Guild Wars 2

Hi,i’m new to the game I’miss looking for a class to make my main.
I’m thinking about guardian.
How is the class in all pve parts? I mainly want to play pve and some wvw.
Will I have problems soloing hot pve content ?
Farm effective solo?
How are dungeon wother guardian? Are they welcome in groups?
How are they for fractals? Can I do all kinds of hight fractals and would my group happy to have me?
How are they in raids ? Are they taken or left behind?
I would like to play some kind of range dps/support for wvw .

I currently thinking between guardian or necro.
Maybe even rev.

Pls help me out here

The state of guardian is radical, sir.

If ur going for pve only dont bother with that… class is fine.

Wvw and pvp.. bow(GS/hammer) meditrapper, mandatory, everything else is super weak.

Spirit weapons, dont work.
Signets are weawk also, and shouts are mostly useless since ur giving and advantage to adversary for corrupt more boons insto condis, theres alot of necros and wells on wvw, backlines are mostly composed by boon corruption.

At this momment how game works i regret not having a warrior lvl 80.

Sorry I’m still new and did not understand everything you are yanking about -_-
So should be no problem getting a spot in raids and dungeons ?
How about fractals (low and high level) I was reading that there was some kind of bug or so where you should not use certain skills in fractals? And that’s why nobody wants a guardian in the grp ? Is that fixed by now ?

For dungeons, it doesn’t really matter. For raids, revs are preferred, but guardian isn’t bottom of the barrel (third best dps after thf and ele). For soloing HoT zones, guardian is pretty good. Farm is good with your farm stick (staff). High level fractals is bad for guardians due to the boon thf instability that steals retaliation (guards have a lot of it) that kills party members. Anet did say they were looking into that though. Ranged dps support is basically the meta in wvw for guardian, running stability, wards, and projectile negation for your blob and your longbow, although after the nerfs to it, not sure if the wvw dh still run that weapon.

Honestly? rev is in the better spot, content wise (pvp, raids, fractals). Next is guardian due to its OPness in pvp and wvw, and then necro due to its niche use in certain raid bosses, although necros are always welcome in wvw blobs, and pro league teams in pvp always take one necro.

Pvp is not really a thing for me since I play with 250-300Ms latency
The only thing I want is have fun in wvw (the big zergs and maybe small 5 grp)
My focus is more to enjoy the pve content fully

Good you mentioned it, rev ,necro and guard are the 3 classes I have to decide.
So for raid all get a spot with
Rev being 1st
Guard /necro on the same lvl at 2nd
Is that correct ?
And for fractals necro and rev at 1st and guard do to its problem 2nd (but if anet fixes this then they are all 3 equal) ?
How long guards already have this problem in the fractails?

And dungeons and solo pve content are all 3 equal again.?

For raids, I’d say necros are likelier to be picked because while you might only want one guard for perma protection and dps, you want two necros to bounce epidemic off eachother. Guard is higher dps though. For higher level fractals, yes, a rev is better, followed by a necro then guard. for low level fractals it doesn’t matter. guards have been having this problem since the fractal revamp, no eta on when they will fix this.

For dungeons and solo play, all about the same. possibly rev and guard are higher priority for vanilla dungeons over nec. for solo play you can customize your build to suit it, so i don’t think it really matters there.

Nostradus.2187:

Hi,i’m new to the game I’miss looking for a class to make my main.
I’m thinking about guardian.
How is the class in all pve parts? I mainly want to play pve and some wvw.
Will I have problems soloing hot pve content ?
Farm effective solo?
How are dungeon wother guardian? Are they welcome in groups?
How are they for fractals? Can I do all kinds of hight fractals and would my group happy to have me?
How are they in raids ? Are they taken or left behind?
I would like to play some kind of range dps/support for wvw .

I currently thinking between guardian or necro.
Maybe even rev.

Pls help me out here

A Guardian, Necro, or Rev will fulfill all your needs. Make one of everything if you can.

Rev may be preferred in Fractals but Rev still has many class issues. Revs are preferred for specific reasons. The ONLY issue that can/will be fixed I hope in Fractals more is the boon theiving with retaliation. Because Guards DPS is as said 3rd basically, and they do offer great support; only a lot of that is boon pwned.

STILL – we are in a great spot compared to previous meta or the last big update before that, Guardian was poor in everything/not wanted.

I’ve found as the patch has been out longer for Raids anyways, Guardians are more accepted/chosen. Raid wise also can be less stringent over Fractals the issues are not the same.

HOWEVER – find a guild, and no issues TBH. I vastly prefer Guardian over Warrior or Rev, so primarily go off what you find most fun, because updates/metas change. However, Necro plays a lot differently than Guardian/Rev, so may want to try each first.

