Guild Wars 2

Hey all I’m probably going to roll a guard soon and I need someone to enlight me on guardians PVE and WvW aspect. (I know nothing about those mode, only played in Spvp since I bought the game)

I keep reading that guardian use full zerker gear in PVE, is that true ? if so, then how do you survive ? and does that mean that guardian is just a dps class in PVE ?

Now WvW, I see a lot of wvw guardians says to go tanky with a lot of regen and play as support , but then isn’t it hard to kill people ? and what’s the purpose of being tanky in a game where you have no taunt or aggro skill to force people to attack you instead of squishy people next to you ?

I’d like to play guard like offtank in other games, I mean medium damage and good personal survivability, but I keep reading that guard is more like a tanky healer/support to the group , so maybe I’m wrong about guard ? or maybe warrior is more the type of plate class I’m looking for ?

Questions might sounds dumb due to my minsunderstanding of pve/wvw so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about anything

Thanks

I go full soldier armor on my guardian, and I’m loving it so far.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlUgqCnFyvDf4ESmiVCBxegRZUHdpQhoIA-jgCBoNCyE1w0HBK7pIaslhht6KalXBRvATXiIq2boIa1SBonyI-e

This is the build I’ve got setup, the reason I went for so much buff duration is because retaliation is really really silly.

With the amount of power I’ve got at 80, it deals 359.625 damage to everyone who attacks me, and just from popping “Stand your ground” and “Save yourselves,” I’ve got 28.5 seconds of it.

Likewise, “Save yourselves” and “Hold the Line” are pretty good for giving me some heals. Opted for the cleric weapons so I could get some extra healing power, because it helps, and they give power and toughness as their secondaries, so heeeeeyyyyy, that works.

Pretty sure I could do better, but this is what I have now, and it works pretty great. All dat condition removal. Dem boons.

My three shouts also convert conditions to boons, which makes taking the hit from popping “Save Yourselves” a lot less risky, because the first two shouts can melt a maximum of 10 (1 per shout, times five people, times two because two shouts) conditions if everyone near me, as well as myself have condi’s.
And then save yourselves cleanses everyone around me again, and sucks every condi that might be left onto me.

Tempted to swap out my sword/focus for a staff for teamfights because staff4’s might spam, as well as the ranged aoe of staff 1, but not sure. With all that buff duration, the might duration is greater than the cooldown of staff4, so it might work out pretty good.

But then again, I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to guard, because I’m used to my warrior.

Zerk guardians offer more than tanky ones in PVE. Your most powerful support abilities are unaffected by tough/vit/healing power.

A zerker guard has tons of blocks, blinds, reflects and invul in addition to your dodges. Survival shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Since the defensive stats don’t make you a better support. Blinds, blocks (most are shared to your group as well) and reflects helps your group. The meta zerk build also has +boon duration for prot and more importantly, stability. And finally, a full buffed guard does alot of dps, i believe just under eles and thieves.

But if this is your first foray into pve, i suggest you use the meta build with zerk trinkets but with knight’s armor instead. Afterwards when you are used to is, you can change out to full zerk.

Thank you very much for both replys ,

@bunmaster does the sticky post " [Guide] DPS Guardian for PVE" is the actual meta build you are talking about ?

In order:

You don’t want to play a zerker guardian in PvE or WvW unless you either know the class really well or you have a team that can keep you alive. Guardians are much better at… well guarding. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be a healbot but it does mean going full dps isn’t really the best choice for this class.

In WvW, guardians are the backbone of a zerg. You have warding lines, shouts, healing and a lot of support abilities. You needn’t run full cleric here. Combine some cleric with some soldier with some knight gear and you’ll have a build that can hit hard, live long and support allies. Zerker is bad in WvW, you’ll die too fast as a guardian.

Being tanky in PvE makes mobs more likely to attack you. Being tanky in WvW means you can support better, rally alies and stay close to other melee for added benefit.

Guardian is exactly what you’re describing there. Medium – but can be high – damage, very good survivability AND good team support.

Hey thanks for those explanations, correct me if I’m wrong but according to what you says about guardians , in big WvW fight the class is closer to a traditional healer than to a tank/offtank right ?

What worry me with that is the gameplay ,
Do we still play as tanks and rush in the melee while dealing some damage and disturbing enemy lines with CC ?
Or are we just sitting back there trying to heal and buff allies ?

While I like the idea of giving some support to allies while standing in the middle of big melee fights, I really don’t like the idea of using a staff and staying in back line acting like a healer or something.

So if I can have confirmation on what kind of gameplay guardians have in WvW I think it will help me knowing if it fit my gameplay style or not

Thanks again and sorry for bad english (not my main language)

Wow, you’re really new to GW2.

