Guild Wars 2

Amins.3710:

Well, the good news is that Archer has made such an kitten of himself that he won’t be back nor regarded as anything more than a Troll.

The Bad news is, ~some~ (1 or two) of his points are valid.

Specifically: If you run a full dps build (x/x/30/5/5), you really do need the Omnom’s for the healing. It’s true. 354 healing on a crit is no joke.

Easily countered though…. nerf food and give a buff to Zealous Blade. The reality is, it’s not too OP because in order for the Build to work (30/x/30/x/x), you cannot have 20 in Honor for the Might Stacks (healing via AH) & Dodge Roll.

HOWEVER, w/ Food the way it is, the 30/x/30 build ~IS~ Viable. But it doesn’t change Archers Point: you really need the food because we lack the mobility Warriors inherently have due to thier weapons.

I would not trade my Guardian. Personally. 30/x/30 in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFHbjfUW_vk

Now I would have to say that is an issue with how crappy the zeal trait line is and the desperate need for a buff. However I have been running with my 10/30/30/0/0 build for a while now and with meditation healing i have to say that the pies are not required. I have ran with 100perc/10% crit damage food, Mango pies for the 88 health per second, hell even ghost pepper poppers for perma chill/crazy might stacks, And all of them are perfectly viable. Are omnom pies the best for the build? yes, they are, because they are crazy strong for a high crit build like I run. However they are not really required as the build has decent self healing as it is, and is more just icing on the cake.

Should they be nerfed at some point I will just move onto a different food instead of changing my spec, because as I said before in this thread, food is an added benefit more than anything. And the real key is finding the right food that complements your build in the best way.

Hey guys, just gonna give my opinion on this subject. I currently have over 1000 hours on my Guardian and i’m not saying i’m the best but I have a fair amount of knowledge on how this profession works. I’ll begin by saying that with the current meta game being surrounded by mobility, I think the Guardian lacks severely. Let me explain:

Most if not all the Guardians abilities to stay alive require him to stand in place thus making him/her an easy target. On the flip-side, you have the Elementalist who has free reign on mobility while providing similar survivability to himself(and party alike) without becoming an easy target. This to me, needs to be changed immediately. I don’t find it to be fun or effective standing inside a small circle(symbols) to actually keep myself afloat.

Guardian damage from what we’ve been told is sustainable. I’m fine with this if you’re actually able to keep up with your target. In PvE, this is easy but when you start fighting intelligent players, it becomes near-impossible. You maybe able to initially reach your target, but you’ll never keep up. This is also another flaw in the Guardians design.

As it stands, you MUST run at the very least MF or AH to even stand a chance of living long enough to make a difference in either PvE or PvP. There’s no room for change here. 30 in Valor will always be a must unless there’s another way of keeping oneself alive. This is another flaw(other classes have it similar) in this professions design that should be looked at.

Support as a Guardian is great, you have 4 shouts to choose from, 2 of which are excellent for your team. I have my doubts on “retreat” because of the long cd and it’s effectiveness. Empower is also another excellent tool to help not only keep himself alive(AH) but give your party a valuable damage increase. Symbols play an excellent role here for PvE since your target will never move so its effectiveness will remain intact. Again, outside of this, symbols are useless.

Exarthious.5792:

My bunker Warrior is far, far more durable than my bunker Guardian. The thing I love most about my bunker Warrior is triggering my three second shield block, running into a zerg, watching the Might stack to 20ish, and absolutely demolishing my target of choice.

Even better, my shout heals, heal my entire GROUP, not just myself, unlike the Guardian, who heals himself.

To add icing to the cake, the Guardian has downtime on his boons, while I also provide a permanent Swiftness, Regen, Fury, and 3 stacks of Might to my group, unless we’ve been in a prolonged fight.

After playing an 80 Thief, 80 Guardian, 80 Ranger, and 80 Warrior all in exotic gear, no other class in the game has felt as complete as the Warrior has for me.

I’ve been in fights running with a Guardian buddy, and they’ve killed him for example today a 3v2, they had (Elementalist, Thief, and Mesmer), and I held them the entire time it took my buddy to run across the borderlands to get back to us, so we could finish them off.

The BIG difference is the Guardian has much better condition removal, and I’ve found myself running Sigil of Purity a lot on my Warrior.

