Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m absolutely new to the game but I’ve played quite a few mmo’s so im getting the hang of it pretty fast. I’m currently a lv 15 warrior, playing pretty much mainly for DPS and soloing the pve content at the moment. However, I’m finding it different to the usual warriors of other mmo’s since I’ve noticed I don’t have much sustainability. No doubt i can 1v1 everything pretty easily, but stuff like veterans and when i get caught with 3+ enemies and I’m in a bit of trouble. I was hoping for something with a higher survival rate. Would you recommend the guardian? My only reserve is that I dont want to be ultra weak and just be able to survive without killing much. As I said, I know I’m only lv 15 on the warrior but I kind of want to just work out whether or not it gets a bit easier to survive, or whether I should begin with a guardian.

Thanks a load.

Warriors survive well in PVE because they kill fast, reducing the opportunity to take damage. But at lower levels (15 according to your post) you don’t have all of the Warriors tools to maximize damage yet. Therefore you are a little bit squishy — not terribly so, but you will get stronger as you level up.

Guardians survive well in PVE because they have decent damage and good damage mitigation skills. They offer perhaps better survivability at lower levels, and stay strong as they level up. Later you can add more survival skills, or better, add more support skill to be a better team player when you group.

Also, you are new to the game. You are still learning the mechanics of the game, including mob behavior, dodging, skill rotations, dodging, combo fields, dodging, consumables, and dodging. Did I mention dodging? Do it, often.

Healing signet and trait for passive healing from adrenaline level. Adrenal health, and you are good to go.

A couple of months back Guardian was the obvious choice, now warriors are crazy strong and one of the best supporters as well.

Stay with your warrior, i know i play mine the majority of time.

Warrior’s buffs from the last patch were incredible and they will be receiving another buffs on the october patch. go for the warrior!

For PvE you can go either way. Warriors are brain dead easy to play, and even a pugging “bad” player can do a respectable amount of DPS. This has led to a lot of CoF heroes who think they know everything because they can sit there and spam 100b. So if you go that route I encourage you to actually learn about your class and dungeon mechanics.

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior (more if you count reflects) while bringing as much or more utility to the table. But…it’s probably harder to do so. Me? I like the challenge of keeping my group alive will well timed aegis or keeping 100% protection uptime. And the best part about the guardian is that you can spec almost fully DPS and still have a ton of utility.

Thanks for the replies guys, I think I might try starting a guardian up to lv 20 or so and see if I’m feeling it! Luckily still got all my +50% exp things so should take too long :P

I used to be very much into powerhouse characters, but since this game is so based on teamplay (particularly in that no one can see my damage if it IS embarrassing), something support based but still packing a punch might suit me.

Much appreciation!

I have 2 warriors on lvl 80 and another on lvl 11 right now. Yes, I love warriors From my experience warriors are the most loved class at the moment.

Simply because they are kings in PvE and rule in WvW/PvP. 20.000 HP with full zerk armor is incredible. If you can dodge, you dont even need support classes like the guardian. Warrior in this game is like a one man army…and it´s easy to play – yes(like EVERY SINGLE CLASS IN THIS GAME besides the elementalist).

Right now I´m leveling a guardian and guardians are fun to play, very similar to my warrior. I choosed a guardian, because I missed some support skills on my warrior(only support a warrior can do is stacking might).

My advice is to level up both to 80. Nobody says you can only have one main character, right?

no … why only 1 main character ?

Fasyx.9347:

(only support a warrior can do is stacking might).

Say what! Are you sure you actually have ONE warrior since you missed out on the support capabilities you have.

How about never ending regeneration, great offensive and defeinsive buffs buffs while having that regen, team wide condiremoval just to mention a few of the options you have.

170 toughness, 170 vitality, 170 power, 170 condition damage, 170 precision, 15% crit damage 250 hps from regen is what i have on my banner warrior. And when i place all in a clash i frigging heal an entire zerg.

Warriors are better 1v1.
Guardians are better 5v5.

Guardians have tons more support, a well placed shield or wall can change the fight.

Warriors are self-sustained juggernauts who can destroy people if not focused, but if they are focused they die rather quickly.

Brutaly.6257:

Fasyx.9347:

(only support a warrior can do is stacking might).

Say what! Are you sure you actually have ONE warrior since you missed out on the support capabilities you have.

How about never ending regeneration, great offensive and defeinsive buffs buffs while having that regen, team wide condiremoval just to mention a few of the options you have.