Okay, first rule of thumb – and I learned this the hard way – there are no defined roles in GW2. You will never, ever, stand back and heal, or whack at a boss and tank, or just dps and do nothing else.

You’ll always attack with whatever weapon you have – example staff. You will use it’s main attack ability, you will use the other abilities as they come off cooldown to heal allies, while damaging enemies, or CC, or grant power to allies.

Playing GW2 is playing the way you want to, and the way you built your character. I’ll give three examples on how support/bunker/zerker works so you get the idea.

As support, you’ll have gear that boosts your beneficial effects on allies, be that healing, boons (buffs) or controlling the enemy with skills. You will choose a weapon that allows you to heal allies with one of its skills, such as the mace.
Then you’ll be in combat, in the front lines because you use a mace, your weapon will allow you on occasion to heal or boon up nearly allies with various effects it has. With you around, they’ll stay alive longer and deal more damage. You will not be dedicated to only healing, you’ll do damage too (but not as much as a full damage build), run around, use heals, help and support. You can swap weapons to a staff, a control/healing weapon which allows you to leave the front lines for a while because its attack is ranged, or stay right there and use your skills in the middle of battle.

As a bunker (tank) you’ll have a lot of defensive gear stats. You’ll take less damage, heal yourself better and while you may not do as much damage you’ll be hard to kill. You can dodge more, control more. Because you don’t go down, you can hold points against 2-3 other people. You can help downed players back up or you can be the backbone or frontline guy who runs in and doesn’t die when pressured. You may use the hammer for example, to snare enemies, CC them or just bash them for good damage.

As zerker (berserker/dps) you’ll have less hit points and less healing. Your skills you select to use won’t be helping allies much but will instead help you heal yourself and deal damage. You rely on your own skills to stay alive – and hopefully nearby support players who will aid you – and deal big damage. You may use the greatsword or the sword, both dps weapons and lay down the pain. You’ll go down fast if you make too many mistakes because there are no healers and a nearby support class can only do so much to help you. Your job is to kill, crush and destroy while keeping yourself alive. This is a hard job as a guardian.

In GW2, your build/your weapons and your chosen utility skills will define how you play. And you are ultimatly also responsible for your own survival. No diving into legions of enemies and hope you get healed or somebody tanks. They will attack you, you will have to dodge, heal yourself, boon yourself and everything to win. Even dps builds can heal and boon, it’s always part of how you’ll play.

I’d recommend checking out a youtube video of GW2 guardian gameplay and you’ll see it’s very versatile. As a guardian, you’ll almost always be in the middle of the fighting, because that’s where they’ll need your help the most.

Thank you very much for the time you took explaining all that

While I’m familiar with solo queue spvp I was under the impression that WvW and PVE were limited to one specific build with everyone playing a specific role, after reading your post I’m glad that it’s not the case and that we can keep some flexibility in our choice.

In the end guardian seems to be what I was initialy looking for , that hard to kill guy with enough sustain to stay in melee and support.
I’m glad it’s far from the wrong idea I was starting to believe about guardians being stuck to healer role , staying on the back with a full healing gear and never stepping in melee

Thanks again for all the informations , I now understand the possibilites the class has to offer.
It’s now time to lvl one and learn by myself

For PvE refer to this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE.

It’s actually a myth that high toughness means you will always get aggro. Quite often the person with the highest DPS gets it or it can switch at random several times during a single fight.

Adam.4103:

For PvE refer to this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE.

It’s actually a myth that high toughness means you will always get aggro. Quite often the person with the highest DPS gets it or it can switch at random several times during a single fight.

Near as I can tell it was made up by a guy who wanted to justify running full tank AH spread in a speedclear DPS group. He then proceeded to increasingly contradict himself by getting rid of all his toughness gear but still claiming his (now nonexistent) extra toughness was helping him keep aggro.

As for WvW, the extra toughness/armor from PVT is primarily a buffer to prevent you from getting instagibbed by stray hits. If you think having any amount of armor or health will keep you from getting destroyed while standing in a spot where fifty enemy players tab-selecting the nearest target will automatically target you first, you’d better try just a bit harder.

Glad to have helped, from the sound of it, Guardian is the class you’re looking for. ;-)

Adam.4103:

For PvE refer to this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE.

