Guild Wars 2

I’m looking for a new main, and I’m deciding between a Guardian, a Warrior, and a Mesmer.

I’m currently leaning towards Guardian heavily, seems like a good class and it would go well with my Charr.

Convince me.

The build variations are tremendous and the value in team is high. The versatility is good, though some drawbacks of the profession hold some people back in WvW.

This class can support and be extremely offensive at the same time. It has a low hp pool but thats somewhat a godsend due to the fact you can heal pretty well back up to full at times while dishing out damage and mitigating damage or avoiding it all together with blocks and blinds which we have a lot of. Not to mention with some weapons and skills we have protection on for a long time (hammer, Save Yourselves utility skill, inspired virtues) so taking damage with low health isnt to much of a big deal unless you are dealing with super burst focus fire stuff.

In WvW our support and group importance is second to nun with our shouts and light combo fields for condition removal and blast finishers for area might and retaliation and regen with traits to whole party we can bring alot to the table.

In PvE we can support our allies with boons to keep them going and dish out alot of damage and heal ourselves all at once pretty simply and you will always have a place there.
For a more a lesser note lets put it this way. mesmers have clones and teleports we have spirit weapons and teleports, warriors have heavy armor and high burst while we have heavy armor and great sustained damage so we wont have to worry about damage drop off after a burst attack. WE DO NOT BURST LIKE MESMERS AND WARRIORS….. i put that in caps as a note we can do burst damage and its been shown and proven to be great burst but we cant drop a guy for 17k damage with our greatsword its just not going to happen.

All in all this class is a jack of all trades so picking up guardian you wont be making a mistake unless you like to be at ranged then idk maybe you might want to wait for the patch to see if they gave us something in the range department otherwise I think one of the best classes in the game. =]

Depends on what you want to do really. If you want to do nothing but damage or have kitten amounts of CC, warrior or mesmer is better.

Yeah depends on what you prefer. I made a guardian because I’m usually playing a supportive role in almost all games I play, not only MMOs, but RTS and FPS as well. Guardian can support your team whether it be in a dungeon or in WvW, and they can also do a decent amount of damage. Supportive boons guardian offers are mostly to improve fighting and keep the team alive longer. Although worth noting is that a lot of people don’t always realize that they’re getting boons from a guardian near them, and those people usually hate on guards lol

This post is coming from a player in full exotics including all possible Guardian weapon sets at Destroyer level:

Play a Guardian.

You can still do a formidable amount of damage (more sustained than burst but that IS possible and horrifying if you are traited for it with Sword + Focus / GS), or you can do a Hammer run and Banish (knock people off of cliffs hell yea) and shut down runners.

You can ALWAYS support with your Virtues, and if you trait for AH and the first in Virtues you can produce a LOT of group healing while having a long life in mid-combat.

Pure DPS is possible if you want to run full Zerker gear, Pure meatshield bunker is possible with full Valkyrie gear, hybrid DPS with limited support is possible with Sword and GS, hybrid support with limited DPS is possible with Hammer and valkyrie gear.. et cetera..

You can define how you play the Guardian, really. It isn’t as OMG <CLASS> RUN as other classes but if you’re built the right way 1v1 people will run from you or wish they had.

Only downside is ranged but with GS leap, Hammer jump, Sword flash, Judges Intervention, Save Yourselves, Retreat.. blah blah blah.. You get the idea. You can close the gap, keep them IN range, and pound them down. All while healing yourself and allies.

Not sure what you’re looking to be able to do with whichever character you choose, but maybe it’ll help to check out some videos. I’ve personally got a channel full of them. :>

My YouTube channel.

While I very much enjoy my Guardian, I often feel like I’d do better as a Warrior. This is probably a “grass is greener” situation, tho.

Svarty.8019:

While I very much enjoy my Guardian, I often feel like I’d do better as a Warrior. This is probably a “grass is greener” situation, tho.

You are not alone, i think that a lot of us think that way, sadly. (me included OFC).

But we are here just for help devs with our class.

Obtena.7952:

The build variations are tremendous and the value in team is high. The versatility is good, though some drawbacks of the profession hold some people back in WvW.

LOL @ build variation. 0/x/30/20/5 doesn’t leave much flexibility. Sure, you can do other builds and still be ok but that’s because Guardian is such a stupid strong class that you can hardly fail unless you try. That doesn’t mean the other builds are good.

Svarty.8019:

While I very much enjoy my Guardian, I often feel like I’d do better as a Warrior. This is probably a “grass is greener” situation, tho.

I like my Warrior slightly better. The best thing about Warrior is the free 500 Vitality and not being tempted into any sort of psuedo-healing build.

Metaphysicist.9427:

You can ALWAYS support with your Virtues, and if you trait for AH and the first in Virtues you can produce a LOT of group healing while having a long life in mid-combat.

