Guild Wars 2

Hello, Guardians! I’ve decide to roll up a guardian, and I’m trying to settle on a race. In my mind, the 2 options that jump out at me are Asura and Charr.

Asura
Utility Skills
Radiation field – 15 sec poison combo field on a 1 min CD. Poison dmg + weakness (i.e. less incoming damage).
Pain Inverter – Melee range AOE Retaliation + Confusion
Elites – Offensive Golem, Defensive Golem, Power Suit
Comments – Seems could be good for a condition build. Also could use combo finishers with Radiation field.

Charr
Utility skills – these seem pretty weak
Elites – Charrzooka – ranged weapon option on 3 min CD, Warband Support to call members of your Warband to support you on 4 min CD.
Comments – For a class with very limited range options, Charrzooka seems like it could be handy when the situation called for some ranged damage. Don’t know how effective it is. Also, Warband support sounds useful, but I don’t know how effective it really is.

Clearly Charrzooka is situational but gives range. For Asura, they seem pretty useful (although, as a noob, I’m not sure I’d these racials would be better than the class based utility skills).

I’d appreciate some feedback on the topic—especially would like to hear about the experiences from you Asura and Charr! I’m also open to thoughts on other races as well. I just mentioned the ones I thought looked good on paper.

I,m an asura guardian but i’ve not use radiation field before so i can’t comment on that, i’ve used the bots before they are not bad overall.
The offensive bot has quite good dmg, his rapid fire does on average 3k dmg per bolt – he would usually get boss aggro when he turns up, leaves you time to heal and stuff, on the downside he’s not very durable and he doesn’t hang around long.

The bot suit is so-so, fun to use but i’d rather not, better call upon a bot to assist you than become a bot yourself.
The defensive golem is not bad either quite a sturdy bot, but i rarely use him, he’s quite slow and pretty dumb sometimes.

I have no experience with either race, but Tome of Wrath will give you 20 seconds of ranged attacking, a massive Quickness boost for your group and other goodies (or baddies, seeing as one of the other skills is another buff, one a debuff and one massive PBAOE damage on a long channel).

As for the Radiation Field, keep in mind that Guardians don’t get a lot of Finishers. Greatsword would allow you to fire off undirected Poison Bolts from the field. If it’s really 15 seconds that would be an eternity and allow you two Whirling Blade and one Binding Blades if you want to use a Greatsword. Or you use Hammer and turn it into more Weakness.

However. Guardians can themselves intiate both Light and Fire Fields aplenty and those synergize better with their other abilities, ie. Purging Flames triggers 5 pulses of 1s of Burning and thus enables Fiery Wrath for 6s.

Reading over Pain Inverter, the Confusion is potentially nice in PVP. In PVE it will most likely only apply to one or two enemy attacks. It’s a trick that’s not in the Guardian’s toolbox. Retaliation on the other hand is cheap. Symbol of Wrath from the Greatsword is Retaliation with a ca. 50% uptime and given to everyone in a small area, plus more direct damage to enemies standing in it than you can hope to gain from Confusion. Its gap closer will also trigger Retaliation if it goes through a Light Field. Popping any Light Field with Hammer’s Mighty Blow will give Retaliation to everyone in range. That’s not counting the various Traits and Shouts that give Retaliation. Of course, in PVP enemies can move out of the Symbol, once again giving preference to the Pain Inverter.

No idea about the Golems.

Charrzooka is so much fun.

For those unfamiliar with it, it has a spammable single-target range damage for button #1 (I think it has splash damage, but honestly I’m too busy cackling when I pull this out to notice). Button #2 is a range opener that knocks back most of the enemies in a cone in front of you. Button #3 is a high damage heat-seeking missle – you have to remain stationary while casting it. #4 is another range-opener that propels you backwards by shooting the ground directly beneath you. #5 is a targeted AoE barrage of rockets.

Its damage is pretty respectable. I can take out a veteran or get it very low on health, without taking much or any damage myself. Health bars melt before it. It’s very nice in WvW against single players, small groups of players, or in large battles. It’s also a handy escape if you need to get away from someone or something – since we don’t have a lot of simple gap openers it fills a nice niche there.

And I really want to emphasize that it is so fun to use. I’m sure there are probably better damage abilities out there – but they don’t have rockets.

Asura Guardian here @80.

WvW: I’ve found Radiation Field to be really fun for placing on top of keeps when trying to siege – it makes defenders move. Really fun, and lasts a good while. I’ve also used Radiation Field for good AoE damage in PvE. I’ve never used Pain Inverter, but have it, as well as all of my other skills.

As per dungeons, PvE, and the like, I’ve found the D-Golem to be really useful. He actually holds aggro for a good amount of time if he’s alive, from what I’ve seen, and acts as a Shield of the Avenger; helps with the blocking ranged rotation very well. The attacking golem is good too, but he seems to die faster and doesn’t have the shield. Makes me sad. The Power Suit is really hard to use effectively in a dungeon and is more of a novelty, honestly. It can put out a high number, but takes awhile to get there channeling. You can’t use utilities in it either…

The Norn racial elite Become the Snow Leopard has a 5 seconds stealth that you can use 3 or 4 times during the 30 second duration of the transformation. Since Guardians don’t naturally have stealth, it can be very handy. I use it when scouting in WvW.

Also bear in the mind the relative height of the Asura and the Norn. In WvW, as an Area Control Guardian, I find my Norn height is good for getting people grouped around me. If you were more into DPS, the Asura might be good for deflecting attention.

Sylvari Guardian here. Just hit 60, but I swear the best group support skill in the game is Healing Seed. Passes out Regeneration to allies, heals you for a bit to begin with. Combo it with Altruistic Healing and laugh as the numbers roll in. Does require close grouping, though, which can be a problem with AoEs. I haven’t tried any of the other Sylvari racials.

>implying race isn’t about aesthetics and storyline only

Great comments so far! Keep ‘em coming. I hadn’t considered Snow Leopard—I was just reading on it, and I think you can stealth for 20 out of the 30 second duration. Not bad. Only drawback is the long cooldown.

Healing Seed is definitely nice—even solo as a melee character. The only drawbacks are that the AOE is a bit small—and the seed itself will draw aggro and get popped pretty quickly.

And Zyph, yes, there are certainly aesthetics and storyline discussions to be had on the races, but that’s not for this thread.

Two reasons why I like my Asuran Guardian.

1. Small size for WvW. (This is a mixed blessing right now with the camera problems)
2. Golem elites. These are great as our normal elites suck for general world PvE.