Guild Wars 2

Hey all, I’ve come back to GW2 after a pretty long hiatus.
After playing for a good while on my warrior, I jumped on my guardian main. Thus began my spiral into despair. I’m slowly becoming convinced that nobody at ArenaNet plays guardian.
I’ma just rattle off a list of my gripes with the profession. Before someone cries, “Well I don’t see you offering any solutions to these problems”, yes I have, many times in the past and I will again. The point is to show how broken I think guardian is.

Your mileage my vary from mine but here’s goes.

- Pigeon-holed into mostly support roles. I LOVE melee support paladin style roles and guardian certainly doesn’t fail at support. Unfortunately, GW2’s design favours support the least, to put it lightly. The guardian’s strongest role is the least needed and often mocked by others.
- Zeal is still really bad. It attempts to promote cross-trait synergy but it tries way too hard to the point that it can’t stand on its own.
- Zeal seems to focus way too much on spirit weapons. Spirit weapons are also still rubbish so there’s a bunch of wasted traits AND skills.
- ANYTHING to do with condition damage is completely wasted on guardians. Until we get reliable sources of damaging conditions outside of burning.
- Ironically, there’s a little too much emphasis on damaging conditions in regard to some zeal and radiance traits. Wasted.
- I don’t see how a primarily front-line melee class still has no cripples and barely any other way of slowing foes. Warriors, heck, ANY other class can easily keep pretty much anyone in the intended range of their weapon for a decent amount of time. Conversely, they will all, always run circles around a guardian, regardless of how many teleports people claim we have.
- Everything that was ever wrong with 1h sword is still there. Sword 2 may as well heal foes. I can talk for pages on my issues with sword. The only other sword skills in the game that don’t have a cripple or leap finisher belong to thief but at least they get immobilise, two teleports and condition removal instead.
- Almost zero combo finishers outside of GS and hammer.
- Only one ranged option, scepter. Which has no projectile finishers, unreliable pseudo-aoe that looks like a symbol but isn’t and an all too brief immobilise.
- No stuns. At all.
- No dazes outside of Tome of Courage.
- Zeal again.
- Shield skills need love, still. Arguably the most iconic guardian weapon but barely used by any.
- Zero passive increased move speed traits/skills.
- Only three sources of swiftness across the entire profession.
- Almost no variety in the types of combo fields.
- Compared to the other professions, I find guardians traits to be far too stand alone. By that, I mean that outside of radiance 1, 3 , VI, Zeal I, the various the symbol traits and EM + AH, it’s hard to make a build where a lot of the traits play off of each other in meaningful ways. Unlike what I’ve seen on other professions.

I think I have more but I’m tired.

There are plenty of things that I think guardian does well but most of those fall into the category of stopping damage (which I love), administering boons (which other classes can do well, too) and healing, which, again, is under-valued in GW2’s game design. I love the idea behind guardian and I want to see the guardian reach the heights of its potential, it’s just that the execution needs a little more work in my opinion. I feel like we’re mostly support in a game that doesn’t need it much and are slow movers in a combat system that favours movement.

Thank you for reading.

- Support role are support important in the all three game mode. What you are thinking is tanking and healing. In PvE the guardian bring aegis, blind, reflection and protection. Those four support are really important in several dungeon, while yes it can be useless in some of the easiest dungeon like CoF. In WvW, guardian are one of the 4 main profession when it come to a zerg. In sPvP, the profession is lagging a bit, but we still have two powerful build and are one of the best bunker. So ya Guardian is good at meaningful support and this nobody laugh at that. We laugh at healing, cleric, staff guardian in PvE. Not the same thing.
- For Zeal, i can’t say much. Some good trait for PvE, but mostly useless major trait. You’re right on this one.
- For conditions, you are still right. Burning is really good, but can’t stand on its own. Especially since we don’t that much skill that can give burning. In PvP, ppl can remove it faster than we can apply it, compare to a Hambow warrior for exemple.
- Sword have some issue. Its doesn’t break the profession but they are annoying.
- Never really think about combo finisher, but you are right. We only have 10 finisher and 3 of those are on the spear lol. But not all profession must have all the stuff. It’s a weakness, but the profession have other strength. It’s a none issue in my opinion.
- Scepter is good, but true, it would be nice to have a second true ranged weapons with more AoE. A bit like the Warrior longbow.
- Stun and Daze are two CC. Yes we don’t really have stun or daze. But we have the most knockdown (4 vs 2 for most profession), and for pull and knockback we have a normal amount of those. I wouldn’t mind more CC, but I don’t see the urgency for it.
- Yes 3 reliable source of switness. And? You can have perma switfness, where is the problem?
- Shield. Oh there you are spot on. I would so love to use a shield on my guardian. The legendary shield look so kitten. Too bad its complete kitten.
- The thing about trait that don’t work together. I don’t know. It feel more like an opinion.

