Guild Wars 2

Hello Guardians of GW2!

The topic title it’s the most important. But I would like to know more about this profession. I have a level 45 Human Warrior and I’m getting a bit bored of playing with this profession only because it’s slow to level-up.
So I want to start over but this time, give a try to the Guardian. Why Guardian? Because I’m a more PvE dedicated player and I’m here for the story-line/gameplay.

Any build recommendation are really welcome!

Thanks in advance!

Guards > Wars for support…

Wars > Guards for dps… agreed.

Also Guards > Wars for PvP
Wars are the worst PvP class
(good idea to take this into consideration even if you mainly PvE).

Guard is a solid choice all around.

The dev’s are also happy with where guards are atm… which means fewer fears of a nerf inc. and messing up your gear/build.

Guards level very fast when using a greatsword+staff combo… buff up with 12 stacks of might on the staff, then 5,5,4,3,2,1 Does an aoe grab, pulls them in, puts down a symbol, blinds them, spins, then you just finish them off and you have many dead mobs. Spit out a swiftness symbol from your staff and get to the next group.

Quit your war and start a guard. You won’t regret it.

It’ll play similar to warrior until you get to higher levels though. You’ll be tanky and deal a lot of damage. The higher level traits are when you start to see the potential of guard. Altruistic healing/monks focus builds are both great (I wouldn’t recommend the healway guard unless you only do PvP and don’t mind not doing much damage). AH is better for closer group situations, monks focus works better if you solo or are away from the group.

Senton.8579:

Hello Guardians of GW2!

The topic title it’s the most important. But I would like to know more about this profession. I have a level 45 Human Warrior and I’m getting a bit bored of playing with this profession only because it’s slow to level-up.
So I want to start over but this time, give a try to the Guardian. Why Guardian? Because I’m a more PvE dedicated player and I’m here for the story-line/gameplay.

Any build recommendation are really welcome!

Thanks in advance!

Sadly, when it comes to straight utility and damage, you can’t beat a warrior in PVE.

Not to say that a Guardian is bad. They’re definitely top 2-3 strongest in PVE.

For builds, take a look at some of the altruistic healing builds.

Zeppelin.6832:

Sadly, when it comes to straight utility and damage, you can’t beat a warrior in PVE.

I think you meant this instead. I disagree that warriors have better utilities that can cover all aspects of PvE than guardians.

You CAN try competing for warrior DPS as a guardian, but you will most likely have to omit some traits that basically make the guardian so unique in PvE in the first place.

Guard dominated the whole way from level 1 in pve. Off just weapon skills you get massive aoe from greatsword, and can tank champs with the blinds/blocks from sword/focus. Sword/focus trivializes every small scale encounter more or less.

With 15 points in radiance, you can spam virtue of justice for AoE blind, and it recharges every time you drop an enemy, negating massive numbers of attacks.

Meditations are cheap/easy heals that don’t require any healing power to be effective. Judge’s keeps you moving smoothly from mob to mob.

Late game you can stack your dungeon squad with boons (protection) and play around with some fancy builds that take a bit more setup (altruistic healing, symbols, etc)

Oh, and the answer to your question is ‘yes’. Guardians can bring the pain while simply avoiding all the damage wholesale.

Aberrant.6749:

Guards > Wars for support…

Actually warrior with compassionate banner and vigorous shout heal better. Guardian is better to mitigate damage. You don’t need that when you twice as much base hp.

Yes, in my opinion guardian is the best PVE standalone class, at least for casual players.
This just because it offers enough damage to kill mobs still having the highest survivability.

This not to say that it’s better than a warrior, and I don’t think that he can level faster.

I think mesmer is the best solo class personally, its almost impossible to die on itmto anything.

But guardiqns are good, and probably a bit easier to pick up. Go 15into radience for the voj reset, and aoe blind, round up mobs and nuke them down spamming f1. Cant really go wrong. I like the virtue reset elite over the more flashy ones, if you need to cut and run 3 secs invul and reset on virtues is great.

Comparing Guardian and Warrior, to sum it up:

Warrior = best burst dps
Guaridan = best sustained dps

Support can be = for both

Personally, I think a lot of people play and build Warriors the wrong way, thus why you see a lot of complaints about Guardians vs Warriors.

Thanks everyone for answering. I will start again as a Guardian this time. I only need to do more ‘research’ regarding builds. Want to find the perfect combination for my gameplay & myself.

Special thanks to Zeppelin.6832 and ens.9854 and also their answer is my reason to play this profession!

From some calculations I’ve seen Warriors are higher than Guards but only by a few hundred DPS maximum. Not 100% sure the numbers are accurate though. There are some higher DPS builds that don’t sacrifice all the really good guardian traits. I have not run a warrior to endgame but I can say that I just keep going back to guardian.

