Guild Wars 2

Wondering why my health is so low compared to all other classes in the game?

why do other classes which have less vitality then me, have more health then me?

I don’t want to do the damage of a warrior, or have the stealth of a thief, or have the range of a ranger, or the pets of a necro…

All i want is to have my vitality convert to health equally to the other players in the game.

Warriors are running around with 25-30k hitpoints. And have a few forms to become 100% immune to damage.

Guardians have half that. Running around with 15k hitpoints.. and having to use every tool in the book just to avoid all damage, and still try to play as a melee class.

Why give us melee weapons, and heavy armor, if we can’t sustain a hit in a melee fight? why not just give us range weapons(with actual range), and light rags?

I love playing my guardian, but have come to just embrace that stacking my gear with vitality, is useless.

Its meant that way
To be able to survive as a guardian youre gonna have to start using some weapon skills, traits or utility to mitigate damage.

Using those skills properly at the right time lets a guardian win out in the end in survivability despite low hp.

Honestly I like this style better, you dont mash #1 and forget, you have to pay attention, and it keeps me awake when i play late night

We get Aegis, Blind, Protection, other blocks/barriers, and multiple forms of healing.

If you find a Guardian at 5k health, and a Warrior at 5k health, the Warrior will be cake while the Guardian can still put up a fight.

As for base health, the Warrior has about 7k more than the Guardian, not 15k.

By the looks of it you’re just straight dps, which is why your Vitality and Toughness is so low. Guardians have a ton of different abilities for you to survive. Anymore hp and they would easily be op.

Take my toon for example. I do decent dps and always the last one standing.

You have to look at the whole package.

Yes, we have less hp, but we have more defensive / heal abilities than other classes.

I’m full support “heal” — “tankish” build and the amount of healing I can put is incredible. I plop my hammer symbol on the ground and I easily heal myself for almost 600-800 health a second.

I mean, look at Save Yourself. :P Every boon with 12s duration.

Alarox.4590:

We get Aegis, Blind, Protection, other blocks/barriers, and multiple forms of healing.

If you find a Guardian at 5k health, and a Warrior at 5k health, the Warrior will be cake while the Guardian can still put up a fight.

As for base health, the Warrior has about 7k more than the Guardian, not 15k.

Yah. My Warrior has ~27k health and that is with all Carrion Gear, Vitality jewelry and 20 points into the Vitality trait.

That toughness man, real low.

I find that with a high amount of toughness, and skills to get rid of conditions as they are applied, I have no issues surviving in pvp and pve alike.

I still have to roll, I still have to dodge, however I have twice the longevity of any Warrior I have come across

Remember, protection stacking, aegis generating skills, and use of weapons like hammers which provide protection for almost 20 seconds on their third attack when used with Hold the Line, are all available to you.

You need to learn to spec with what you want to do. As you are specced now, real glass cannon.

EDIT:
For some reason, my health is showing as 15k on stats page but 15,455 on the health node. We own no pvp orbs on the server so that isn’t it. Page must be bugging.

Marthiarn, that looks mighty sweet. Any chance for a rundown on what kinda jewels your wearing and what spec youre sporting? Lovely stats.

Currently sporting this spec

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2Fen%2F%3FfUEQNAS8elUgKDHFSLEm4EhlCAKQMFYE%2BXPo4EZIA

In the process of getting full inquisitor berserker style set, and changing the runes to Superior Runes of the Soldier for the 6th set stat (shouts remove conditions) and added toughness and vitality

Thanks for taking the time, been making exotic cleric gear sofar myself for dungeon running with my guildies. But itching to try out a proper 2h hammer build, with a proper gear setup.

Daedric.6912:

Thanks for taking the time, been making exotic cleric gear sofar myself for dungeon running with my guildies. But itching to try out a proper 2h hammer build, with a proper gear setup.

No problem. Just so you know, I personally found a healer type guardian to be the least effective on my runs. I find I play the guardian much better as a Hammer spec who abuses the 5 sec CD on Mighty Blow and combo blasts everyone’s combo fields.

The almost perma protection boon you give to allies with hammer and utility skills doesn’t hurt at all either

@Chii, i understand that, but it could be something is wrong, and maybe Anet forgot to carry the one when they gave us our health. There are necros that have a 45k health build with certain specs. We can barely reach 20k. And thats with orbs, and with stack vital. Even the sPvP guardian at max gear is capped at around 19k.

@Alarox, yes we have those tools, but warriors have their own set of tools that do just the same, with 30k hitpoints on top of that.

@everyone, I had a power/vit/toughness build before, but felt i was wasting lots of points,. So went into this high power/crit/burn build.. my condition dam is at around 900 i think.

@Marth, that set looks costly.. but is a nice template for me to build towards when i work on my next set with a balanced toughness/power/crit build.

Are you the same Testpig from the Warhamme:Age of Reckoning beta boards way back when?

First off, protection gives 33% dmg reduction which is like having 33% more health.
Second, Guardian isn’t meant to be a gimmicky passive tank based on health like other trash MMOs, you have a ton of active defenses that you need to time well.