In the end. The Guardian is in a really good place right now. In PvE, even if Guardian is rarely part of record run (but really only thief, warrior, elementalist and mesmer are usually part of those run), it always a powerful profession to keep your allies alive wihtout sacrificing much dps. It’s also essentiel in fractals. In WvW, its part of the 4 main profession in a zerg, being a core element of any organized guild. In sPvP, the Guardian is already on of the best bunker, but true, when it come to roaming and killing you are pretty much limited to very few build.

Thaddeus.4891:

The Guardian is in a really good place right now.

Can you not

I tend to agree with a lot of your points. Every time I play my Guardian I feel a large dose of Underwhelmed, for a lot of the reasons you have indicated above. I don’t feel weak, I don’t feel strong, I just feel Underwhelmed.

Look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1nr5IpngTg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkkgL1cPJYM
2 layers of depth that do not exist at all.

Thaddeus.4891:

The Guardian is in a really good place right now.

Take that back!

I’ll compound on the issue’s I see:

-Worst ranged weaponry of all the professions(very easy to strafe-dodge the orbs)

-Least amount of significant passive’s compared to other professions(virute’s are incredibly weak passively)

-No controlling conditions

-Very limited mobility

-Condition builds are limited

-List of useless traits(my opinion):

Minors: All of zeal, first 2 in radiance, first 2 in valor, 2nd in honor(unless you have a ton of HP), 3rd in virtues.

Majors: Zeal-(I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, X, XI, XII) Radiance(I, II, III, V, VIII, IX, XII, XIII) Valor(III, VIII, XIII) Honor(I, III, IV,VII, VIII, X, XII, XIII) Virtues(I, III, IV, V, VIII, XI, XII, XIII)

That is a little over half in terms of majors and minors. Again, my opinion.

I’ve never found any of these traits to be of use, especially the symbol-related ones. Due to them relying on Rallying/defeating, static in nature(symbols), AI or just scale terribly with their respective slots.

Honestly, I just want some fun/strong traits instead of the boring ones we have now.

I see the are so many problems with the guard class but some words that i heard a while ago prove they want the guardian to be an underdog for other classses ’’While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes ,, (remember those words from the livestream? )

The main problem is that guardians have mediocre cleanses outside of pve where you don’t need that much.

Now, you might say, “dude my pure of voice/trooper rune” guardian cleanses stuff like mad!". Which is true, but you have to realize that Pure of Voice is utterly trash after it was fixed and is reliant on a runeset to make it not trash.

So we have contemplation of purity (long cooldown, selfish), and purging flames. It’s all about purging flames, or you can go deep into virtues for Absolute Resolution. You could also try for passive condi removal with signet of resolve (which really isn’t a choice) and the so and so purity.

Is there not a problem with this?

Thaddeus.4891:

- Yes 3 reliable source of switness. And? You can have perma switfness, where is the problem?

The problem is that none of those three sources of swiftness can be worked into a meditation dps build. All three are centered on bunker type skills (shouts, staff) where swiftness uptime isn’t as important. Sticking to your target is crucial for a melee dps build.

Sure, it works fine in PvE if you’re running from mining nodes to use staff and 2 shouts for swiftness alone, but in PvP or roaming WvW there needs to be a source with more synergy. Access to swiftness or movement speed through traits would be ideal, as all 7 other classes have some form of swiftness/movement speed in their traits. Even a low duration high application (like 5s of swiftness on crit) or a conditional movement speed (like warriors) would be better than nothing.

