Guild Wars 2

Guardian seems to shine in a group environment where we can share buffs with others and stack the duration of our buffs, ie wvw when you have a lot of guardians together.

In all other areas the Warrior is better.

Particularly, it can survive the changes in the game better as it has a more diverse weapon set.

I have a full exotic lvl80 guardian and a lvl36 warrior.

I play both on wvw (i level up my war in wvw only)

Dont make a guardian, make a warrior.

-As a guardian you are good in tpvp , you only need a lvl1 guardian to play it.
-As a guardian you are good in zerg, you can do it safe in zerg at low level with green items anyways.
-As a guardian you gonna had a BAD time with range or kites classes, only necros lacks on mobility like you, you have too few gap closer and you have almost nothing to keep them close (slows, roots, speed you up) , you just can hold a position, tank if the enemy dont just ignore you and attack only your allies, and just buff.
The main problem of guardians is his lack of mobility and CC to keep them in melee range, and your range weapon is so limited, only 1 one handed weapon with 3 skills, and one of them is situational to do full damage, and the AA is just too low in damage without side effects (no bleeding, etc…)

You lose a lot of damage potential because you cant melee hit them continuously. Guardian have a lot of damage bursting with berserker, jump-and-nuke them only in one move.

A warrior can be more tanky than a guardian (time block, not hit block) you can block 20 enemies hits, not just 1 or 3 like guardian. And you have a lot of them (shield block, endure pain, endure pain trait) for one hit block you have mace and sword.
-As a warrior you havent healing powers but you have a lot more regeneration.
-As a warrior you have a lot of mobility.
-As a warrior you have a lot of CC. A LOT.
-You can jump to enemies and stick to him very easily.
-You can be less kite because you are almost inmune by traits to inmovilize effect (auto stability, root time reduction, jump to go out inmobilizations)
-You have a lot more damage.
-You have a lot more condition damage
-You have better stats (more free health, more for others stats instead of vitality)
-You have better range options.
-You can support as well with shouts and banners. Maybe not that good as guardian but good at all.

urieldhynne.2743:

I have a full exotic lvl80 guardian and a lvl36 warrior.

I play both on wvw (i level up my war in wvw only)

Dont make a guardian, make a warrior.

-As a guardian you are good in tpvp , you only need a lvl1 guardian to play it.
-As a guardian you are good in zerg, you can do it safe in zerg at low level with green items anyways.
-As a guardian you gonna had a BAD time with range or kites classes, only necros lacks on mobility like you, you have too few gap closer and you have almost nothing to keep them close (slows, roots, speed you up) , you just can hold a position, tank if the enemy dont just ignore you and attack only your allies, and just buff.
The main problem of guardians is his lack of mobility and CC to keep them in melee range, and your range weapon is so limited, only 1 one handed weapon with 3 skills, and one of them is situational to do full damage, and the AA is just too low in damage without side effects (no bleeding, etc…)

You lose a lot of damage potential because you cant melee hit them continuously. Guardian have a lot of damage bursting with berserker, jump-and-nuke them only in one move.

---

A warrior can be more tanky than a guardian (time block, not hit block) you can block 20 enemies hits, not just 1 or 3 like guardian. And you have a lot of them (shield block, endure pain, endure pain trait) for one hit block you have mace and sword.
-As a warrior you havent healing powers but you have a lot more regeneration.
-As a warrior you have a lot of mobility.
-As a warrior you have a lot of CC. A LOT.
-You can jump to enemies and stick to him very easily.
-You can be less kite because you are almost inmune by traits to inmovilize effect (auto stability, root time reduction, jump to go out inmobilizations)
-You have a lot more damage.
-You have a lot more condition damage
-You have better stats (more free health, more for others stats instead of vitality)
-You have better range options.
-You can support as well with shouts and banners. Maybe not that good as guardian but good at all.

Go watch: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2722227

Karl tries to explain how Guardians and Necromancers bunker better than Warriors while Roy and a friendly necro are trying to beat on a Warrior….and lose horribly.

Start watching at about 9 minutes. Karl clearly has no idea what he’s watching or what he’s talking about. Clue number one, the warrior runs in with a banner and he calls him a “greatsword build”. But just listen to him talk and eventually be surprised as he puts his foot in his mouth about who’s a better bunker.

