So, throughout the patches over the years, I feel as if the Guardian has been homogenized. They’ve been haphazardly pushed into a dps role in which I believe they have no place being. Bosses easily strip Aegis, or are simply healed through. Guardian need to be sent back to it’s roots.
Things that I believe would fix this would be things such as:
-allowing Aegis to stack up to 5 times.
-letting healing from guardians to overheal up to 50% extra health
-giving them a larger health pool and giving them a signet to soak some damage at a reduced rate from allies.
Now, I’m not saying all of these at once. But one or more would certainly help. I was also curious if anyone had any feedback or other ideas to bring back the core of the class back?
(TL;DR: Yes to an improved method of healing. Otherwise I love all the guardian’s just the way they are ;x)
I don’t really feel this. I love my DH. Loved her before she was a DH too. Loved her back when guardian DPS was often considered “lol”. It would be very cool if it could have a better healing spec than currently. It does alright in clerics/magis but it’s kinda tricky and doesn’t hold up as well as druid of course (We could really do with other healing options that are as useful as druid). Aegis stacking sounds ridiculously overpowered, I’m happy with my low health pool purely because we have aegis at all. I’m not sure I’d feel quite right if we had the large, or even the middle health pool ranges too. Overhealing, sounds nice, but also sounds like one of those dreaded power creeps.
Guards are in a good place right now, I think we were always meant to be a support class rather than a tank class. And finally now we have the one thing we were always lacking, dps and we still kept our supporting boons. Increasing our health pool and allowing a stacked aegis is just way too overpowered. Remember we already have access to 3-4 Aegis skills in a reasonable dps rotation not to mention our dodge rolls. I’m just glad that we are the only class that has hammer still in the meta
They’ve been haphazardly pushed into a dps role in which I believe they have no place being.
That’s your belief. I completely disagree, having viable dps builds is essential for any class in this game. While I wouldn’t mind if the next elite spec brought the stuff you wish for (so I can completely ignore it and stick to DH), I think it has serious flaws. In WvW, it may become close to god-like, in PvP I’m already highly sceptical about its usability, and in PvE it will be utterly pointless. Face it, this game’s PvE is centered solely around damage and offensive support. Creating an elite spec that does not deliver anything for the (likely) most important game mode does not seem like a good idea.
Warning! This post may contain traces of irony, sarcasm and peanuts.
Frankly, anyone that complains that Guardians have been pushed haphazardly into a role that is THE predominant role that every class SHOULD be capable of fullfilling in the game shows little regard for the health of the class when suggesting this has been a bad direction for the class to take.
As much as everyone seems to say Guardian is in a good place, so many of the recent posts are asking for weapon redesigns or buffs. I do believe guardian is ok in pve and wvw, but kinda lags behind a bit in raid and a little in fractals too.
Guard needs overhaul of their skills and traits, especially some weapons.
Welp, get in line behind the revenant….
Revenant needs a complete class redesign. That’s totally different.
This guy gets it.
Also guardian and revenant literally swapped places. You want support you pick revenant, you want dps you go guard. Pretty sure the tome spec will be support oriented anyway.
Salt, salt, moar salt. So salty like fries from McDonald!
Playing Smite since mid s2, f broken gw2.
i never play that filthy dragon hunter in pvp
guardian was my main pre HoT
now i just used him for pvp achievement
not interested in this class any more
As much as everyone seems to say Guardian is in a good place, so many of the recent posts are asking for weapon redesigns or buffs.
Forum posts are a terrible gauge of the public opinion of “x”. It’s the classic Customer Service issue of how many people will go out of their way to fill out the survey at the bottom of the receipt when they have a good experience vs those who will immediately ask for a manager when their order/service was wrongly delivered. In short, the noisiest customers are generally going to be the ones that are unhappy as the happy customers have nothing to speak out towards.
Back on topic though…
I find that Guard is in a good place as in my expectation of the class was to be primarily a defensive buffer. The fact that DHunter adds DPS viable is icing on the cake. Though, I had no expectation even from the beginning for the class to be a tank or a healer. For me, Paladin-type classes always seem to play better in groups as they buff their team members rather than buffing themselves. Sure, they have some healing built-in, but nowhere near the capacity of more Cleric-type classes. Now, if Purifier (future leaked spec) will bring a more Cleric-like spec? I wouldn’t mind that at all.
Linking skills is a silly thing. Yes we can heal a bit. Yes we can give aegis periodically. Our dps is fair. However our party buff (aegis) is so easily stripped that it’s almost silly to bring extra skills for it. Especially when most people just heal through any damage taken these days. I’m only saying that the class as a whole should drop some of the silly pointless stuff and stop to trying to be a dps main and instead have more class bonuses, traits and buffs based on guarding. Why bring a guardian over a warrior who brings better buffs? Guardian just feels like a mushy homogenous mess.
