Guild Wars 2

I mean all I see is posts stating how bad you all have it (specially after the nerf to GS) yet you are a top tier pve and pvp class.

Sure you may not have the dps output of a Warrior but you come close and your survivability is way better.

Sure in pvp you have very limited range but you are one of the only classes able to walk away from a thief in a 1v1 situation.

I mean every single class forum you go to all you see are people asking how do I beat a Guardian and yet here you all are complaining about your class being broken..

Enlighten me please because I just don’t see it.

People that are happy with the class are less likely to post. Discussing potential problems is more constructive than talking about how great everything is, too.

In my experience, players in MMOs see regular updates from an active developer and think they should listen to every demand from their customers. The game needs balance and that involves buffing and more importantly nerfs. There are very few players of a profession that will come forward and say “we require x nerf” or present an alternative that is practical and not just a stealth buff. Im sure pretty soon there will be a wave of quits because “ArenaNet dont listen to the community” when in reality, people have just got bored and want to move but are looking to blame someone for not catering to their selfish demands.

The mmo community is fragile. Look at any other mmo message board and I can guarantee you reading through some of the threads will be enough to make you go bald.

Overally Guardian is good class IF played right!!
If you are noob you are basically going to get smashed a lot.
And people mostly complain since last update mainly because it directly or indirectly screwed up MANY builds, including making the Greatsword a less relevant weapon. And well yes, the skill change. Not that it’s a big of a deal but I still find myself clicking #3 and expecting to whirl but I leap instead, or I want to create a symbol but whirl first (which messes up my combo xD) but few more weeks I should be okay i guess. It’s not easy to forget 300+ hours doing the same thing all the time.

Sure in pvp you have very limited range but you are one of the only classes able to walk away from a thief in a 1v1 situation.

That’s only true if the guardian is smart enough and run back to his zerg so that the thief could get scared. I’ve fought many thieves and I’m playing with one shoulder to shoulder. It’s amazing class

Guardians are great. We just have a vocal population (minority?) who doesn’t think that.
But we do have quite some issues. Most of them don’t have anything to do with our powerlevel. And the things Guardians can do in sPvP are more or less limited to bunker builds, which not everyone finds fun.
Our issues:

• Playstyle is a bit reactionary and has a bit too much auto-attacking (this has gotten a bit worse with the Greatsword change)
• Our damage options are limited and our main-damage trait-line is terrible
• Our ranged options are terrible
• Despite having a strong focus on support, support isn’t properly, well, supported in the game (This is a global issue, but the Guardian was announced as the support profession.)

Also, if people are really curious on how to beat Guardians, they should come here and make a post about it. I certainly wouldn’t mind explaining on how to kill Guardians (first tip: condition damage)

Guardians are great, your post is a flame bait. People QQing about guards probably havent had a lot of hands on time extensively with other classes and thus don’t know any better.

The same problem with any other mmo.

People roll a class expecting it to perform exactly how it they want it to, without bothering to discover the nuances that come with it. People don’t like being pidgeon-holed into certain specs, and want to be successful regardless of them. It doesn’t work that way.

I struggled with this in the beginning of beta testing, and still did at release. I then stopped looking at what I truly wanted to do, and made my own spec for it. It seems to be catching on as over the past few weeks I see an upswing of guardians rolling with a mace and shield…

I come from a Necro. Sucks to be so buggy, totally not versatile, and have no burst because we got good survival.

My main is my Guardian now it’s way more fun, versatile. Guardian is a great class.

Guardian might be good class, but PVE absolutley no fun. Yes the first weeks after playing ele/necro feel good because it’s more powerfull. Then you’ll meet lvl 70-80 monster (Orr Difficulty level) and realize, this doenst cut it, especially with the cooldown nerfs. It’s no fun or reliable to battle strong mobs, with this long cool downs.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Guardian might be good class, but PVE absolutley no fun. Yes the first weeks after playing ele/necro feel good because it’s more powerfull. Then you’ll meet lvl 70-80 monster (Orr Difficulty level) and realize, this doenst cut it, especially with the cooldown nerfs. It’s no fun or reliable to battle strong mobs, with this long cool downs.