Guardian is PvP – I only do WvW, but lots of options. Traps yeah all the OPness there but they are great on every line, support wise it’s awesome. LB is not really played currently.

Open World PvE/Solo – Guardian’s awesome; great DPS, can support.

Nostradus.2187:

Pvp is not really a thing for me since I play with 250-300Ms latency
The only thing I want is have fun in wvw (the big zergs and maybe small 5 grp)
My focus is more to enjoy the pve content fully

I’m from South America. My ping is always >200 and I can pvp just fine, even got to legendary and manage to get teamed up with high lvl pvpers. You should try to pv if you like it.

Reve es better in all terms compared to guardian imo. But guard is fine, it’s still the class I enjoy the most.

holychampion.7386:

Reve es better in all terms compared to guardian imo. But guard is fine, it’s still the class I enjoy the most.

Opinions are subjective but Guardian is better in ranged fights, and definitely have better healing than Revenants. Centaur Stance is still way too gimmicky.

DPS-wise Guardians are better than Revenants against stationary foes and slightly better against blobs. Revenants on the other hand are better against mobile foes and single targets. For open world revenants can go condi whereas guardians not so much. They can do it but it’s not that good, but like said before, guardian has better ranged options than revenant.

Support-wise they are both good. Guardian gets perma-protection with hammer but revenants can provide other things. They actually work really well together.

A warning about leveling these classes. They both move slow af. Guardians don’t have a mobility speed skill at all whereas revenants only gain an effective movement speed boost with their ESpec, Herald, which is only accessible once you reach lvl 80. You can however choose to use Superior Traveler/Speed runes after lvl 65 for both classes.

Most of all, you should just try all the classes you want. I suspect the class you will end up playing is the one you like the most. Which probably has nothing to do with whatever is the best. Guardian was my 1st class 4 years ago and it’s still my main class but I do have a lvl 80 of all classes now. (or rather I did, rerolled my thief and engi a little while back)

Open world PvE: great
Dungeons: great
Raids: decent
Fractals: crap
PvP: irrelevant at high level tournaments
WvW (large groups): good to strong, albeit boring to play
WvW Roaming: too slow for this task
WvW Duels: good

Crap at fractals?

Buran.3796:

WvW Roaming: too slow for this task

I roam on my guardian, it isn’t great to not have swiftness, but the sword 2, Judges intervention and DH F2 give you a good bit of mobility for either catching someone or running from a group assuming you have something you can target further away. It really shines in smaller roaming groups if you have a rev to give permanent swiftness.

Seteruss.4058:

Crap at fractals?

Is a well known problem: at high level fractals (81+) enemies steal your boons; Guardian/DH is usually a machine of making light fields, which procs retaliation for your team, which ends with your team annihilated when the enemy steals this boon.

But even without this issue the Guardian/DH doesn’t provide too much to fractals: as the level rises the amount of HP and armor from bosses escalates hugely, so physical damage soon loses eficiency. Currently the best high fractal team composition is having 4 viper horror Necros/Reapers + one healer (Druid or Tempest), which can deal huge condition damage utterly ignoring the enemie’s armor and also tank and body block most of their attacks with their army of minions.

I did fracs with a Guard until level ~40, then swapped to Rev until ~70 and then swapped to Reaper. I’m not saying that can’t be done with Guard/DH, but is just suboptimal and cand end in your character accidentaly wiping your team with a random blasted light field.

Buran.3796:

Seteruss.4058:

Crap at fractals?

Is a well known problem: at high level fractals (81+) enemies steal your boons; Guardian/DH is usually a machine of making light fields, which procs retaliation for your team, which ends with your team annihilated when the enemy steals this boon.

But even without this issue the Guardian/DH doesn’t provide too much to fractals: as the level rises the amount of HP and armor from bosses escalates hugely, so physical damage soon loses eficiency. Currently the best high fractal team composition is having 4 viper horror Necros/Reapers + one healer (Druid or Tempest), which can deal huge condition damage utterly ignoring the enemie’s armor and also tank and body block most of their attacks with their army of minions.

I did fracs with a Guard until level ~40, then swapped to Rev until ~70 and then swapped to Reaper. I’m not saying that can’t be done with Guard/DH, but is just suboptimal and cand end in your character accidentaly wiping your team with a random blasted light field.

Tottaly understand .
But in that case isn’t all power classes in huge problem as the extra toughness of bosses make their dps harder to achieve?
I completely understand that conditions have their best fit in there but in the other hand there aren’t only condi builds in this game.