GL out there,
Blood~

My only concern is that the OP said a warrior is slow to level up. Whether or not end-game Warrior is better than a Guardian is irrelevant IMO, Warriors tear apart low level content and from what I heard basically face-rolls over it. If you think the warrior is slow to level, then you may not want to drop him since he is the quickest content clearer in the game.

Indure.5410:

My only concern is that the OP said a warrior is slow to level up. Whether or not end-game Warrior is better than a Guardian is irrelevant IMO, Warriors tear apart low level content and from what I heard basically face-rolls over it. If you think the warrior is slow to level, then you may not want to drop him since he is the quickest content clearer in the game.

I personally have not played a warrior, but i have leveled beside them and i do have friends that have played both. All of them say guardian is much easier to play as it can take on a lot harder mobs or more mobs at once and survive. As for those that i leveled beside i constantly had to run to them to save them from mobs i would face roll threw 5-8 at a time. Even warriors i was not teaming with would send me tell’s as i went charging threw the mobs that just killed them and their 3 friends solo asking for a res and how on earth did i take out all those mobs solo. Most of the time their friends would just reply hes a guard. I got to the point i started to use that reply because honestly i did not see how warriors were not able to do the same, and did not want to degrade the player.

Well SiNoS, that’s what happens when you neglect defense and go glass cannon.

Guardians with Greatsword (this is important) and Staff/Hammer are borderline OP for PvE.
No other profession can come close to it’s “farming” capabilities.

If you use any weapon other than the Greatsword your potential decreases greatly, and when you’re using an one-hander/offhand you’re about equal to other professions.

The reasons are simple, high AoE damage, high self-healing from plenty of sources (Virtue of Resolve, Altruistic Healing, Zealous Blade, Writ of the Merciful, Staff’s skills, etc), high armor, great projectile protection making it viable to solo group content that relies on projectiles, and great sustained damage.

If all that you care about is PvE, you can’t go wrong with a Guardian.
As you group up with other players your effectiveness will go down as they’re supposedly there to balance your weaknesses, such as an Elementalist’s potential damage increasing greatly when there’s someone tanking/rooting for him, but this is easily handed by having a versatile build to switch around for better group synergy.
So besides World PvE, Guardians are also a great choice for dungeons and fractals.

As for PvP… I’d say there are better professions out there and Guardians don’t stand out much as they have a “skillcap” of some sorts, you’ll never outplay a great Thief or Elementalist, but Guardians rock for solid gameplay.
Meaning you’re at your best when it’s about damage and defense.

For WvW… I’d say it’s where Guardians suffers the most, since we lack good ranged options and ranged AoEs, we’re severely impaired in various situations.
This doesn’t mean Guardians don’t have their spot in WvW battles, but it’s just not as common and easy to achieve great performance as other professions.

One of the main problems for guardians going fulldps is this. You lose all identity basically as a guardian. And your very easily killed by anything just about. Warriors going full dps can survive a lot more. So that alone would make warriors have a 1 up on guardians pve wise.

Irena.1062:

Well SiNoS, that’s what happens when you neglect defense and go glass cannon.

Actually most of them were not glass cannon warrior’s. They just for some reason were not as hearty as me. Might of been all the self healing guards produce and on call aegis i could use to outright negate shots that would kill most. But something is very different between the two. As i said though i personally have not played warrior so I cant say what that difference is.

ok anyone here who said that guardians and wars have similar dps is either blind or ignorant… full berserker trinkets/armor on both with gs my guardian does about 4-5k/sec, while my war (use axe because gs blows for sustained damage) does anywhere from 10-25k/second

edit: forgot to add that in open world pve warrior is king because survivability doesnt matter when you kill everything so fast

Clumsy.6257:

full berserker trinkets/armor on both with gs my guardian does about 4-5k/sec, while my war (use axe because gs blows for sustained damage) does anywhere from 10-25k/second

/facepalm

Guardians the best PvE class? Maybe the most boring PvE class.

Clumsy.6257:

ok anyone here who said that guardians and wars have similar dps is either blind or ignorant… full berserker trinkets/armor on both with gs my guardian does about 4-5k/sec, while my war (use axe because gs blows for sustained damage) does anywhere from 10-25k/second

edit: forgot to add that in open world pve warrior is king because survivability doesnt matter when you kill everything so fast

Do you understand how much damage 25k per second is? That would literally mean any class that the warrior caught would be killed in less than a second.

style.6173:

Guardians the best PvE class? Maybe the most boring PvE class.

Care to elaborate why? I’ve played a Guardian since the BWE’s and I find it the most interesting out of all classes, especially in PvE. Of course, this might just be me, but I just want to know why do you think we are the most boring?

style.6173:

Guardians the best PvE class? Maybe the most boring PvE class.

As a Guardian,I’m very interested in knowing why you find it boring.Can you please pray tell?

maybe he finds it boring because you can do almost anything as a guardian in PVE solo and going to vistas, doing heart quests is all too easy. So yes some people are bored by there being no challenge in PVE.