Guild Wars 2

I ‘get it’ when it comes to guardians in dungeons. You do damage, make boons, boons heal you… it’s all good!

But in WvW… that don’t work so well. No one ever says in chat “OMG guardians are so powerful, I died in 3 hits!”

…nope. Guardians aren’t scary in pvp.

So why are they so gawd-awful slow? ..I hate being forced to use the staff just to run across the map.

I’ll take an elite slot signet for some run speed any day!

…and all this slow running just makes any glass cannon spec suicidal. What would a D/D mage be without ride the lightning, crazy heals and damage? A guardian ;(

I can understand your point. Yes guardians are quite useless in solo WvW. But as solo you can clear an entire camp by pulling all of the mobs and killing them at once.

Guardians are also amazing agents Zergs. Wall of reflection right by the gate = shield the gate and amount of damage no other class can do agents a Zerg. All of guardians CC can be a large influence in battles
Eg split few people from a Zerg by using “You Shall NOT PASS” or even stop a good chunk of a Zerg so the rest of your Zerg can catch up.

Block people from using rams by popping sanctuary.

Guardians are more team player sad to say but you can do allot by soloing too.

The wards and sanctuaries aren’t supposed to stop the entire zerg, they just stability.

however what it DOES do it 1) force them to pop their stability and 2) separate the ones with stability from the ones without, you fight two smaller groups in sucession rather than one large group, which is strategically advantageous.

And yes, out of all the classes, we have probably the most ways like with mesmers, around the 5 man “aoe” cap. Wards affect all, sanctuary blocks all, wall of reflection reflects all projectiles, bubbles block all projectiles, retaliation (one of the boons we have on the highest uptime) does not have an aoe cap, etc etc.

And I wouldn’t say we’re useless solo. We’re quite powerful solo actually (built different from the area control guardian; the best solo is usually triple shouts), if built for roaming. The problem is we don’t have escape skills so we basically have to be situationally aware to run from higher numbers or win all our fights.

Overall our class functions far better in a zerg but we’re still one of the most powerful duelist classes. Having clocked about nearly 900 hours on a guardian, with well over half being in wvw, I can say we one of if not THE best and we are definitely THE most highly demanded classes in this realm.

I posted something to this effect in another thread here…Guards definitely need a better way to close the gap between us and our prey

Like in any other game, heavy armor = slow and clumsy, but hits like a truck and can take a hit like a tank. It wouldn’t exactly be fair if the guards can not only do that but also have the mobility of a thief or ele, there would be no reason to play any other class BUT the guard in that case! That would be quite broken.

Can a D/D ele run front and center in a zerg and spearhead into an enemy zerg, trigger self heal AND boons to allies AND and not die? Nope, but a guard can!

I guess I’m a little confused here. Guardians have swiftness from multiple sources such as:

Retreat
Save yourself
Staff 3

Not to mention abilities that either teleport or leap to your target, like:

Greatsword 3
Sword 2
Judge’s Intervention

Granted, these are not all serve dual purpose as escape moves. But for getting TO your target, you have all the tools you need. The only question is if you want to build for ultra-tankiness, or for mobility. One of the greatest things GW2 does is force you to choose, and not just get everything in a single build.

Guardians are beasts in pvp and wvw!
But yeah, we lack swiftness. Boon duration runes and cd decrease on 2h weapons basically gives us perm swiftness though. If we use staff.

Guardians are more suited for group play. There we can get swiftness from our allies and blast the static fields!

Perhaps consider an alternate build. It’s entirely possible to get permanent swiftness via Retreat and Save Yourselves, without the Staff.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Boonway-alternative-Guardian-build/first

Side effects include 33% uptime on every single boon in the game, permanent retaliation, permanent swiftness, permanent 5-12 stacks of might while in combat, 9 AoE condition removals and a personal condi removal every 10s (while your heal isn’t on cooldown), and 33% uptime on stability. In essence, you have permanent swiftness, and are nearly unstoppable by anything less than a coordinated team. Immobilize, cripple, and chill can be stripped. Knockbacks, knockdowns, stuns, and daze are countered by two stunbreaks and high stability uptime. Might-stacking, decent critical damage, and high power/precision provide a very significant amount of damage, though the gear stats you aim for can be adjusted for whatever purpose you want.

Edit: I should also note, I roam solo in WvW. I can solo-cap camps quickly. It’s not uncommon to kill one or two people that attempt to prevent me from capping them in the process, in several cases killing them alongside the mobs in the camp.

rush in man.4506:

I can understand your point. Yes guardians are quite useless in solo WvW. But as solo you can clear an entire camp by pulling all of the mobs and killing them at once.

Guardians are also amazing agents Zergs. Wall of reflection right by the gate = shield the gate and amount of damage no other class can do agents a Zerg. All of guardians CC can be a large influence in battles
Eg split few people from a Zerg by using “You Shall NOT PASS” or even stop a good chunk of a Zerg so the rest of your Zerg can catch up.

Block people from using rams by popping sanctuary.

Guardians are more team player sad to say but you can do allot by soloing too.

I actually strongly disagree, and after recently getting my engineer to 80, have realized my Guardian is actually much more effective at solo roaming.

The problem is to roam you’re pretty much pushed into running GS/Sword+X to have two gap closers/openers. I find that when I’m in a bad situation, popping swiftness and rolling/GS leaping/Sword blinking away constantly can put me way way ahead of any chasing enemies, or also allow me to chase others down very effectively.

Guardian can have 2 teleports 1 leap several CC, its fine overall, problem is for people that dont want to relly in boons it get a bit limited.

PS. as for roaming, i prefer necro removing boons on guardians (most used build and class i find o wvw) that relly on them to much, aplly poison when they try to heal (-33% effect).

gs + sword + ji puts you at 2400 range instantly… well, within 1s for weapon swap.

sword is on a 10s cooldown

leap is on a 12s cooldown.

lots of mobility there.

The blinks are really not that effective in WvW…maybe its just my client or my imagination, but there is a slight root at the end of these teleport animations and your target is still moving forward mind you…has anyone else noticed this?

I run staff as its an amazing WvW weapon.

And I then use retreat and save yourselves to travel across the map, swapping back to sanctury and wall of reflection when I near combat.

If running a zerg its not an issue as you get other people’s buffs, if solo, speed is less important anyway, incombat mobility matters more and we have quite a bit of that.

Meh, Guardians are only average speed and not the slowest which is probably Mesmer. Guardians also have access to speed buff skills but really you should focus on using something like Chains of Light to help you out.