Guild Wars 2

the class that was suppose to be THE frontline character has now after 3 years, become possibly the worst melee class in the game.

try to melee vs a engie? certain death
try to melee vs a revanant? certain death
try to melee a ranger with a HoT pet? certain death
try to melee a necro? lolgoodjoke certain death

its time for the dev in charge of GUARDIAN to wake up and realize how much trouble the class actually is in in terms of pvp, after 3 years, no we are not “still in a good spot”. All the trap buffs or longbow buffs in the world cannot cover up the fact that the core class has fallen severely behind.

oh and Anet still refuses to give the class a passive speed boost trait because we’re “suppose” to stay in the thick of the action…lol, a guardian that jumps in the action to do anything other than a JI trap bomb combo nowadays is dead within 3 secs of popping RF and Shield of Courage.

Welcome to HoT power creep.

Well even before HOT core guardian had a large array of problems.

Between 35-45% of the core traits are never used by anyone in their right mind for anything.

Multiple types of utility skills are never worth using

Multiple weapons have multiple problems with their skills

Sadly I don’t think Anet is ever going to get around to fixing any of this for 2 reasons’

1: Karl the lead guardian dev cannot even keep track of what skills a guardian actually has (listen to some of the streams he was on, he mixes up guardian skills with other classes skills)

2: Anet is a pretty small company as far as major developers are concerned, so when it comes down to fixing a class or fixing numerous bugs etc… they will always choose the later because at the end of the day ppl can just use meditations/shouts or reroll.

No bunker no guard :p

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Well even before HOT core guardian had a large array of problems.

A good chuck of that came down to the awful PvP stat system. Guardians need vitality and toughness, but after the trait revamp, you couldn’t get that while having viable damage or support.

to be fair if u melee a tempest ur gonna die too they just have run in circles in their aoes while u have fun chasing them while dying
and warriors can rip ya a good one, if they bait u on cd
and melee
only thing it in the universe that you have a solid chance is maybe thieves

one of the problem with guard is that if u run cleanse, ya lose damage in form of traps or ya lose JI if ya run lyssa runes u cant have travler runes for speed= u cant chase when need to

its halirous how we have so many light fields but we cant remove condi on our selves with it

why do i even mention running cleanse? cause our health aint exactly ment to take DOT

i met a DH in dueling arena and he just runs all traps +ji and be a nuclear bomb, i think i’mma take his word for it soon, as much as i hate to play my guard this way

No reason to play Guardian in spvp anymore. Traps are only strong againt knobs and baddies. Once shield of courage is gone Guardian one of the easiest kills in the game. All non DH builds are even weaker. The whole idea was lame from the start anyway a tank class built around Longbow and Traps. Seriously did someone’s ten year old son come up with the idea?

One thing I’ve been pondering lately…

…there are 9 classes in GW2. If all things were ‘properly balanced’ and equal then that should mean each class should win a pvp battle roughly 1/ 9 8 of the time…

…which means that many of those playing PvP across the board will feel their class incredibly underpowered and imbalanced because they lose significantly more often than win. And, many of those people will cry for nerfs or buffs according to their personal tastes….

…which those kinds of cries are happening seemingly in most/every class subsection.

Not saying it’s true, but some food for thought…

…and I’m sure I’m going to be schooled about how my math is wrong. /flameshield

~EW

edit: thinking about this further, I guess I’m looking at it from a All v All standpoint (there was another mistake there with the 9 instead of 8 above, thanks KC for pointing that out). And, that’s obviously not how the matches are fought. Ah well… an all-out fight between all the classes at once would be fun to watch!

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

One thing I’ve been pondering lately…

…there are 9 classes in GW2. If all things were ‘properly balanced’ and equal then that should mean each class should win a pvp battle roughly 1/9 of the time…

…which means that many of those playing PvP across the board will feel their class incredibly underpowered and imbalanced because they lose significantly more often than win. And, many of those people will cry for nerfs or buffs according to their personal tastes….

…which those kinds of cries are happening seemingly in most/every class subsection.

Not saying it’s true, but some food for thought…

…and I’m sure I’m going to be schooled about how my math is wrong. /flameshield

~EW

Cut it with the excess ellipses. You don’t get a flameshield, that was one of the worst attempts at math I’ve ever seen.