Nonsense. I’m able to take on 4-5 mobs with little problem in Cursed Shore with my Guardian.

If you can’t survive as you say, you need to take a serious look at your build.

Ravenmoon.5318

Overally Guardian is good class IF played right!!
If you are noob you are basically going to get smashed a lot.

^^this. The community appears to be divided between;
i) those who know what to do and can do it,
ii) those who think they know what to do but can’t do it (because it’s “twitch”),
iii) those who think they know what to do but really don’t (I consider myself in this category),
iv) those who don’t know what to do.

You give me a longer range Staff with higher damage and Z axis and I’d be the happiest Guardian ever, you could nerf me to the ground, I wouldn’t even care.

Aside from that, yes, we are pretty strong, besides the gimmicky bunker build, I wouldn’t consider us OP (which I sorf of think is the intention behind this thread).

Its simple, Guardians are good.. like every class in every game there are people that have shutters on and think they are Great and if they cant kill every one or (anyone ) the class is broken.

Khenzy.9348:

Aside from that, yes, we are pretty strong, besides the gimmicky bunker build, I wouldn’t consider us OP (which I sort of think is the intention behind this thread).

This comes a bit from the way sPvP is organized. If you had other types of maps, bunker builds would be less viable. But that’s for a different thread.

Shootsfoot.9276:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Guardian might be good class, but PVE absolutley no fun. Yes the first weeks after playing ele/necro feel good because it’s more powerfull. Then you’ll meet lvl 70-80 monster (Orr Difficulty level) and realize, this doenst cut it, especially with the cooldown nerfs. It’s no fun or reliable to battle strong mobs, with this long cool downs.

Nonsense. I’m able to take on 4-5 mobs with little problem in Cursed Shore with my Guardian.

If you can’t survive as you say, you need to take a serious look at your build.

I agree. Your build might be it. You have to figure out what you want to do and have the build reflect that. I’m able to take even more than 6 mobs and one that’s a Veteran in Orr (it’s to get a Skill Point). Granted I was down near the end but all the tools I have and the utility skills I picked rallied me (Spirit Weapons and the human elite skill). My build, armor and runes are all for condition damage (burning).

I don’t think Guardians are complaining about having it worse than other professions in terms of a “tier list.” I’ll be the first to admit that the Guardian is in a very solid situation when it comes to balance and versatility (except our ranged capabilities).

I can’t speak for the entire population, but I can say with confidence that the Guardian’s play-style is simply boring in PvE. Perhaps not with every weapon, but the ones that seem like they should be the most fun are, indeed, the most boring. The Two-Handers (Greatsword and Hammer) are just incredibly passive and boring weapons now. I find myself wanting to move away from utilizing symbols in my builds despite really enjoying that particular mechanic.

So, to answer the OP’s question, I don’t believe a Guardian is ever really complaining that they can’t compete with other professions in PvP (PvE may be another story depending on what facet you are focusing on). The only professions that have ever been able to beat me are skilled Mesmers and Engineers. I would say that I am on par with Warriors and Thieves. I consistently beat Necromancers, Rangers, and Elementalists.

That may simply be the way my build works as opposed to others, but I don’t think any Guardian’s experience should vary too much from this “tier list.”

This is exactly the problem. People like this are nerfing guardians into oblivion for WvW. Cry about how strong guardians are in sPvP… try playing a guardian in WvW, then complain about them being overpowered. With no diminishing returns, you will just get kited/snared/cc till you die. People complain about not being able to beat guardians, but what they never say, they can easily run away from guardians if they realize they are losing the fight(never beat them, but also never die to them). Guardians ability to keep a player by them is horrible, and have such high cool-downs and horrible cc you can run away whenever you feel like it.

Shootsfoot.9276:

Nonsense. I’m able to take on 4-5 mobs with little problem in Cursed Shore with my Guardian.

If you can’t survive as you say, you need to take a serious look at your build.

This. When I see the DPS other classes can put out I often get jealous. Same with the CC. I envy the way Necros can manage Conditions (we have a ton of tools for those too, but Necros are so much more versatile in that regard). Water Elementalists are better support IMO.

