Guild Wars 2

I hate to say it but our time has come. We are now the most unwanted class out there. Power builds got a significant 5% nerf with regards to seaweed salad. Most classes got stronger condition builds after the recent balance patches, except for Guardian. Our DPS is now at 29k DPS maximum. This is lower than a condition Revenant. We did got our signets buffed even though they are still bad, so there’s that.

So what class is the most wanted..?

Guardian is kitten now. But I am used to play with kitten classes like enhancement shaman in wow right now.

Maybe they can change unscathed contender to make it a 600 radius aura that increase the damage dealt by 15% (or 7% damage and 7% condition damage) to 10 allies with an aegis

Don’t you dare say that again.

Revenant was a meta staple ever since HoT launched. It was in every group. Where was guardian at that time? Oh that’s right, in the garbage bin, because gaurdian didn’t have any dps build, besides hammer, which was and still is very low dps. Guardian wasn’t accepted in fractals because it gave the opponents retaliation.

Guardian was “the new rev” for a LONG time before revenant became one. So, don’t come here and tell me guardian is as bad as revenant now. I main guardian, I know bad.

We’ve been in this stage before. I just wish anet would decide that if they’re gonna buff pve raid builds, they should probably also buff some for guardian. If not, then they got a lot of power creep to nerf in raids then.

Don’t worry, you will be able to buy the next expansion to fix the class.

TBH, I play a class because I find it fun, not because it’s some top-tier DPS class/spec, odd huh?

Odokuro.5049:

TBH, I play a class because I find it fun, not because it’s some top-tier DPS class/spec, odd huh?

Gettin kicked out of group content is crazy fun, I know.
If I played the class for chart-topping DPS, I would have abandoned ship years ago. You can still have fun while doing good dps. You can have more fun if the condi spec is buffed to viability because you have a new way to play the class. The ‘fun’ buzzword is not an argument.

Premature post. I haven’t lost to a Rev and we’re not nearly as kittenome people say that we are. (pvp)

Kuya.6495:

We’ve been in this stage before. I just wish anet would decide that if they’re gonna buff pve raid builds, they should probably also buff some for guardian. If not, then they got a lot of power creep to nerf in raids then.

The main problem is that the balance updates are too focused on DPS output and not enough on taking advantage of the diversity of each class. If we look at instanced PvE content you will see that since the expansion release not much has changed with these roles:

- We have the Warrior supplying might, banners and EA
- Chronomancer supplying quickness, alacrity and boon sharing while being able to tank
- Druid supplying heals, GotL, spotter, glyphs & spirits

Then we have only a few spots left for DPS & offensive support which have changed slightly since every balance update, mainly benefiting Tempests and condition Rangers. That means the Guardian has had to compete with all these other classes in order to get a spot. Frankly, there is not a lot a Guardian can bring to a party. I believe the balance team should go back to the drawing board and think why the current Guardian feels hollow instead of hallow. They made a step in the right direction by adding Pinpoint Distribution to Engineers and making Grace of the Lands/Banners focusing on 10 people. Even though the guardian hasn’t benefited from that yet.

To me, the Guardian has always been a supportive class and it took a wrong turn with the release of the Dragonhunter. Dragonhunter is a ranged offensive build with close combat traps which seems purposed for PvP and solo play which didn’t seem to benefit much from the core specializations which relied on close combat, active defense and a focus on support. Hopefully this gets restored by the next expansion. I sincerely hope we don’t simply receive an elite specialization that will deal condition damage and give quickness.

We need something that makes Guardians unique so we can start fulfilling other roles than just DPS. Before the expansion was released Guardian was frequently used for it’s active defense & supportive role. We had blinds, reflects, protection & blocks. But most of these have become useless with the introduction of Druids and Chronomancers. We should go back to that and make supportive builds more viable.

One guy posts something, and the whole world goes “brain /off, ill go along with it”. Is that it? That’s how limited you are? Let me brake it down to y’all. Also grab a power supply and connect it to your brains. Seems you lack to energy to think. You’re going to need it anyway

First my forward to the guys and guilds, that do put the effort of testing / sharing the benchmarks and scoreboards. I really appreciate it. No joke.