There are 9 classes, so for a given class there should be 4 favorable matchups, and 4 unfavorable matchups in a scenario of pure rock/paper/scissors counters (ignoring the complexity inherent to build diversity).

King Cephalopod.7942:

Cut it with the excess ellipses. You don’t get a flameshield, that was one of the worst attempts at math I’ve ever seen.

There are 9 classes, so for a given class there should be 4 favorable matchups, and 4 unfavorable matchups in a scenario of pure rock/paper/scissors counters (ignoring the complexity inherent to build diversity).

Those are my pondering periods.

~EW

edit: and who divvies out the flameshields? ’Cause I want to appeal. Or, rematch. Or, whatever.

Exedore.6320:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Well even before HOT core guardian had a large array of problems.

A good chuck of that came down to the awful PvP stat system. Guardians need vitality and toughness, but after the trait revamp, you couldn’t get that while having viable damage or support.

True higher base health does help.

Other things that help are

1: very high protection uptime

2: very high regeneration up time (especially when you can disengage)
(ele has permanent of both 1 & 2, engi can obtain 2 easily)

3: More consistent if smaller heals (on water attunement traits and skills, as well as the bunker down trait)

4: Reflects

5: (especially true in the case of ele) More condition cleanses then the guardian could ever hope to have.

Whats more in the case of many of these things they can get them without having to use utility slots for them & or they come from the tool belt.

This means that you can spec somewhat defensively, still use an offensive amulet yet survive incredibly well while doing good damage.

@Ragnar the Rock

You just described scrapper in a nut shell!

No wonder they can survive in melee range for so long. rolls eyes Balance

Maybe my glasses have never been rose coloured but I don’t really recall a time when Guardians were ever considered top tier in PVP. To me, OP is simply describing instances (in a biased way) that I would call balanced, which is what Guardian has always been.

Hey they gave us smite condition to cure 2 conditions(guess they think that will help vs revenant, necro, druid)….thats called balance. If someone is OP just buff guardian trait for falling dmg

I don’t even like playing my guardian in PvE anymore. I can just log in with my reaper, roll my face over the keyboard, and easily defeat content that makes my guardian sweat. I don’t think it’s a case of the reaper being too strong either.

Do dragon hunter, camp a point and no one will stop you unless they have massive condi damage. DH is cancer.

Mintyfreshsmell.1568:

Do dragon hunter, camp a point and no one will stop you unless they have massive condi damage. DH is cancer.

This is only the case against people who have bound dodge to ‘Alt F4’.

Mintyfreshsmell.1568:

Do dragon hunter, camp a point and no one will stop you unless they have massive condi damage. DH is cancer.

revanant, staff 5, all traps cleared, proceed to swap to sword and auto attack the guardian to death

Obtena.7952:

Maybe my glasses have never been rose coloured but I don’t really recall a time when Guardians were ever considered top tier in PVP.

The two first years. First, Guardians were brokenly op in the beta, with the same base HP as Warriors and capable to tank vs 2-3 for minutes in the point. Then, after the nerfs and the release, Guardians dominated as bunker holders. For the first two years the team with Tage as Guardian was basically intended to win.

Guardians were competitive in high level PvP for at least two years, then viable but weak for about half year and now they are in a unbreakable streak of garbage tier for about five months, with another two or three months of crapiness assured.

Well, for my perspective, dominating as a bunker holder does not make the class a top tier PVP class. Try to do anything else with it and it was quite the opposite case for most of the last 3 years.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Guardians have benefited from many changes in PVP over the history of GW2 but I think the OP is exaggerating a little; Guardians haven’t fallen as far from whatever level they have been as the OP would like to think.

Classes that Annihilates DH

• Druid Only way to beat a druid is to go all out at start, unrelentingly bursting him down fast; continuing the burst pressure. If we can’t down him in 15-20s then he’ll out sustain us there after and obliterate us. No good DH can effectively kill a good Druid, but it could happen if he’s careless.
• Engi DH can’t beat a good engi unfortunately. The Engi would have to make several mistakes while the DH has to play well and preplace traps for him to trigger first. We should be able to sustain in time for a +1

• Revs Same as the Engi, except not as forgiving. You’ll likely never beat a good rev unless you run burn guard (even then, good revs would know how to counter burn guard"

• Tempest – Their Reflect build with Sage amulet can counter DH but that build is not viable in tpvp (imo) as oppose to their tpvp meta builds. Any other build, we’ll be able to sustain against an Ele for days, essentially making it a draw.

