Guild Wars 2

[All Stats are Lv80 Base/Naked]
Why do Warriors have 5067 more HP than a Guardian, and why do Guardians have 250 more Vitality at Lv 80? More Vitality usually means more HP, I don’t get this can someone explain?

And why should a Warrior get more HP than the "tank"y class?

because otherwise guardian would be op. damage mitigation of the guardian is insane.

don’t have guardians more toughness though?

Nope, same toughness. I don’t get why we have more Vitality, and less HP, doesn’t make much sense.

Is it that hard to piece together why? While Warriors may have the upper hand stats wise, the game is far from simple mathematics. Guardians have a plethora of ways to avoid damage or recover lost health more so than any other class. Where as a Warrior is designed around the concept of just taking the damage and powering through it, the Guardian doesn’t have to take the damage in the first place or can bounce back from it.

Warriors may be able to block pretty well with their Mace/Shield, but it has nothing on Mace/Focus (Focus alone can negate 4 hits). Guardians also have the most liberal access to Protection, Regeneration and Stability relative to all other classes; it also packs Blinds across multiple weapon sets. If they have both highest base HP AND armor with all this mitigation, wouldn’t that just be a tad OP?

Rather than soaking up damage with a fat HP pool, a good guardian uses a combination of all these things to greatly increase its life span and it works. It is in fact the most durable class in the game.

I dont get it too. I thought the idea was to give same stats values to both and let traits do the difference. I dont know from where it comes from. In theory, 1 vitality point means 10 hp right?

Edit: Lumines, you can have all your theory about the differences of the classes way of fight, but attributes are defined mathematically….

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attributes

Not all of your health comes from your Vitality. Warriors have significantly higher base health: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health

As to why? Probably because Guardians get more/better healing and defensive abilities, but, shrug

guardina hp were nerfed on bw2 and his glyps of heal too both cut of 50%.
I had 22k of life and a heal of 10k now i have a life of 12 and a heal of 4k and is th emost powerfull……….

All profession have the same (916) and gain the same from Vitality (1 vit = 10 HPs), but Warrior’s innate base HPs are 5k+ above and so are Necromancers.

This is to balance the higher natural defensive capabilities of the Guardian. A 20 seconds fight is already 2k HPs just from the Virtue of Resolve passive, plus an absorb from the Aegis.

Tesq.1432:

guardina hp were nerfed on bw2 and his glyps of heal too both cut of 50%.
I had 22k of life and a heal of 10k now i have a life of 12 and a heal of 4k and is th emost powerfull……….

So? Use Knight’s Amulet and Signet of Resolve.

Meteoric.4531:

Not all of your health comes from your Vitality. Warriors have significantly higher base health: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health

As to why? Probably because Guardians get more/better healing and defensive abilities, but, shrug

Right, missed that. But I agree that guardians should have more HP. Even with more defensive abilities, what about offensive abilities? I understand that in theory, guardians should be more defensive that warriors, but shouldnt that mean we should have more hp too?

Athea have you actually played a Guardian?

They have so many heals, blocks it’s insane. If I had HP like a Warrior I’d be nigh invincible.

Tesq.1432:

guardina hp were nerfed on bw2 and his glyps of heal too both cut of 50%.
I had 22k of life and a heal of 10k now i have a life of 12 and a heal of 4k and is th emost powerfull……….

They never changed how much hp they had, unless it was over a year ago since I didn’t even know about GW2 until last September. They just simply changed the amulet guardians had by default, you can change it for free if you want to.

As for the topic on hand, guardians have low hp because of their damage migration and passive regen. The regen is low, but it adds up in long fights quickly, and with the right build it can be doubled while still maintaining fairly high hp and damage.

Passive regen and Aegis is why. We are far more defensive and tanky than a warrior.

Just a side note: Signet of Resolve with the Purity trait is AMAZING.
Yes, they do stack and together they remove 2 conditions every 10 sec.
Your big bleeding stack? Gone!
Your poison debuff? Gone!
Your cripples and immobilizes? Gone!
Your chills running down my spine? Gone!
Your burns scorching my platemail? Gone!

What do Warriors have?… Healing Signet… Pfft… Lmao!

For the record:

• High HP: Warrior & Necro
• Mod HP: Ranger, Engineer & Mesmer
• Low HP: Guardian, Assassin & Elementalist

The Guardian with Heavy Armour and Virtues of Resolve & Courage more than makes up for the lack of HP. Add in the Condition Removal, Blocks (not just Aegis, but Sanctuary, Wall of Reflection, etc, and the Guardian is very hard to kill.

Then you can add in Altruistic Healing and then you practically have to try to get killed.

The moaning and whining on this forum aside, Anet has done a very good job balancing things. There are a few hiccups here and there (the Shield traits was one example as the Warrior & the Engineer also had the combined trait while the Guardian had them split), but that aside, don’t listen to other people the Guardian is a very strong class. I’ve heard of other people that were working two or three people at an event and failing horribly, only to have a Guardian come along and brush past it as if it were nothing.