I was thinking the same thing … if high level fractals are successfully killing teams because of stealing boons, it’s really easy to avoid boons with the proper build. The good part is that Guardians don’t RELY on boons for any of the builds they use for DPS, etc… That’s someone else’s job. That being said, I would think that the non-boon defensive abilities Guardian possess would make them even more desirable if this boon stealing thing is the problem that the poster says makes Guardians = crap in fractals.

Sounds like Fractals at 81+ are a problem and not Guardian as a class
But that’s none of my business
anyone have some tea?

Ghotistyx.6942:

Sounds like Fractals at 81+ are a problem and not Guardian as a class
But that’s none of my business
anyone have some tea?

Well…i main a guard again after swap to engi and back(i get a little bored with engi i know is still fun to play), and i m leveling up a revenant cause i have all armors and weapons ascended already from guardian so….i really don’t mind and i’m not gonna give up my class for only fractals.I prefer to give up on fractals instead of throw away 2 classes just like that. Not that i don’t have full armor on my engi and i’m really not in the mood of crafting armor for my necro. I just don’t want to give up power classes as i like them more.

Obtena.7952:

That being said, I would think that the non-boon defensive abilities Guardian possess would make them even more desirable if this boon stealing thing is the problem that the poster says makes Guardians = crap in fractals.

Read my post again: even WITHOUT the retaliation steal issue Guardians are STILL subpar at high level fractals.

The main source of damage from Guardians is usually physical, which performs poorly once the boss HP and armor (specially due the armor increse) starts to rise after level 50+. Condi Guardians rely on fire, which can’t be stacked massively as bleed/poison, neither have a weapon which procs conditions in autoattacks, so they need to spent utility skill slots to burn foes, end even then the damage output is a fraction of what a viper horror reaper can achieve.

It can be argued that Guardians offers useful utilities in fractals (mostly Wall of Reflection, group stability and some consecrations), but the thing is that in high fractals the faster you crush the enemies the less you have to worry about defensive tactics, and neither of the support skills from a Guardian are a need in high fractals.

It took me five to six weeks to grind the gold to craft the full ascended armor and weapons for my viper Reaper (which I only use for fractals), and I understand that can be a though effort for most of players (and also, their success can be suddenly reverted at any of those balance patches which Anet does 4-5 timeas each year) BUT the effort clearly worths the pain: is easy to play, is safe to play, erodes the high fractal bosses HP at voracious speeds and once you have it the rewards soon fills the cost: it lets you do the task in half of the time, and each time you get a ascended drop (armor pieces or weapons) you’re saving 120~150 gold coins.

Anyway, isn’t a problem specifically from the Guardian class: most of the classes and specializations have hard times in high fractals due the “sack of health points” boss design. A few builds can circunvent this issues making fractals a cake walk. Guardians doesn’t have any of those builds.

So, a fast resume: I don’t think that Guardians are crap at fractals due boon steals (albeit is an extra issue), I do think they are crap due they struggle to do damage to bosses, they struggle to keep themselves alive (a zerk Guard barely has 11k HP) and if I can do the same task with other class in half of the time, more safely and effortlessly then I can conclude that I have no reasons to use them is this department of the game.

Buran.3796:

… The main source of damage from Guardians is usually physical, which performs poorly once the boss HP and armor (specially due the armor increse) starts to rise after level 50+. Condi Guardians rely on fire, which can’t be stacked massively as bleed/poison, neither have a weapon which procs conditions in autoattacks, so they need to spent utility skill slots to burn foes, end even then the damage output is a fraction of what a viper horror reaper can achieve….

IIRC isn’t the main reason viper reaper is so good due to epidemic? Technically guard procs condis on AA, it’s just that it’s only burning. But based on the rest, the problem is more with condi damage/fractal design itself, no? I run a full cleric’s cakewalk guard with my friends and we just slow and steady faceroll T4’s because I never let them (or the minions of our two necros) die.

Buran.3796:

Obtena.7952:

That being said, I would think that the non-boon defensive abilities Guardian possess would make them even more desirable if this boon stealing thing is the problem that the poster says makes Guardians = crap in fractals.

Read my post again: even WITHOUT the retaliation steal issue Guardians are STILL subpar at high level fractals.

The main source of damage from Guardians is usually physical, which performs poorly once the boss HP and armor (specially due the armor increse) starts to rise after level 50+. Condi Guardians rely on fire, which can’t be stacked massively as bleed/poison, neither have a weapon which procs conditions in autoattacks, so they need to spent utility skill slots to burn foes, end even then the damage output is a fraction of what a viper horror reaper can achieve.

