So I really don’t know anything about the guardian, I’m trying to decide between a guardian or warrior to play for an alt, I like to do damage, but I also like having unique utility skills, like the one that the guardian make that enemies can’t cross, that seems kitten.
How is the guardians damage? say a guardian that is specced for damage.
And also if any of you have played other classes, where would you say the guardians damage ranks against the other classes? Is it on the low end?
Speccing a guardian for pure damage is a waste of time. That’s not to say it can’t be done, it can. It just negates your greatest strengths as a support character; guardian brings a ton of utility to the table, and this shouldn’t be ignored.
You want pure damage and nothing else, roll a warrior and use signets.
Guard can be built for damage, and from my experience (level 66) I can say it does well enough to satisfy. I will agree though, that in dungeons, I find myself paying less attention to how much damage I’m doing, and more attention to the more unique things I can bring. Basically, damage is not as important (we are not bad at it, it just isn’t the focus) as the things you do well. For example, my friends and I did Ascalonian Catacombs, and during the Lovers fight, I found it more useful to run x/shield and Hammer and focus on keeping the two bosses apart, rather than being the guy helping kill stuff faster.
I think in the end the real beauty of the guardian lies in it’s ability to bring just about anything to the table, and if you can make good use of a jack of all trades profession, the prof. is great for you.
Guard can be built for damage, and from my experience (level 66) I can say it does well enough to satisfy. I will agree though, that in dungeons, I find myself paying less attention to how much damage I’m doing, and more attention to the more unique things I can bring. Basically, damage is not as important (we are not bad at it, it just isn’t the focus) as the things you do well. For example, my friends and I did Ascalonian Catacombs, and during the Lovers fight, I found it more useful to run x/shield and Hammer and focus on keeping the two bosses apart, rather than being the guy helping kill stuff faster.
I think in the end the real beauty of the guardian lies in it’s ability to bring just about anything to the table, and if you can make good use of a jack of all trades profession, the prof. is great for you.
Excellent thank you for your time and the answer.
I’m not planning on speccing a guard for full damage, I like supporting my buddies and having options to bring to the table (always usually played a healer or tank in other games)
I just also want to have the damage to be able to kill things in pvp, is the damage against players good as well?
Guardians can do great damage, and I don’t see where the myth that they can’t comes from.
They can’t do _burst_damage properly. Sustained damage is no problem at all in the right build.
Hammer/Greatsword switching deal tons of damage. Hammer #1 is the best damage chain in the game.
Guardians can do great damage, and I don’t see where the myth that they can’t comes from.
They can’t do _burst_damage properly. Sustained damage is no problem at all in the right build.
We are also capable of doing burst damage. My whirl of wrath in PvE/WvW crit for 7-11k with good positioning.
I’m not planning on speccing a guard for full damage, I like supporting my buddies and having options to bring to the table (always usually played a healer or tank in other games)
You can do anything with any profession. Even if they say a Guardian’s strength lies in support, nothing prevents you to be a full egoistical damage dealer. I’d even guess that they’re equivalent to all other professions.
I just also want to have the damage to be able to kill things in pvp, is the damage against players good as well?
Yes they are. You can also have a different build for PvP, so even if you want a more support type for PvE you can be full DpS on PvP, though playing a glass cannon build isn’t exactly the best thing for PvP in my opinion…
For guardian, no matter what you do, you will support others in some form or another. It’s stapled to the class.
Virtues are about the only thing that I use that support other players and if someone runs into my staff #3 ability to get the sprint. That is all the support I have as a DPS Guardian.
Back to the original post:
Guardians can do great damage. Speaking from experience on my level 80 guardian. I have ran explorable mode dungeons and tons of WvW. Im able to 1v1 someone down pretty quickly and efficiently. However there is a set back. Having more than one person on you at a time which is very often in WvW you tend to take a lot of damage and you have a pretty small health pool compared to other classes.
The weapon sets I find to the the most damage are the greatsword and the sword/torch combo. That is all out damage. The Hammer offers nice utility though and does good damage though I feel it doesn’t have the mobility that I would like it to have, It seems to lack on the gap closers for me.
Right now, I use the staff in my offhand to stop people with the number 5 ability and the number 3 ability as my sprint to get around. Other than that I just roll around with a greatsword and try to do as much damage as possible. While the damage they do isnt as bursty as the warriors “Hundred Blades” it is still very good.
Greatsword’s Symbol of Wrath gives retaliation then combines with Whirl of Wrath for cleansing bolts. Hammer gives protection, and its blast finisher provides retaliation. If you’re using sword or scepter, you have to pair it with either shield or focus (focus gives regen and shield gives protection/group heal). Heck, even out giving out light fields is supporting since other classes can utilize it.
A guardian can be specced for both heavy support and heavy damage at the same time.
This goes for both spvp and pve.
I maintanked (yeah you read it correctly, i maintanked, aggro for minutes is maintanking to me) some bosses in explorermode with my exotic berserker guardian. Almost 60% critrating, 45% crit damage and using three shouts as utility. Spewing out boons from my hammer and regen form 1h/focus, all this with just 14k health.
You can almost stand toe to toe with champions and you never need have to dodge a veteran.
So yes you can use dpsbuilds and still support your team with boons and cc at the same time.
If that dps is on par with other profession? Frankly i dont know but as long as i can do it with shouts, boons/conditions from weapons and virtues then i think i also solve my supportive duties.
Then read my reply. Because remember, PvE is different from PvP.
Not to be harsh but even though that table is correct, based ion the criteria set up in the test, it has no connection to reality what so ever since traits isnt included. Weapons are effected in different ways from traits, for instance comparing singletarget weapons with aoeweapons is misleading.
