Guild Wars 2

Ok the posts on this forum down talking the Guardian are numerous. When I came back to the game it was disappointing to see how many people that wrote the Guardian off as useless. Guardian was my favorite class and I had planned to play them again and now I’m not so sure. Just looking for honesty on whether the Guardian really is completely useless or just a harder class that you have to try harder with in order to get results. If it’s just a matter of putting more effort into the class I don’t particularly see an issue.

I can only tell you my opinion and as you can tell the forum is pretty divided on the issue.

Guardians are still very viable in WvW and the new Dragonhunter specialization gave us a huge boost to range capabilities and area control.

For sPVP, in many ways guardians have stayed the same even if you pick up Dragonhunter (medi builds still being the mainstay). Guardians seem to have strong burst damage, but with the powercreep are too frail to survive in the current meta, bunker guardian included. But this pertains to pro sPVP and if you are just solo-queuing you most likely will do great.

For PVE, guardians do the same as they have always done. They provide arguably helpful support and mid-tier damage. They thrive in content that needs aegis, condition removal, projectile blocking, and stability. The only weakness they currently have are raids where their four strengths aren’t really needed and there lower damage is seen as a liability. My belief is that you should bring good players to raids not good classes; but if are going to pug, expect some troubling getting into raids (not because guardians are terrible, but because they are entirely replaceable).

In direct regards to your post: “If it’s just a matter of putting more effort into the class I don’t particularly see an issue.” Guardians have one of the lowest skill-ceilings in my opinion so I think you might experience the opposite effect and get potentially frustrated when you can’t squeeze more performance out of the class.

Can guardian work ? Yes.

However

1: Its damage is lower then a rev or engineer & even ele in many cases.

2: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better boon support.

3: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better defense against conditions.

4: Rev, ele and engineer all provide more CC

5: Rev, ele & engineer all provide more damage reduction & healing for the group.

6: Rev, ele & engineer all provide just as good or better defense against projectiles.

So you have to ask, why play a guardian when something else can do everything it can do better while doing more damage.

Guardian is trash tier right now. And Anet is considering nerfing DH because amber players can’t dodge.

I wouldn’t want to play a Guardian now, much less after the update. Re roll ele war rev or necro whike you can. Druid and engie is much better as eell. Even thief is getting nerfed.

Guardian will be sitting in trash tier by itself till at least sumer 2016. I’m not looking forward to it

Core Guardian: Feels like deals lower damage than other professions, average to below support depending on your traits/gear.
Probably the best damage/support you can get is Mace/Shield with Zeal/Honor and anything else.

Dragonhunter: Huge damage improvement, most of it thanks to the traps (low CD and great damage) and a better ranged weapon than Scepter, giving the Dragonhunter a solid all around build.
Besides that, weapon damage didn’t change much, your best DpS might still be Zeal + Mace or Radiance + Sword.

The huge downside of the Dragonhunter in my opinion is that in exchange of the increase in damage you lose a lot in support. Your utilities will be filled mostly with traps, two which grant no support at all, and you’ll probably be keeping Empowering Might and maybe Light’s Judgement and Feel My Wrath.

Everything else is sorta… selfish. If you use a Mace, it’s not that bad, but compared to what other Elite specializations do to their professions, it makes the Dragonhunter feels lacking.
As an example, Chronomancer gives a nice damage increase for Mesmers while also granting a whole lot of (unique) support. Tempest gives up damage slightly (arguably balanced for the overloads) but the support, which was already great for Elementalists, gets insanely better.

However, GW2 is designed in such a way (or so it seems) that you shouldn’t worry about maxing out everything you do, you should be able to play whatever you want, with the build you want (to some extent), and still be successful in whatever you want to do.
So I’d suggest playing with whatever profession you enjoy playing.

Just looking for honesty on whether the Guardian really is completely useless or just a harder class that you have to try harder with in order to get results. If it’s just a matter of putting more effort into the class I don’t particularly see an issue.