Warriors are currently OP in the bunker meta. Anyone who denies this is only fooling themselves. The only reason wars don’t just dominate hands-down is because toughness/condi builds are pure win. The meta is all kinds of fkd right now.

Redscope.6215:

Go watch: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2722227

Karl tries to explain how Guardians and Necromancers bunker better than Warriors while Roy and a friendly necro are trying to beat on a Warrior….and lose horribly.

Start watching at about 9 minutes. Karl clearly has no idea what he’s watching or what he’s talking about. Clue number one, the warrior runs in with a banner and he calls him a “greatsword build”. But just listen to him talk and eventually be surprised as he puts his foot in his mouth about who’s a better bunker.

Warriors are currently OP in the bunker meta. Anyone who denies this is only fooling themselves. The only reason wars don’t just dominate hands-down is because toughness/condi builds are pure win. The meta is all kinds of fkd right now.

That video is a terrible example after seeing the terrible skill level of the people trying to kill the warrior.

Anyways, dont play a guardian unless you want:

1) Zerg (boon machine, and remove conditions)
2) sPvP

You gonna being HEAVILY kited by the 90% of professions.

What is this, I don’t even..

I’ll preface this with the fact that I really don’t care what other players’ opinions are of whether professions other than the Warrior are better at certain things than the Guardian. This OP asked about Warriors and Guardians and that is what I’m going to respond to.

Guardians are obviously a good choice for group and zerg support. If you’re looking to do decent damage while supporting the group, there are a few AH builds that utilize Staff + Greatsword or similar in order to spam blinds/vulnerability/might via VoJ spam and Greatsword #3. I imagine a typical gear setup would include Knight’s armor with Soldier runes. Might be something worth looking into.

If you don’t actually care THAT much about damage, you can go with a Knight’s/Cleric’s, PTV/Cleric’s, or even Cleric’s/Cleric’s mix. 0/0/10/30/30 with triple shouts or double + a consecration such as Sanctuary, Hallowed Ground, or WoR. It’ll give you plenty of condition removal, healing, and boon application to spam all over your group, and just enough damage to contribute to enemy group wipes, depending on your weapon set choices (Staff being at least one of them).

As far as solo roaming goes, Guardians are perfectly capable of engaging and defeating 1-2 (or more, depending on your build and theirs) players of similar skill in WvW. There are people who will argue against Guardian viability in solo roaming based entirely on the virtue of how “easy” we can be to kite or get away from. It isn’t entirely untrue, but it’s silly to think we aren’t capable of staying on target with practice and the right weapons. Mobility in combat is practically an art after a certain point — you can always improve your ability to stay on target or disengage, but you’ll probably never perfect it as a Guardian. That said, our lack of snares or a movement speed signet (or similar) aren’t gamebreaking for us. Just a little annoying.

The only professions you’ll probably be hopeless to catch if they decide they want to leave the fight are Warriors with Greatswords, S/D Thieves, and D/D Eles. Even then, you can probably lock them down if you happen to be running JI and/or any combination of Hammer, Scepter, or Greatsword. Acceptable drawbacks considering how durable we can be in a fight and how valuable we are for group sustain and output (via boons and heals).

I’m under the impression that Warriors tend to have more damage potential than Guardians in most cases. More access to Might and Fury when alone with whatever weapons they wish to use (whereas our high-stacking ability is tied to Staff). They’re also able to run away really efficiently with Greatsword and Sword/Shield. Basically, they’ve got us beat in mobility and damage in the majority of cases, but I feel as though they lack a lot of the utility and sustainability that we have access to. I’ve never played one, I’ve just never seen one outperform a Guardian of similar skill when roaming alone. I’m sure they’re great when practiced with and under favorable circumstances (what profession isn’t?), but in a good 3,000 hours of almost entirely WvW play on my Guardian, I’ve never seen a Warrior do what a Guardian can in 1vX. That said, it depends a lot on their builds, their opponents’ builds, and ability to use the terrain to their advantage (then there are the psychological factors — are they tired, etc?) I might just not be seeing it.

Group play is a different thing entirely.