It can be argued that Guardians offers useful utilities in fractals (mostly Wall of Reflection, group stability and some consecrations), but the thing is that in high fractals the faster you crush the enemies the less you have to worry about defensive tactics, and neither of the support skills from a Guardian are a need in high fractals.

It took me five to six weeks to grind the gold to craft the full ascended armor and weapons for my viper Reaper (which I only use for fractals), and I understand that can be a though effort for most of players (and also, their success can be suddenly reverted at any of those balance patches which Anet does 4-5 timeas each year) BUT the effort clearly worths the pain: is easy to play, is safe to play, erodes the high fractal bosses HP at voracious speeds and once you have it the rewards soon fills the cost: it lets you do the task in half of the time, and each time you get a ascended drop (armor pieces or weapons) you’re saving 120~150 gold coins.

Anyway, isn’t a problem specifically from the Guardian class: most of the classes and specializations have hard times in high fractals due the “sack of health points” boss design. A few builds can circunvent this issues making fractals a cake walk. Guardians doesn’t have any of those builds.

So, a fast resume: I don’t think that Guardians are crap at fractals due boon steals (albeit is an extra issue), I do think they are crap due they struggle to do damage to bosses, they struggle to keep themselves alive (a zerk Guard barely has 11k HP) and if I can do the same task with other class in half of the time, more safely and effortlessly then I can conclude that I have no reasons to use them is this department of the game.

Personally agree with that but when i’ll finish with my revenant i get in with him in there.
I have already a full viper’s on my engi and have the mats ready if i want a full viers on my necr.
I’m just not in that mood which i have to change class whenever something is really broken in the game…and something that doesn’t leave you a choice to play a whole type of classes it is broken..

Well, I read your post … I saw reasons for why Guardians are not optimal in high level fractals, but I didn’t see anything that convinced me they sucked. I mean, TONS of people run power builds … do they suck to? Do they not roll those professions and use them in fractals? Let’s be realistic … power builds sucking in 81+ fractals is not a reason that Guardians suck in fractals, no more than a power warrior or whatever. You’re criteria basically dismisses any class that can’t run a high condition damage build as ‘sucking’, so in otherwords, it’s a bad measure of fractal performance in the first place.

Friendly PSA:
Even if you do have a team of 4 Viper Necros + Healer doesn’t mean anyone is playing optimally.

For everyone who isn’t going for speedrun world records, Completion is the goal, and completion can be done with far less than optimal.

Guys, I think you’re missing the point a bit here.

Nostradus asked about the state of the Guardian in the game. I did provide my honest opinion about each department. I argued that fractals were the weakest department and reasoned why.

Now, I didn’t say that the task was impossible, I did say that was suboptimal, slow and dangerous, and explained why. So, Nostradus is free to main Guardian for fractals if He wish, spent a lot of gold crafting the needed stuff, and IF He gets kicked from the player finder when brings a Guardian to high level fractals, at leas He will known the “why”.

Personally, I don’t have too much time to play the game in work days, so usually I spend 40 min gathering resources and 15-20 min with the daily, and tha’s all. If I want/need to do a fractal of two I do like to finish the task asap, so faster is usually better for me.

the OP also didn’t just say fractals – other class may > Guardian for various reasons at higher tier Fractals. But Guardians are not subpar in PvE or Raids imo; or WvW or PvP.

Fractals are not all there is in PvE. It literally is it’s own thing, you almost need exclusive gear for it vs. other PvE content (depending on class/build yeah, but infusion are different etc.) and what a group needs, DPS is more important than anything else in fractals. If that’s what he wants to focus on, I agree Guard right now I’d not go so far as crap, but bad – however everything else they are minimum good to great. So imo enjoy Guard I love it!

thanks for all your replys.
i now have played around with necro and guardian but i`m still not sure what to play,i not want to play 2 classes.

so i guess i have to test around a bit more. i just found so far that necro/reaper is way quicker and easyer in solo pve. guardian is more like use all CD and then auto attack and that feels a bit slow.
when i go at a golem the dmg is similar but in the open world it feels like the reaper is doing 2 times the dmg of the guardian.also guardian feels a bit squishy, i really have to use defens/heal CD to not run to low on HP.
with the guardian i have to really play more,like block and use the f2 skill,it feels like if you want you could survive really good i can imagine thats something come in handy in pvp? or is pvp more burst then survive longer?

on the other hand when you come low hp with the reaper you not come back as quick as the guardian

Necro doing twice as much damage in open world content? Now that sounds rather improbable. Open world mobs melt extremely fast against a properly built guard.