It’s actually a myth that high toughness means you will always get aggro. Quite often the person with the highest DPS gets it or it can switch at random several times during a single fight.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

In PvE the game is limited in term of roles. You still have dps, tanky (surviability), and support but there is a problem with 2 of them.
- Surviability is useless since you have enough basic defense (dodge, healing, etc) to survive even in full dps build. Any surviability you take in PvE is only to help you survive because you are not good enough. There is several legitimate reason to get some surviability : You are new and are learning the game or the profession, or you are casual and don’t want to be stress about your survivability especially in new content that you don’t know very well yet. But you need to keep in mind that this is only a crutch.
- Support is partially like survivability since you don’t need healing if you know what you are doing. There is plenty of support that are powerful, but most of them don’t need trait or stats to be effective, meaning that even a support character will be better in full dps setup.

The role of the guardian here is like most profession. Kill stuff before they kill you. But where Warrior bring huge DPS and offensive support, guardian bring good DPS with defensive support that can help you a lot in a dungeon. Reflect and boons (especially aegis) come first to mind as they allow you team to DPS something while being protected from their attack (increasing the total DPS of the team).

For WvW this is completely different. Tanky, Support and DPS are three really important role in a group makeup. Usually most build will have different balance between Tanky and DPS ranging from the Commander (the most tanky since he need to be the last alive to lead the group) to the Ele/Necro backliner that hide behind tanky teammate while bashing damage into the enemy group from a distance. Support is more spread across the group, with everybody having his own support role that he bring to the group.

For guardian you usually are more tanky to survive in the middle of the battle, while bringing support in the form of boons (especially stability), condition removal, reflect (in some situation), tome of courage, blast, cc, etc.

For WvW roaming its similar to sPvP roaming. Guardian can be good, but its not the best and he won’t use the same build as Zerging Guardian.

I would argue that Guardians are the best profession in this game because they are useful in every game mode. I found levelling easy in PvE as a Guardian because you can get some decent damage out and its very hard to get downed. I used to just use GS5, pull a bunch of foes in and then whirl like mad and destroy them all pretty quickly. Its easymode tbh.
In WvW the support a Guardian can bring is brilliant and that is why a lot of commanders are Guardians (coupled with their great withstandability). Guardians can also make decent roamers and have some nifty utilities for group play.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Adam.4103:

For PvE refer to this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE.

It’s actually a myth that high toughness means you will always get aggro. Quite often the person with the highest DPS gets it or it can switch at random several times during a single fight.

Near as I can tell it was made up by a guy who wanted to justify running full tank AH spread in a speedclear DPS group. He then proceeded to increasingly contradict himself by getting rid of all his toughness gear but still claiming his (now nonexistent) extra toughness was helping him keep aggro.

As for WvW, the extra toughness/armor from PVT is primarily a buffer to prevent you from getting instagibbed by stray hits. If you think having any amount of armor or health will keep you from getting destroyed while standing in a spot where fifty enemy players tab-selecting the nearest target will automatically target you first, you’d better try just a bit harder.

To be fair, bosses tend to have individual aggro profiles.

The ones that jump to mind…

1. DPS. The Slave Driver in CoFp1 is pretty keenly attracted to attacking whomever is doing the most dps to him. Doesn’t matter now that people kill him in 6 seconds, but back in the bad old days when pugs took 30 seconds to kill him it was very noticeable.

2. Toughness/Armor. The Champ ettin in Uncategorised fractal undeniably tends to go after the person with the highest toughness. For a while when I was the only full ascended armor in my group he would ignore the guardian and focus me unless teh Guardian equipped Knights pieces, and then suddenly he was back on the Guardian.

3. Profession. Certain bosses have a clear order of preference. The Golem in CoE focuses Elementalists, as any ele player will tell you. Lupicus targets Guardians and Elementalists above anyone else with his single target life steal in phase 3.

Toughness can have very unfortunate consequences as an aggro puller when it does work and you’re doing a pug. During a fotm pug we decided to have the necro do the console because he was the least fit of the group to either kite mobs or survive on switches (and since the guy on the console isn’t supposed to be hit at all, or they get interrupted while using it..). What happened next was a real pain in the butt. There was absolutely no way whatsoever to get the mobs off that necro. None. It was technically impossible. We could hit the mobs in melee with high dps and they’d still stick to the necro. They’d fly from the other end of the room onto him.
In the end we had no choice but to put him on the safest switch and just spam stuff to protect him.

.. said necro was the only one with high toughness in the group (rabid gear). It’s pretty clear to me that some trash mobs tend to be highly attracted to toughness in fractals:
dredge, chanters (cliffside), lava elementals (volcanic) tend to be the worst offenders.
You just have to see it to believe it. It’s incredible how the mobs across the whole room will forget about the group and literally make a declaration of love to the pug necro just because of the rabid gear. And also unfortunate because it takes a lot of control away from you while doing pugs.