The thing is, Guardian is still sufficient amounts of DPS, support, Condition management (maybe not CC but we’re not useless there either) and doing all of that in heavy armor and a ton of self-healing options with good (though not great) melee weapons.

Guardians don’t necessarily shine in any single category, but the mix of being pretty good at everything except ranged damage is often stronger than specialization.

Oh. That said.

Guardians have some horrible Traits and the Zeal line which was always bad is now horrible as well. There are basically two weapon-related Traits that are really worth it, and the others just feel like filler. Said filler traits are badly placed on top of that, eg. Scepter in Zeal.

I really don’t have any complaints about guardians other than it’s not as flashy as other caster classes. They certainly aren’t terrible even post 10/7, however, pvp and pve are two very different things. Builds that work in PvP are bound to fail in PvE and vice-versa.

“Sure you may not have the dps output of a Warrior but you come close and your survivability is way better.”

Sorry, but this is simply NOT TRUE. When my Guardian is specced for straight damage output, I have 14K health and do about 4.5K-7K with a buffed Zealots Defense (given that EVERY projectile hits). On my warrior, a simple Bolas + Hundred blades hits for 7K-12K, on top of the fact that he has 22K health.

Guardians do NOT do as much damage as warriors, not even close really. Even disregarding HB a warrior can completely own Guardian damage output just using mainhand axe auto attack. On top of that, warriors have HUGE survivability options that Guardians don’t have. For instance, shouts that potentially heal (esp fear shout for survivability), ENDURE PAIN (huge one), 200 toughness while disabled, shield move that actually BLOCKS, better heals, etc etc, I could really go on forever.

While Guardians CAN have high survivability, you HAVE to be specced for it. You can’t have the passive resilience that warriors have while doing immense amounts of damage.

I have a great time on my Guardian in PvE, but after playing a Warrior in PvP it’s a bit depressing and I tend to avoid playing PvP on the Guardian (takes too much effort for too little reward)

Lumines.3916:

People QQing about guards probably havent had a lot of hands on time extensively with other classes and thus don’t know any better.

I think this has a little to do with it. I actually think that a lot of the guardians QQ’n would find another class that fits them better as a main if they played through all the classes. For example, all of the people QQ’n that the guardian can’t do the same damage as a warrior. So what… The classes have different play styles. A warrior cannot do the amount of party support/defense that a guardian can. If you want offense, roll a warrior…

kittentoes.3427:

Shootsfoot.9276:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Guardian might be good class, but PVE absolutley no fun. Yes the first weeks after playing ele/necro feel good because it’s more powerfull. Then you’ll meet lvl 70-80 monster (Orr Difficulty level) and realize, this doenst cut it, especially with the cooldown nerfs. It’s no fun or reliable to battle strong mobs, with this long cool downs.

Nonsense. I’m able to take on 4-5 mobs with little problem in Cursed Shore with my Guardian.

If you can’t survive as you say, you need to take a serious look at your build.

I agree. Your build might be it. You have to figure out what you want to do and have the build reflect that. I’m able to take even more than 6 mobs and one that’s a Veteran in Orr (it’s to get a Skill Point). Granted I was down near the end but all the tools I have and the utility skills I picked rallied me (Spirit Weapons and the human elite skill). My build, armor and runes are all for condition damage (burning).

0-15-0-20-15 at the moment. 15 is obvious (renewed justice, blind on top of it). The Honor like is interesting but i’m still not out what to use. ‘end of dodge roll heals’ seems a nice bonus to survival, but all in all i don’t feel a bit of it. I don’t have rare/exotic gear as it’s to expensive (but eventually i’m going for it). It seems all people having a breeze can respond superior fast (0,2 sec delay) to the battlefield actions (to dodge) or are lying badly, or exaggerating, because whatever i try, no matter how hard or carefull it doesn’t work. And i know it’s myself. Caues in other games I’m at least above average in all this kidna stuff (ancipate, respond, continu). At low levels everything works fine on every profession. (except maybe ele, way to underpowered). At level 60 the mobs work different, they cheat on dodge (ignoring a dodge move, and no i’m not talking about aoe’s but melee attacks of them), the attacks are not predictable enough, some of them take 4 secs to charge, so you press blind, ‘yay i’m safe’ oops, time ran out blind gone, BAAAM all damage on me. Thirdly with recent cool down nerfs half of time i’m auto attacking wich means 25 secs to kill one lousy monster. I’m loving hammer more and more since greatsword nerf. Then again the super slow nature of it means either you finish you third hit (only good one and necessary to keep dps up) or trow away your chain, and dodge to prevent damage. This choices prevent the combat from going forward, meaning in the end i run out of endurance, hp, or condition removers.