Nostradus.2187:

thanks for all your replys.
i now have played around with necro and guardian but i`m still not sure what to play,i not want to play 2 classes.

so i guess i have to test around a bit more. i just found so far that necro/reaper is way quicker and easyer in solo pve. guardian is more like use all CD and then auto attack and that feels a bit slow.
when i go at a golem the dmg is similar but in the open world it feels like the reaper is doing 2 times the dmg of the guardian.also guardian feels a bit squishy, i really have to use defens/heal CD to not run to low on HP.
with the guardian i have to really play more,like block and use the f2 skill,it feels like if you want you could survive really good i can imagine thats something come in handy in pvp? or is pvp more burst then survive longer?

on the other hand when you come low hp with the reaper you not come back as quick as the guardian

Test a guardian with soldier armor while trinkets and weapons all berserker. Is the most simple way to see how you can easily survive and melt down mobs easily.
It is just an example if you dont have experience with guard.
A straight zerk gear melt down simply everything, with soldiers you just dont have to worry so much about your hp and nothing more.
Compare necro to guard no…..guard melt them really fast if it is a good build.

Edit: Here is my general open pve/world bosses build.
It focused mainly on keeping me and my allies alive while making a fair ammount of dmg.
Not so much of a problem if you dont have infusions.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVEQNAsdTn0ABNChFCBedCEEhFLiKL8KvFQu2v9gHLAqtIA-TxBBABnpEMgTpAWK7sU9HWVKkn+GAeSBPGCAmUUlVVSBE2IL-e

it can be that the gear is different/better setup for the necro since i use the hot lvl 80 boost on the necro and used tombs and crafting to lvl the guard,the guard has almost all exotic gear as well like the necro but the gear stats are mixed on the guardian,maybe thats the problem.

everybody is talking about viper,berserker gear and so on but in the game i rarely see these names,is there a website where i can find what the different gear types are with the stats and all?

Nostradus.2187:

it can be that the gear is different/better setup for the necro since i use the hot lvl 80 boost on the necro and used tombs and crafting to lvl the guard,the guard has almost all exotic gear as well like the necro but the gear stats are mixed on the guardian,maybe thats the problem.

everybody is talking about viper,berserker gear and so on but in the game i rarely see these names,is there a website where i can find what the different gear types are with the stats and all?

Personally i use zerk gear only for raids and fractals. In open world i use only soldiers just because i dont want to put much effort on staying alive.
I really pass whole dragonstand without hit any mob with soldiers. I agree with some in a degree that extra toughness is useless in some specific situations as dungeons etc, but for me is great for general pve.
No need to put ascended gear. Just put exotic (they re cheap in tp) and put traveler runes to see the speed difference(guard is really awfull cause of speed traits missing).

Nostradus.2187:

it can be that the gear is different/better setup for the necro since i use the hot lvl 80 boost on the necro and used tombs and crafting to lvl the guard,the guard has almost all exotic gear as well like the necro but the gear stats are mixed on the guardian,maybe thats the problem.

everybody is talking about viper,berserker gear and so on but in the game i rarely see these names,is there a website where i can find what the different gear types are with the stats and all?

Here you are

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

Anyone have something to add to this post now that Boon Thief has been removed?

Once again guardians will rule the galaxy :P

They turned the class into a joke with the cheesehunter. Went from “hold the line” straight to “come into mah trapz”.

Dh hammer super good perma protection and now without boons thieves and lower toughness great damage.
one thing that most people dont realise is that burn viper dh is really good on non bossesfights. Against 3-4 grouped mobs burn guardian probably have one of the highest damage easy 10k burning without 25 might

msalakka.4653:

They turned the class into a joke with the cheesehunter. Went from “hold the line” straight to “come into mah trapz”.

Depends on playstyle.
Trap spamming personally was never my best feeling.
Other than that guardian is a very strong and viable class and saves a lot around with his protection…

thanks for all the response,now it looks like guardian is in a good spot with the fractail problem fixed.

Guardian is in general in very good spot.
The only thing i miss in guardian is a mobility trait or utility for that 25% speed buff. Is really slow and if you paly other classes, this tend to be a huge problem for some of us.
I personaly have runes of traveler and for fractals i m using a speed booster(i have almost a stack of them)

Seteruss.4058:

Gyardian is in general in very good spot.
The only thing i miss in guardian is a mobility trait or utility for that 25% soeed buff. Is really slow and if you oaly other classes, this tend to be a huge problem for some of us.
I personaly have runes of traveler and for fractals i m using a speed booster(i have almost a stack of them)

Guardians are not ment to be mobile, if players want mobility we get it via gap closers, sword 2, gs leat, DH F2, and meditations.
A nike guardian is possible.