Thank you for bringing all this forward, it made me think of something that further stresses the level of fun between Warrior and Guardian play.
A support Warrior need only bring their traits, shouts and/or banners to be an effective support role. They aren’t really limited in their choice of weaponry as they’d all still play quite effectively, won’t diminish the support they can put out and be just as fun to use in terms of functionality, combo finishers, conditions and control etc.
Support oriented Guardians, I find, while being able to choose whatever utilities they want generally, are somewhat pigeonholed into using particular weapons, usually anything with a symbol. Symbols aren’t really that amazing and you usually have to take Writ of Exaltation to make them have any great effect.
Symbols also tend to enforce less movement as you have to stay in them to get their goods which can be a little counter productive in a game that has a pretty big emphasis on fluid, moving combat.
The main problem I have with this, as stated before, the Guardian weapons just aren’t really that fun. A lot of the weapon configurations just don’t seem to play as well with each other as Warrior (and other professions). Say if I wanted to play a support Guardian but really wanted to use a sword, it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to use sword instead of a mace, for example. Shout/banner support Warrior who wants to use a sword? No problem. I understand there would still be weapons that are better suited to support but if you ask me, it wouldn’t make as huge a difference as it does for Guardian. The fact remains that Warrior weapons are far more fun and functional.

So Warrior has effective support at the cost of using banners or shouts in the utilities (which isn’t really all that bad as a lot of people bring them anyway) while having free choice of weaponry, Guardians generally get siphoned into using weapons with symbols with the benefit of using whatever utility they want.

Allow me be totally clear, I have absolutely no problem with different professions doing the same things differently, in fact I endorse and advocate this kind of design. I do however think the problem lies with the fact that some Guardian weapons just aren’t fun to play or don’t quite work too well.
I also think the default size of symbols should be the size they are with Writ of Exaltation, that would also facilitate Smite being made into a symbol as I suspect one of the reasons it isn’t one is that its size is larger than that of the default symbol size, aside from its strange damage mechanic.

I had no idea that when specced warrior shouts heal everyone, I thought it was just for them. This really puts a strain on the Guardian. To add more insult to injury, the upkeep of guardian boons is pretty short when compared to say a warriors. 5 seconds of whatever on a 30 second or more cd.

I remember making a Warrior build that spat out AoE regen that ticked up instead of down. Haha!

Or just do away with the symbols. As it stands even with an increased radius, you’re still confined to a small circle that doesn’t promote mobile game play.

I have never ever been defeated in 1v1 battle that took place in WvWvW by a Warrior, i consider them easy targets. Actually almost the easiest target of them all. My guardian is by far the most powerfull i have in WvWvW, but even my engineer can handle warriors with ease. (while guardians are a pain)

Guards are better than wars as it is. Any decent guard will never lose to a war in a 1v1.

May I remind people this is not a “Who will win in a fight? Guardian or Warrior?” thread. This is a “Guardian effectiveness compared to Warrior effectiveness” thread.
While your epic tales of beating countless Warriors sure is impressive, it’s not the point of this thread.

The thing is, many of us dont have too much trouble beating most warriors and so while you may make an essay which is both logical and sound about how warriors are just that much better than us in pvp. Most of us will still just believe in our own experience.

Not that i dont lose to warriors. I do sometimes, but most of the time i feel im at an advantage.

In my experience there not easy kills like necros, engineers or rangers.
Yet in no way do i feel they match DD eles, mesmers or thieves.

My personal experience with them tells me that the majority of them are pretty eaasy to beat.

I have a hard time sympathizing or lets say relating to claims of how gimp we are compared to them warriors.

Change the topic to random Guardian vs DD elementalist rant and id likely be chiming in with you

But warrior??? Nahh

I’m beginning to think people aren’t reading the original post and are simply replying to the semi-misleading title. Nobody said they were having trouble fighting Warriors!

Let’s read that again.
Nobody said they were having trouble fighting Warriors!

The OP was making a point that the Warrior weapons, skills and traits all seem to function a whole lot smoother than the Guardian’s and are, generally, much more fun to play. This is regardless of who would win in a duel.

Let’s look at some examples that apply to more than just Warrior:
Q: How many professions that use main hand sword have a leap finisher on it?
A: All but Thief and Guardian. Thief still manages to get a shadowstep, immobilise and condition removal instead of a leap. We get the handy blind but damage that is so low that it may as well heal enemies.

Q: How many professions that use main hand sword get a cripple on it?
A: All but Guardian.

Q: How many professions can liberally apply bleeds?
A: All but Guardian.

Q: How many professions are given only one condition that deals damage?
A: One. GUESS WHO IT IS!!!

(I used sword as an example as I believe it to be horribly broken compared to other professions but scepter, torch and possibly staff are also kinda static)

It doesn’t make sense that a profession designed to do well in melee can’t keep foes from simply walking away from them! The wards are ok in PvE but timely stability renders them little more than a light field with a long cooldown (this is ignoring the fact people just roll through them).

