“The Need to be in Melee Range”

“The Need to be in Melee Range”

in Guardian

Posted by: Alarox.4590

Alarox.4590

“The Guardian is a heavy armor class who relies on boons to make up for their low levels of innate health. They focus on area control and punishing enemies for the position on the battlefield. We want them to feel very powerful when their boons are active, but if those boons are removed, they will start to feel pressure. They can remove conditions more easily than the Warrior, but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.”

-Survival is from boons + armor
-Focus on area control and positioning
-Rely on boons
-Need to be in melee range

This essentially defines what the Guardian is; I think ArenaNet has mostly achieved this vision of the Guardian. However, the design itself has one glaring flaw. ‘Need to be in melee range’; this is the Guardian’s paradox.

Guardians don’t have comparatively powerful burst. Guardians don’t have powerful ranged weaponry (or effective long-range weaponry). Guardians don’t have massive health pools. But, they are the anti-attrition Profession and can stay in a fight for a long time, and they have reliable melee damage. Their ranged capacity is not reliable at anywhere beyond 600 range or so, and to be effective, as ArenaNet indicates and as any Guardian knows, you have to be in melee range. This is the contradiction.

Guardians are by far the most dependent on melee combat in the game, and yet they lack the tools to stay within melee range.

The following is the entire arsenal the Guardian has to stay in melee range (which they are designed to rely on):

3 Immobilizes
1 Chill
3 Gap closers (1 leap; 2 teleports)
3 Wards
3 Swiftness Abilities
1 Pull

Immobilizes: There are 2 at 900 and 1200 range, and a projectile that goes to 1200 range. They are on the Scepter, Utility Skill, and Hammer respectively. They tend to be quite reliable and effective.

Chill: It is a 2nd tier Major trait in Valor that lasts 4s/45s and requires the Hammer and critical hit activation. It’s useful only if you have a Hammer with a critical build, and is only reliable at the start of battle.

Gap Closers: There are two teleports, a Utility on a 45s cooldown and a Sword skill on a 10s cooldown. The Leap is 15s on the Greatsword. They are good at bad. The Utility has a 1200 range, but requires a target and has a long cooldown. The Sword is on a short cooldown but also requires a target. The Leap has a moderate cooldown and can be used in a variety of ways. The problem with the teleports is that you need a target, so they can’t be used for movement or evasion; only gap closing. Overall they are adequate at the very least.

Alarox – Human Guardian
Rampage Wilson – Charr Engineer
Sea of Sorrows

“The Need to be in Melee Range”

in Guardian

Posted by: Alarox.4590

Alarox.4590

Wards: One line on a 45s cooldown with a 5 seconds duration, a ring on a 45s cooldown with a 5 second duration, and a dome on a 120s cooldown with a 6s duration. The line and the ring tend to be impractical because they immobilize you when you cast, so actually trapping enemies becomes a problem. There is also an issue where enemies can bounce through the ward, rendering it useless. There is another problem of where enemies who receive the knockdown from running into the ward become temporarily unhittable. The dome can be useful in the right situations, especially if traited for ground casting. Overall they are subpar until they have bugs fixed and become more practical by allowing movement while cast.

Swiftness: Most Professions can now have passive +25% movement speed, and most have access to easy swiftness. For example, the Engineer can gain permanent swiftness by 10 points in a trait line and having 1 kit equipped. The Warrior can gain 50% swiftness uptime by one skill on an off-hand. The Guardian can only achieve a similar level by sacrificing melee or by sacrificing 2 utility skills. This poses a significant problem for Guardians in PvP unless they can also have as much movement speed, since they are designed to be melee-dependent.

They can either switch to Staff and gain 8s swiftness and be stuck using a staff (which is not a powerful combat weapon), or by taking the shouts Retreat and Save Yourselves, which barely meet 50% duration (and both are on a 60s cooldown). If the boon is stripped, this effectively nullifies the sole reason for taking 2 long cooldown utilities.

Edit: Retreat traited with 10 points in Honor can reach close to 50% swiftness duration, but it still suffers from the same issues mentioned above (in addition to also requiring a trait).