- Pigeon-holed into mostly support roles. I LOVE melee support paladin style roles and guardian certainly doesn’t fail at support. Unfortunately, GW2’s design favours support the least, to put it lightly. The guardian’s strongest role is the least needed and often mocked by others.
Guardians are supposed to be a support profession. Anyone who uses them for zerk are mentally kittened.
- Zeal is still really bad. It attempts to promote cross-trait synergy but it tries way too hard to the point that it can’t stand on its own.
If you put a majority of your points (or any, for that matter) in Zeal, then please reroll. You suck.
- Zeal seems to focus way too much on spirit weapons. Spirit weapons are also still rubbish so there’s a bunch of wasted traits AND skills.
Please reroll as Warrior. No one loves you.
- ANYTHING to do with condition damage is completely wasted on guardians. Until we get reliable sources of damaging conditions outside of burning.
Conditions are crap, I agree. Go reroll a warrior if you want melee DPS.
- Ironically, there’s a little too much emphasis on damaging conditions in regard to some zeal and radiance traits. Wasted.
Reroll warrior to make things better, you whiny $#^.
- I don’t see how a primarily front-line melee class still has no cripples and barely any other way of slowing foes. Warriors, heck, ANY other class can easily keep pretty much anyone in the intended range of their weapon for a decent amount of time. Conversely, they will all, always run circles around a guardian, regardless of how many teleports people claim we have.
Guardians have an insane amount of survivability if you build one right. If you’re getting rekd in PvP because you wanted to suck on the DPS nipple. Then reroll a warrior.
- Everything that was ever wrong with 1h sword is still there. Sword 2 may as well heal foes. I can talk for pages on my issues with sword. The only other sword skills in the game that don’t have a cripple or leap finisher belong to thief but at least they get immobilise, two teleports and condition removal instead.
Swords are for plebs.
- Almost zero combo finishers outside of GS and hammer.
L2Play.
- Only one ranged option, scepter. Which has no projectile finishers, unreliable pseudo-aoe that looks like a symbol but isn’t and an all too brief immobilise.
L2Staff.
- No stuns. At all.
L2Guardian.
- No dazes outside of Tome of Courage.
L2Guardian.
- Zeal again.
Reroll Warrior.
- Shield skills need love, still. Arguably the most iconic guardian weapon but barely used by any.
L2Tank/Heal build.
- Zero passive increased move speed traits/skills.
L2Retreat.
- Only three sources of swiftness across the entire profession.
L2Retreat.
- Almost no variety in the types of combo fields.
L2Guardian.
- Compared to the other professions, I find guardians traits to be far too stand alone. By that, I mean that outside of radiance 1, 3 , VI, Zeal I, the various the symbol traits and EM + AH, it’s hard to make a build where a lot of the traits play off of each other in meaningful ways. Unlike what I’ve seen on other professions.
L2Guardian.

Meta sux. Go look for a better build. Meta is for plebs and Mezmer/Warrior wannabes. They can all die in a fire.

Rethmar Stokestrike.1927:

- Pigeon-holed into mostly support roles. I LOVE melee support paladin style roles and guardian certainly doesn’t fail at support. Unfortunately, GW2’s design favours support the least, to put it lightly. The guardian’s strongest role is the least needed and often mocked by others.
Guardians are supposed to be a support profession. Anyone who uses them for zerk are mentally kittened.
- Zeal is still really bad. It attempts to promote cross-trait synergy but it tries way too hard to the point that it can’t stand on its own.
If you put a majority of your points (or any, for that matter) in Zeal, then please reroll. You suck.
- Zeal seems to focus way too much on spirit weapons. Spirit weapons are also still rubbish so there’s a bunch of wasted traits AND skills.
Please reroll as Warrior. No one loves you.
- ANYTHING to do with condition damage is completely wasted on guardians. Until we get reliable sources of damaging conditions outside of burning.
Conditions are crap, I agree. Go reroll a warrior if you want melee DPS.
- Ironically, there’s a little too much emphasis on damaging conditions in regard to some zeal and radiance traits. Wasted.
Reroll warrior to make things better, you whiny $#^.
- I don’t see how a primarily front-line melee class still has no cripples and barely any other way of slowing foes. Warriors, heck, ANY other class can easily keep pretty much anyone in the intended range of their weapon for a decent amount of time. Conversely, they will all, always run circles around a guardian, regardless of how many teleports people claim we have.
Guardians have an insane amount of survivability if you build one right. If you’re getting rekd in PvP because you wanted to suck on the DPS nipple. Then reroll a warrior.
- Everything that was ever wrong with 1h sword is still there. Sword 2 may as well heal foes. I can talk for pages on my issues with sword. The only other sword skills in the game that don’t have a cripple or leap finisher belong to thief but at least they get immobilise, two teleports and condition removal instead.
Swords are for plebs.
- Almost zero combo finishers outside of GS and hammer.
L2Play.
- Only one ranged option, scepter. Which has no projectile finishers, unreliable pseudo-aoe that looks like a symbol but isn’t and an all too brief immobilise.
L2Staff.
- No stuns. At all.
L2Guardian.
- No dazes outside of Tome of Courage.
L2Guardian.
- Zeal again.
Reroll Warrior.
- Shield skills need love, still. Arguably the most iconic guardian weapon but barely used by any.
L2Tank/Heal build.
- Zero passive increased move speed traits/skills.
L2Retreat.
- Only three sources of swiftness across the entire profession.
L2Retreat.
- Almost no variety in the types of combo fields.
L2Guardian.
- Compared to the other professions, I find guardians traits to be far too stand alone. By that, I mean that outside of radiance 1, 3 , VI, Zeal I, the various the symbol traits and EM + AH, it’s hard to make a build where a lot of the traits play off of each other in meaningful ways. Unlike what I’ve seen on other professions.
L2Guardian.