Q: What does stability do to a good cripple or immobilise?
A: Jack.

Understand, I’m not annoyed at the fact we can’t do everything, I like profession diversity, I’m annoyed at the fact we can’t even do basic things that every other profession is able to perform.

This has nothing to do with Warriors beating Guardians in fights or vice versa, I’m talking about the effectiveness of their skills and traits. There are enough strawmen floating around here already.

What was that? Oh that’s right, this has nothing to do with Warriors beating Guardians in fights or vice versa!

It might be a good idea to change the title of this thread so it stops confusing people.

You also might want to add, How many professions are required to stay still(or in a small circle) to be effective?

The whole discussion is ridiculous.

Guardians can send around aoe stability, aoe condition removal, protection, regeneration, might, aegis, dodge heals, virtues heals, retaliation, the list goes on – and yes, this is all in the same build.

Warriors can give 3 stacks of might and 8s of fury on a 20s cd – traited. And immobile banners for some fixed buffs on 240 sec cooldowns. Swiftness and vigor on warhorn. And they do weakness on enemies. That’s it.

There is literally no comparison in terms of group support.

Compare to auramancer ele, then you might have a basis for discussion.

A Warrior excels at PvE without a doubt, there is a reason why everyone wants 4 Warriors in their group. However in PvP and WvW, they cannot compare to the Guardian, who is both useful in both PvP/WvW and PvE.

Yes Warriors have a high health pool and damage, but they have a high health pool because they cannot mitigate nor prevent damage like a Guardian can, they can only endure it which is where there high health comes in. They are also incredibly predictable, which makes them easy to avoid with attacks such as 100 Blades rooting them in place.

Guardians have better mobility, better synergy with skills, and have tons of ways to both mitigate and prevent damage. If a Guardian would have a high health pool like Warriors, they would be straight up OP and unkillable.

Did someone just say Guardians have better mobility?
Did someone just say immobile banners?

No comparison my elbow. Shout heal builds heal EVERYONE around them. Banners can be traited to have a larger radius and then throw out regeneration to EVERYONE around them constantly. However, this is not a build versus build thread!

Regardless of how many boons each profession can throw out, regardless of who is better in PvE or WvW/PvP the fact remains that Warrior weapons and traits are not as broken as Guardian weapons and traits (I’ll say mostly Zeal here).

Small example of what the original topic of the post is about:

Q: Does Guardian have any combo options when using sword?
A: No.

Q: Does Warrior have any combo options when using a sword?
A: Yes. In fact, most professions that use a sword do.

Q: Can Guardians keep foes close to them so they can actually use their melee against them more effectively?
A: No.

Q: Can Warrior?
A:Yes.

Look, I can go on but I have to leave for work. Please read what the actual point of the thread is about before creating strawman arguments.
It’s not about who is the better healer, it’s about the functionality of the weapons and traits and how well the work together. Warrior just seems to have it better (along with the other professions, really) I really don’t know how to explain it any better.

Silver.8023:

I’m beginning to think people aren’t reading the original post and are simply replying to the semi-misleading title. Nobody said they were having trouble fighting Warriors!

Let’s read that again.
Nobody said they were having trouble fighting Warriors!

The OP was making a point that the Warrior weapons, skills and traits all seem to function a whole lot smoother than the Guardian’s and are, generally, much more fun to play. This is regardless of who would win in a duel.

Let’s look at some examples that apply to more than just Warrior:
Q: How many professions that use main hand sword have a leap finisher on it?
A: All but Thief and Guardian. Thief still manages to get a shadowstep, immobilise and condition removal instead of a leap. We get the handy blind but damage that is so low that it may as well heal enemies.

Q: How many professions that use main hand sword get a cripple on it?
A: All but Guardian.

Q: How many professions can liberally apply bleeds?
A: All but Guardian.

Q: How many professions are given only one condition that deals damage?
A: One. GUESS WHO IT IS!!!

(I used sword as an example as I believe it to be horribly broken compared to other professions but scepter, torch and possibly staff are also kinda static)

It doesn’t make sense that a profession designed to do well in melee can’t keep foes from simply walking away from them! The wards are ok in PvE but timely stability renders them little more than a light field with a long cooldown (this is ignoring the fact people just roll through them).

Q: What does stability do to a good cripple or immobilise?
A: Jack.

Understand, I’m not annoyed at the fact we can’t do everything, I like profession diversity, I’m annoyed at the fact we can’t even do basic things that every other profession is able to perform.

