Guild Wars 2

Rethinking Your Builds.

Those of you who are complaining that other classes are op compared to the guardian, (war, mes, eng, etc…) should think about what the guardian does best compared to a thief, mesmer, or warrior. More importantly…think about what your focus is.
1: Holding nodes/bunking/team support
2: Grabbing home node/pressure at far/roaming (assuming you win 70% of your 1v1’s) knowing when to treb or grab hammer, etc.
Again, pretty much the emphasis of most classes, but the guardian Can roam and Can take on Most Builds 1v1.

If you can’t 1v1 a toon within 20s to 25s, then you shouldn’t be roaming. If you can’t draw out 10k damage in that amount of time, then you’re Definitely not a roamer. Need to have a strategy that consists of your build. If it takes longer than 20s to down some one… you should either 1:… be a better bunk/team support or 2:… … rethink your strat. In retrospective, start doing 1v1 duels and see how you fair vs certain classes, and builds, (notice…certain builds beat certain builds..)

I just want to lay this out there in terms of Team Speak or Vent:
If I can’t 1v1 some one at far, then I need to rethink my strategy. Period. Call for some one at your side. Take initiative in-spite a “commando” in your group calling the shots. He, and everyone else, wants you to say where you need help at or what you’re doing. However obvious, call incoming too… whether it be at home, middle, far or etc…just saying

I just came back after not playing for ages and the same stuff is still being posted.

See, the Guardian is really good at some things.

Team support, we’re awesome at. No question about it. As long as I’ve got a team-mate with me, we’re close to unstoppable. The Guardian you can totally serve as a power multiplier.

Grabbing and holding a point, we’re good at too. With the right build and good use of your skills, you can hold a point for way longer than anyone else. As I said, I haven’t played in ages and I can still knock someone off a point for long enough to cap it.

But here’s the thing:

That’s it. And it’s not enough. I can draw out fights forever, especially in 1v1 or even 2v1 (depending on my opponents) or help my team-mates stay alive, but it won’t kill him. If I invest in living long enough (and with a low starting health pool, you kinda need to) I can’t reach the damage required to take someone down. And to be honest, if you could choose between taking a point without killing its defender, or killing the defender and then taking the point, it’s not hard to figure out what you should prefer.

And if you play in an organized group, this can be mitigated by good communication. A quick: “Hey, I’m at the keep holding off two guys, could use some help,” should sort things out just fine. But not everyone plays at that level of organization and it isn’t fun that you *need*¨that level of organization to play effectively.

Guardians are by no means underpowered. I always cringe when people complain about what is hands-down the best group support/spearhead in any content because it doesn’t play like another profession. Some of us have been main guardian from the start and we have builds that haven’t changed in over a year in PVE and PVP.

The idea that all professions can be equally good at every aspect of play is just a fantasy. ArenaNet made a big deal of muddying the water, but the truth is that any game which has mechanically different classes will have incomparables which cannot be so easily balanced and will leave some better at specific things than others.

liedofwar.5409:

Guardians are by no means underpowered. I always cringe when people complain about what is hands-down the best group support/spearhead in any content because it doesn’t play like another profession.

I don’t want to bring other games into this, but most games allow multiple playstyles per profession. Having only a single viable playstyle is a problem that plagues specializations in other games.

And (since I honestly don’t know) are other professions similarly restricted into a single playstyle?

liedofwar.5409:

Some of us have been main guardian from the start and we have builds that haven’t changed in over a year in PVE and PVP.

That doesn’t sound like a good thing, to be honest.

liedofwar.5409:

. ArenaNet made a big deal of muddying the water, but the truth is that any game which has mechanically different classes will have incomparables which cannot be so easily balanced and will leave some better at specific things than others.

No-one is complaining about the things we are good at. I think nobody has anything bad to say about our support capabilities. Those are awesome. But we aren’t even forced into that because of a particular meta. It’s literally the only thing we can do properly. (Although I’m enthusiastic about the people who’re trying to make a more bursty Guardian a thing in PvP.)

Being the second overall best class in game, The Guardian strikes a decent enough balance between what its good at and what its poor at, with as far as I know no major skill bugs or annoyances. Twohanded weapons are some of the best in game and onehanders seem to fit nicely into builds. Their only real weakness, low health, is easily countered by lots and lots of healing.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to my main which is a broken down nerfed to the ground Mesmer. kitten you lucky Guardians.