Now the part where you hook up the power supply and switch it on: What you people don’t get is that these benchmarks are done ON A STILL STANDING GOLEM. Read that again. Realize what i am saying, im serious. In a real scenario, there are more elements at play. Yes you will deal less damage, but so will anyone else. The only difference is that guardian… or dh to be more specific will have LESS dps uptime loss. Again dps UPTIME loss. not the total damage. This duo to how the class or build functions in comparison with others. As we all know in a real scenario you have to dodge, (re)position yourself, foes moves also, and all of this goes at cost of your damage. Guardian has less problem with this duo to the fact that it can stay at ranged for like 70% of the time. I mean lets be honest, you only need to on the boss when you swap to GS and lay traps. For the remaining time you can stay at X range. You have to deal less with dodging and repositioning. Other classes will have to do this more often. So all of that combined guardian will pretty much deal similar damage if not perhaps a bit higher even IN A REAL SCENARIO in comparison with its party/squad members.

Unless you are that perfect player that does everything without a single mistake ofc. But lets be honest. How many of those do we have here? There is a difference between successful (speed)kill in X time and executing everything 100% perfect.

GWMO.4785:

The only difference is that guardian… or dh to be more specific will have LESS dps uptime loss. Again dps UPTIME loss. not the total damage. This duo to how the class or build functions in comparison with others. As we all know in a real scenario you have to dodge, (re)position yourself, foes moves also, and all of this goes at cost of your damage. Guardian has less problem with this duo to the fact that it can stay at ranged for like 70% of the time. I mean lets be honest, you only need to on the boss when you swap to GS and lay traps. For the remaining time you can stay at X range. You have to deal less with dodging and repositioning. Other classes will have to do this more often. So all of that combined guardian will pretty much deal similar damage if not perhaps a bit higher even IN A REAL SCENARIO in comparison with its party/squad members.

As much as I like to believe you I think you’re giving a somewhat rose-tinted picture to guardians in real raid scenario’s. For example, scepter doesn’t pierce, retaliation is hard to keep up for the 10% damage buff, light fields screw up more important fields such as fire, chill and water. Not to even mention all the benchmarks being done with the unrealistic trait of Unscathed Defender which only work in niche situations. More importantly, like I mentioned in my previous post, Guardian doesn’t bring anything to the party that other players could benefit from.

Staying at range isn’t all that great. You’ll lose all the buffs you get from staying in melee with the group. You will lose out on might, Grace of the Lands and other short range buffs which will also significantly impact your DPS output. With a decent Druid you won’t have to worry too much about the damage you get from standing in melee.

Noah.4756:

For example, scepter doesn’t pierce, retaliation is hard to keep up for the 10% damage buff, light fields screw up more important fields such as fire, chill and water. Not to even mention all the benchmarks being done with the unrealistic trait of Unscathed Defender which only work in niche situations. More importantly, like I mentioned in my previous post, Guardian doesn’t bring anything to the party that other players could benefit from.

This was already the case before the patch. so nothing changes there. Also guardian can bring fury and protection. How useful that is, is dependent on how well the player is as well as group composition ofc.

Noah.4756:

Staying at range isn’t all that great. You’ll lose all the buffs you get from staying in melee with the group. You will lose out on might, Grace of the Lands and other short range buffs which will also significantly impact your DPS output. With a decent Druid you won’t have to worry too much about the damage you get from standing in melee.

Staying at X range MOSTLY. I did not say that you can or should stay on the other side of the arena or so. Given that you only need to be on the boss for Whirling Wrath and Binding Blades. You can execute remaining gs skills as well as traps in melee range. Followed by scepter at higher range. Again not saying that you should be on the other side of the surface. But you can take a bigger range while still benefiting from the shared boons and buffs.

GWMO.4785:

First my forward to the guys and guilds, that do put the effort of testing / sharing the benchmarks and scoreboards. I really appreciate it. No joke.

