Guild Wars 2

So i played a Ranger at release and was really digging it but after the SB nerf i quit for a while. I just patched last week and rolled a new character with a friend, i picked a Guardian and he picked a Engi. So far i really love the dynamics of the class it just seems like i am a little more squishy then i expected? At level 14 i have 930 health and he’s at 1k at level 12. Is this normal or should i be stacking some vit with power?

Thanks for the insight.

yep that is completely normal because guardians have the smallest health pool
instead of stacking vit you should stack toughness instead but dont worry about that at low lvl, just get as much power as you can for now

so toughness later in the game or sorta 50/50 with power?

While leveling I think some Vit is always good since it’s a better effective health increase than toughness, and you have plenty of time to recover between each monster.

For later in the game though, it’s up to you, some Guardians say they can manage fine with 10800~ (the minimum health) to 13800 (with 30 in Honor), but personally I feel like paper so I always aim for 18k+

Vitality has a better effective health increase than Toughness (it means you get more “health” per point spent), but Toughness’ really excels as a battle drags on and you make more use of your healing skills, but it also is weaker against Conditions (defense doesn’t reduce condition damage), so an average here is recommended.

Guardians get better once you hit 40 or so. Although at lower levels I was able to tank just about anything face to face with a mace and shield…except Champs of course.

Just keep your gear up to date about every 5 levels.

One thing you won’t be as used to on Guardian coming from a ranger is the mechanics of melee. You’re definitely best off in melee 90% of the time; our ranged weapons are junk when it comes to damage output in most scenarios. However, melee doesn’t mean “stand in front of a target and attack”; quite the opposite in fact!

First things first, turn off melee assist in your settings. While it’s a handy crutch to keep you from running through targets at first, it also limits your mobility in unfortunate ways at times. Second, you’ll probably want to bind a key to “about face” (I forget the exact name of the action—basically, it makes you turn 180 degrees instantly).

Melee is all about movement, even more so than at range. Every movement you make at melee range has a profound effect on the angles of attack both you and your enemy have. Learning the effective ranges of each melee weapon on each class is crucial as well; as a greatsword user it’s entirely possible to outrange many enemies’ attacks entirely, and pocket-kite them to death, staying just out of range of their attacks while landing your own.

Sidestep and circle-strafe constantly, and don’t be afraid to run through your target and turn around, especially between attacks or while using something like Whirling Wrath (actually, the ideal place to use Whirling Wrath is standing literally inside your opponent, ensuring that all the projectiles it flings hit). Often you can avoid an attack or two via clever movement, which is significant damage mitigation in and of itself. Blinds and blocks will mitigate another attack or 11 (in my case). Protection + Signet of Judgement will reduce incoming damage by 43% when combined, which is more damage reduction than you can gain with an entire set of max-level exotic/ascended toughness-focused gear, so don’t ignore boons such as protection when setting up your build.

As far as health goes, I generally target between 14k-16k health at level 80. Toughness, protection, SoJ, blinds, blocks, and clever movement more than make up for the low health pool guardians start with.