It’s not an issue of working harder, it’s an issue of profession limitation.
You can work hard and be an excellent player, never get hits, dealing the max DpS your profession/build can get, but you’re still limited to the builds and skills available to your profession.
What people seem to complain is that Guardian/Dragonhunter feels very lacking compared to other Elites (and I agree), but it’s not game breaking at all.

Hunter.4783:

Guardian is trash tier right now. And Anet is considering nerfing DH because amber players can’t dodge.

I wouldn’t want to play a Guardian now, much less after the update. Re roll ele war rev or necro whike you can. Druid and engie is much better as eell. Even thief is getting nerfed.

Guardian will be sitting in trash tier by itself till at least sumer 2016. I’m not looking forward to it

There are two classes in trash tier, atm, Guardian is not one of them. I’m optimistic about the soon-to-be balance patch… if all they do is nerf and not buff, then yes, we’ll be bad.

Have faith in Karl!

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Can guardian work ? Yes.

However

1: Its damage is lower then a rev or engineer & even ele in many cases.

2: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better boon support.

3: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better defense against conditions.

4: Rev, ele and engineer all provide more CC

5: Rev, ele & engineer all provide more damage reduction & healing for the group.

6: Rev, ele & engineer all provide just as good or better defense against projectiles.

So you have to ask, why play a guardian when something else can do everything it can do better while doing more damage.

That’s misinformation because most of those can’t be done at the same time. We’ll talk about meta build here because who care if a elementalist can bring more boons on a non meta build.

1) It’s dmg is less than all of those 3 you are right. Don’t know you said sometime worst than Ele. Elementalist is the best of the 3 in term of dps (even if the rating will change a lot depending on the alacrity and the size of the boss).

2) Staff Elementalist won’t bring more boons support. D/X yes, but they are mostly not the same type of boons. They bring fury and might, they can also bring around 50% perma protection but by reducing their dps. Revenant is better at boons, but you have to choose. Either you bring fury/might/regen/swiftness or you bring fury/protection. Engineer isn’t really good at boons support so I don’t know why you put him here. They can give boons pretty much only by combo field outside of their normal rotation. Guardian on the other hand will bring quickness, vigor and aegis that the other 3 can’t.

3) Engineer is bad with condition removal, especially removing to their friend. Revenant have Staff 4 but you need to stay 10second in staff for 2 condition. You have other option, but not really good ones and each of them will cost you energy and dps. For elementalist you have option to remove a lot of condition on your with slight modif to the meta that doesn’t change much your dps, but team wide condi removal? Staff 4 and Elemental in water are pretty much your only option. So that’s just totally false. Guardian is the best at condition removal for the team and is one of the best at self condition removal for PvE. Remember here we are not comparing a Guardian to a D/D PvP elementalist.

4) Revenant have more powerful cc and engineer have more option that’s for sure. Elementalist on the other hand? D/F, D/W or Staff all have only 1 hard cc. Guardian is way better than Elementalist on that front with Bane Signet, Binding Blades and 1 trap daze.

5) Revenant only have regen from herald which is 130 HP/sec. Guardian can reach that with Wings of Resolve alone with are 129.6 HP/sec. So at best they are equal at worst Guardian take Receive de Light at very little dps cost. Engineer and Elementalist heal more. For damage reduction? Herald can bring equal protection uptime as a Hammer Guardian (which is only 5% less dps than a GS+Lonbow guardian). In that setup a Guardian will outheal the engineer, but i’m not sure compare to the Ele. Engineer just bring zero damage reduction so that’s easy. The Elementalist on the other hand is trickier. A staff tempest can’t put much protection and only a bit of frost aura. D/W freash air can give around 50% of protection (with 100% boon duration and right rotation), which is around 20% more efficient that normal protection and he can give some frost aura on top on that. Which dmg protection is better? Perma protection or more protection for shorter period of time? Hard to tell to be honest. I guess it depend on the situation.