This is what qT has to say about guardian after the patch:

“Guardian: Nothing really changed for guardian. The rotation is the same and the changes made in the balance patch are irrelevant for the pve guardians. It’s damage is so low, that unfortunately it can’t keep up with any dps class anymore. Guardian is basically the new rev in terms of bad dps and uselessness. "

And this:

“We also think Hammer Guardian and Power Rev are too weak dps wise so we excluded them from benchmarks aswell”

I’m not saying that we should all follow qT’s word as gospel, but some commanders in raids and people in fractals will do just that, and when they put an LFG ad up, they will say “lf tempest” instead of “lf dps”.

And really, it’s not like they are lying. DH was a dps focused elite spec, that offers absolutely nothing else, and what’s the result? We have lower dps than base classes, like ranger who got a ridiculously strong support spec.

Now the part where you hook up the power supply and switch it on: What you people don’t get is that these benchmarks are done ON A STILL STANDING GOLEM. Read that again. Realize what i am saying, im serious. In a real scenario, there are more elements at play.

Funny you say that, because Guardian loses more dps in realistic conditions than other classes. They rely on having retaliation or aegis up to increase their damage, which golem bechmarks take for granted at 100% uptime, and lose dps to moving bosses and boss adds. Condi ranger is close to unaffected by all that and condi rev gains damage when the boss moves.

New Improved Guardian Elite ready for a special price of $$$$.

-Master ANET Plan.

You are crazy. Revenant is unusable. Herald isn’t even wanted in raids for boon support. That class is the only class I couldn’t stand to level to 80. It needs a complete rework from the ground up more than any other class.

bearshaman.3421:

You are crazy. Revenant is unusable. Herald isn’t even wanted in raids for boon support. That class is the only class I couldn’t stand to level to 80. It needs a complete rework from the ground up more than any other class.

DH medi trapper is a spam newb build, who even fells for the traps nowadays? theres a kneel animation and sound anoucing the traps..

Symbolic avenger maybe is decent, i never played.

Mace shield shouts? useless as consecrations and Spirit weapons, its like watching your team mate dying while ur afk.

hammer builds dont offer nothing besides protection on the AA…

theres only 1 elite skill avaliable for guardian

class sacrifices alot to gain vitality and damage output stats, while the defenses besides aegis that gets cleared with a cleave targeting other player or a a auto atack, more are useless or very easy to counter..

Rev atm might be slightly better, what guardian provides it alot of things bit they mostly suck on the battlefield, all that matter is the hammer protection and the boon stacking stuff but even other classes do it better….

And yet, guardian has double the number of builds as revenant on metabattle, and is more readily accepted into groups from what I’ve seen. I’m not saying we are doing great, but to say that we are worse off than revenant? That’s just crazy talk.

bearshaman.3421:

And yet, guardian has double the number of builds as revenant on metabattle, and is more readily accepted into groups from what I’ve seen. I’m not saying we are doing great, but to say that we are worse off than revenant? That’s just crazy talk.

+1 on that..

bearshaman.3421:

And yet, guardian has double the number of builds as revenant on metabattle, and is more readily accepted into groups from what I’ve seen. I’m not saying we are doing great, but to say that we are worse off than revenant? That’s just crazy talk.

Given that this is a pve-focused thread, I don’t see how conquest builds make a difference. And a lot of them are duplicates.

For pve, guardian has 1 build and that build was already falling behind prior to the patch, but with the condi craze, we are 5-6 builds behind. And it’s not like guardian had it good at any time since HoT’s launch. We were always average, when Revenant was meta. Revenant fell off the meta for 2 balance patches and it became a meme, ignoring the garbage heap guardian was burried under for an entire year.

Past comparisons aside, revenant is becoming viable in groups again with their condi build, they have Deimos fight where they are a standard pick, and they have the off-meta Ventari build. Meanwhile guardian remains in their decent-but-Ele-is-better place for 2 years straight. We had a situational edge due to more CC, but that was nerfed.

Generally speaking, guardian is still viable and is not the condi craze but the meta craze.
Can’t say anything else when benchmarks(and personal parsing) still have him at least on 30k+ dps.
Is just that the “so called meta” need something else from what we can give, or anet have a great plan to sell the new expac..
Also while i have a great respect for all class testers out there, one single sentence can throw a class to trash instantly.Especially when speaking for lfg..