Meta sux. Go look for a better build. Meta is for plebs and Mezmer/Warrior wannabes. They can all die in a fire.

… Wait. You’re not serious, are you?

Actually Rethmar is serious. He made this video about healing guardian in PvE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oueBpmhAU-o. I couldnt stop laughing when Í saw that

PS. also he is usings shield in PvE

Hohou.1508:

Actually Rethmar is serious. He made this video about healing guardian in PvE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oueBpmhAU-o. I couldnt stop laughing when Í saw that

PS. also he is usings shield in PvE

I just saw the video… holy kitten I have no words for this. And there are even people who thank him for this. I just – what the… wow…

That video was made by Nemesis, I do believe…

My apologize, this video was in Rethmar’s topic, I thought he was its author.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/The-Immovable-Object-Tank-Heals-PvE

It still doesn’t change the fact that the video is pretty bad though. Using a shield in 95% of the content seems nonsensical. I do remember that one boss in the queen’s gauntlet where it was best to kill all the bosses simultaneously and you wanted to destroy and not reflect near the end so shield was used. I remember they asked me to use a shield and I was like “wtf?”

Guardian is the class with the least amount of variety, and this should surprise noone. Zeal is mostly useless save for 2 traits (out of 13) and radiance is not faring much better. The irony with radiance is that people go 25 points all in just for the MINOR trait and end up using the majors for flavor which is ridiculous.

Its the ONLY tree where spending 30 points is detrimental, compared to spending 25, and that should tell the devs something, assuming they know even what im talking about

valor is viable for 2 specs, and honor is valiable for 1 spec, and virtue goes only up to Master level, for there is no one, in the history of Gw2 who put a point in virtue grandmaster triats for any kind of remotely serious builds. And i have been around healway, and i think that build was a joke exploiting player ignorance

So we have more than half the guardian traits which are WORTHLESS, and this says a lot from the getgo.

Now lets go over to class mechanics:

Virtue passive AND active abilities = a joke. You need to trait them to be worthwhile, which is completely stupid. its like having to trait mesmer shatters in order to do damage.

No viable condi builds, which deserves no explanation

We are also the class with the least amount of CCs. I can’t tell you how frustrating SPVP is these days where im stunned and snared nonstop whereas i have to chase kitten kitten necros, engies, rangers, and eles just to poke them with my sword while eating a myriad of CC and condi in the process. Good engies and D/D can 1v2 guardians all day, because we are in a good place right now.

We have no viable ranged options in competitive play, end of story

SPVP on my guard is so frustrating now i find i have to move over to my D/D ele or ranger every 2 games in order not to punch my monitor. Did i mention how i am seeing less and less guards in sPVP. Any soloQ team with 2 guards or more is better off AFking from the getgo and save themselves the embarrasment, especially if there is an engie on the other side

Haters gonna hate. I’ve done 100% of the content with that build and it works like a charm. But you guys can go ahead and whine about how broke the class is while flailing around in full berzerk. The sad thing is none of you have even tried anything else, so have fun being bad you cheeky scrubs. 2mlg4u.

You should also see by precision warrior build that requires full knights gear. Never die and do top damage.

Every single content in the game can be cleared while fully naked wielding a weapon of your choice, Dont pretend like GW2 is hard, so claming you have “done 100% of the content” does nothing but make you lose credibility to anyone with half a brain who has played for longer than 2 months.

All the discussion is centered around efficiency, and how quickly you can clear the content. Never in this forum has anyone complained about being UNABLE to clear a specific dungeon of fractal with x or y build.

I still dont know whether you are being serious of sarcastic, and frankly i don’t care. I simply don’t want to get the random nub rolling with a similar build to yours whom i will have to kick midway through bloomberg for dragging everyone behind and wasting 5 min of everyones time.

Rethmar Stokestrike.1927:

Haters gonna hate. I’ve done 100% of the content with that build and it works like a charm. But you guys can go ahead and whine about how broke the class is while flailing around in full berzerk. The sad thing is none of you have even tried anything else, so have fun being bad you cheeky scrubs. 2mlg4u.

You should also see by precision warrior build that requires full knights gear. Never die and do top damage.

And I’ve done 100% of the content in less than half the time it took you with that build.