Guardians and Warriors fill similar roles in very different ways when it comes to group play. Both are capable of dealing damage, soaking it for teammates, and of dishing out heals and boons. Guardians have more access to Protection, Regen, and Retaliation. Warriors have more access Fury and Swiftness. They can also grant area Vigor pretty consistently with Warhorn, which is pretty standard for group play. Both professions have the ability to stack large amounts of Might through different means. Warriors have more access to snares such as Cripple and Immobilize, but they don’t get spammable AoE heals via Selfless Daring (although they can trait for damage on dodge roll) or a nearly spammable blast finisher like we do with Hammer #2.

If I had to put it simply: Guardians have more sustain for themselves and for the group. Warriors provide more offensive utility and a Warbanner. Otherwise, they’re both capable of filling pretty much the same roles, just in really different ways.

Sorry if this isn’t what you were looking for, OP. Really just started rambling after a bit.

I still think the fact that a guardian will win against a warrior almost any day of the week (assuming equal skill level) is enough justification for me ..

pot.6805:

Redscope.6215:

Go watch: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2722227

Karl tries to explain how Guardians and Necromancers bunker better than Warriors while Roy and a friendly necro are trying to beat on a Warrior….and lose horribly.

Start watching at about 9 minutes. Karl clearly has no idea what he’s watching or what he’s talking about. Clue number one, the warrior runs in with a banner and he calls him a “greatsword build”. But just listen to him talk and eventually be surprised as he puts his foot in his mouth about who’s a better bunker.

Warriors are currently OP in the bunker meta. Anyone who denies this is only fooling themselves. The only reason wars don’t just dominate hands-down is because toughness/condi builds are pure win. The meta is all kinds of fkd right now.

That video is a terrible example after seeing the terrible skill level of the people trying to kill the warrior.

Ad Hominem is Ad Hominem? You haven’t provided an argument.

Chase.8415:

There are far more variants of a guardian for DPS, and I have yet to see an “instant-kill” build in PvP.

The biggest problem with a guardian is mobility. Anyone who’s decent can easily kite you and spam conditions to the point you are dead.

Pretty much this. You can run with a condition clearing build all you want; you go blow for blow for 30-40 seconds before they become too much to handle. It’s why burst guardian builds are becoming more prominent in WvW, imo.

Can a guardian burst people down? Of course, as long as the victim has no clue on how guardian skills work.
Almost any guardian burst build use Shield of Wrath, a skill with 45 sec CD and pretty predictable mechanics, as a big part of his offensive combo. The same timing a guardian needs to land it is also valid for evading it on defenders side.
You also lack the tools to set up the hit. You can’t rely on immobilize because there’s not really any other thing for your enemy to use their condi removals and your only reliable hard CC is on an easily spotteable signet asking for a stun breaker to be saved.
If your enemy knows what is facing and is running a well-rounded build, it’s going to be really hard to land this kind of attack. It’s easier to avoid than a thief Backstab, and it’s on a 45 sec CD.
Another burst option could be torch, but now again it has a really huge cast time, preceded by the obvious flaming animation, so your enemy is going to avoid it if he knows how guardian works.
That lets you only with the usual low CD damaging moves, wich are not enough to burst down anything but maybe the glassiest specs and which consist usually on channeled attacks, hard to fully land on a skilled opponent and hard to set up cause a lack of CC and Conditions to burn out enemy scape resources.
Guardian burst spec works only because a lack of knowledge/skill on enemy side. Hopefully, this is something fairly usual when solo roaming, but honestly, the spec itself is not good at all.

On the other side, we have the healway guardian. You are hard to beat, that’s for sure, but it’s not like you’re going to kill anyone who doesn’t decide to fight you til death.
You just lack the tools to keep most enemies at close combat long enough to deal the damage needed to down them.
It can work on SPvP because it’s about staying at a point, but for solo-roaming I found it horrible.

Finally, you have balanceds builds, which in order to be well rounded need:

- Mobility, in order to stick to your enemy or to run away if an unbeatable manforce is approaching. Since you do not have movement impairment tools (besides immobilizes, that as I said before are almost the only attacks on your arsenal that deserve a condi cleanse) you are forcefully going to need swiftness.
That means you need to run a staff, retreat and/or some kind of food/runeset, all of them with fairly obvious downcomes. Save Yourselves, which is an insanely powerful skill for solo roaming, can get the work done against some enemies, but it’s not going to be enough most of the time.
Even with that, you’re still going to need something to counter enemy gap openers, which forces some combination of Sword, Greatsword and Judges Interventions.
You can beat some specs without all of this, but you can also automatically lose to some others if you lack it.
In fact, a good mobility is going to let you choose your fights more than anything, so it’s going to be always a good investment.