To make a proper guardian/paladin with 18k+ health we sacrifice too much stat wise, we are under powered.

I rolled the class to play a warrior healer hybrid, not rogue healer.

You must not have gone toe to toe w some seriously good players if you haven’t been in a fight that lasted longer than 25s 1v1

mrauls.6519:

You must not have gone toe to toe w some seriously good players if you haven’t been in a fight that lasted longer than 25s 1v1

Seriously, half the classes out there do the roaming better than the guardian, scratch that, all of them. No disengage = no roaming.

Apolo.5942:

mrauls.6519:

You must not have gone toe to toe w some seriously good players if you haven’t been in a fight that lasted longer than 25s 1v1

Seriously, half the classes out there do the roaming better than the guardian, scratch that, all of them. No disengage = no roaming.

You’ve just never played with a good guard.

Apolo.5942:

mrauls.6519:

You must not have gone toe to toe w some seriously good players if you haven’t been in a fight that lasted longer than 25s 1v1

Seriously, half the classes out there do the roaming better than the guardian, scratch that, all of them. No disengage = no roaming.

The issue is our “Disengages” are on too long of a cooldown, whereas other classes have them up much more often to where they can ENTER & EXIT w/ the same skill.

Guards… not so much, as our exit consists of 1 wpn skill (Either sword or GS, which is on a good cooldown, I believe) + JI (too long a cooldown – It’d better if it was 35s Base w/ 28s Mediation Mastery).

The issue has always been the long cooldowns for guardians.

Ynna.8769:

I just came back after not playing for ages and the same stuff is still being posted.

See, the Guardian is really good at some things.

Team support, we’re awesome at. No question about it. As long as I’ve got a team-mate with me, we’re close to unstoppable. The Guardian you can totally serve as a power multiplier.

Grabbing and holding a point, we’re good at too. With the right build and good use of your skills, you can hold a point for way longer than anyone else. As I said, I haven’t played in ages and I can still knock someone off a point for long enough to cap it.

But here’s the thing:

That’s it. And it’s not enough. I can draw out fights forever, especially in 1v1 or even 2v1 (depending on my opponents) or help my team-mates stay alive, but it won’t kill him. If I invest in living long enough (and with a low starting health pool, you kinda need to) I can’t reach the damage required to take someone down. And to be honest, if you could choose between taking a point without killing its defender, or killing the defender and then taking the point, it’s not hard to figure out what you should prefer.

And if you play in an organized group, this can be mitigated by good communication. A quick: “Hey, I’m at the keep holding off two guys, could use some help,” should sort things out just fine. But not everyone plays at that level of organization and it isn’t fun that you *need*¨that level of organization to play effectively.

QFT.

I love my Guardian, but he feels too much like the Paragon from Guild Wars to me. I.E. Really great in groups or teams, but really poor on his own.

And I will never agree with ArenaNet’s stance that having three permanent signets as my class mechanic justifies being the most easily kited profession that is designed to be a melee class, but without the health to actually survive very long in the front lines. Especially when Rangers, Engineers, Mesmers and Necromancers all get more health while safely staying at range.

I would be quite happy to have more options with a Guardian than I currently do. What I am allowed to do, I do quite well but the profession is definitely pigeon-holed as far as diversity and choice goes.

Thanks.

liedofwar.5409:

The idea that all professions can be equally good at every aspect of play is just a fantasy. ArenaNet made a big deal of muddying the water, but the truth is that any game which has mechanically different classes will have incomparables which cannot be so easily balanced and will leave some better at specific things than others.

Ha Ha… read this. Thought about the Warrior class in this game. Then laughed some more.

Michaeas Magister.1589:

And I will never agree with ArenaNet’s stance that having three permanent signets as my class mechanic justifies being the most easily kited profession that is designed to be a melee class, but without the health to actually survive very long in the front lines. Especially when Rangers, Engineers, Mesmers and Necromancers all get more health while safely staying at range.

