Guardian's Staying Power

Guardian's Staying Power

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Posted by: CMF.5461

CMF.5461

Continuously we are told by the developers in interviews and various updates and posts that Guardian’s are melee oriented, boon-centric, front line fighters that are supposed to stay in the fight once engaged.

We are not highly mobile and not supposed to run around. We “punish for positioning” and so forth. The developers believe that Guardian as a profession is pretty well situated and need no real adjustments.

The above rhetoric that has been provided to us has me thinking about our mechanics available to us that help us maintain that staying power to keep engaged at the front line of a fight.

Are healing power and heals the main function that keeps us in a fight? Should we focus on healing? Poison reduces healing by 33%, so this is a big hindrance to Guardian staying power. Conditional removal is mandatory if you want to focus on healing, but is the arms race between how fast we can remove conditions and how easy it is to apply poison equal or is it a pointless fight.

Blocks and blinds? Should we focus on avoiding damage and now just recovering damage? With the flurry of attacks coming in and blocks/blinds only stopping one hit out of many, it definitely helps but I’m not so sure this is staying power.

We are also supposed to be hearty due to our toughness and heavy armor. Do we feel superior to other classes due to our armor and toughness?

In the end I do believe that all of those things combined help provide us with staying power, but I wanted to voice our different mechanics to spark more build thought and ideas based on those three core mechanics: Healing, avoiding, and mitigation.

One last thing that Guardian’s are touted at having a niche for is from the main GW2 page:

“True guardians are brilliant tacticians and selfless defenders who know when to sacrifice their own defenses to empower their allies to achieve victory.”

To that point it states that we are defensive, but we sacrifice our defense to help others kill. It seems we are not intended as being the killers but the support to the killers. Or maybe I’m just reading too far into their virtue description…

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

While I think all three of those mechanics make us above average staying power, the nature of some of the WvW in the game will always tend to zerg. Many interesting game mechanics break down at that point so Guardian mechanics don’t seem to be well suited for that.

I found in sPVP, there is definitely an increase in staying power if you use the total sum of those mechanics and pick your fights in smart ways. Still, getting zerged there is still certain death for anyone.

I’m not convinced that our niche role is supported by the toolset. There really isn’t anything unique about having a boon and being able to apply that boon to a team; many professions have at least a few ways to apply a few boons. Guardians simply do it more and more frequently. It’s a very simplistic model and a rather weak statement for the devs to claim it’s a defining Guardian element.

I would have expected the Guardian to bring some modification to boons in the team. For instance, a global duration increase. That would REALLY be a unique and supporting boon element for the profession. I’m certain the game isn’t limited to increasing the effectiveness of boons as well. Yet another globally applied possibility for Guardians to bolster teams.

(edited by Obtena.7952)

Guardian's Staying Power

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Posted by: CMF.5461

CMF.5461

I agree that some of our core mechanics break down in actual game play. My goal is to find ways to enhance and emphasize these things the devs keep telling us we can do.

What weapons/skills/abilities are most effective in maintaining our staying power? I personally feel that we have these tools available to us, but we are not as superior and above average as we are told. For sure we are a hearty and defensive profession, but sometimes it feels like it is not enough.

So I want to push the boundaries and reach that holy grail of what the Guardian was envisioned to be by the devs.

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Posted by: Danicco.3568

Danicco.3568

1. Staff + Altruistic Healing + at least 4 allies around you
You get a huge heal every 16~20 seconds.

2. Monk’s Focus/Altruistic Healing + Writ of the Merciful + Mace & Shield or Focus
Use at least 2 meditations and you get half a heal every 16~32 seconds (traited), or just bumps your Mace’s Symbol regeneration to higher levels with AH and save your utilities for something else.

It’s official, the developer developing Guardians should just make every new-created Guardian locked to the Valor tree by default. With Soldier gear.

If you don’t use none of the above (no 30 in Valor, or Staff, or Maces) your “staying power” is greatly diminished.