This has nothing to do with Warriors beating Guardians in fights or vice versa, I’m talking about the effectiveness of their skills and traits. There are enough strawmen floating around here already.

What was that? Oh that’s right, this has nothing to do with Warriors beating Guardians in fights or vice versa!

It might be a good idea to change the title of this thread so it stops confusing people.

Thanks, I feel less alone.

A Warrior excels at PvE without a doubt, there is a reason why everyone wants 4 Warriors in their group. However in PvP and WvW, they cannot compare to the Guardian, who is both useful in both PvP/WvW and PvE.

Yes Warriors have a high health pool and damage, but they have a high health pool because they cannot mitigate nor prevent damage like a Guardian can, they can only endure it which is where there high health comes in. They are also incredibly predictable, which makes them easy to avoid with attacks such as 100 Blades rooting them in place.

Guardians have better mobility, better synergy with skills, and have tons of ways to both mitigate and prevent damage. If a Guardian would have a high health pool like Warriors, they would be straight up OP and unkillable.

I do realize giving guardians +8k hp would truly make us OP. However, there is still something to do. I always like to play a tanky character, so I don’t mind getting some hp. But, compared to our Warrior friends, vitality is a “vital” (pardon me the pun) stat. Glass canon Guardians cannot exist (or in skilled hands who will achieve greater deeds with other classes). I always get hp, but someone could raise the problem of hp flexibility – we can’t do nothing without it. Also, the recent topic in the Guardian forums about the usefulness of armor raises a serious problem. It doesn’t do much – which makes hp strong.

I think that’s what bother me most. The flexibility. Yeah, we have great stun & conditions removers, passive heals, but in a fight scenario, what are we expected to do but to use hammer / shield-mace ? The slowness of the weapons allow people to use stability & dodge at the right times (again, I played these, know their effectiveness, and have faced fearsome opponents. Popping fear no pain / elem bubble / double / whatever can make you dodge stuff a the right times wrecks your combo).

Limiting a class to a few options makes it easily counterable. That’s why scepter & sword amongst others need some love.

xiv.7136:

The whole discussion is ridiculous.

Guardians can send around aoe stability, aoe condition removal, protection, regeneration, might, aegis, dodge heals, virtues heals, retaliation, the list goes on – and yes, this is all in the same build.

Warriors can give 3 stacks of might and 8s of fury on a 20s cd – traited. And immobile banners for some fixed buffs on 240 sec cooldowns. Swiftness and vigor on warhorn. And they do weakness on enemies. That’s it.

There is literally no comparison in terms of group support.

Compare to auramancer ele, then you might have a basis for discussion.

All of which you listed are on a 5 second duration. Do you really believe 5 seconds is going to mean much in a long term fight? Some of these skills have as high as a 90 second cd(Aegis when activated) to give 5 seconds of protection…yay so good. The list doesn’t go on because the upkeep of these boons is so low that their usefulness is minimal unless you spec for duration and make yourself useless in terms of damage.

Why for the love of god must we keep picking on 1h Sword, If you don’t like it that is fine, but seriously it is NOT that flawed of a weapon when used correctly. Lets compare it to warrior 1h sword

Auto attack:
Guardian: Fast hits (5 hits in 2.5 seconds) Very good at getting food/trait procs due to faster crits. Longest melee range of all weapons, pretty good damage.
Warrior: Medium speed, Medium damage, Bleeds with the first 2 hits.

#2
Guardian: Gap closer, Shadowstep movement, which means 0 travel time. Very low damage (I do agree this needs to be upped) AoE Blind on impact, also adds 3 stacks of vulnerability to those it blinds if traited.
Warrior: low damage, leap finisher, can clear immobilize if traited.

#3:
Guardian: High damage, absorbs projectiles, multi-hit so can also proc on crit effects more. Does root the caster but there are ways around this to ensure hits (immobilize, knockdowns, judge’s intervention use)
Warrior: Low damage cripple, does last for 7 seconds though, can immobilize for 1 second if traited.

So in the end we have a fast hitting, semi defensive, but still decent damage weapon with guardian, and for warrior we have a more control/condition based weapon for warrior. the only pros that the sword has for warrior over guardian is the leap finisher (which we have on our GS, which warriors do not), the cripple, and the bleed however we trade that off for getting a blind, a good burst ability with projectile absorb, and a fast hitting auto attack that can proc our burn pretty quickly. Also the burn proc from VoJ on our auto attack comes pretty much makes the bleed damage from warrior auto attack a wash.