6) That’s just not true. Elementalist have a bad projectile defense. You get a couple of magnetic auras, but you can only share them if you have powerful aura in water, which is a great dps lost. Even there you will have like 60% Aura uptime and for that you need to stay in earth so at that point you are doing pitifull dps. Other than that you have Focus 4 which is good but don’t last long. Engineer is also very bad. We won’t talk about turret projectile defense because that would destroy your dps. That leave use with Revenant. You have the hammer which can grant you 50% projectile defense, but will drop your dps AND you boons support AND your CC. You can also take Centaur Legend but again you drop your dps (but less) and boons support by a lot, but you can still keep your cc. Guardian is the only one that can bring perma projectile defense at little expense to his dps. The Guardian can bring 25% projectile reflect with zero dps drop. Bring 45% projectile defense at the expense of 5% of his dps. And 56% projectile defense at the expense of another 5% of his dps. So yes Revenant can bring more projectile defense since he can bring perma. But he does it by destroying everything else he can bring to the table. While the guardian can bring 56% projectile defense at the expense of only 10% of his dps.

People just look at what each of these projectile can bring the best in a bubble and then shout that guardian is worst than all of them in all category. First of all half of those are just wrong like elementalist and engineer having better projectile defense. Or engineer having more boons support. But most of them need to profession to specialize and lost all of his best aspect to reach it.

None of those profession can bring perma protection, aegis, quickness, heal, reflect projectile and still bring around 80-85% of his max dps. None. If you gonna need projectile protection in raids, you won’t gonna bring a Centaur Revenant or a Turret Engineer or a Magnetic Auramancer.

Guardian is in a bad place because ya. Herald and Tempest kind of took part of his job. But it’s really mostly because, just like thief, you don’t need any of the strenght of those profession in raid. Guardian are still as good as before in fractal, dungeon, open world, wvw and pvp.

Saiyan.1704:

Have faith in Karl!

Lolno.

Thaddeus.4891:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Can guardian work ? Yes.

However

1: Its damage is lower then a rev or engineer & even ele in many cases.

2: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better boon support.

3: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better defense against conditions.

4: Rev, ele and engineer all provide more CC

5: Rev, ele & engineer all provide more damage reduction & healing for the group.

6: Rev, ele & engineer all provide just as good or better defense against projectiles.

So you have to ask, why play a guardian when something else can do everything it can do better while doing more damage.

That’s misinformation because most of those can’t be done at the same time. We’ll talk about meta build here because who care if a elementalist can bring more boons on a non meta build.

1) It’s dmg is less than all of those 3 you are right. Don’t know you said sometime worst than Ele. Elementalist is the best of the 3 in term of dps (even if the rating will change a lot depending on the alacrity and the size of the boss).

2) Staff Elementalist won’t bring more boons support. D/X yes, but they are mostly not the same type of boons. They bring fury and might, they can also bring around 50% perma protection but by reducing their dps. Revenant is better at boons, but you have to choose. Either you bring fury/might/regen/swiftness or you bring fury/protection. Engineer isn’t really good at boons support so I don’t know why you put him here. They can give boons pretty much only by combo field outside of their normal rotation. Guardian on the other hand will bring quickness, vigor and aegis that the other 3 can’t.

3) Engineer is bad with condition removal, especially removing to their friend. Revenant have Staff 4 but you need to stay 10second in staff for 2 condition. You have other option, but not really good ones and each of them will cost you energy and dps. For elementalist you have option to remove a lot of condition on your with slight modif to the meta that doesn’t change much your dps, but team wide condi removal? Staff 4 and Elemental in water are pretty much your only option. So that’s just totally false. Guardian is the best at condition removal for the team and is one of the best at self condition removal for PvE. Remember here we are not comparing a Guardian to a D/D PvP elementalist.