I also hate condition removal on guardian. It’s terrible bad. Way better on warrior. Overstacks poison (1min +) kills me often. And the signet healing (wich is supposed to heal it), responds way to late. It’s like it only start counting when you have conditions, meaning you will at least feel like 7-10 secs of the poison before it wears of (removed) by that time the mobs just renew it, and you keep going quickly down on hp. Utilities are one time solution, that the mobs just fix by recasting it again. At the moment i have no clear answer again heavy poison spam. (every 5 secs).

I think one thing that makes guardians special is their ability of ground control. They have 4 skills that completely deny an area to the opponent unless they burn their stability. Since stability is not a terribly easy boon to get for most class and is also often tied to their stun breaker, you can make a lot of people do ab crunches. Then you also have the WALL.

In most situation, particularly in PvE, these abilities are not useful. However, in WvW, they can be deadly if used correctly. Hide behind a wall of reflection, and cast a line of warding into the middle of the opponent line, and watch their organization scatter unless facing a well-disciplined and organized group. You can make a little safety cubical for yourself when you rush out of a tower to harass the attackers. A good guardian, utilizing their bubbles and wall correctly, can sometimes single-handedly push a open-field standoff in your team’s favor. We don’t get great ranged damage options (nobody stands in your smite ring that long), but we got wonderfully shiny toys to play with!

Some people complain guardians are not rewarding to play in WvW, but I don’t think I truly appreciated what a guardian can do until I started playing WvW heavily.

Every class forum ever has been like this since forever.

Guardian, which was a top tier class and fun to play, is being slowly nerfed to middle and bottom tiers and is now very slow and boring.

Already people say they can bunker better on other classes, which was our one saving grace.

With no fun or legitimate ranged options, there are times when playing a guardian is very annoying.

Overall, I would rate the Guardian a B-, but given it used to be an A is kinds worrying at present.

I tried other classed, even took em to 80, wasn’t what I was looking for(played rit in gw1) but i thought why not I’ll give the guardian a run and take it 20 or so see how I like it. I LOVE IT even in WvW I can walk up and decides who dies, if you are not level 80 with exotics in WvW you will not kill me plain and simple, I can last for a hell of a long time in WvW. As for dungeons I feel much more useful then my engineer ever did, but that’s just me.
Sure I would like a better ranged weapon and a few tweaks here and there, but over all I think the guard is just fine.

Guardian is the only class i have trouble with on my thief, there are some other classes that people play well and i will lose or have trouble with in close fights but it seems like most fights withs guardians i die or have to stealth away.

Yesterday i actually made a guardian to start leveling and playing. also so i can figure out how to beat them with my thief :P

At this point in time i’d say after the slew of nerfs, i’d give the guardian about a C+, maybe a B- depending on what you’re doing. We’re slowly seeing one of our main abilities quickly being wiped out of existence with no alternative nor compensation to said ability. I’ve said this before that Retaliation shouldn’t be allowed to be activated 90-100% of the time but what else do we have besides protection? The regeneration skills provided are mere peanuts compared to the elementalist or Engineer that can keep constant regen/protection. Combine this with no escape mechanisms or cripples, it’s a little boring and quite frustrating.

I’m one of those who loves the Greatsword. I still love it but finding it to be very boring and the abilities to be out of sync. It used to be Combo field-finisher-finisher and now it’s backwards. I say just remove retaliation completely and give us protection instead.

Edit: This profession was given its low tier health due to its defensive abilities. One of which has been nerfed every single patch, I dare say there has to be some middle ground here or at least a bump in vitality. If you’re going to take away one, buff the other.