- A good mix of sustain and damage.
Some enemies are glassy, some others are though as hell. The first ones use to be a good fight for you, since you have pretty good anti-burst tools on shelter, renewed focus, blind sources, … and Save Yourselves gives you everything you need for a short fight. The second ones, however, can be a pain in the kitten .
Unlike some people try to state, Guardians don’t have such an incredible sustainability, not at least when alone or without heavy investment on healing power.
For short fights, Save Yourselves offers a lot of everything, but it’s a 60 sec (48 if traited) skill. Once it’s over, it’s not like you’re going to have many sources of protection/regeneration on a solo roaming build.
Altruistic Healing, while great in some situations, is pretty awful for solo roaming.
Selfless daring can heal A LOT, so if you have enough critchance to proc vigor consistently (and even maybe sigils of energy), it can give you and insane sustain. It requieres, however, high investment on healing power, which can produce many stalemates and automatic loses when outmanned. It’s still handy without any stat investment (just the ones on the Honor traitline), but miles away from the monster it can be on a healway build.
In the end, if you want to keep a decent damage output, Monk Focus seems to be the only way to add decent sustain, and even on a triple meditation build, it’s only about 200 HPS. I mean, shelter (just the healing), resolve and monk focus altogether barely beat the warrior Healing Signet passive.
A balanced guardian is far from a god of sustain. You actually need to use your active defenses (blinds, blocks, evades) wisely in order to succeed, which can be applied to every single class, some of them with more resources than you.

- Condi cleanses and stun breakers. Like every other balanced build.
Purity helps a lot removing some nasty bleed stacks or saving you from being crippled to death, but it’s not enough on its own. It can easily be bypassed by a clever enemy and doesn’t help at all against condi CC like immob.
This lets you with meditations (Smite for soft cleanse or immobilizes, CoP for heavy condition bursts), Shouts + Pure of Voice, Absolute Resolution and/or maybe Runes of Lyssa. Ray of Judgment is too easily avoidable.
If you run Smite Condition and CoP, you only have one last slot for either JI, SY or SYG. Lacking any of these skills hurts, lacking two of them can be really painful.
If you run Shouts + Pure of Voice, you can have all of them but you’re not going to be running Monk Focus (which means less sustain) and you might need to waste some of these precious resources just for the condi cleanse.
Absolute Resolution seems a good choice, since it can be viable on a Monk Focus build and also enhances your passive regeneration. On the other hand, it actually reduces it if you have to cleanse, and forces you to a retaliation build, not so useful on bursty fights.
Runes of Lyssa are great, but they prevent you for using a runeset that gives you swiftness consistently (which you are going to need agains tough enemies).

In the end, your only choices are running a burst build and praying for your enemy not knowing what is facing or trying a balanced one just knowing that there are better well rounded specs out there (I would say that warrior ones too).
The first one probably has better outcomes but winning with the second one leaves a better taste IMHO.

Guardian need more mobility, is too frustrating trying to catch someone in a game that almost all profession excel in mobility. Is not only the lack of mobility, is the lack of soft CC, like cripples/chills to keep enemies in melee range. Or some decent range weapon. Not only one “one-handed” range weapon.

Right now, in WvW, warrior excel guardian by far. In mobility, tankiness, damage, CC (omg, too much hard and soft CC) the health regeneration is so broken… thats (by time) block you can block EVERYTHING, not only 3 hits.

As i said, i have a level 80 guardian full exotic, and a level 36 warrior (only leveled in wvw) and works great even in that level.

It seems like the louder players really come out swinging in these types of threads. Particularly the negative ones.

I’ve played Guardian since day 1 and while I’ve touched on other classes to see how their mechanics work 99.9% of my playtime is Guardian however just recently I have made a ranger and I’m playing that now simply because we got screwed so hard with this Meta I can’t be bothered any more.

The lack of Mobility was always a problem but it’s never been more apparent with the latest condition spam where chill and cripple effects are a constant or you got Mesmers of Thieves teleporting around so much it takes such epic determination to kill them you feel like sitting down and saying ‘sod it I’m done.’