4) Revenant have more powerful cc and engineer have more option that’s for sure. Elementalist on the other hand? D/F, D/W or Staff all have only 1 hard cc. Guardian is way better than Elementalist on that front with Bane Signet, Binding Blades and 1 trap daze.

5) Revenant only have regen from herald which is 130 HP/sec. Guardian can reach that with Wings of Resolve alone with are 129.6 HP/sec. So at best they are equal at worst Guardian take Receive de Light at very little dps cost. Engineer and Elementalist heal more. For damage reduction? Herald can bring equal protection uptime as a Hammer Guardian (which is only 5% less dps than a GS+Lonbow guardian). In that setup a Guardian will outheal the engineer, but i’m not sure compare to the Ele. Engineer just bring zero damage reduction so that’s easy. The Elementalist on the other hand is trickier. A staff tempest can’t put much protection and only a bit of frost aura. D/W freash air can give around 50% of protection (with 100% boon duration and right rotation), which is around 20% more efficient that normal protection and he can give some frost aura on top on that. Which dmg protection is better? Perma protection or more protection for shorter period of time? Hard to tell to be honest. I guess it depend on the situation.

6) That’s just not true. Elementalist have a bad projectile defense. You get a couple of magnetic auras, but you can only share them if you have powerful aura in water, which is a great dps lost. Even there you will have like 60% Aura uptime and for that you need to stay in earth so at that point you are doing pitifull dps. Other than that you have Focus 4 which is good but don’t last long. Engineer is also very bad. We won’t talk about turret projectile defense because that would destroy your dps. That leave use with Revenant. You have the hammer which can grant you 50% projectile defense, but will drop your dps AND you boons support AND your CC. You can also take Centaur Legend but again you drop your dps (but less) and boons support by a lot, but you can still keep your cc. Guardian is the only one that can bring perma projectile defense at little expense to his dps. The Guardian can bring 25% projectile reflect with zero dps drop. Bring 45% projectile defense at the expense of 5% of his dps. And 56% projectile defense at the expense of another 5% of his dps. So yes Revenant can bring more projectile defense since he can bring perma. But he does it by destroying everything else he can bring to the table. While the guardian can bring 56% projectile defense at the expense of only 10% of his dps.

People just look at what each of these projectile can bring the best in a bubble and then shout that guardian is worst than all of them in all category. First of all half of those are just wrong like elementalist and engineer having better projectile defense. Or engineer having more boons support. But most of them need to profession to specialize and lost all of his best aspect to reach it.

None of those profession can bring perma protection, aegis, quickness, heal, reflect projectile and still bring around 80-85% of his max dps. None. If you gonna need projectile protection in raids, you won’t gonna bring a Centaur Revenant or a Turret Engineer or a Magnetic Auramancer.

Guardian is in a bad place because ya. Herald and Tempest kind of took part of his job. But it’s really mostly because, just like thief, you don’t need any of the strenght of those profession in raid. Guardian are still as good as before in fractal, dungeon, open world, wvw and pvp.

True you cant do them all at the same time on others but you cannot do them at the same time on a guardian either.

1: Staff ele can actually do better boon support if they use arcane traits.

2: Engineer, especially scrapper actually has amazing condition removal & has since they revamped the traits.
Engineer also has some pretty good boon support if they use elixers. Doing so is a slight dps loss vs a full dps spec but it provides quite a bit of support & a fair bit of condition removal.

3: Heralds Ventari spec actually puts the healing a guardian do do to shame & over the course of a fight can do more then double what the guardian can do. They also have a decent amount of protection uptime without the need for hammer that guardian does.

The same goes for an ele or an engineer.

As for projectile defense yes the herald suffers a dps loss for doing so but the engineer & ele do so better then the guardian without a dps loss due to their elite specs.

At the end of the day they are all much more flexible then the guardian and still have a higher dps.

I have to laugh. Revenant is so in the nerf-cannon crosshairs right now it’s not even funny. I take it back, it’s hilarious. Lets see where we stand at the end of the month.