Polle.6908:

The mmo community is fragile. Look at any other mmo message board and I can guarantee you reading through some of the threads will be enough to make you go bald.

These forums are pretty much already at that point, I’m afraid. Not the guardian forum specifically (although there’s some posts that make me go “what”). But you don’t really have to look far to see the age-old monster of “hardcore vs casual” has already surfaced.

Which is kind of a shame, I like this game, but it’s a little irritating to give constructive criticism that is met with people stamping their feet and throwing tantrums or people demanding overpowering buffs to their own class.

because they get a totally unnecessary nerf? people don’t say the class is kitten they say they don’t like the gs nerf the most useful guardian weapon. was suppose to nerf retaliation but it also it nerfed other symbol traits and the dps in overall. as well as leap skill slot changed. and guardian is not top tier (superior to all other classes) because they can beat a theif it goes both ways. on this nerfing rate its going to get the paragon treatment in gw1 very fast. already nerfed the best weapon.

so in summary people don’t say the class is kitten they just think the nerfs is. and its a result of crybabies not skill mechanics.

Leveling and gearing other classes to 80 is so easy and fast, I wonder what stops people from switching over?

After playing an elementalist, playing a guardian was pretty easy breezy. GW2 on easy mode. However, that doesn’t mean the class has no weaknesses. As we all know, once a player has discovered a weakness of yours, he will exploit it as much as he possibly can.

Also it can be hard to specialise in one way then have to deal with situations your build doesn’t cater for. Suddenly you can feel very under powered.

eg. My ele had a very good support based build. In group situations he shone, however, when it came to solo questing or certain personal storyline events… it was impossibly hard… and ultimately I had to drop the spec and create a whole new build, re-do my armour and re-manage my stats just to be able to survive in certain situations.

Guardian is no different (although, it is much harder to get it wrong).

As for the Greatsword nerf, Anet has messed around with something and the reason they gave for the nerf makes no sense. ie The problem: Retaliation, Answer: Move all the GS abilities around and increase the CDs of said abilities. Its all very confusing and frustrating for a lot of players.

kousei.5914:

A warrior cannot do the amount of party support/defense that a guardian can.

Isn’t that the point though? The guardian feels like it DOESN’T do support/defense, particularly in dungeons. I just feel like I’m wasting a Ranger’s slot. My powers feel flimsy at best and negligible at worst. Heals (from mace attacks, mace symbol, for example) are miserly, in the hundreds of points while damage is being generously dished out in the tens of thousands. Our shields last for a few paltry seconds on long timers while the battles go on for minutes. Learning to time things sounds like a viable solution, but even if I do this, most of the time my powers are on cooldown when I need them. In fact, I could probably cast my powers several times inside the cooldown timers, so bad is the situation in dungeons.

Arenanet have admitted they got certain systems wrong, so I’m hoping that guardians will work as intended in dungeons after these systems are changed. Perhaps bigger tells on the bosses or some kind of predictable boss behaviour might help remedy this.

The low heals, very low duration on shields, and long cooldowns are also very noticeable in WvW, where many people appear to spec high DPS instead.

People are drama llamas.

wouldnt a top tier class be able to do everything?

i dont see many condition guardians burning people

I dont see complains and flames about 2handed guardians

I dont see complaints about ranged guardians

no, i only see complaints about the defensive guardians who are hard to kill without using conditions and buff removal.

so yes guardian is a GREAT class, but jus making yourself hard to kill isnt top tier.

The GreatSword complaint comes from the fact that GreatSword was THE go-to weapon of choice for symbol based builds if you wanted to do viable damage, and is now useless.

Guardian damage from most weapons was weak to begin with, so now you have one of few relatively high damage options left removed from the table.

The stated reason for this was retaliation, but other builds provide higher levels of retaliation uptime, so this change doesn’t fix this, but what it does do is make an entire trait-line pretty lack-luster, make greatsword primarily auto-attack (even with weapon switching), and severely hinder symbol-based builds which have nothing to do with abusing retaliation.

