Guild Wars 2

Friends keep telling me, “play what you want, play what you like.” For the most part, that’s true, but in this game, I want to a character who is effective in PvE as well as PvP and simply put, Warrior doesn’t seem to do that. I’ve been lvling a Necromancer and it’s been enjoyable but I miss the enjoyment I get from being a heavily armored melee class, swinging a huge sword around, granted I’ll get to do that with my Necro at 80, minus the plate. So I am very much interested in getting some input about the Guardian, I’ve never played one and it seems like my only other choice to get that specific feel I get when I play Warrior/Fighters in other games.

In PvE it’s pretty good but not optimal. In raids and fractals they are useful thanks to blocks, reflects, cleanses, decent dps and perma protection and people like having them but in a 100% optimal comp you wouldn’t pick them.

In PvP it’s meh and pretty outclassed. It’s definetly not on the same level of uselessness as warrior but still not in a great spot.

It’s a good class. You won’t regret investing your time into it.

I suggest going with the Medi Trapper build.

Medi Trapper is pretty fun in WvW roaming. You’ll just have to wait to WvW to get fixed.

Cecilia.5179:

Medi Trapper is pretty fun in WvW roaming. You’ll just have to wait to WvW to get fixed.

Reason DH works in WvW is due bad players not paying atention and bow on the space ship gameplay.

WvW get fixed?? XD 1 april has passed.

The low health pool is a major detriment with the power creep going on. I’m getting one shotted more and more often by more and more classes. And increasing health / armor just kills your dps potential to the point of being worthless.

The lack of a speed boost is another big problem; for roaming you HAVE to use traveler runes which really limits your options.

This is depressing. But i really like Guard

I can’t speak for PvE or WvW’s lack of speed but there’s nothing wrong with Guardian in tPvP. Sure, the classes you’ll have issues with (likely never beat on fair grounds) is Engi, Druid & Rev but I wouldn’t say we’re a “sub-optimal”. On the contrary, we’d be very OP if it wasn’t the certain hard counters in place (game shouldn’t be so but.. that’s another discussion)

You’ll do just fine in team fights with your bursts and stuns with trap & longbow, LB#5 & knockbacks. If you or some one else gets focused then you have your F3 for stability+blocks and F2 for additional aoe cleanses, heals, peeling off.

That’s not to say Guardian is as resilient like other classes. We simply don’t belong in certain team comps; rather, we would need that gap filler to beat a scrap/rev/druid and rotate appropriately. We do exceptionally well with an Ele healer (who doesn’t) and a Mesmer. Even a Thief can complement our bursts and cc’s to down any one target.

You may have tougher times in random SoloQ games so I highly recommend finding Ele/Mesmer friends to tag along with. Trust me, they probably wouldn’t mind

Guard is useless atm (unless you consider clearly unoptimal and easily avoidable builds (by playing other op classes) as not useless).

Guard is still the best frontline in wvw, once you unlock dh, it is good against break bars in pve and while not being a meta class in pvp it can still hold its own with a decent build…overall i think guard is one of the more useful classes…obviously elementalist is #1 in usefulness tho

Guards are in a good spot. If you are in a guild or with a bunch of friends who only care about the very best setups etc then there is nothing wrong with a guard in fotm/raids/dungeons/WvW or pvp.

There are obviously things I would like on guard but that is for another thread. Guards are still useful.

Guard is always the mid point in this game, never over-powered and rarely if ever under-powered. We’re at a fine point in this game. We bring solid DPS in raids, work average in fractals, compete fine in sPVP (outside of professional level tournaments), and are strong in WvW.

That being said, I would caution the OP that Guardians have changed quite a bit with the inclusion of the Dragon Hunter traitline and expect to use Longbow from ranged far more often than you are going to use Great Sword. You can still use hammer in raids, but it is the most boring weapon in the game to use by far.