Frontline? Join WvW and compare how long you survive in the frontline as all those classes compared to a guardian. Guardians have the best defense in the whole game, no other class can endure so much damage like a guardian. Ive seen more than enough solo guardians get swarmed by a whole zerg and still survive for very long time compared to the situation they are in. Please dont whine about the survivability of guardians. Thats like whining about thieves not having enough options to stealth…

My problem with guardian is we are playing a game with limited character options, basically 10 skills 15 if you reckon weapon swap.

My Spirt Weapons are not viable for anything. Neither are our sigils.

This means that I don’t really have a lot of options when it comes to character design. I get bored with games that have no significant character design options.

Too many useless traits and too many useless skills.

It isn’t a matter of power. I am plenty powerful when running the right builds. Its a matter of only having about 4 builds worth running.

A lot of people complain a bout roaming. I would say, why bother? The skills Guardian has would be acceptable for roaming in other games. In this one though, some classes have so much mobility and invisibility that they can run around all day. I see no point to chasing after them. Until Anet does something to address the silliness of the many Nike builds (run away specialists) roaming will always be frustrating at best.

The problem is that Anet is not objective. They seem to constantly ignore the many flaws with the characters and the game as a whole.

Mayama.1854:

Frontline? Join WvW and compare how long you survive in the frontline as all those classes compared to a guardian. Guardians have the best defense in the whole game, no other class can endure so much damage like a guardian. I’ve seen more than enough solo guardians get swarmed by a whole zerg and still survive for very long time compared to the situation they are in. Please don’t whine about the survivability of guardians. Thats like whining about thieves not having enough options to stealth…

While I’m sure that a decently geared level 80 Guardian is a powerhouse in WvW, there are two things I’d like to mention in that regard.
1) This power is inconsequential. WvW battles aren’t turned because a Guardian survives 4 seconds more than another class. It is rather useful if you’re tackling smaller objectives with a smaller group, guerrilla style, but WvW revolves around large group “battles” (my experience with WvW hasn’t involved battles, but rather “who has the biggest zerg”) in which your individual skills and abilities hardly matter. Everyone is useful in WvW, this isn’t special to Guardians.
2) This doesn’t hold for lower-level Guardians. I’ve got a Warrior that I’m leveling completely through WvW. This works, because I have the option of hanging back, providing useful (offensive) buffs and taking down stragglers with my Rifle or Longbow. I know I tried something similar with my Guardian before hitting level 80, and it was very hard to be that useful.

Relentliss.2170:

My problem with guardian is we are playing a game with limited character options, basically 10 skills 15 if you reckon weapon swap.

My Spirt Weapons are not viable for anything. Neither are our sigils.

This means that I don’t really have a lot of options when it comes to character design. I get bored with games that have no significant character design options.

Too many useless traits and too many useless skills.

Useless traits is a problem I feel most professions have to deal with. Traits just aren’t as interesting as progression systems in other games.

But yeah, I think this is important to keep in mind. People come into a profession with different expectations. Guardians encompass several archetypes: Monk, Zealous Warrior, Tank-y Paladin, Priest, Medic… And players are going to come into this profession expecting to eventually fill one or more of those roles and I don’t think we can fault them for that.

Ynna.8769:

1) This power is inconsequential. WvW battles aren’t turned because a Guardian survives 4 seconds more than another class. It is rather useful if you’re tackling smaller objectives with a smaller group, guerrilla style, but WvW revolves around large group “battles” (my experience with WvW hasn’t involved battles, but rather “who has the biggest zerg”) in which your individual skills and abilities hardly matter. Everyone is useful in WvW, this isn’t special to Guardians.

That guardian that survives 4 seconds longer blocks with walls, captures enemy in his circle, spams condi cleans on his group and gives them stability so he really makes a difference. Especially the stability is so important.

Mayama.1854:

Michaeas Magister.1589:

And I will never agree with ArenaNet’s stance that having three permanent signets as my class mechanic justifies being the most easily kited profession that is designed to be a melee class, but without the health to actually survive very long in the front lines. Especially when Rangers, Engineers, Mesmers and Necromancers all get more health while safely staying at range.