The fact is that the weapon you score seconds lowest in that test is actually the one thats number two on the dps list.
So by all means, post your testing but please dont crosspost them if they arent conclusive, which they arent.
When i first roled a Guardian, i made the mistake of investing in vitality. From my experience ( And this is just my opinion) it is better to invest in Toughness.
I prefer playing with a greatsword and sword/shield and over the course of time i changed my role more into somebody who brings several things to the table instead of being the classic tank or dps guardian. So i think you need to ask yourself which style you want to play and build your character up with that in mind.
Hammer/Greatsword switching deal tons of damage. Hammer #1 is the best damage chain in the game.
Guardians can do great damage, and I don’t see where the myth that they can’t comes from.
They can’t do _burst_damage properly. Sustained damage is no problem at all in the right build.
We are also capable of doing burst damage. My whirl of wrath in PvE/WvW crit for 7-11k with good positioning.
The downside in PvP with Hammer is the same as with mace. Your 1 takes too long to actually take effect. In pve it isn’t a problem because most of the time the enemies will stand still for it. In PvP it’s much more chaotic, so don’t expect to hit with it too often unless you catch them in some cc.
Scepter, Staff, and GS/Sword are going to be your best bets for pvp.
Maybe my guardian is just too low level (mid 60s) but so far I’ve found his damage to be far below my warrior. My warrior also has much more survival. Sure he doesn’t get the regen of 40 some odd health per sec like my guardian, but consider at the same level his crit was mid 80s with double the health.
Sorry to say this but if you want good damage, with good survival at the same time with much better build varieties go warrior. Not saying this in hopes of getting them nerfed, I hope anet tries to bring other classes inline with warriors/thieves.
The 19800 was on the champion during Temple of Grenth event. I also crit some poor soul in WvW for 11k. My lowest is like 4k with minimal crit and most of the projectiles miss. It has to do a lot with positioning and the luck for crits (well, it helps to have 56% chance). I made a post about whirling wrath. You can click on my name and search for it.
Guardian’s damage is fine. Not very bursty, but still really okay. Support stats like healing power and toughness scale horribly at the moment, so don’t bother with that. (tried it, full best in slot)
The great thing about guardians is that you can build one offensively, and still have alot of support utility.
All full dmg/high dmg specs for the guardian are pretty high risk but mediocare reward( high risk becaus you loose a lot support power and with our already low Hp pool it can back fire pretty fast).
All are sub par if you compare them to other melee dps ( besides the necro and mesmer).
Also forget the word burst. I am happy to crit for 1,5k with a 2h weapon.
I can easily crit 3k with gs’s auto attacks, are you even level 80?
Building entirely full dmg w/o any defense is ofcourse very high risk. As dps it’s best imo to always build some vitality.
But like I said in a previous post. Dps guardian’s can bring nearly the same utility to the battlefield as support orientated guardians.
Guardians can definitely be built to destroy people in pvp. You may not burst someone down in 2 seconds, but you also don’t have to rely on some gimmicky haste+100b sequence to kill people. The great thing is there are so many builds that you can successfully use also.
It’s easy to make perma-retaliation builds that absolutely punish anyone that uses fast attacks and will melt them quickly. You can also keep burning up on people in many different ways. Add those two types of damage to your other active weapon attacks and the damage really adds up quickly. I personally either roll with a greatsword + scepter/focus setup (focusing on retaliation) or sword/focus + scepter/shield focusing on 1h-strength and crit damage.
I personally think guardians are way more dangerous than warriors in pvp.
SoR – Nethernoz (Necro), Zealot of Pain (Guardian), William The Butcher (Ranger)
@shiz I ran both a full dmg build and doing a full supporty build atm and no the support is now where near to each other. I give perma might and prot to my team and cleans all there condtions or give them a other buff that makes them stay alive and deal dmg.
I also spamm my F1 on Cd to give them the boost. It adds a lof of power to the group at the cost of your own.
Is one better then the other. I am not really sure yet.
Both build have there place. But like Kita said the biggest part of the DPS guardians support is perma ret. While (my) support guardian focuses on prot and and buffing up the team.
@kidbs
That is the whole problem we tear people apart in PvP because we got more heals and ways to stop dmg then anyone else in a 1v1. Becaus of that you need to keep the dmg and Hp etc. of the guardian low not make him Op there. How ever in PvE content like dungones 1v1 does not happen unless you want to hall 1v1 you group vs the boss and most bosse atm only have a big HP pool and not much more ( aside from Ac the Ranger boss in Explora mode is the prim example how bosses should be). Also some doe either telegraph ther moves so little or fast that you can’t like hit prot just befor the mage gets hit(well you can but try to do it with all that light effect on the boss he is just a glowing thing).
The 19800 was on the champion during Temple of Grenth event. I also crit some poor soul in WvW for 11k. My lowest is like 4k with minimal crit and most of the projectiles miss. It has to do a lot with positioning and the luck for crits (well, it helps to have 56% chance). I made a post about whirling wrath. You can click on my name and search for it.
Are you talking about cummulative damage of the whirlwind or a single blow?
Guardians do not pack the heavy burst as seen on Warriors or Thieves. They do however, have incredibly high sustain and their damage isn’t terrible even if you build and go for supportive traits too.
Are you talking about cummulative damage of the whirlwind or a single blow?
Yes, the cumulative damage (the number show at the end of a whirl).
Cumulative damage then it’s quite normal to reach 12k. I think i even got a higher dmg output fighting Jormag then normal mobs, guess all projectiles hit since he’s so big.