That aside, screaming ‘L2GUARDIAN’ when people are stating legitimate issues just makes you look like an kitten with nothing to contribute. So please, if you do not have anything constructive to say, then simply don’t say anything at all.

Black Box.9312:

Thaddeus.4891:

The Guardian is in a really good place right now.

Can you not

Irony is a peculiar thing, huh?

Rethmar Stokestrike.1927:

Black Box.9312:

Thaddeus.4891:

The Guardian is in a really good place right now.

Can you not

Irony is a peculiar thing, huh?

Huh. I guess that one flew over your head. Oh well, not my problem.

Shanks.2907:

Thaddeus.4891:

- Yes 3 reliable source of switness. And? You can have perma switfness, where is the problem?

The problem is that none of those three sources of swiftness can be worked into a meditation dps build. All three are centered on bunker type skills (shouts, staff) where swiftness uptime isn’t as important. Sticking to your target is crucial for a melee dps build.

Sure, it works fine in PvE if you’re running from mining nodes to use staff and 2 shouts for swiftness alone, but in PvP or roaming WvW there needs to be a source with more synergy. Access to swiftness or movement speed through traits would be ideal, as all 7 other classes have some form of swiftness/movement speed in their traits. Even a low duration high application (like 5s of swiftness on crit) or a conditional movement speed (like warriors) would be better than nothing.

That a WAY better point that what OP said. I can get behind that. I don’t play medi guardian, i play bunker guardian in sPvP, so this problem never occur to me.

Overall I agree with many of the complaints, but are guardians in a bad position? They have competitive DPS in PVE (which right now is the only thing that matters) and provide unique utilities to a party, which is a lot more than I can say for half the classes in the game. In WvW they are one of four classes that form the core of a zerg. They fall behind in sPVP, but they still have two viable builds.

Zeal is a bad trait line and focuses on Spirit Weapons –
Zeal is one of our damage lines and I think it does a pretty good job of it. I agree there are a lot of wasted traits, but it increases the DPS output of 4 of our weapons (scepter, GS, mace, hammer) by roughly 15-20% each. It does have Spirit weapons tied to the line, but one of our lines has to, and the spirit sword/hammer would make sense in zeal if the spirit weapons themselves were reliable and/or good.

Condition damage is wasted on Guardians –
Overall agree, but I don’t see any real +condition damage traits in zeal or radiance except for Radiant Retaliation (terrible), Amplified Wrath (okay), and Kindled Zeal (meh).

No cripples, minimum swiftness, and no stuns/dazes –
True, and it can suck at times, but we do have a plethora of gap closers … Judges Intervention being one of the greatest utilities in the game. Although swiftness is minimal, Retreat is a great utility and fills most, if not all your swiftness needs. No stuns/dazes isn’t that big of a deal; serves no purpose in PVE and block/blind out class them; in PVP they’re helpful but a cripple is what Guardians actually need. I personally would like to see sword #3 be redone to apply cripple/swiftness per attack landed.

Shields suck-
Shields suck.

One field type; minimal finishers-
In my experience fields and finishers are overrated. Yes, you can do cool things with them, but overall they are meaningless or impossible to use in zergs, solo PVE, and large scale PVP. In truth I would rather have strong, reliable utilities than try to combo a stationary field and finisher against a moving target or with ten other fields also laid down.

Scepter as the range weapon-
Against moving targets, scepter sucks end of story, against stationary targets, especially large targets, scepter has the highest DPS for the Guardian. It is what it is. When specced for damage, the scepter paired with a focus is actually good in PVP, you just need to use it situationally.

Thaddeus.4891:

Shanks.2907:

Thaddeus.4891:

- Yes 3 reliable source of switness. And? You can have perma switfness, where is the problem?

The problem is that none of those three sources of swiftness can be worked into a meditation dps build. All three are centered on bunker type skills (shouts, staff) where swiftness uptime isn’t as important. Sticking to your target is crucial for a melee dps build.

Sure, it works fine in PvE if you’re running from mining nodes to use staff and 2 shouts for swiftness alone, but in PvP or roaming WvW there needs to be a source with more synergy. Access to swiftness or movement speed through traits would be ideal, as all 7 other classes have some form of swiftness/movement speed in their traits. Even a low duration high application (like 5s of swiftness on crit) or a conditional movement speed (like warriors) would be better than nothing.

That a WAY better point that what OP said. I can get behind that. I don’t play medi guardian, i play bunker guardian in sPvP, so this problem never occur to me.

Thanks man. It’s refreshing to see someone who mains a support guardian be able to understand the needs of a meditation guardian. Far too often it’s a split for resources considering the lack of potential buffs coming our way.