Frontline? Join WvW and compare how long you survive in the frontline as all those classes compared to a guardian. Guardians have the best defense in the whole game, no other class can endure so much damage like a guardian. Ive seen more than enough solo guardians get swarmed by a whole zerg and still survive for very long time compared to the situation they are in. Please dont whine about the survivability of guardians. Thats like whining about thieves not having enough options to stealth…

/sigh

Quoted out of context again. Ah well, what can you do?

Thanks.

Mayama.1854:

Ynna.8769:

1) This power is inconsequential. WvW battles aren’t turned because a Guardian survives 4 seconds more than another class. It is rather useful if you’re tackling smaller objectives with a smaller group, guerrilla style, but WvW revolves around large group “battles” (my experience with WvW hasn’t involved battles, but rather “who has the biggest zerg”) in which your individual skills and abilities hardly matter. Everyone is useful in WvW, this isn’t special to Guardians.

That guardian that survives 4 seconds longer blocks with walls, captures enemy in his circle, spams condi cleans on his group and gives them stability so he really makes a difference. Especially the stability is so important.

I won’t disagree that Stability is important, but I’ve never known a Guardian to make a huge difference to a zerg apart from that. Just being the guy that brings Stability isn’t all that interesting either. Maybe it’s just the groups I’ve ran with?

Relentliss.2170:

My problem with guardian is we are playing a game with limited character options, basically 10 skills 15 if you reckon weapon swap.

My Spirt Weapons are not viable for anything. Neither are our sigils.

This means that I don’t really have a lot of options when it comes to character design. I get bored with games that have no significant character design options.

Too many useless traits and too many useless skills.

It isn’t a matter of power. I am plenty powerful when running the right builds. Its a matter of only having about 4 builds worth running.

A lot of people complain a bout roaming. I would say, why bother? The skills Guardian has would be acceptable for roaming in other games. In this one though, some classes have so much mobility and invisibility that they can run around all day. I see no point to chasing after them. Until Anet does something to address the silliness of the many Nike builds (run away specialists) roaming will always be frustrating at best.

The problem is that Anet is not objective. They seem to constantly ignore the many flaws with the characters and the game as a whole.

I’m going to bump this because I feel the same, with the exception of the last statement. I’m not sure it’s objectivity that’s holding the devs back on improving the class but what I do see is alot of ‘trying too hard’ to make poor concepts work. Sometimes they get it right and it becomes interesting, but it’s never as good as what’s already being used and played … Anet isn’t bold/creative enough with their changes IMO.

Obtena.7952:

I’m going to bump this because I feel the same, with the exception of the last statement. I’m not sure it’s objectivity that’s holding the devs back on improving the class but what I do see is alot of ‘trying too hard’ to make poor concepts work. Sometimes they get it right and it becomes interesting, but it’s never as good as what’s already being used and played … Anet isn’t bold/creative enough with their changes IMO.

I have many friends who are/were strong beta testers of new content and had access and the ear of the devs involved with that. My opinion is based on what they have told me of how things get tested. Anet isn’t bold/creative enough because they don’t see or want to see the many flaws with the many systems in their game. Some of the flaws are pretty fundamental in nature but they proceed like things are fine.

Whoever is chairing the Dev team for warriors knows what he is doing. Look at them.
Banners – work fine, do what you’d expect
Sigils – also really strong
Shouts – awesome
Stances – awesome

Compare to Guardian
Shouts – work fine, do what you might expect
Meditations – really strong
Spirit Weapons – weak
Sigils – weak
Virtues – weak
I don’t expect any changes to Virtues alot of other people percieve them as fine. But I can see some serious issues with Spirit Weapons and Sigils.

Spirit Weapons need some serious rejigging. There are too many traits across too many trees. If you equip Spirit Weapons you basically lose alot of survivability, it becomes quite low, because of how you have had to spec to make them even usable.

Our Sigils when used are just plain pathetic. Compare this to Warriors and you see what I mean.

meditation builds are still very good after april’s patch , everything else screwed

you can hold a cap point unless its a well played power necro that auto attacks for 8k+, or a two shot thief that is played well…not great not top 10 play just half decent. simply put bunker is the only thing we have and it is slowing falling behind the arms race that is going on with the other class’s. As other class’s keep getting buffed to compete with each other the guardian falls behind. Guardian’s are great at pve and great in wvw hammer train to provide lots of stability and water blasts, with good cc using staff for some burst heal, speed boost, and might stacks…..nothing more.

