What is a Guardian?
Are you unfamiliar with RPG archetypes? The Guardian is the “Paladin” Archetype aka the traditional heavy-armor/magic-user hyrbid.
They differ from the Warrior in that they mainly fight to uphold truth and justic, whereas a Warrior could be a common mercenary. They also differ in that they fight using the “foefire” which is the magic used by the last king of Ascalon to turn his subjects into ghosts when they were defeated by the Charr.
Whereas the Warrior is something of a “Weapons specialist,” the Guardian is more like a “chivalrous Knight” riding around the country side inspiring others to do good.
(edited by Finnway.2183)
Guardians get their magic from the Monk side of things. Monk, a GW1 profession, was recast as Guardian. Only instead of getting magic from deities, they get their magic from the same place as everyone else, the Bloodstones. Specifically the Preservation school.
Guardian magic is faith based, channeled through objects of power or inspiration, aka weapons like scepters, staves, and the focus. What they have faith in varies from person to person, but it’s definitely not directly given by any gods – they are all gone. Typically it’s faith in a cause, person, deity, or powerful object that is the actual inspiration. Guardian magic also seems to be spontaneous and not require specific learning, but that’s up for debate.
The other three magic schools are Denial (Mesmers, Thieves), Aggression (Necromancers), and Destruction (Elementalists).
Painbow.6059: Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong.
(edited by foofad.5162)
On a less lore focused answer, the Guardian wears heavy armour and uses staffs etc. because the Guardian’s particular play style is usually to be in the heat of the battle providing boons and protection to his allies. That’s why they need heavy armour to take the blows and use weapons that traditionally have a support / magical focus. Yes there are DPS builds but realistically the Guardian excels at being a hit-taking support character.
The concept of the class was an amalgamation between the original GW Monk and Paragon (notably the defensive magic of the Monk class coupled with the shouts and boons of the Paragon)
I believe that lore-wise the Guardians are descendants from the original Paragons except they adapted and the source of their magic abilities was no longer from the Gods
Guardian / WvW Enthusiast
To quote Macha from the book Sea of Sorrows: “It’s a pile of Elonian protection magic, mixed with a little monk training, wrapped up in some crazy ritualist hoo-ha from Cantha. A real grab bag of ‘you can’t hurt me.’”
It’s a mix of Paragon and Monk from gw1 basically, look those up.
r4420k+ blazetrain