Nike.2631:

I have to laugh. Revenant is so in the nerf-cannon crosshairs right now it’s not even funny. I take it back, it’s hilarious. Lets see where we stand at the end of the month.

In all honesty that class doesn’t belong in GW2 (permanent boons … really), I’m interested in seeing where they take it.

Indure.5410:

Nike.2631:

I have to laugh. Revenant is so in the nerf-cannon crosshairs right now it’s not even funny. I take it back, it’s hilarious. Lets see where we stand at the end of the month.

In all honesty that class doesn’t belong in GW2 (permanent boons … really), I’m interested in seeing where they take it.

If it wasn’t for the herald the rev would actually be decently balanced. (while still being on the more powerful end of the spectrum)

The herald spec however just brings too many boons with so much up time and so much utility when you toggle them off that it makes the whole class take that next step from powerful to absurd.

Nerfing revenant will not suddenly bring the guardian up from trash tier. Don’t kid yourselves.

If rev is OP, so is tempest, chrono, reaper, burn zerkers on targets with large hit boxes, etc

There is a general powercreep with HoT in general. Its classes like guardian and thief that need to be brought up to date with the top dogs, DH is trash and has been like that since day 1. People did point it out and Anet did nothing about it.

Thaddeus.4891:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Can guardian work ? Yes.

However

1: Its damage is lower then a rev or engineer & even ele in many cases.

2: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better boon support.

3: Rev, ele & engineer all provide better defense against conditions.

4: Rev, ele and engineer all provide more CC

5: Rev, ele & engineer all provide more damage reduction & healing for the group.

6: Rev, ele & engineer all provide just as good or better defense against projectiles.

So you have to ask, why play a guardian when something else can do everything it can do better while doing more damage.

That’s misinformation because most of those can’t be done at the same time. We’ll talk about meta build here because who care if a elementalist can bring more boons on a non meta build.

1) It’s dmg is less than all of those 3 you are right. Don’t know you said sometime worst than Ele. Elementalist is the best of the 3 in term of dps (even if the rating will change a lot depending on the alacrity and the size of the boss).

2) Staff Elementalist won’t bring more boons support. D/X yes, but they are mostly not the same type of boons. They bring fury and might, they can also bring around 50% perma protection but by reducing their dps. Revenant is better at boons, but you have to choose. Either you bring fury/might/regen/swiftness or you bring fury/protection. Engineer isn’t really good at boons support so I don’t know why you put him here. They can give boons pretty much only by combo field outside of their normal rotation. Guardian on the other hand will bring quickness, vigor and aegis that the other 3 can’t.

3) Engineer is bad with condition removal, especially removing to their friend. Revenant have Staff 4 but you need to stay 10second in staff for 2 condition. You have other option, but not really good ones and each of them will cost you energy and dps. For elementalist you have option to remove a lot of condition on your with slight modif to the meta that doesn’t change much your dps, but team wide condi removal? Staff 4 and Elemental in water are pretty much your only option. So that’s just totally false. Guardian is the best at condition removal for the team and is one of the best at self condition removal for PvE. Remember here we are not comparing a Guardian to a D/D PvP elementalist.

4) Revenant have more powerful cc and engineer have more option that’s for sure. Elementalist on the other hand? D/F, D/W or Staff all have only 1 hard cc. Guardian is way better than Elementalist on that front with Bane Signet, Binding Blades and 1 trap daze.

5) Revenant only have regen from herald which is 130 HP/sec. Guardian can reach that with Wings of Resolve alone with are 129.6 HP/sec. So at best they are equal at worst Guardian take Receive de Light at very little dps cost. Engineer and Elementalist heal more. For damage reduction? Herald can bring equal protection uptime as a Hammer Guardian (which is only 5% less dps than a GS+Lonbow guardian). In that setup a Guardian will outheal the engineer, but i’m not sure compare to the Ele. Engineer just bring zero damage reduction so that’s easy. The Elementalist on the other hand is trickier. A staff tempest can’t put much protection and only a bit of frost aura. D/W freash air can give around 50% of protection (with 100% boon duration and right rotation), which is around 20% more efficient that normal protection and he can give some frost aura on top on that. Which dmg protection is better? Perma protection or more protection for shorter period of time? Hard to tell to be honest. I guess it depend on the situation.