I was first very surprised with the guardian, loads of cool weapons and abilities, only to find out that there is a lot of pigeonholing going on in PvE, I got this feeling that guardians are not the only profession subjected to this.

Relentliss.2170:

Whoever is chairing the Dev team for warriors knows what he is doing. Look at them.
Banners – work fine, do what you’d expect
Sigils – also really strong
Shouts – awesome
Stances – awesome

Compare to Guardian
Shouts – work fine, do what you might expect
Meditations – really strong
Spirit Weapons – weak
Sigils – weak
Virtues – weak
I don’t expect any changes to Virtues alot of other people percieve them as fine. But I can see some serious issues with Spirit Weapons and Sigils.

Our Sigils when used are just plain pathetic. Compare this to Warriors and you see what I mean.

Guardians are fine. Some skill types may see little use, but there are certainly very viable skills and builds.

One way to buff spirit weapon usefulness would be to introduce a useful spirit weapon elite.

Concerning signets. I believe signet-focused builds should be good options for newbie players, but weak options for any averagely skilled player. What’s frustrating, is that the easy-to-play warriors have access to strong signets.

I don’t find virtues to be weak, but they are at their strongest in a group setting.

Guardians have weak escape abilities, and they aren’t good at lock down either. These are very important in WvW. Giving them an elite gank/lockdown skill would be pretty cool.

A couple things on my wishlist for for guardians:
1. Ascended and exotic gear with power, vitality and precision stats.
2. Spirit Prison elite skill (counts as a spirit weapon). Create a prison around you potentially trapping other enemy players. Trapped enemy players would need to destroy it to escape. Either that or some other elite with gank potential.

I think the biggest barrier to more creative play and builds on Guardian is the concept of the class itself. There is only so much interesting mechanics that can be done related to team support, especially without the trinity. As we see for the next balance patch, apparently ANet has thought of some additional ways to make that team support concept more interesting for SWeapons. Guardian is certainly not underpowered though but it would be nice to branch the class out a bit, even within the support concept, the mechanics are a a bit passive and defensively focused. If the strength of the effects could somehow be tied to more difficult methods of application, it could become more interesting.

Fergus.4208:

Concerning sigils. I believe sigil-focused builds should be good options for newbie players, but weak options for any averagely skilled player. What’s frustrating, is that the easy-to-play warriors have access to strong sigils.

I personally find that a horrible design philosophy. There shouldn’t be a major skillgroup dedicated to newer players. Sigils should be easier to use for new players, but not that effective, but in the hand of a good player, they should become even more powerful. Making the trade-off between the passive and the active should be a hard decision.

Guardians aren’t underpowered. But IMO, they have serious QOL issues, and fighting in map size larger than half a city block proves too much. Clearly they don’t believe in walking and more about smashing things, making them the most American of all unlike the cowards that run away like thieves and warriors.*

*Is a joke. But the thief and warrior part is totally true.

Ynna.8769:

Fergus.4208:

Concerning signets. I believe signet-focused builds should be good options for newbie players, but weak options for any averagely skilled player. What’s frustrating, is that the easy-to-play warriors have access to strong sigils.

I personally find that a horrible design philosophy. There shouldn’t be a major skillgroup dedicated to newer players. Sigils should be easier to use for new players, but not that effective, but in the hand of a good player, they should become even more powerful. Making the trade-off between the passive and the active should be a hard decision.

Just to clarify. I meant signets. Not sigils (I have now edited my post).

If it’s hard to decide if you should use the active, then would imply that keeping the passive is almost as good as not using the active.

There is a big gap between playing an elementalist and a warrior, and making signets strong for the most straightforward class just makes it even more easy to play.

The conquest mode is fairly static (compared to say Dota matches), and a big part of the PvP comes down to the actual combat. That also means that it’s troublesome if some professions are much easier to play than others.

Based on the class mechanics Guards are only really good at two things: Zerging and Point defense so thats probably why they are ‘in a good place.’