The main problem with your argument isn’t so much that when you directly compare the two, the Guardian’s option doesn’t compare well. It does. Sort of. The problem is the off-hand. Warriors have Mace, which gives them a massive knockdown. They also have Axe, which gives a massive AoE. Sword gives a ranged bleed, and their shield skills are quite a bit better. And let’s not forget – that #3 cripple/immobilize directly combos into their Burst skill, which is a multi-hit medium damage and massive bleed skill.

So in the end, how it really compares is this: Guardians get a decent range closing, hard hitting autoattack with a temperamental projectile-based #3 skill. Warriors get a decent range closing, bleed-pumping machine with a very good F1 DPS skill and plenty of control in the form of immobilize and cripple to go along with the leap. Then they have the much better off-hand options.

I’ll explain why I keep ‘dissing’ the sword. It’s a bit of a wall so those who aren’t interested, skip this one.

The attack speeds of the sword chain for both Guardian and Warrior are identical.
Does one second of burn every 1.5 seconds really add up to about six stacks of bleeds up constantly? Maybe, I haven’t done the math, I’ll get to it later. However, it doesn’t add up the moment you are attacking more than one foe as the burn is only applied to one of them at a time.
Final Thrust hits up to three enemies easily in the normal melee attack arc. Sword Wave is, not only a cone shaped, invisible (and reflectable apparently) projectile attack but does not hit foes in the normal melee arc and even hitting three targets with it all can require awkward amounts of effort.

I did some rudimentary numbers using level 80 with zero condition damage using the formulae provided on the wiki. I’m not great at working out dps stuff by the way.

One second of burning would be 328. Let’s say it’s a best case scenario where you hit three targets with all three chain attacks. This actually adds up to 15 hits, so three one seconds burns on who knows what targets is 984 burn damage in total every chain, which is 1.5 seconds.

Hitting three targets with the Warrior sword chain will easily keep about six stacks of bleeds on all three targets.
Six stacks of bleeding is 225 per second. Across all three targets you’d be doing 765 damage per second in total. Remember though, we’re going per chain, which is every 1.5 seconds so we would actually add multiply 765 by 1.5 to bring it to the same pseudo-ratio, that brings it to 1147.5 bleed damage per chain, best case scenario of course, like the other example.

Another thing to remember, we’re relying on Virtue of Justice to not be on cooldown as a best case scenario here, so if we’re relying on profession mechanics we can also factor in the Warrior sword’s burst skill which will stack up to 12 bleeds on a target. Anyway, aside from having an immobilise, 12 stacks of bleeds for 2 seconds adds up to about 1020 damage on top of the melee damage from Flurry. Considering you can use it every 10 seconds assuming you have the adrenaline (albeit with 8 stacks instead of 12), I think that would actually make up for the fact that Hamstring doesn’t hit as hard as Zealot’s Defense.

Yeah, Zealot’s Defense does great damage but not every situation is ideal, a little bit of enemy movement or deciding not to blow a long cooldown utility (assuming you bring it) can result in it not even doing any damage at all! I love the concept of the skill though and the projectile absorption is great when used effectively. However, the best time to use it to block projectiles is not often the best time to use it for its damage, the cooldown is short enough though but essentially, if you’re playing for the absorbs, you can pretty much bet that you’re not going to get all the damage from it anyway. Funnily enough, a cripple on the Guardian sword would fix up a lot of the Zealot’s Defense misses.

So I would say that, in regard to damage, Warrior sword beats Guardian sword, albeit by only a small margin, I’m not a complete math freak though and I may be a little off. However, two of the three skills on Guardian sword can be unreliable anyway. Good luck getting Sword Wave to hit three targets three times reliably, Virtue of Justice is often on cooldown, erasing all those potential burns and we all know how Zealot’s Defense works (read: misses), whereas the Warrior’s sword skills have reliable damage in the normal melee arc, made only more reliable by the cripple they have and made more fun and flexible by the addition of a short cooldown combo finisher.

I love the teleport on Flashing Blade, don’t get me wrong. The blind is useful too, but this skill really needs this to be at least a leap finisher and it would be nice if it didn’t need a target but whatever. That would make sword FAR more interesting, flexible, fun and would at least make up for some of the piddly damage Flashing Blade does depending on the combo field. Really, it should just do more damage anyway. That’s really the only problem I have with it. It feels incomplete as it stands now.