At risk of bringing up “the giant”, i’m reminded of the proposed lifetap changes to “the mmo which shall not be named’s warlocks”. At least then, blizz actually tested this on the ptr, and ADMITTED AND REVERTED THEIR MISTAKE when it was apparent how thoroughly it would be breaking things.

Been playing guardian since beta i have over 500hrs of experience with the class i can definatly say guardian is very strong and a very good class. It take times to learn the mechanic to play it right and to know the ins and out of the class and exploit his strength to the maximum.

Sure we dont have the best range option in the game i am sure Anet is trying to do some tweak with the range weapons one thing i got in mind is making the scepter #2 a symbole would pretty much fix the weapon. But look at ranger they are pretty weak in melee and cannot go toe to toe in melee vs a guardian or warrior, but their range option is stronger. So at the end of the day its just normal that guardian is not the best at range. We dont have the DPS of a warrior but we can survive alot more then warriors.

There is definatly some traits that need to buffed cause there is alot of them that are useless but the guardian is class is very strong.

Viable specs.

As in what teams actually want you to play, or will let you play.

Right now everyone just wants the super defensive live as long as possible bunker Guardian spec.
The one that calls for assistance when people come so the rest of your team can come and kill them, in the meantime you just stay alive alone on your point, or stand alone all match because the enemy knows you’re bunker and ignores your point.

It’s so boring to play.

Myst.9182:

As for the Greatsword nerf, Anet has messed around with something and the reason they gave for the nerf makes no sense. ie The problem: Retaliation, Answer: Move all the GS abilities around and increase the CDs of said abilities. Its all very confusing and frustrating for a lot of players.

It actually makes a lot of sense because it was pretty easy (and still is, really) to keep a high uptime on Retaliation. ANet apparently envisioned Retaliation as more of a short-term defensive buff instead of a constant offensive buff. The sword abilities were changed slightly to reflect that, mostly that Symbol of Wrath had its cooldown increased (probably to encourage weapon swapping instead of standing around with the Greatsword 100% of the time). The abilities are reordered to reflect cooldown length, like all other weapons in the game.

If you go searching around the other class forums, you’ll find plenty of threads that say their particular class is rolled over and forgotten on the side of the road, while they compare the “maussiv deh peh ehs” of other classes. Its literally a circle (more like multiple over-lapping circles) of the grass is greener.

I expect, like some others have stated above, that most if it is caused by people not running alts, and otherwise just not being familiar with every/any other class.

Also, people like use the phrasing “viable” and “only decent option” for top-tier or overly powerful weapons/traits/etc, and complain when they’re brought down to a more even leveling to their own or other class/game mechanics etc.

etc., etc., and more etc.

Standard thread.

It’s great.
No it isn’t.
Yes it is.
No it isn’t
Yes it is.
No it isn’t

No actual help. (Sigh)

It’s the same as every class. People feel like the class is bad because they’re playing it wrong. I do it all the time.

i’ve play a lot of different games and the only common factor for all of them was the player’s tendency to cry a lot.
I’ve choose guardian because i was a paladin in L2 and i love it since the first minute of game, the problem is that people doesn’t care about playing they just want to win, win and win and if someone touch their winning card they start complaining!!
I think that guardians were powerful before the change and they still are, we should complain about the new greatsword bar, it took me 2 days for adjust!!! XD kitten you a net!!!!

You can tell by the way the first post is worded, he doesn’t play a guardian.

Also the explanation that the ranger is far weaker I don’t buy for a second. The fact that almost every bot I have seen in the game is using a ranger with a bear, speaks for itself.

Not even condition damage kills me anymore but my build does have one weakness spam immobilize and you’ll kill the tankiest guardians in wvw. If oyu build right you can remove conditions like crazy, but a huge amount of my healing is from dodge roll and sigil of energy or stamina. You can seriously go in a zerg with a staff in clerics gear tag everything and watch as you have a unlimited regen of stamina and doge roll/heal throughy anything, but right when somone is smart and starts immobilizing you constantly you will die. Btw doing this in a zerg is insane healing for everyone else also.

My Guardian doesn’t stink.

She’s a Sylvari, so I imagine she smells like pine or sandalwood or something.