6) That’s just not true. Elementalist have a bad projectile defense. You get a couple of magnetic auras, but you can only share them if you have powerful aura in water, which is a great dps lost. Even there you will have like 60% Aura uptime and for that you need to stay in earth so at that point you are doing pitifull dps. Other than that you have Focus 4 which is good but don’t last long. Engineer is also very bad. We won’t talk about turret projectile defense because that would destroy your dps. That leave use with Revenant. You have the hammer which can grant you 50% projectile defense, but will drop your dps AND you boons support AND your CC. You can also take Centaur Legend but again you drop your dps (but less) and boons support by a lot, but you can still keep your cc. Guardian is the only one that can bring perma projectile defense at little expense to his dps. The Guardian can bring 25% projectile reflect with zero dps drop. Bring 45% projectile defense at the expense of 5% of his dps. And 56% projectile defense at the expense of another 5% of his dps. So yes Revenant can bring more projectile defense since he can bring perma. But he does it by destroying everything else he can bring to the table. While the guardian can bring 56% projectile defense at the expense of only 10% of his dps.

People just look at what each of these projectile can bring the best in a bubble and then shout that guardian is worst than all of them in all category. First of all half of those are just wrong like elementalist and engineer having better projectile defense. Or engineer having more boons support. But most of them need to profession to specialize and lost all of his best aspect to reach it.

None of those profession can bring perma protection, aegis, quickness, heal, reflect projectile and still bring around 80-85% of his max dps. None. If you gonna need projectile protection in raids, you won’t gonna bring a Centaur Revenant or a Turret Engineer or a Magnetic Auramancer.

Guardian is in a bad place because ya. Herald and Tempest kind of took part of his job. But it’s really mostly because, just like thief, you don’t need any of the strenght of those profession in raid. Guardian are still as good as before in fractal, dungeon, open world, wvw and pvp.

So much wins in this to whiners

So I tried to put as much cc into a single guardian build as possible. I came up with at least eleven different sources equipped at once.

Morgan.5170:

So I tried to put as much cc into a single guardian build as possible. I came up with at least eleven different sources equipped at once.

Did you include runes, food, and sigils? I think Amins had a troll/laugh build surrounding chill.

Hunter.4783:

Nerfing revenant will not suddenly bring the guardian up from trash tier. Don’t kid yourselves.

If rev is OP, so is tempest, chrono, reaper, burn zerkers on targets with large hit boxes, etc

There is a general powercreep with HoT in general. Its classes like guardian and thief that need to be brought up to date with the top dogs, DH is trash and has been like that since day 1. People did point it out and Anet did nothing about it.

People underestimate the power of Thieves & Guardians tbh. Our performance in this bunker meta is obviously poor, but Anet is forcing at least 2 meta bunk classes, Ele and Mesmer, to change into a slightly more glassy but more dps role. This alone will change the meta game entirely because it reverts back to only 1 or 2 classes bursting down ‘bunkers’ as oppose to an entire team focus targeting 1 class

Between the trait changes, amulet changes and class’s weapon changes, we really don’t have anything but speculations at this point. For all we know Warriors could be op with their new trait changes. Who knows.

I think DH is a must for everything at this point. I have switched both my AH tank and roaming mediguard over to DH and with very few additional changes and have had very good luck with them in WvW (once I figured out I didn’t HAVE to use a bow.)

In small team battles that spear of justice is a real godsend, and it is hilariously funny to pull people off of walls right into your trap with it.