(Had to make a second post as it said my reply was too long )

Anyway, sorry for another wall, I really don’t mind discussing this with everyone, it’s not like I’m mad at anyone for disagreeing with me by the way, just thought I’d make that clear. So don’t read this post in an angry voice!
The reason I keep talking about sword is that it just doesn’t seem as functional as other weapons we have, along with scepter (I think scepter is a little worse off to be honest). At the end of the day though, it’s not all about the amount of damage the weapon puts out but how well it plays if you ask me. Which, is what this whole thread is about, Guardians feel really clunky to play in regards to weapon skills and traits when compared to Warrior and other professions. Finishing combos is fun! We don’t get to do it enough!

Silver.8023:

(Had to make a second post as it said my reply was too long )

Anyway, sorry for another wall, I really don’t mind discussing this with everyone, it’s not like I’m mad at anyone for disagreeing with me by the way, just thought I’d make that clear. So don’t read this post in an angry voice!
The reason I keep talking about sword is that it just doesn’t seem as functional as other weapons we have, along with scepter (I think scepter is a little worse off to be honest). At the end of the day though, it’s not all about the amount of damage the weapon puts out but how well it plays if you ask me. Which, is what this whole thread is about, Guardians feel really clunky to play in regards to weapon skills and traits when compared to Warrior and other professions. Finishing combos is fun! We don’t get to do it enough!

Sums up my toughts nicely. It isn’t much about damage / hp stats, but about the tools we get to play with these (exception of scepter – low damage and low utility). The buffs we get from most of our seals are great, but it restrains us to a small space (I have seals traited to be a bit bigger, but it doesn’t help much in a dodge/run/dodge common day).

Also thanks for the numbers Silver, even though you can feel the effectiveness of a weapon by using it, it’s good to have the numbers to back up the thoughts.

You’re welcome, my numbers are not to be taken as an overall dps assessment of each weapon though, as all manner of things affect the melee portion of the damage, I was mostly focusing on getting the condition damage portion of the chains a little more transparent using no modifiers. Even then it only counts for Guardian if Justice is off cooldown.
Man, just saying condition damage from a Guardian perspective makes me feel jipped…

I still think that even if Warrior sword did less damage, I’d still like it more as it’s hella more fun to use and I find it way more useful anyway. I know what you mean about feeling the usefulness of a weapon. Sword feels so weak in PvE especially. It’s a real drag as it’s my favourite weapon to use in games.

I think if they want a strong single target weapon for Guardian, they should fix up scepter to facilitate that, I think it would be a great candidate with some good tweaks. As it stands, sword is really only acceptable damage against one target. Even then you’re pretty much just spamming 1. Boring. Especially when you could have finished multiple foes off in the same amount of time and had more fun doing it with other weapons. (Yes, I know the term ‘fun’ is subjective but you know what I mean)

Thief shortbow, now that’s a fun weapon!

See numbers aside I think we just have different play styles and thats what this is coming down to. I love 1h sword. Almost every spec I play now needs to include it, and it is more or less because I feel very comfortable with it and it really does not feel clunky to me at all. I seem to see more potential in it than you. (not saying thats a bad thing) Same goes for Scepter.

However I use scepter as a melee weapon first, and ranged weapon for when it needs to be, and honestly this DOES need to be fixed. The scepter is meant to be our sole ranged weapon and it fails pretty hard at that.

On the other hand I love Focus and torch and completely hate shield. It really just comes down to how we play our classes ourselves. Also just a bit of a background on me, My first character that I leveled was a warrior, which was kind of funny considering this was the first rpg that I had ever thought a warrior was fun. Got him up to level 54 and decided to test some different classes out too. And actually thought the Guardian was more fun and ended up switching to it.

Bakitten291:

See numbers aside I think we just have different play styles and thats what this is coming down to. I love 1h sword. Almost every spec I play now needs to include it, and it is more or less because I feel very comfortable with it and it really does not feel clunky to me at all. I seem to see more potential in it than you. (not saying thats a bad thing) Same goes for Scepter.

However I use scepter as a melee weapon first, and ranged weapon for when it needs to be, and honestly this DOES need to be fixed. The scepter is meant to be our sole ranged weapon and it fails pretty hard at that.

On the other hand I love Focus and torch and completely hate shield. It really just comes down to how we play our classes ourselves. Also just a bit of a background on me, My first character that I leveled was a warrior, which was kind of funny considering this was the first rpg that I had ever thought a warrior was fun. Got him up to level 54 and decided to test some different classes out too. And actually thought the Guardian was more fun and ended up switching to it.