When you get good with a Guardian you realize health has little effect, it’s all about timing/managing your defensive CDs, dodging and positioning.

Red Falcon.8257:

First off, protection gives 33% dmg reduction which is like having 33% more health.
Second, Guardian isn’t meant to be a gimmicky passive tank based on health like other trash MMOs, you have a ton of active defenses that you need to time well.

When you get good with a Guardian you realize health has little effect, it’s all about timing/managing your defensive CDs, dodging and positioning.

This does cover some pretty good points. I would even go so far as to say that 33% less damage taken is even better than 33% more health — we have a good amount of constant healing and regeneration coming in and protection means that these, too, are 33% more effective!

Ancallan.5279:

Red Falcon.8257:

First off, protection gives 33% dmg reduction which is like having 33% more health.
Second, Guardian isn’t meant to be a gimmicky passive tank based on health like other trash MMOs, you have a ton of active defenses that you need to time well.

When you get good with a Guardian you realize health has little effect, it’s all about timing/managing your defensive CDs, dodging and positioning.

This does cover some pretty good points. I would even go so far as to say that 33% less damage taken is even better than 33% more health — we have a good amount of constant healing and regeneration coming in and protection means that these, too, are 33% more effective!

Totally agree with all these statements.

As it is, there is no percentage of health where I feel like I am doomed to die. It seems like no matter what, I always have some ability up that can buy me the extra second or two I need to survive while me endurance regens, or my next aegi is up.

It’s an addictive game style, honestly. One slip up, and you are toast. But play it all right, and you are nigh-unkillable

Marthiarn.8107:

It’s an addictive game style, honestly.

Indeed.
It’s a constant battle with buying time to use your tools again while you roll around the battlefield saving the day.
I think they nailed the Guardian very well.

Marthiarn.8107:

EDIT:
For some reason, my health is showing as 15k on stats page but 15,455 on the health node. We own no pvp orbs on the server so that isn’t it. Page must be bugging.

The reason your HP Node shows different is because healing power adds to your total hp.

33% dmg reduction is more like 50% more health, just FYI.

SiNoS.2147:

Marthiarn.8107:

EDIT:
For some reason, my health is showing as 15k on stats page but 15,455 on the health node. We own no pvp orbs on the server so that isn’t it. Page must be bugging.

The reason your HP Node shows different is because healing power adds to your total hp.

Im not seeing any difference to HP when I add healing gear

Firstly, as a former Warhammer player, I have a lot of respect for the thoughts and opinions of Testpig.

Secondly, it’s not surprising to find that I agree with everything he said.
/agree. WTF were they thinking with Guardian?

Kog.6710:

SiNoS.2147:

Marthiarn.8107:

EDIT:
For some reason, my health is showing as 15k on stats page but 15,455 on the health node. We own no pvp orbs on the server so that isn’t it. Page must be bugging.

The reason your HP Node shows different is because healing power adds to your total hp.

Im not seeing any difference to HP when I add healing gear

You should see a difference between your hp node and the stated hp on your hero page.

@everyone, Yes, i am testpig

Also, yes, we that play guardians do have to play our class very very differently then most. My fingers have never moved so fast as a guardian then any other class ever.

The amount of actions/animations a thief does while in combat doesn’t compare to what a Guardians players hands are doing on the keyboard/mouse.

With that said… we still should have a much higher baseline of health, if a class is supposed to have such variety in play-style as the guardian. It should not be restricted into having to run protection builds, just to stay alive in a fight. That actually limits us overall on what we are supposed to do.

Now keep in mind, i love everything about the guardian, all our tools are amazing, our damage is exactly where our damage should be.

Our health is just not. A simple 4-5k health base at 80. would make this class right where it should be. A perfect middle ground all purpose class, with the tools needed to be either front line support, back line support, and burn baby burn.

Bleh. Any more HP given to me will just make the class boring, I can already tank well without having to bring protection utility skills since its built in the weapons themselves, Blind and Range Shield on sword, Mace has blocks and heal, GS has Blind and combo condition removal, hammer has prot and control, staff has control and heal, scepter has control.

EDIT, if people really want the boring stand-there-and-take-damage style, Just let them have it through traits or whatever. Put some +HP mods on some zeal traits
Add that to the fact that theres passive regen and aegis that you can activate on necessity.

But I dont agree with anything thatll increase the base HP naturally. I dont care if other people get the option to have higher HP, but at least let me have the option of playing the guardian as is right now

Marthiarn.8107:

Currently sporting this spec

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2Fen%2F%3FfUEQNAS8elUgKDHFSLEm4EhlCAKQMFYE%2BXPo4EZIA

In the process of getting full inquisitor berserker style set, and changing the runes to Superior Runes of the Soldier for the 6th set stat (shouts remove conditions) and added toughness and vitality

I like how you made nice use of the C.dmg to make up for tough + bit of extra vit.

