveled other classes. Turns out those 9k True Shots every 5 seconds pale in comparison to Revenants who can hit 3k auto attacks every half second, or Reapers who can spam 15k Gravediggers every 2 seconds, or Engies who can have 8k burns/5k bleeds/3k poison stacks all ticking away.

I might be wrong, I would love to be proven wrong, but from everything I’ve seen & played, Dragon Hunter DPS simply isn’t competitive in large scale PVE engagements.

logan.5846:

phor.7952:

logan.5846:

Skip to 11:25 in this video to see a comparison of target dummy kill times between various classes. DH is by far the worst…

You do realize that is using PvP stats with no group buffs, some of them are using food and others aren’t, and that different classes scale differently when you add in those extra PVE stats… right?

Using that video to come to the conclusion that “DH dps is bottom tier” is naiveté.

I didn’t use the video, I used my own experience. I have a DH, Scrapper, Reaper and Herald at level 80, and of those 4, DH does the lowest DPS, and it isn’t a very close race.

Guard/DH is my main, so for a long time I simply didn’t know any better until I burned some tomes and leveled other classes. Turns out those 9k True Shots every 5 seconds pale in comparison to Revenants who can hit 3k auto attacks every half second, or Reapers who can spam 15k Gravediggers every 2 seconds, or Engies who can have 8k burns/5k bleeds/3k poison stacks all ticking away.

I might be wrong, I would love to be proven wrong, but from everything I’ve seen & played, Dragon Hunter DPS simply isn’t competitive in large scale PVE engagements.

I can’t believe you dont seem to realize you are comparing three melee build options to a range build, which as far as im aware every raid boss has need of some ranged damage?

We’ve killed first boss yesterday.
And I felt quite usefull.

Dropping blocks on demand so we could do a bit more damage without dodging out of the blue circles. And my melee damage was pretty high. Seeing up to 35K GS 2 skill in my screen.
Also when one of our Green Circle people got downed – I was the one going there with Mercifull Intervention.

Also the fact you barely do any Cripple or Slows as a guardian works quite well with the tactic we used.

We’ve killed first boss yesterday.
And I felt quite usefull.

Dropping blocks on demand so we could do a bit more damage without dodging out of the blue circles. And my melee damage was pretty high. Seeing up to 35K GS 2 skill in my screen.
Also when one of our Green Circle people got downed – I was the one going there with Mercifull Intervention.

Also the fact you barely do any Cripple or Slows as a guardian works quite well with the tactic we used.

Guys, all your constructive comments gave me some hope. I will farm gold for scholar runes, create my own squad and give it a try. Thank you.

Masori.3528:

We’ve killed first boss yesterday.
And I felt quite usefull.

Dropping blocks on demand so we could do a bit more damage without dodging out of the blue circles. And my melee damage was pretty high. Seeing up to 35K GS 2 skill in my screen.
Also when one of our Green Circle people got downed – I was the one going there with Mercifull Intervention.

Also the fact you barely do any Cripple or Slows as a guardian works quite well with the tactic we used.

I’m really curious about the build you were using? Could you share?

Kormeg.2469:

I’m really curious about the build you were using? Could you share?

This is what i run.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARTn8cCFChlDBedCEEhl4BrKA0AqXy7vA4BMLF1imRA-TRSBABZp04MlgPcJAoU9nrUGcz+DYpEDPdBA8EAIFQELjA-e

Masori.3528:

Kormeg.2469:

I’m really curious about the build you were using? Could you share?

This is what i run.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARTn8cCFChlDBedCEEhl4BrKA0AqXy7vA4BMLF1imRA-TRSBABZp04MlgPcJAoU9nrUGcz+DYpEDPdBA8EAIFQELjA-e

So you used merciful intervention? Because in this link you chose Judge’s intervention. I guess that is just a miss-click.
But what about those soldier items (edited from a wrong word)? Were you tanking the boss? And wouldn’t it be better to use Knight instead of Soldier for extra critical chance?

edit>
I would little bit edit it like this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJATRn8cCFChtDBedCEEhl4BrKA0AqXy7vA4BMLF1imRA-TBSBABnpE8hLBAlqWclyvb2foS1UwTXAAPBgAAIA38mZzbGwNv5Nv5NvZpAiYYF-e

What do you think? This way I don’t have to craft last 3 pieces of zerk armor and istead use jewelry for the stats. And I get bigger chance of landing a crit.

Short question: Do these knockbacks, stuns, daze, … occur in the raid? I can’t remember them. Maybe i didn’t get far enough in order to see them.

A yes, that was a misclick.
DPS wise it doesn’t matter tho

I don’t got all the zerker asc items yet, and this is what i had equiped on the kill (currently aswell). And the thoughness I got is overrated anyways – since i’m not tanking

Your link looks pretty nice.

Allthough I’d Suggest just to ditch the Soldier gear and go for Maurader.

Shadowwarrior.7159:

Short question: Do these knockbacks, stuns, daze, … occur in the raid? I can’t remember them. Maybe i didn’t get far enough in order to see them.

Not on the first boss,

But if you’re refering to why i picked Hunter’s Determination instead of Zealot’s Aggression.

You do not want the cripple on your attacks for the AOE phase, since his breakbar will melt if you do take it. Which isn’t good for the NO CC tactic

Masori.3528:

Shadowwarrior.7159:

Short question: Do these knockbacks, stuns, daze, … occur in the raid? I can’t remember them. Maybe i didn’t get far enough in order to see them.

Not on the first boss,

But if you’re refering to why i picked Hunter’s Determination instead of Zealot’s Aggression.

You do not want the cripple on your attacks for the AOE phase, since his breakbar will melt if you do take it. Which isn’t good for the NO CC tactic

What do you mean by aoe phase and no CC tactic?? I thought you always have to break the bar

No, he takes normal damage, but is not moving around or spawning blue and green circles on the ground – so one tactic is to let him be and dps until the next phase. But the areas still will light up.

Shadowwarrior.7159:

No, he takes normal damage, but is not moving around or spawning blue and green circles on the ground – so one tactic is to let him be and dps until the next phase. But the areas still will light up.

Only really works well if you have fantastic ranged damage and can avoid his aoes.

Swiftwynd.1685:

Shadowwarrior.7159:

No, he takes normal damage, but is not moving around or spawning blue and green circles on the ground – so one tactic is to let him be and dps until the next phase. But the areas still will light up.

Only really works well if you have fantastic ranged damage and can avoid his aoes.

Not really. You could probably do it with a melee setup aswell.
Is just awarness of the red circles. which you can dodge pretty easy. by just side stepping. Or just pop aegis a second after the circles popped.

Did it two days ago with a druid and 1 necro and a ranger as the only ranged dps.