There’s always different thoughts on weapon – it’s great that you got the hand on the 1h hand sword, I just couldn’t enjoy it. As for the shield, I would go with Focus or Torch if I just didn’t hate these side-arms for the fact that they aren’t shields. Our class symbol is a shield, yet Focus is surely the best defensive side-arm (swap the focus block with the shield bubble ? That’d be a start). While warrior’s shield is purely defensive (stun to interrupt, block if stun is on cd), Guardian’s is stranger. The prot buff doesn’t deal reliable damage nor has a good upkeep time. Only the bubble is half-decent.

I think sword only really shines for people who run crit builds and shield only really shines for people focused on team support, I quite like shield although I would like it to perform a little better somehow, not much room to work with though.

This isn’t a massive problem design wise if you ask me, as obviously, weapons would be good in some areas that others aren’t, although it does highlight what I said a while ago about how Guardians play when compared to Warriors. We get siphoned into using particular weapons for particular builds, with not a whole lot of options.
If a Warrior wants to do damage, they could use whatever weapon they want really, if a Warrior wants to focus on support, again, they can use whatever weapon they want really. Granted, they may not be as effective as Guardian at support, they certainly are quite competent at it, all the while, not having the interesting and effective weapon sets they possess compromised.
If I wanted to run a support build with Guardian that used a sword, I would most likely still have to spec some into crit just to take Empowering Might and even then, all I would be doing is tossing out might a bit just to proc Altruistic Healing, which would only be healing me anyway and it doesn’t offer anything like a symbol, which a large portion of our support comes from (unfortunately). I don’t want to spec crit, I quite like the Cleric’s gear. So essentially, unless I want to completely jip myself, I can’t really use a sword at all.

I think torch could be better really, it’s probably the least bad out of the weapons I’d consider bad. I mean, it has this massive blue flame that doesn’t even inflict burning?! Even the Elementalist’s flamethrower type move inflicts burning. I know ours removes conditions but I would imagine, in most cases, it would be used for the damage and any conditions removed would be a bonus. Some people claim it’s not worth using anyway as the auto attack does more damage, I would argue that it’s a far better AoE than sword’s auto attack any day.

But once again, what if I, for some weird reason, really wanted to use a sword+torch but wanted to focus more on team support like heals? I’d have to do it with no symbols and probably focus on shouts and take the broken Battle Presence. I’d most likely just get laughed at.
The irony is, in this case, a sword+shield (or any weapons) Warrior with shouts or banners support build would do a much better job. It goes the other way too, a Guardian damage build focusing on the mace or staff would seem strange too.

I know that’s a silly example but it does highlight a problem. I’m currently a little stuck where I’m at with Guardian, I’d love use sword and shield but I also love to run tough support builds and the sword really just doesn’t work at all with it, especially when I’m pulling huge groups of foes. I guess what I’m saying is, a few more options for each weapon type would be nice, perhaps in the form of traits, I dunno, I’d have to think about it.

Silver.8023:

snip

I do agree that sometimes we do get stuck using certain weapons with certain builds, however almost all classes are like that in a regard, since there are traits the go well with certain weapons. I do personally run high crit builds most of the time, so maybe that is why I am so partial to the sword.

As far as the torch goes I think it is a fantastic weapon, possibly one of the best for a raw damage offhand. the #4 torch throw does a bit less than our ZD when it crits, and also adds a 3 second( i think its 3 second) burn on the target. The #5, while I agree does do less single target damage than an auto attack, fills the role of a cone AoE with ALOT of hits. For food/traits that run on crits this skill is amazing in group combat when used correctly. As far as not applying burn it does in a sense as long as you have VoJ up, it should give 2 procs of it at least for a full hit on single target, even more for multi target. Also the skills are all very low cooldowns compared to our 2 other choices for offhands, and can be traited for even less.

I guess maybe I am more OK with our weapons filling certain niches in certain builds compared to being a bit more versatile as a warrior. I am fine with our hammer being a more CC based weapon, our Focus/mace being more defensive, and our Sword/Torch being mostly offensive.

1h sword for guardians is best used with virtue trait line. Procs aoe burn every 4 hits greatly increasing the dps if the weapon. Forget 3 people in a cone infront, you can aoe burn people every 2 seconds.

1h sword is actually a very good aoe weapon for guardian but not many people will go virtue traitline.

@silver

my sentiments exactly

exactly why i would rate a healer warrior/ele/engineer over a healer guardian

the mace and staff

the 2 weapon combo which convinces me that i shouldnt go full healer/support

I remember in spvp a guardian had me down on the ground. he had 25% health, i killed him by throwing rocks at him from the ground.

Guardians need a buff.