I personally run a Virtues build instead, with a bit higher c.rate / dmg stats than yours, that allows me to make full use of all the damage modifiers (25 to 35% additional damage) while supporting my team and my own survivability as well.

props.

The Guardian really is the sum of all it’s parts. Health can be, if you let it, a crutch. The Guardian is designed around a few passive survival buffs and a lot of active defense. Played correctly, we are far, far and away the most survivable class in the game and it really isn’t even close.

Looking at Warriors higher health pool is very dangerous as they just don’t have the means to avoid damage like we do. That fat health pool they have melts like butter compared to ours and they are welcome to it. Someone said it earlier and I believe firmly in it, Toughness. Get some! Given a choice to stack toughness or vitality I’ll take toughness every time.

I found early on that unless we plan to run in a group 24/7, we need to seriously consider our weapon setup. Choose something for high DPS in your primary set but make sure you choose something defensive to fall back on in your offset. Personally, I like Mace/Focus but can also make Hammer work just fine. These are our 2 go-to defensive weapon sets and they make our survivability skyrocket when used correctly.

It took me a little playing around with weapons/traits/skills to figure it out but now I can’t play any other class without feeling terribly squishy!

I think it’d be a fair assessment, given their outrageous claims, that the Guardian apologists in this thread never played WvWvW.

Svarty:

We have a lot of issues in WvWvW. Survivability is not one of them.

And contrary to popular belief, there is a huge jump in survivability when going from using random exotics, to picking and choosing your exotic stats runes and sigils to compliment you survivability traits.

Synergy between set bonuses and traits is what makes guardians the most durable class in the game. Perhaps you should try and put some critical thinking into your builds

Would just like to add that I respect Testpig as well, seeing first hand and being a part of old threads on Tank balance he posted on the WAR beta site when it was only a few hundred of us.

I just respectfully disagree, and find I have yet to have any issues with survivability in any aspect of the game. Perhaps it will change as more people in WvWvW get geared. I do not know. I can only speak as to how effective I feel at this current time

@everyone, I have started to rebuild my gear set, and wow it is costly, my next purchase will be 6g for 3 divinity runes(painful).. I have gotten my toughness around 1500 now, without having to sacrifice much in power/presion/critdam.

In WvW i tend to run, with Staff/2hander… my playstyle leans towards mobility, while solo & grouped… movement speed is clutch for me(just like the old DAOC days)

@Marth, those warhammer days have burnt me out, when i quit war officially the moment they released patch 1.4, and removed all NPCs from the lake, and removed the option for players to actually hit the doors! ugh. Whats great about GW2, it seems a lot of the concepts and ideas i wanted in WAR, ended up in GW2. it’s amazing. Also, with all those theories i created back in the war beta days, i have started to develop a MMOrpg… why let all those ideas go to waste!

My guardian has a lot of regen, but it is still challenging to play in Dungeons. You can’t just stand there and take hits.

Passive regen heals me for 125/sec
Symbol heals me for 175/sec
Hit with greatsword heals me for 20/hit
Dodge heals me for 950/dodge
Signet heals for around 8K ~ 9K
Bow summon has a huge cascade of 95 heals, but you have to be in the right spot.

This is with about 800~900 in healing
However, even with this much healing power I still need to switch out my healing jewelry for vitality jewelry in dungeons. Going in with 14K HP is not going to be good.
I’m currently changing out my Cleric gear for power/vitality and toughness gear to see how that works. But 44k karma per armor piece doesn’t come fast.

Whats the numbers we get with our greatsword heal trait.. i used it for about a week. and felt it was low i would do 1000 damage, and get 20heal from it. I use malice on my thief, and it seems to heal me for about 25%-50% of the damage i deal.

Yeah i dont think the greatsword heal trait is even any good. But then again its in Zeal, zeal has major issues.

I mean its nice in pve when you mob 6 things so the “20” procs several times but in the end you invested in zeal grandmaster, that itself is already a kitten

Greatsword heal is garbage. Zeal in general is a very weak tree unless you plan on going spirit weapon build it seems.

Tower Guard:
Don’t be fooled into gong the whole healing power route. Our best ability to heal is through constant application of protection boons. You will see that your health regen is loads more effective when you can effectively have protection up often.

Also, it seems the best way to “facetank” as a guardian in my experience is to synergize the abilities altruistic healing and empowering might together with high toughness and a condition removal. It seems like i get at least a 150 heal per boon i give to an ally. Seems insignificant, but when you add up just how often we give boons to allies it is really powerful. Spam shouts when low and health and you can go from 20%-100% in a full dungeon group no problem.

in bwe1 warrior and guardian have the same life, but the guardian was too strong so they cut 10k of life and cut 50% of your heal, plus warrior have to go on melee for do damage guardian have to protect ally so it doesn’t have to go too much intoo the zerg for do that, this explain why have 10k life more, btw the warrior heal is not so good so….the only thing is that with the second 2h sword warrior do too much damage than uardian can mitigate so this is the only thing not balanced