170 toughness, 170 vitality, 170 power, 170 condition damage, 170 precision, 15% crit damage 250 hps from regen is what i have on my banner warrior. And when i place all in a clash i frigging heal an entire zerg.

Sorry, I was talking only PvE. Forgot to mention that.

Daecollo.9578:

Warriors are better 1v1.
Guardians are better 5v5.

Guardians have tons more support, a well placed shield or wall can change the fight.

Warriors are self-sustained juggernauts who can destroy people if not focused, but if they are focused they die rather quickly.

I think that is a pretty fair assessment.

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

Go for warrior, is a guardian 5.0

And as support the warrior is a offensive support, as good like guardian but more offensive oriented.

NoTrigger.8396:

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

lol keep thinking that as soon as you try warrior you will see how wrong you are. My warrior deal on average 2x as much dps as my guardian both are using full berserker.

tom.7468:

NoTrigger.8396:

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

lol keep thinking that as soon as you try warrior you will see how wrong you are. My warrior deal on average 2x as much dps as my guardian both are using full berserker.

well guardian using full zerker is just wrong, also Zerker warriors provide burst damage, guardians provide sustained damage, so in the long run they will average about the same

tom.7468:

NoTrigger.8396:

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

lol keep thinking that as soon as you try warrior you will see how wrong you are. My warrior deal on average 2x as much dps as my guardian both are using full berserker.

You either suck at math or as a guardian.

korelg.7862:

well guardian using full zerker is just wrong

Nah, you’re wrong, zerk is a viable choice for both pvp and pve. I wouldn’t use it on hot joins due to the ammount of players and AoEs but on 5v5s it is a pretty solid choice, as for pve… i’ll let the research function do it’s job.

tom.7468:

NoTrigger.8396:

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

lol keep thinking that as soon as you try warrior you will see how wrong you are. My warrior deal on average 2x as much dps as my guardian both are using full berserker.

get your facts straight.
2 guard 1hsword autoattack chains deal more dmg than 100b in the same time. just saying.

NoTrigger.8396:

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

You cherry picked my post, conveniently leaving off my part about reflects.

You also added the “in good groups” part, which is highly ambiguous and subjective.

I’m a sword guardian and wouldn’t trade it for a warrior any day of the week, but with the vastly different amount of situations you can encounter I think it’s hard to make a blanket “guardian > warrior dps” type of statement.

If anything, I’d say is close enough to not really matter, and that the OP should focus his decision on which class to make based on the other merits that each brings.

I actually never realized how much damage Guardians do. Ive had my Guardian with Cleric trinkets and zerk gear for soooo long. I think I might get zerker trinks im kinda intrigued

Daecollo.9578:

Warriors are better 1v1.
Guardians are better 5v5.

Guardians have tons more support, a well placed shield or wall can change the fight.

Warriors are self-sustained juggernauts who can destroy people if not focused, but if they are focused they die rather quickly.

I’d say warrior edges out guardian all around. Over these past several months warrior’s support and sustain has gone from non existent to being competitive with guardian. Warrior doesn’t have the ability to give protection, aegis and stability to the party, but they pretty much have everything else.

But none of those boons make guardian on par with warrior. But the game is constantly changing, so we’ll see what future guardian patches bring.

purgatoryz.6038:

NoTrigger.8396:

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

You cherry picked my post, conveniently leaving off my part about reflects.

You also added the “in good groups” part, which is highly ambiguous and subjective.

I’m a sword guardian and wouldn’t trade it for a warrior any day of the week, but with the vastly different amount of situations you can encounter I think it’s hard to make a blanket “guardian > warrior dps” type of statement.

If anything, I’d say is close enough to not really matter, and that the OP should focus his decision on which class to make based on the other merits that each brings.

u can do the math. guard deals more dps than warrior in groups, even without reflects.
and warrior is only number 4 in the rankings of the highest dps.

I’ll help clarifying a bit since i’m bored as hell and can’t actually play due to lag issues:

If the wiki is right, the full sword’s basic attack chain completes itself in 2.5secs, assuming you have 20ish stacks of might and 20ish vulnerability on your target the first two autos will hit by something near 4500 damage, third one 2800ishx3 i believe (not sure if that includes bloodlust as well, i’m just pulling the values i remember from most dungeons runs), that’s 17400 damage in less than 3 seconds, without any cooldown.
Ah, with banners and fury RHS guardians have around 90% critical chance, so getting the full basic chain to crit ins’t a problem at all.