Yeah, Permeating Wrath is a pretty insane trait, it’s difficult to go 30 Virtues though.
I did notice that it actually makes ranged weapons not as effective at delivering long range burns, that’s the trade-off I guess. Bit of a drag there but hey, it’s not like our ranged weapons are ranged weapons.

Silver.8023:

Yeah, Permeating Wrath is a pretty insane trait, it’s difficult to go 30 Virtues though.
I did notice that it actually makes ranged weapons not as effective at delivering long range burns, that’s the trade-off I guess. Bit of a drag there but hey, it’s not like our ranged weapons are ranged weapons.

I have tried multiple times to get that trait into my build but have yet been able to do it. Just have to give up too many required things to get that deep into virtues. Unless of course you use healway. However it is pretty much useless as far as damage goes to go as a condition damage version of that spec. The burning just takes so long to work. And you lose a lot of the damage from your retaliation.

A few things,

If you want to say a guardian is bad, I do not think the guardian forums is the best place to complain.
, try using the Suggestions Forum

If you want advice on how you can be better, try considering some advice constantly given by well-known guardians and experienced guardians in many different areas.

If the advice you are receiving is something you’ve done before and it doesn’t work for you. Roll another class instead of complaining how much you dislike the guardian or think is underpowered in the Guardian Forums, try Suggestions if you really want something changed.

But bottom-line, if you are not willing to change and adapt to be a better guardian with the mechanics that exist today while future balancing issues are pending, then don’t play a guardian, and don’t complain here. Submit a ticket. It’s very annoying to read posters pretty much want us all to agree and see their point on how guardians are bad. That’s very unproductive.

Guardians almost do more for the team by being selfish and staying alive.
It’s easier to keep myself alive and if the rest of my team is smart, they’ll stick close and utilize my shouts/virtues/symbols. Otherwise, if I am alive, there’s atleast someone who can go pick up the dead off the floor (really helps in near-wipes).

TBH, I do have to agree ultimately. That while I feel like I have great ways of staying alive in PvE, the other warrior on my team has all of the same ways of staying alive…and then some. (banners…..sigh)

ArcTheFallen.7682:

A few things,

If you want to say a guardian is bad, I do not think the guardian forums is the best place to complain.
, try using the Suggestions Forum

If you want advice on how you can be better, try considering some advice constantly given by well-known guardians and experienced guardians in many different areas.

If the advice you are receiving is something you’ve done before and it doesn’t work for you. Roll another class instead of complaining how much you dislike the guardian or think is underpowered in the Guardian Forums, try Suggestions if you really want something changed.

But bottom-line, if you are not willing to change and adapt to be a better guardian with the mechanics that exist today while future balancing issues are pending, then don’t play a guardian, and don’t complain here. Submit a ticket. It’s very annoying to read posters pretty much want us all to agree and see their point on how guardians are bad. That’s very unproductive.

So essentially you’re saying, “Certain Guardian mechanics bug you? Don’t play Guardian!”, to which I say, “People discussing how Guardian could be improved bug you? Don’t read about it then!” Stop being so unproductive!
There are people, like myself, that want to see the Guardian profession become everything it could be! I love the idea of that profession much more than the others, there are just things here and there that I think require tweaking to bring them up to the level of fun and functionality that the other professions are at. I’m not just going to go, “Oh well, there are certain things I don’t like about my favourite profession, time to pick a new one!”. Have you never thought about your favourite profession and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if….” or, “I would love it if we could….”? That’s what we’re really doing here, we’re not going, “OMGz! Warriors are OP!”.

You mentioned “change and adapt” to existing mechanics. Changing and adapting is fine and I think a system where you can do that is good design but when something with one profession is partially broken especially when compared to other professions who are relatively fine, saying nothing about it and moving on isn’t going to fix anything. To which I would expect a response like, “Submit a ticket then!”, I’ve always thought tickets were for support and forums were for discussion. So I go to the forums. Am I wrong?
Realistically, as threads go, this one isn’t really a complaining thread anyway, those don’t last very long around here. People are talking about problems constructively and offering possible ideas that could fix them up and aside from that weird part where people were arguing about builds vs builds or the people who were replying to the then ambiguous thread title, the overall temperature of the discussion has been pretty relaxed really.

I don’t think it really matters if this thread were on the suggestions forums or the Guardian forums, they would have moved it by now it if bugged them and really, it is a 100% Guardian specific set of issues, what better place to go to than the sub-forum designed for talking specifically about Guardian? If this thread belongs in the Suggestions forum, so be it, let them move it but dude, you aren’t a moderator.