Pull: The pull affects 5 enemies at 600 range and is on a 30s cooldown. It’s the best AoE pull in the game and pairs well with the rest of the Greatsword. However, it is the Guardian’s only pull.

Overall, the Guardian is dependent on melee combat, but has few tools to stay in melee combat. They have 3 ways to quickly close the gap, but the Utility is usually a one-use skill due to the cooldown, which leaves 2 melee weapons with no gap closer. If the Guardian can manage to effectively close the gap, they still can not reliably keep the enemy from moving away due to lack of cripples/chills and only a handful of short duration immobilizes, and the Guardian lacks the speed to keep up with the enemy in the first place.

IMO: The base of the profession is solid, but it is incomplete. The supportive mechanics are there, as are the survival mechanics. The damaging mechanics are also solid. However, the mechanics aren’t functional due to “the need to be in melee range” not being supported, in any adequate way. There are numerous small changes that can, and in my opinion, should be made to address this issue.


That’s my view of the problem, what’s yours?

Alarox – Human Guardian
Rampage Wilson – Charr Engineer
Sea of Sorrows

(edited by Alarox.4590)

“The Need to be in Melee Range”

in Guardian

Posted by: Ganzo.5079

Ganzo.5079

FOr the gap closer argument, i think that they are not so effective to mantain range, ok they close a gap, but after you close this gap, without a movement malus, your enemy can continue simply to run away. The best gap closing we have is mighty blow, that can close little gap, but every 4 seconds, so we can really mantaining a fighting range using this skill. But when the Cd of a gap closing skill is above 15 seconds, it need something to mantain you enemy in you range (immobilize, cripple or chill). JUDge intervention + ring of warding combo, is how a close cap skill should work, you close gap and you trap your enemy for some second.

And for you last sentence, our class base, was strong, but nerf after nerf, we are loosing our streght without compensate the nerf, like adjusting something that simply dont work (IE useless skills and traits)
This forum is full of post with wonderful propositions for our class, and very fev of this proposal aim to make guardian OP, a lot of them aim to rebalance our class. BUt if they insist to ignore US and OUR feedbacks, the situation can only go in a worse way.

Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs.
It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill"
LOL

(edited by Ganzo.5079)

“The Need to be in Melee Range”

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Posted by: KensaiZen.3740

KensaiZen.3740

This is why i said guardians are obselete in WvW. Every class will be able to kite a guardian with guardians not being able to do anything about it. The patch pretty much nerfed our survival using easy healing from AH but the worst part is to increase kiting ability on burst classes?!?!?!

For way of comoensation they increased our burst ability. But its like giving someone a gun with no ammo. What is the point of burst if you cant catch them?

Combat in WvW will just become even more range reliant.

To me it seems these changes were designed for PvE. You dont need range closers in PvE so these nerfs dont seem as bad. Spvp battles are fought around control points thus not affected.There is no WvW love at all and just gets worse and worse.

I hope this is somehow linked to the goodies the guardian will get in feb or how WvW will change so this makes sense.

For the moment, this class is slowly dying.

400+ hours on guardian and decided to make an engineer grenadeer alt. Thanks for making such an OP class such as the engineers crap too.

Winters Ascension The White Guardian
Sophia Theos Beast Master
[Fissure of Woe]

“The Need to be in Melee Range”

in Guardian

Posted by: Alarox.4590

Alarox.4590

400+ hours on guardian and decided to make an engineer grenadeer alt. Thanks for making such an OP class such as the engineers crap too.

I just made an Engineer alt too, and got him to lv 40 in the last few days. I used Grenades originally until the nerf, but now I actually melee with the Engineer.

The Tool Kit is surprisingly effective. Traited, you get 3 skills that inflict cripple all on low cooldowns, a 3s block, a 1200 range pull, a powerful auto-attack as strong as the Greatsword’s, and a very powerful 1v1 burst attack (that also inflicts 3x confusion). Paired with the Rifle you gain a gap closer, an immobilize on a 10s cooldown, and another powerful close range attack. They can also achieve perma-swiftness with 10 points in a trait line.

Engineers don’t need to be in melee range, and yet they have a much easier time of staying there than Guardians.

Alarox – Human Guardian
Rampage Wilson – Charr Engineer
Sea of Sorrows

(edited by Alarox.4590)