5s of regen every 60 seconds isn’t a lot.

The Guardian is currently a profession where, if you happen to like the current playstyles it caters to, you’ll absolutely love it and see no problems. If you don’t want to settle for tank/support with 0/0/30/20/20 variants, then you’ll become frustrated and see all of the flaws, because you’ll look deeper than an AH/30-Valor support/bunker build.

The Warrior has the same problem. If you’re not into burst and dedicated to damage, then you’ll become frustrated.

This is why you’ll see people in both who think Warrior/Guardians are nearly perfect and are must play classes. This is because the majority of Warriors played them for the massive damage and the majority of Guardians played them for the tankiness and the support they’re used to from other games.

I play Mesmer as main, Im also lvling a guardian now for the lols.
I tried warrior but it felt boring.
I really like mesmer in dungeons like Arah, 100k-200k critts with feedback + 100% critt dmg.

If you think all a guardian can do with a 30 valour and honour build is tank and support then you are not understanding the class.

You can switch from tank/support/dps all within the same 2 traitlines. Guardians are the most versatile of all classes. This is why they seem so OP because thry are good in any situation. As designed. Jack of all trades, master of none. They are second best at everything but does not have to sacrifice a lot to do it.

This is the true face of a Guardian. You are only as limited as you allow yourself to be.

On another note, we are the worst at range… doesnt quite fit with guardian design. Pleasefix. Guardian+long bow please

I would like to play my Guardian with a Greatsword in all kind of PvE content. What kind of build and stats should I aim for?

Example: 2000 power, 30% critt chance, how much defensive stats and so on.

Traits? Stats to aim for?

Thanks!

Yes. They are really high dps and can take a hit or two more than other classes.

the only thing that guardian need to be addressed is the lack of:
Mobility\range\snare
and the funny thing is that to be perfect, we need only ONE of this.

I would recommend warrior over guardian.
IMO, warriors are just overall better designed; traits and weapon skills are more complete.
Guardians need some work.

If you’re set on making a guardian, just go straight damage for leveling. Staff/Greatsword.

Ganzo has it right; that is one weakness of guardians (among others).

I’m pretty new to this game, but I leveled a warrior to 14 and felt it was very lackluster in its abilities. Sure, it can do a lot of damage. But the Banners felt useless to help out the group. After reading through a few beginner’s guides, one suggested that if you want to get a feel for a profession, you can do so by finishing the intro story quest and then immediately going to the PvP island. You don’t get all the skills and utilities, but you get to try out and look at them, as well as try out the weapons with 1-5. So instead of wasting hours upon hours playing a class before you realize you don’t like it anymore, you can spend 1 hour tops on testing it before you dedicate yourself to it. I did it that way with the guardian, deleted the warrior, and have been having the time of my life with the Guardian it’s all based on what you like to do.

No, it sucks. Play a Support Warrior or Bunker Mesmer and just /assist us.

I’ll take the 50 on the right. You take the 10 on the left.

Otherwise known as 0/5/30/30/5 – Full Zerker gear. Kill fast, die slow. Life’s a good’n.

Guardian is fun, that’s why you should play it.

However don’t let the fan boy’s kid you into thinking its some easy ride, or at times good at everything because it isn’t. Without a lot of effort guardian can be very gimped at times, bunkers get destroyed roaming by any one with a brain. Find yourself a good mesmer, thief when you’re alone, realize you have your staff swapped on for mobility or that you are still set into your AH traits with nobody around you and you’ll hit the dirt before you can even react ‘sometimes’

Play a guardian to his strengths – support skirmish/group support, or indeed go for one of the more ‘out there builds’ and try and put guardian into a role he really wasn’t ‘optimally’ designed for like burst dps. He does have alot of options, some are skill dependent more so than others.

You need to understand that defense isn’t all that in this game a lot of the time, so the joy of guard is often finding that balance between being so bunkery you cant make kills or dealing so much damage you go down faster than thief once anyone with a brain drops aegis and basilisk venoms you.

I hear complete idiots saying its normal to 1v7 on guardian lol.. and yeah. What to say to that.

The survivability can be great, the healing great, the DPS decent but dont buy into the hyperbole that you can tank and also drop people like a thief. You cant, they are just fighting totally unskilled or uplevelled players. Anyone can beat those with anything.

Advice I was given long ago, when I aspired to be the best in tourney ‘play what you love, its the last 25% of awesome’

I still believe that. A good player will make almost everything work but loving it for what it is on top of that will make you a legend.

It is near impossible to take on more than 1 skilled player on at a time playing as a Guardian especially if they are rocking out the thief or mesmer but then again that’s the same for most classes (except for thieves, mesmers and D/D eles because well they’re just good at avoiding people). It’s an easy class to play but a very tough class to play well because there are a lot of little tricks you need to learn to get ahead of the enemy.