Everything is viable. Raid bosses have been cleared with masterwork gear or with 3 people. Nobody claims there’s something that absolutely doesn’t work. Just that it’s not optimal.

What can we give? Stability? Dragonhunter is an entirely selfish spec focused on dps. The meta wants dps. It just so happens that in the end, we are not good at it.

It’s not the testers fault that the number look like this. Nobody suggests a group is dooming themselves by accepting a guardian. But when people are already playing multiple classes, and dps is the most popular role, you will find offers from tempests, condi rangers/engis/thieves along with that guardian. Why would you not take the best offer?

Seteruss.4058:

bearshaman.3421:

And yet, guardian has double the number of builds as revenant on metabattle, and is more readily accepted into groups from what I’ve seen. I’m not saying we are doing great, but to say that we are worse off than revenant? That’s just crazy talk.

+1 on that..

who cares about metacrapble? besides most build in guard are copy paste from each other with just diferent weapon or 1 utility changed, the core build anb alot of builds there even use same utilities from build to build.

@Rabbitup and Aeolus, I used metabattle to show the fact that Guardian has way more build diversity over all the gametypes then revenant does. Your opinions about metabattle aside, that can’t be argued. I will disagree on Aeolus’ low opinion of our build diversity, since I’ve seen both power and condi builds using almost every weapon we have, and used effectively, at least in pve. I can’t and won’t speak to pvp or wvw, don’t play those.

Edit: And again, I’m speaking purely about the comparison of guardian to revenant. Guardian to any other profession, that’s a different conversation.

bearshaman.3421:

@Rabbitup and Aeolus, I used metabattle to show the fact that Guardian has way more build diversity over all the gametypes then revenant does. Your opinions about metabattle aside, that can’t be argued. I will disagree on Aeolus’ low opinion of our build diversity, since I’ve seen both power and condi builds using almost every weapon we have, and used effectively, at least in pve. I can’t and won’t speak to pvp or wvw, don’t play those.

Edit: And again, I’m speaking purely about the comparison of guardian to revenant. Guardian to any other profession, that’s a different conversation.

i tend to ignore pve on this game… i tend to forget about that as well…. still quantity does not means quality…

im actually trying to get into pve with SW and burn build… but all i can spend is 2-5 minutes in pve until i want to press alt-f4,pve is dammn boring…

Aeolus.3615:

bearshaman.3421:

@Rabbitup and Aeolus, I used metabattle to show the fact that Guardian has way more build diversity over all the gametypes then revenant does. Your opinions about metabattle aside, that can’t be argued. I will disagree on Aeolus’ low opinion of our build diversity, since I’ve seen both power and condi builds using almost every weapon we have, and used effectively, at least in pve. I can’t and won’t speak to pvp or wvw, don’t play those.

Edit: And again, I’m speaking purely about the comparison of guardian to revenant. Guardian to any other profession, that’s a different conversation.

i tend to ignore pve on this game… i tend to forget about that as well…. still quantity does not means quality…

im actually trying to get into pve with SW and burn build… but all i can spend is 2-5 minutes in pve until i want to press alt-f4,pve is dammn boring…

It’s not for everyone. I can’t stand pvp. I refuse to even enter that part of the game. That’s what makes this game really cool, is that there are so many ways to play it. But as I’ve said repeatedly in multiple places throughout the threads, people need to specify what gametype they are talking about before starting a thread. Saves a lot of time.