Guards have been plagued with stealth nerfs and next to not fixes since beta where they got nerfed every patch. Are we under powered? Not really, but we’re also not that good. You get a little bit less out of the class from what you put into it which is the exact opposite of every other class except ranger, but they are getting buffed pretty hard

Dynnen.6405:

Based on the class mechanics Guards are only really good at two things: Zerging and Point defense so thats probably why they are ‘in a good place.’

Guards have been plagued with stealth nerfs and next to not fixes since beta where they got nerfed every patch. Are we under powered? Not really, but we’re also not that good. You get a little bit less out of the class from what you put into it which is the exact opposite of every other class except ranger, but they are getting buffed pretty hard

So, do you hold out any hope for any changes with this upcoming patch or do you figure it will be more of “in a good place” rhetoric?

Thanks.

Fergus.4208:

Guardians are fine. Some skill types may see little use, but there are certainly very viable skills and builds.
.

Guardians are fine when you run the 2 types of abilities that are good Mediations or Shouts… maybe even Consecrations but they are limited by their stationary nature. The other abilities like Spirit Weapons need improving so that they too are viable.

I can not really equip Mediations and Spirit Weapons or Shouts and Signets, etc… so it’s not like improving some underused abilities are going to make us OP as you can only equip and spec for one at a time.

Still funny seeing comments like, “all we have are medi and shout builds” or “We only zerg and point defense”
I know of 3 condi builds, 1 spirit burn build and 2 non spirits burn builds, all of which make great roamers and are down right op against ANY class with a 15k health pool and little to no condi removals, partly because they hope to run with a cleansing guard or mesmer/etc but those cleanse will be in zergs, not far or home.

I will say that there’s a big skill gap in medi builds..I see a lot of bad medi guards on the field. Then there’s that 10k in 5s guard that melts face. (Thief+Medi, best roam/zerg combo, imo)

Fun fact, guard can take out Lord 1v1 style. Gave my team a sweet victory, 505 to 460 a few games ago.

10k hp thief-guardian aint hard to play, people just do not like 10k hp paladins.

Saiyan.1704:

Still funny seeing comments like, “all we have are medi and shout builds” or “We only zerg and point defense”
I know of 3 condi builds, 1 spirit burn build and 2 non spirits burn builds, all of which make great roamers and are down right op against ANY class with a 15k health pool and little to no condi removals, partly because they hope to run with a cleansing guard or mesmer/etc but those cleanse will be in zergs, not far or home.

I will say that there’s a big skill gap in medi builds..I see a lot of bad medi guards on the field. Then there’s that 10k in 5s guard that melts face. (Thief+Medi, best roam/zerg combo, imo)

Fun fact, guard can take out Lord 1v1 style. Gave my team a sweet victory, 505 to 460 a few games ago.

Are you trying to tell me that spirit weapons have a place in wvw roaming?

Dynnen.6405:

Saiyan.1704:

Still funny seeing comments like, “all we have are medi and shout builds” or “We only zerg and point defense”
I know of 3 condi builds, 1 spirit burn build and 2 non spirits burn builds, all of which make great roamers and are down right op against ANY class with a 15k health pool and little to no condi removals, partly because they hope to run with a cleansing guard or mesmer/etc but those cleanse will be in zergs, not far or home.

I will say that there’s a big skill gap in medi builds..I see a lot of bad medi guards on the field. Then there’s that 10k in 5s guard that melts face. (Thief+Medi, best roam/zerg combo, imo)

Fun fact, guard can take out Lord 1v1 style. Gave my team a sweet victory, 505 to 460 a few games ago.

Are you trying to tell me that spirit weapons have a place in wvw roaming?

I believe he’s talking about a roamer in pvp, not wvw.

Ohh, that makes more sense then

Guardians are underpowered, said absolutely no one serious ever.

As far as PvP concerns, the Guardian meta is dead at high level play.

In the ToL 2 (both EU an NA) both winner teams hadn’t a Guardian at all, and both finalist (using dps Guardians) were utterly outplayed.

Is not that bunker Guardian is useless (He still can play very well the role), but now some other classes can be as good -if not better- in the role, and the dps variants of Guardian are just a dead weight at high level gameplay.

The problem is not to be weak, but low flexibility and to have useless things.

With this pack they’ll at least finally try to fix that. But the lack of mobility and soft CC will still be a problem to the class.