Blinds aren’t as effective as healing through the damage you take, since Blinds can be wasted in weak AoEish attacks, pet attacks, or multi-hit attacks. It comes easy during PvE, but not as good in PvP/WvW (10 sec minimum).

Aegis also fall short for staying power, it can easily be wasted in the same manner of Blind, and it’s much harder to come (40~ sec average).

While this is effective in 1v1s, this means Guardians just excel at bunkering. For XvX Guardian’s effectiveness is highly reduced, but Consecrations and Spirit Weapons to some extent starts getting more value.

It’s unfortunate though, this means Zeal/Radiance/Virtue is limited to PvE, and we’re required to go Valor/Honor for PvP/WvW to reach the developer’s “good spot” vision of Guardians.

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Posted by: Red Falcon.8257

Red Falcon.8257

I don’t think any game will ever be balanced until developers stop thinking in terms of “this class must be extremely OP at this but terribly UP at that”.
Balance means a class does everything well, but does it in a way that is unique to that class.

Guardians are fine in PvE but in PvP… ugh.
In sPvP we must bunker to be effective, in WvW we have no access to swiftness (unless sacrificing a whole 2 utilities+all boon runes or a whole weapon swap).

And now we’re getting boon hate which destroys bunker and means we’re left with PvE as the only thing we’re good.

As a Guardian I have absolutely no issues with staying power (I have those on my Warrior), I just ditched the whole class for PvP/WvW due to being unnecessarily handicapped.

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Posted by: Sahfur.5612

Sahfur.5612

Agreed, Red Falcon. I would also like each class to be able to spec into certain things and do them in its own way. Fights could be longer and more interesting and the game would match their advertisements.

I think a large part of it is that they think that because we can tank bosses or survive in melee it means we are more powerful than those other classes.. They have tunnel vision.

I feel they start believing that the ability to survive in melee range is enough for a class to warrant nerfing every other mechanic that class has. In other words, heavy armor will always be nerfed until we can’t tank in melee range and the other classes start complaining because they die with noone absorbing their damage for them.

I always hear ____ is op because it can survive in melee range. Zerg mentality rules modern times, just look at WVW. People don’t think outside of the box.

All I really want is balance, it came so easy in many eastern mmo’s I’ve played. How are those devs so much better at it? The math on much of the skill potential just isn’t balanced here. You and I bother to do the math and realize how useless some things are.

Plants, As far as I know are still, still bending toward
the light! And if we dance, until the heart explodes,
It’ll make this place ignite!

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Posted by: Dynnen.6405

Dynnen.6405

It’s unfortunate though, this means Zeal/Radiance/Virtue is limited to PvE, and we’re required to go Valor/Honor for PvP/WvW to reach the developer’s “good spot” vision of Guardians.

So I’m not crazy…thank you Danicco! Although I can’t run a build very well in wvw without 20 into Virtues for Absolute Resolution. I catch a whooooooooooole lot of conditions.

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Posted by: CMF.5461

CMF.5461

I think I have come full circle from when I started playing GW2 and now. Class comparison is a slippery slope, but…

I can make a warrior that has the same armor/toughness, more health, faster block cool downs, more knockdowns/knock backs, and faster healing cool down.

What a warrior doesn’t have that a guardian does have are:

Multiple sources of heal over times (reliable regen/virtue of resolve, or other trait oriented heals), boons, condition removals, and group support.

So what we see is that warriors can protect themselves better and survive damage better, while guardians can protect others better and recover from damage better.

Our strengths lie in support to others and heals, not “tanking”. The question is, do our heals result in equivalent “effective health” as a warrior? If not then I believe some adjustments are in line, as the argument on why we have a lower health pool is because we are “more defensive” than other classes (i.e. we can heal more).

The biggest problem with heals are the multiple sources of boon stripping or poisons which reduce our ability to survive vastly.

That said, our staying power seems to rely on healing more so than tanking hits…in a game without healers…. =(

(edited by CMF.5461)