Depends on what you want to do with your class, Guardians are a really solid group support class(helllloooooo group stability) and if specced for it can deal adequate damage. I wouldnt go too far down the zerker path however due to very low hp’s. But i have an Altruistic Healing build i run that is hybridish with around 1600 tough, 800healing, 55%crit chance and 65%crit dmg and it does ok damage without sacrificing too much survivability.

Warriors can get away with full zerker to an extent because of their mobility around the combat(if they are running greatsword) and because a zerker warrior will have around 19-20k hp’s, a zerker guardian will have 12-13k which means you will melt to conditions(which are currently in omfg crazy mode atm).

And that brings me to my next point, Guardians are like armoured snails, if you like being mobile take a warrior, you dont even really have to spec for mobility. Just throw a greatsword on from ur inventory when ur running somewhere and swap it out when u get there or ur about to enter combat.

At the moment warriors are in a better place having being buffed last patch, but that can change in an instant. Just look at Ele’s, they were 1 of the best classes and now are just free badges.

Chorazin.4107:

Depends on what you want to do with your class, Guardians are a really solid group support class(helllloooooo group stability) and if specced for it can deal adequate damage. I wouldnt go too far down the zerker path however due to very low hp’s. But i have an Altruistic Healing build i run that is hybridish with around 1600 tough, 800healing, 55%crit chance and 65%crit dmg and it does ok damage without sacrificing too much survivability.

Warriors can get away with full zerker to an extent because of their mobility around the combat(if they are running greatsword) and because a zerker warrior will have around 19-20k hp’s, a zerker guardian will have 12-13k which means you will melt to conditions(which are currently in omfg crazy mode atm).

And that brings me to my next point, Guardians are like armoured snails, if you like being mobile take a warrior, you dont even really have to spec for mobility. Just throw a greatsword on from ur inventory when ur running somewhere and swap it out when u get there or ur about to enter combat.

At the moment warriors are in a better place having being buffed last patch, but that can change in an instant. Just look at Ele’s, they were 1 of the best classes and now are just free badges.

you have aegis, blocks, vigor on crit etc. …
thats why full berserker guardians get away even with 11k hp.
in pve there are almost no conditions that are really dangerous, except maybe if u fight the slime in arah p1 for an hour.

One imporant difference to me, because I love to play with builds, is that Warriors have more weapons and a greater number of builds to fiddle around with.

Want to do uber damage
- Can do that
Want to run massive CC
- can do that too
Want a to be ranged
- can do that
Want to be tanky
- check
Conditions
- yep

And so on…

Guardian is a lot more limited. Healway or AH for pvp. The pve builds all seem to be generally the same too, with it just depending on which 10% damage trait you prefer, the one in Virtues or the one in Honor.

I’m gonna say it right now. My warrior is my main and I’ve dropped every single profession many months ago because of how much I love my warrior but what some people are saying here is outright stupid.

Warrior has high PvE DPS, but by no means is it the highest. It’s simply the most accessible as all you have to do is press 2. Thieves and Guardian can for example be traited to do waaaay more damage in a few autoattacks than a warrior can in his full rotation except it takes good practice and knowledge of game mechanics/building. My friends guardian can hit for up to 5k/autoattack, meaning in 4-5 autoattacks he can outdps a warriors whole 100B combo.

And warriors are only faceroll in PvE, which is why you see so many bad ones in WvW because they’re used to just standing there and pressing 2. That is of course unless you meet a Mace/Shield + GS warrior, which is a crutch build for bad players vs other bad players. In fact, I can guarantee that most of the people saying “Warrior is god!” only know how to play Mace/Shield + GS, and they’re utterly terrible if they’re ever put into a situation that nullifies the advantage of that build (They go against a player that’s good).

If you are talking about PVE, they are equally good , both can do super dps and easy to play;
If you are talking about sPvP/tPvP, guardian is more useful;
If you are talking about WvW, both are equally necessary for zerg/GvG; Guardian has better suvivialbility warrior has better CC and dps. For roaming, warrior is far way better than guardian due to the insane mobility.

Turtle.4130:

I’m gonna say it right now. My warrior is my main and I’ve dropped every single profession many months ago because of how much I love my warrior but what some people are saying here is outright stupid.

Warrior has high PvE DPS, but by no means is it the highest. It’s simply the most accessible as all you have to do is press 2.