50/50
Mesmers
Thieves
Necros – no clue why people have a hard time with them. Only met 1 hard-to-beat necro and he was an “off meta” condi build.

Ez mode
Warriors

Realistically
Revs, Scrap & Druid are the only classes that gives us issues. Everyone else are usually easy to beat.
(Only traps I use are Purification and ToF)

The one thing I like about DH is how it breaks the bull**** range restriction placed upon guardians.

Obtena.7952:

Well, for my perspective, dominating as a bunker holder does not make the class a top tier PVP class.

So being the best bunker in game and one of the best team support classes for two years in a game in which the outcome of the matches are determined by the team which controls the points is not being top tier pvp, uh?

Well, that’s a good starting point for people to value how relevant your opinion about PvP in general and Guardians in particular are.

guardians were the top bunker class during a time when conditions and CCs weren’t nearly as close to spammable and rampant as it is now, at no point during the game’s history have guardians been close to the best bruiser/fighter class or even near the top of the bruiser/fighter list.

Darknicrofia.2604:

guardians were the top bunker class during a time when conditions and CCs weren’t nearly as close to spammable and rampant as it is now, at no point during the game’s history have guardians been close to the best bruiser/fighter class or even near the top of the bruiser/fighter list.

You’re right we’ve been no where near the “bruiser” class. Maybe back during the Hammer Medi builds but we were hardly up there compared to Ele/Engi/War.

Honestly, we might be a viable 5th assuming Rev/Engi/Druid don’t counter us on point. If we run with a Mesmer then we’ll be fine in any skirmish 2v2+ fight. As for 1v1 fights, we can last long enougj for that +1 rotation.

I still have a lot of fun and win more then I lose. And I do carry my team half of those wins – obviously.

Darknicrofia.2604:

guardians were the top bunker class during a time when conditions and CCs weren’t nearly as close to spammable and rampant as it is now, at no point during the game’s history have guardians been close to the best bruiser/fighter class or even near the top of the bruiser/fighter list.

For a long time after the release of the game “bruisers” didn’t exist, due the concept of bruiser demands being able to sustain damage while slowly erasing the HP of your oponent. “Bruisers” weren’t able to do enough damage to Guardian bunker at that time, so bunker builds as Altruistic Healing Guardian were at the very top of the food chain in the pro PvP scene. Saying that Guardians never were top tier is just a false statement.

King Cephalopod.7942:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

One thing I’ve been pondering lately…

…there are 9 classes in GW2. If all things were ‘properly balanced’ and equal then that should mean each class should win a pvp battle roughly 1/9 of the time…

…which means that many of those playing PvP across the board will feel their class incredibly underpowered and imbalanced because they lose significantly more often than win. And, many of those people will cry for nerfs or buffs according to their personal tastes….

…which those kinds of cries are happening seemingly in most/every class subsection.

Not saying it’s true, but some food for thought…

…and I’m sure I’m going to be schooled about how my math is wrong. /flameshield

~EW

Cut it with the excess ellipses. You don’t get a flameshield, that was one of the worst attempts at math I’ve ever seen.

There are 9 classes, so for a given class there should be 4 favorable matchups, and 4 unfavorable matchups in a scenario of pure rock/paper/scissors counters (ignoring the complexity inherent to build diversity).

His math may be weird but the idea is sound. No one should be able to beat everyone else. it should be about 50/50 if everything is well balanced.

Quarktastic.1027:

I don’t even like playing my guardian in PvE anymore. I can just log in with my reaper, roll my face over the keyboard, and easily defeat content that makes my guardian sweat. I don’t think it’s a case of the reaper being too strong either.

If you can faceroll it, the class is too strong. You should always have to pay attention to what you are doing, and there should always be at least a small risk of death.