Edit: my suggestion? try dungeons fractals or raids. OW is generally boring, except for some of the map meta events in SW and HoT.

its not for eveyone that is true, its for players that are new at mmo’s… or are bad at them…

i cant stand this pve game build system, pve and ANet DEV’s ..lol has much i hate BDO quest system and history.. its hoooorrible ive been playing more bdo than gw2… while im waitting to for some other mmo to go alpha… pity that my +8 gear isnt that good for pew pew…

Meanwhile ill try to apear on WvW just to team up with some players while Anet keeps borking up WvW even more…

Even Disney would create a better pvp game…

Aeolus.3615:

its not for eveyone that is true, its for players that are new at mmo’s… or are bad at them…

i cant stand this pve game build system, pve and ANet DEV’s ..lol has much i hate BDO quest system and history.. its hoooorrible ive been playing more bdo than gw2… while im waitting to for some other mmo to go alpha… pity that my +8 gear isnt that good for pew pew…

Meanwhile ill try to apear on WvW just to team up with some players while Anet keeps borking up WvW even more…

Even Disney would create a better pvp game…

Ok, just because some of us like co-op play over trying to prove who has the larger player kill count doesn’t mean we are bad at mmorpgs. If this was a moba, sure. That’s designed for one thing and one thing only. This game is more diverse than that, and if that’s an issue for you, I hear LoL calling your name.

I dont care if i am wanted or not they will take my power build from my cold dead hands.

bearshaman.3421, man i hate mobas, got tired of it with stc3 mods… reason i hate gw2 pvp…

I’m just sayin’, if you want a game that is purely designed around pvp, that’s your option. Don’t play a game that is designed to have multiple game types, and then complain about stuff that exists for that very reason.

bearshaman.3421:

I’m just sayin’, if you want a game that is purely designed around pvp, that’s your option. Don’t play a game that is designed to have multiple game types, and then complain about stuff that exists for that very reason.

i wasnt quite clear, the issue is the pve design confilcting with pvp, while Anet keeps enforcing their pve skill design spamway across pvp, they wanted the game to have a moba feeling, they failed since they dont know how to balance nor design classes that fit in both pve and pvp with good gameplay, all resumes to play certain gimmicks per class due how easy is to be carried in this game against players that dont follow the “metas”.
The gap between metas and effort needed is wrongly done.

Aeolus.3615:

bearshaman.3421:

I’m just sayin’, if you want a game that is purely designed around pvp, that’s your option. Don’t play a game that is designed to have multiple game types, and then complain about stuff that exists for that very reason.

i wasnt quite clear, the issue is the pve design confilcting with pvp, while Anet keeps enforcing their pve skill design spamway across pvp, they wanted the game to have a moba feeling, they failed since they dont know how to balance nor design classes that fit in both pve and pvp with good gameplay, all resumes to play certain gimmicks per class due how easy is to be carried in this game against players that dont follow the “metas”.
The gap between metas and effort needed is wrongly done.

Ok I get pve/pvp conflict in general, part of the reason I’ve advocated for, and been happy that they are finally doing more skill splits between the two, so balance issues for either one doesn’t negatively impact the other, and hopefully we’ll see more of this done over time.

I don’t think they wanted the game to feel like a moba in the first place, but that’s my impression. I’m not an Anet person, so my opinion isn’t worth much. I only brought up moba because that is the purest form of pvp I can think of in terms of a game being focused around that one gametype, not because I thought that’s what Anet was going for. Also, I’m glad they didn’t because I would hate this game and never play it. (I don’t play mobas. Ever. I don’t like competitive gaming, so I look for games that don’t revolve around it.)

As far as balancing classes for both pve and pvp, I’m not sure if that’s possible without skill splits. And I couldn’t make sense of what you were talking about with “meta”.

I think it is possible but Anet wants this game to carry lots of bad players trough keyboars smashing….

Skill slipt is actually not needed, why just not reduce the cleave spam and make players get better, team better, gank and spiked better????
Some utilities need to be reduced as well to 3 targets, while we could have actually strong AoE skills in compensation.
I bet the game even on WvW would get better and less laggy….

The issue might not be the damage but the overall spam stack gameplay Anet is enforcing from pve into the other game modes, so reducing that and make players get better if they want better results.

whatever issues the game has at its core it is funny Anet keeps enforcing them, it is what made the game out of ESL, it wrecked WvW, it made alot of players leave WvW oreven GW2 overall and they come with rewards instead of change a little bit what is makin the game with ugly fights and stupidly unskilled compared with gw1 and alot of pvp games.