I can only say that if you’re approach to choosing classes is based on who’s better at X or Y, you’re not the kind of player that will be satisfied by balance changes to address that in the first place. I can remember a time when classes that were meta are not now … and that classes that were considered trash are good now. The game changes, and what is considered good with it. It’s a silly idea for Anet to chase the meta, which is what this thread advocates.
The best reason for you to pick a class and play it is not because it’s good at something or better than someone else. it’s because you like it. If you can’t do that, you’re next best thing is to roll one of everything and hip hop from one bandwagon to the next as the game evolves.
And to be fair, linking skills is a really smart way to answer you, because you only want to see what is the best, or worst, in the classes you are considering. You don’t look at them as a whole. Guardian is probably in the best place it has ever been, but you only want to complain about it because of a few cherry picked elements of the class that you don’t think are good enough. That argument goes no where.
Linking skills is a silly thing. Yes we can heal a bit. Yes we can give aegis periodically. Our dps is fair. However our party buff (aegis) is so easily stripped that it’s almost silly to bring extra skills for it. Especially when most people just heal through any damage taken these days. I’m only saying that the class as a whole should drop some of the silly pointless stuff and stop to trying to be a dps main and instead have more class bonuses, traits and buffs based on guarding. Why bring a guardian over a warrior who brings better buffs? Guardian just feels like a mushy homogenous mess.
So, I initially decided to just write “no” and I main DH (Guardian) and I have this to say. What do you mean when you talk about “why bring a guardian over a warrior (in a DPS slot)?”
Because Guardian has better DPS overall if you aren’t in a drunken stupor or stoned out of your skull?
Because Guardian’s elite spec on F3 basically has infinite blocks for about 5 seconds which is godly for some encounters like Slothasor? (mesmer has F4 but it sure helps a lot)
Because you don’t need more than 1 PS warrior per subgroup for might?
Because banners reach all of your 5-man subgroup in a raid therefore you don’t need more than 1 warrior per subgroup?
Look, the point is if you want to make a healer just play a Druid. Sure “Guardian” is not an all-healing, all-tanking machine but, get this: It’s not supposed to be. The system being based around active damage mitigation means the current system already works for what we have. Guardian doesn’t need buffing or tweaking. It’s literally a lazy man’s ele with less blasts and no combo fields and already really good defensive utility, just like a Guardian should. . Sure you used to have to be able to spam Aegis in F50 pre-HOT days, but nowadays if your team mates are dying all the time the problem is not that Guard is a weak class and needs tweaking, it’s that they are underperforming and need to stop slacking.
(ps: your suggestions would also make DH extremely overpowered)
Ultimately, the core Guard class is one of the most solid defensive classes you can get:
Protection and Stability uptime
High availability of aegis skills
Access to personal/group blocking skills (different from aegis)
Warding skills
Projectile management
Condition cleanse
Moderate group healing (even without investment into traits)
Throw in the Dhunter Spec? Well, personally, that makes the class feel pretty powerful augmenting the class’s core defensive skills with the Elite Spec’s high Damage output capability. Overall, Guard feels like one of the more complete classes and hopefully the Purifier spec will open up either a healing focus or Condi focus (you know, purofy everything with holy fire).
Guardians have almost always been damage. Every class since launch has effectively been damage.
A-Net ripped up the Holy Trinity of MMOs, but forgot to properly implement their new philosophy into it.
Guardian is not going to tank/support/condi/heal because elite specs like Chronomancer and Druid do what any possible build does except better in every way.
Want to tank? Chronomancer. They get perma-evades, dodges, blocks, and the works. Then they get to rewind and do it all over again with minimal upkeep.
Want to heal? Druid. Through the mere act of existing, they can bring upwards to a 30% damage boost to the entire raid. The only time another kind of healer is brought in is to handle a single mechanic to make the druid’s life easier.
Actually guardians can “gaurd”. For starters its not a healer. So in that sense you have to look in he supporting factor if you think about guarding. Translating that into gw2, we’re basically talking about utility. Think about (certain) boons, condi removal. Projectile block, cc and such. If you look at these things, then you’ll notice that guardian is indeed capable of doing so. Maybe not the best in class, but it is there
…unless you’re one of those people that copy-paste a build from like meta battle, without actually understanding the class… No, prefer versitality and swap things around depending on the situation at that given time. Doing so i feel oftenly that guardian is pretty similiar to chronomancer. Except that the utility/support is weaker, with higher dps ofc.
Additionally, i am personally perfectly fine having guardian as a pure dps class. Perhaps you should see it more as a title rather then actually name/class or something… if that makes sense