Buran.3796:

Darknicrofia.2604:

guardians were the top bunker class during a time when conditions and CCs weren’t nearly as close to spammable and rampant as it is now, at no point during the game’s history have guardians been close to the best bruiser/fighter class or even near the top of the bruiser/fighter list.

For a long time after the release of the game “bruisers” didn’t exist, due the concept of bruiser demands being able to sustain damage while slowly erasing the HP of your oponent. “Bruisers” weren’t able to do enough damage to Guardian bunker at that time, so bunker builds as Altruistic Healing Guardian were at the very top of the food chain in the pro PvP scene. Saying that Guardians never were top tier is just a false statement.

True altruistic healing guardian has the possibility of being the best bunker in game.

However it has always had 3 major problems

1: It requires you be nearby at the very least 1 if not more allies or altruistic healing sucks.

2: It’s damage output was laughably low because it had to go for so much defensive wise.

3: It lacked any CC.

This is why allot of high end teams did not want to use it as it could not help CC, required allies to be nearby to be effective & was not really any help to spike down enemies.
(the ones that did use AH guard basically built the team around it and suffered for it more often then not)

This in turn ended up making elementalists much more in favor due to them having all the same strengths + CC, several different conditions & the power of mobility which allows for rotation & disengage.

Later with the rise of bruisers it was not wanted at all because why play something lacking that much when a bruiser is fairly tanky & brings so many other things.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

True altruistic healing guardian has the possibility of being the best bunker in game.

However it has always had 3 major problems

1: It requires you be nearby at the very least 1 if not more allies or altruistic healing sucks.

2: It’s damage output was laughably low because it had to go for so much defensive wise.

3: It lacked any CC.

This is why allot of high end teams did not want to use it as it could not help CC, required allies to be nearby to be effective & was not really any help to spike down enemies.
(the ones that did use AH guard basically built the team around it and suffered for it more often then not)

My point stands: before the rise of Abjured the european teams dominated the PvP scene and from that lanscape arguably Orange Logo with Tage as a Guardian (playing with holder builds most of the time) was the top team for a while.

No one negates that damage and cc was lower at the time and that Bunker Guardian did need team support (as currently hapens with Reapers, which are powerful yet vulnerable), but in high end PvP gameplay Guardians were meta and high skilled Guardians as Tage did bring chanpionships to their teams. Obtena saying “Guardians never were top tier in PvP” is a non sense.

let’s put it this way, guardians have never been close to being the most efficient damage dealers (be it spike damage or sustained DPS) and have gotten even worse at dealing damage since HoT (compared to the rest of the meta)

but now its bunkering abilities have fallen to be on par with its absolutely horrid offensive abilities too (full kitten JI trap bomb combo once every 60 secs notwithstanding)

Darknicrofia.2604:

let’s put it this way, guardians have never been close to being the most efficient damage dealers (be it spike damage or sustained DPS) and have gotten even worse at dealing damage since HoT (compared to the rest of the meta)

but now its bunkering abilities have fallen to be on par with its absolutely horrid offensive abilities too (full kitten JI trap bomb combo once every 60 secs notwithstanding)

But that is what gw2 turned out to be, be clever when and how to spam to win, if not prepare to get “instadaeth” due other player spam.

Buran.3796:

Obtena.7952:

Well, for my perspective, dominating as a bunker holder does not make the class a top tier PVP class.

So being the best bunker in game and one of the best team support classes for two years in a game in which the outcome of the matches are determined by the team which controls the points is not being top tier pvp, uh?

Well, that’s a good starting point for people to value how relevant your opinion about PvP in general and Guardians in particular are.

I was thinking the same thing about your opinion when you said how a class is top tier in PVP because it does exactly ONE thing really good.

That didn’t mean this class was ever top tier; it means it was pigeonholed to a single role because it’s the only thing it could do well. It also meant that it was reliant on a very specific way to win PVP games and had no flexibility to adapt to other strategies. Yeah, top tier indeed. GG.

“Hey guys, they are beating our brains out”
“Oh don’t worry, I will just stand here and guard point … oh and if you want amazing support goodness, just come camp point with me”

Awesome.

In fact, I think that what you see happening in game is exactly why Guardians were never top tier in PVP … the meta shifts a bit and now that one thing we did well, we don’t do so well anymore. Further to that, since we don’t do anything else really well, now you see people generally thinking Guardians are that great.