You have played warrior a lot so im not going to say you’re wrong ok but this is what i do. HB on 3 mobs to get 25 stacks of might. If they are pinned to a wall WW else skip that part. Swap to axe 2,4 gives 8 stack of vulnerability then 5 just for the CC.
Then finish the autoattack chain, and repeat. Warrior is not so simple all you can do it press 2. Axe autoattack is really fast and when buffed i can hit 3-4k with this.
They also stack vulnerability on crits which helps a ton especially on bosses.
Those of you who say guardian do more dps, did you take in account buffs and traits? because on my i see nowhere near as high dps as my warrior.
What buffs i get in a spamfest zerg is irrelevant.

tom.7468:

Turtle.4130:

I’m gonna say it right now. My warrior is my main and I’ve dropped every single profession many months ago because of how much I love my warrior but what some people are saying here is outright stupid.

Warrior has high PvE DPS, but by no means is it the highest. It’s simply the most accessible as all you have to do is press 2.

Those of you who say guardian do more dps, did you take in account buffs and traits? because on my i see nowhere near as high dps as my warrior.
What buffs i get in a spamfest zerg is irrelevant.

do you think people who are trying to optimize their builds and do the math behind all of this are stupid?

I didn’t knew that a five man party is a spamfest zerg. I must be new here.

tom.7468:

Turtle.4130:

I’m gonna say it right now. My warrior is my main and I’ve dropped every single profession many months ago because of how much I love my warrior but what some people are saying here is outright stupid.

Warrior has high PvE DPS, but by no means is it the highest. It’s simply the most accessible as all you have to do is press 2.

You have played warrior a lot so im not going to say you’re wrong ok but this is what i do. HB on 3 mobs to get 25 stacks of might. If they are pinned to a wall WW else skip that part. Swap to axe 2,4 gives 8 stack of vulnerability then 5 just for the CC.
Then finish the autoattack chain, and repeat. Warrior is not so simple all you can do it press 2. Axe autoattack is really fast and when buffed i can hit 3-4k with this.
They also stack vulnerability on crits which helps a ton especially on bosses.
Those of you who say guardian do more dps, did you take in account buffs and traits? because on my i see nowhere near as high dps as my warrior.
What buffs i get in a spamfest zerg is irrelevant.

I’m well aware of the fact that 2 and axe are also extremely high source(s) of damage however in terms of GS -which is what I’m talking about- 100B will often be more consistent in damage than WW in PvE simply because it does not require mobs to be anywhere but in range of you (And most monsters won’t dodge) whereas WW is conditional in terms of the mob being placed against a wall.

In terms of WvW almost nobody is stupid enough to go crawling along a wall to take a full WW to the face. Heck, when most people see warrior they’re concerned about being 100B’d, not many people thing “Oh man I hope that warrior doesn’t WW me” simply because the raw damage it does is conditional on where your opponent is. Axe has always been known as a warriors telegraphable- yet high DPS- weapon.

What I’m trying to basically say is, GS is a warriors most popular weapon and it is renown simply because of 2. Hell, there’s been multiple warrior metas which even revolved around setting up 100B’s, the Bulls Charge → Frenzy → 100B meta, the Skullcrack → 100B meta, etc. When a warrior equips a GS, there’s three things:

A) He wants to troll around with GS+ SWH and/ or Wants to have crazy mobility (But no damage without any way to set up his GS damage)

B) He suddenly turned his whole build into revolving around 100B.

There’s no denying it, there’s even been metas around it, that’s how much of a defined skill it is in terms of a warriors DPS.

Both professions are well desired in all contexts so give them both a try and see which one you like more.

Turtle.4130:

My friends guardian can hit for up to 5k/autoattack, meaning in 4-5 autoattacks he can outdps a warriors whole 100B combo.

Okay, now just correct “4-5 autoattacks” in “9-10 autoattacks” and your post is fine

I played both, and even though I have loved my Guardian for longer, Warriors are equally fun. Extremely durable, they have a lot more options of damage builds, but they aren’t as support oriented as Guardians. I’ve always thought of it like this: Warriors= Offensive with no magical themes, Guardians Defensive with magical “Paladin” type themes.. They can do pretty much the same things in different ways.

Honestly, play whichever you want. In general, I’d say Warriors are more “requested”, but I have yet to see someone competent turn down a “good” Guardian. That’s another thing, as well. Both classes are really easy to pick up and get a handle for, but Warriors are much easier (IMO) to modify builds for without losing viability.

I have a bunker warrior and bunker guardian. Both are awesome and have their ups and downs. In the end of the day, you’ll probably stick with the character you like seeing more. (my norn is beautiful versus my perky sylvari) w/c is why i play my norn more. Haha. But if my norn was guardian and my sylvari was warrior – that aesthetic look will probably tip the scale too.