All the heals in the world won’t make up for our supreme lack of mobility to keep the pressure on and the fact most classes can do more damage, CC and maintain survivability is a giggle.

Finally the reason we can beat on warriors comes down to 2 things:
1: They have to be in melee to do the most damage so that means we can actually deal our best damage as well.
2: A lot of people who play warriors are turnips who rolled it because it’s a ‘Warrior’ and that’s ‘awesome.’ Fighting against a skilled warrior is a different ball game and I’ve had some insanely close fights.

Guardians are a great class and I’ve loved playing mine but everything just seems like a lot of hard work lately so hopefully some changes will be made and I can go back to feeling on-par instead of a punching bag.

Does anyone find it strange to create a melee class with cripple or mobility? Balance wise, melee needs to keep up with runners in order to deal damage. Since pvp isn’t usually stationary.

But looking at guardians design I see the following:

To do damage your enemies must be stationary in a small radius around you. But there is nothing to keep them there against their will nor is their any real way to keep up with enemies who decide its not in their best interest to stay near you.

But range has classes to trick and control targets from every reaching them.

I played a Retribution Paladin for 5 years. I’m used to not having a snare.

That isn’t to say I wouldn’t appreciate one, though. :P

The New Dire gear is really going to hurt Warriors. :<

Also they are adding new movement speed gear.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I played a Retribution Paladin for 5 years. I’m used to not having a snare.

That isn’t to say I wouldn’t appreciate one, though. :P

So did I.

Ret paladin had way better mechanics than Guardian. At least they could do burst damage and maintain their survivability with bubble and other defensive cooldowns.

Not to mention they had hammer of wrath to finish someone, which also had range! Ret also had a passive run speed buff too.

Hi, My name is Merril (Merrillian in game)

I play with a small wvw skirmish Guild called Riot.

The decision you are making here has a few steps two it.

<strong>The best place to start is to make a Warrior and Guardian and put them into “The Mists” to play some 15 v 15.</strong> This will show you what you can expect to find in a general WvW scenario – where you will not be the target of a large group.
Things to note are how you handle the condition meta, how succesful you are in helping your allies and how you handle pressure in a heavy cc situation.

Find out which class you enjoy playing in this type of environment first. This is the main reason to roll a warrior or guardian.

Second find a guild that you want to WvW with and see what classes they need. You do not want to be the #3 or #4 support guardian on the field.

Dembian.9257:

What I’m looking for is the ability to support a zerg if i need to and to be able to survive decently in those head on zerg vs zerg fights, while doing decent damage to auctally feel like im putting pressure on the enemy. (my thiekittenda gets squashed
underfoot instantly).

Guardians fair better in zergs and can do decent AoE pressure with GS/Hammer. You’r support will be limited by aoe buff caps, but you can gear for boon duration and healing power to increase these support capacities.

You throw in that you want to put on “pressure”
There are a few ways to do that; Damage and Crowd Control are the major ones that come to mind, but providing heals and stability to your allies can apply mental pressure to your enemies.

It is important to realize that providing both support and “decent damage” (if that is what you are after) may not be possible.

Im also looking for the ability to solo roam if i feel the want to and be able to hold my own in a 1v1 or even a 1v2 if it pops up.

Guardians make excellent solo roamers with a few caveats; If your enemy wants to run from you, they will. Meanwhile if you are running a zerker build you will have a harder time running and avoiding damage than a warrior.

in exit:
Guardians bring certain things to fights; stability, blast finishers, and dodge heals with reliable cc.
This goes extremely well with a zerg playstyle.
Personally I don’t zerg and I find myself needing to fit into my small groups ‘team’ play. I’ll run my guardian, but if we have a water field running engi or any other guardians, I usually switch to an alt.
For Solo, warriors are pretty OP at the moment and I’m enjoying mine

Well, I’ve played both extensively. ATM, my med/healing guardian and healing signet warrior have about the same sustainability but the warrior has far greater killing power. That, along with having far greater mobility, makes the warrior better for solo roaming.

It’s not that the guardian is bad. It’s just the case that less people are going to get away from you and the people you do kill will be dying much faster.

Just switching any utility to Wall of Reflection in a zerg gives a Guardian an edge.

Oh, and never trust anyone who compares professions just by looking at base stats. It’s like they haven’t heard what protection or combo fields are.