So no, it was never top tier … it simply fit the meta really well that allowed it to do one thing really well.

Darknicrofia.2604:

let’s put it this way, guardians have never been close to being the most efficient damage dealers (be it spike damage or sustained DPS) and have gotten even worse at dealing damage since HoT (compared to the rest of the meta)

The thing is that you don’t need to do damage to win matches. Damage is good for a team deathmatch but GW2’s PvP moves around Conquest, a game mode in which wins are provided mostly due point control.

So, if you are able to stay in two of the three control points over most of the time, and you can sustain the damage and cc without losing the point, you can do 0 damage and still being the most important and crucial class in the game. And for a while, Guardians were almost mandatory in Conquest. Maybe they were bad as decappers, or in 1 vs 1 duels or they weren’t good enough in n vs n (they were), but at least they were meta in a key role: holders (by the way: which I hate).

Obviously, that’s not longer true. Currently, they excell at nothing but one shooting people which doesn’t known how to play. So, moving back to the title of this thread, YES, Guardians USED to be very good in PvP, and NOW they AREN’T. They’ve fallen a lot.

Obtena.7952:

Buran.3796:

Obtena.7952:

Well, for my perspective, dominating as a bunker holder does not make the class a top tier PVP class.

So being the best bunker in game and one of the best team support classes for two years in a game in which the outcome of the matches are determined by the team which controls the points is not being top tier pvp, uh?

Well, that’s a good starting point for people to value how relevant your opinion about PvP in general and Guardians in particular are.

I was thinking the same thing about your opinion when you said how a class is top tier in PVP because it does exactly ONE thing really good.

That didn’t mean this class was ever top tier; it means it was pigeonholed to a single role because it’s the only thing it could do well. It also meant that it was reliant on a very specific way to win PVP games and had no flexibility to adapt to other strategies. Yeah, top tier indeed. GG.

“Hey guys, they are beating our brains out”
“Oh don’t worry, I will just stand here and guard point … oh and if you want amazing support goodness, just come camp point with me”

Awesome.

In fact, I think that what you see happening in game is exactly why Guardians were never top tier in PVP … the meta shifts a bit and now that one thing we did well, we don’t do so well anymore. Further to that, since we don’t do anything else really well, now you see people generally thinking Guardians are that great.

So no, it was never top tier … it simply fit the meta really well that allowed it to do one thing really well.

The bolded points highlighted defines Cele Ele prepatch. It was the only build that worked for the class and the Ele role was very specific in conquest. Same goes for Thieve’s +1 and Decap role and Cele Warrior’s support-then-burst opportunities. You’re right about these prepatch Cele classes able to fill multiple roles, the point is, it was still the 1 and only viable build for them.

Guardian is more viable now than Power Hamguard back when Tage was in tournaments. I say this because, unlike the Cele Ele/War/Engi in old patch, certain classes like Rev and Necro can very well be countered & outplayed by Mesmer & Guardian, respectively. (though I disagree with unbalances in 1v1s) If the class stacking rule was never added then we (along with other classes) would be screwed.

For the record… Traps + JI + Trueshot is a hit-or-miss combo that should only be tried in SoloQ or certain scenario situations where you absolutely know it’ll hit. And full trap DH simply doesn’t work in higher tier pvp. Guardians who run those will have issues pass Ruby (or during ruby for that matter).

we can snipe out necros for a bit if its say foefire mid, but the degree in which we get hilariously countered by the presence of just 1 ele or 2 scrappers makes guardians pretty pointless in team vs team matches (where there will always be an ele)

bearshaman.3421:

Quarktastic.1027:

I don’t even like playing my guardian in PvE anymore. I can just log in with my reaper, roll my face over the keyboard, and easily defeat content that makes my guardian sweat. I don’t think it’s a case of the reaper being too strong either.

If you can faceroll it, the class is too strong. You should always have to pay attention to what you are doing, and there should always be at least a small risk of death.

Too strong or not, the reaper has become my favorite spec without a doubt. When I want to be challenged, I play my guardian or ranger. When I want to sleep through the DS meta for epic lootz, I play my reaper.