Again, not saying it’s perfect, but it is strong, and if Guardians had the Warriors’ HP, it would be a God Class.

Warrior, Necromancer : 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer: 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist: 10,805

Actually the difference is more than 5k health. Its absolutly redicilous to make a heavy armor class have so little health.

Its a guardian, how can we guard things without a truckload of health and armor?

Malediktus.9250:

Warrior, Necromancer : 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer: 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist: 10,805

Actually the difference is more than 5k health. Its absolutly redicilous to make a heavy armor class have so little health.

Its a guardian, how can we guard things without a truckload of health and armor?

By clever use of all the utility skills guardians have. Guardians are insanely difficult to kill of they know how to time their skills.

If you play too defensively you wont get any kills thought. Especially since guardian is lacking ranged options which make him easy to kite.
Considering I have been hit for over 10k damage by bosses already its very few health points in pve, too. Aegis is nice, but often it gets triggered by attacks which barely would have done any damage to you and with all the particle effects in big groups its not always possible to evade all the big attacks. This may sound nooby, but personally I find the redicilous low health very annoying. If I would have knew about it before the game has been released I would have rolled a warrior instead of guardian.

Stack toughness and healing with condition removals for your utility and you are incredibly hard to kill. Vitality/health is not the be all/end all.

Also, you will still be one shot by avoidable mechanics regardless, this is intentional.

We make up for it with our healing is why.

First and foremost, aegis and resolve don’t make up for more than an 8k loss in health compared to the warrior. one miss doesn’t justify it.

Arken.3725:

First and foremost, aegis and resolve don’t make up for more than an 8k loss in health compared to the warrior. one miss doesn’t justify it.

It absolutely does.

Arken.3725:

First and foremost, aegis and resolve don’t make up for more than an 8k loss in health compared to the warrior. one miss doesn’t justify it.

They also have higher sustained damage than warriors, multiple blocks, blinds, projectile absorption, AoE buffs, combo finishers, and starters. Also untraited resolve will heal 1k damage within 10 seconds and can go up to 3k with a regen build. Don’t even get me started on how much a shout/staff/ToC/regen guardian can heal when in a group.

While I agree they do have rather low hp for a melee based class guardians still have a rather high survivability rate already. The thing that bugs me the most is the fact that Conditional damage is super effective against a Guardian comparative to every other class.

One could say it’s Magic hitting Heavy armor but still, bleeding is much more dangerous on a guardian. Yeah we can factor in all the well “if” we had xtrait or y skill we can remove condition that still doesn’t justify why you just magically die to numbers.

The trait and skill restriction is creating staples within builds which means builds are just going to be restricted to few trait/skill differences compared to each other. This defeats the purpose of, creating diversity.

I seriously find posts like this puzzling. I know that it is SOP to complain in MMO forums that your class is underpowered and/or other classes are overpowered, but seriously do people really feel the Guardian has durability issues? Is this a PvE focused issue or a PvP one? In PvP even my offense specced Guardian has crazy survivability. Is this strictly an argument over numbers rather than how the classes play?

Evangeline.8197:

While I agree they do have rather low hp for a melee based class guardians still have a rather high survivability rate already. The thing that bugs me the most is the fact that Conditional damage is super effective against a Guardian comparative to every other class.

But few classes come close to the guardian when it comes to condition removal:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition#Skills_that_remove_conditions

SirMoogie.9263:

Evangeline.8197:

While I agree they do have rather low hp for a melee based class guardians still have a rather high survivability rate already. The thing that bugs me the most is the fact that Conditional damage is super effective against a Guardian comparative to every other class.

But few classes come close to the guardian when it comes to condition removal:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition#Skills_that_remove_conditions

Yea conditions aren’t our bane, at all. If anything it’d be spike damage but toughness and regen (and getting the hell out of there) is the way you handle that.

Arken.3725:

First and foremost, aegis and resolve don’t make up for more than an 8k loss in health compared to the warrior. one miss doesn’t justify it.

8k means that we’re probably getting two-shot. Warriors in the same sitation will probably also get two-shot because all of our regen will keep us near full hp whereas they will be at 1/2 to 2/3 hp because they lack it. Either way, both classes are getting two-shot.

Also: dodge. Those huge attacks usually have a tell. Learn it and avoid them.

You can’t escape conditional damage from relying on the trait. bleed is reapplied from pistols as a normal attack and conditional damage by-passes toughness and deals direct damage making it draining on a class with low max hp.

Yes they have plenty of ways to remove conditional damage (requiring specific traits) but it’s still their bane due to the low hp (the main issue here). You can block massive spikes but you can’t block continuous bleed, you can remove it a few time but when it comes from normal attacks it will severely hampen your survival rate.

For the record I do main guardian so i’m fully aware of how tough it is to even take one down(seriously it’s a lot of effort) still the main reason I die is to the continuous conditional damage like poison and bleed.

Evangeline.8197:

You can’t escape conditional damage from relying on the trait. bleed is reapplied from pistols as a normal attack and conditional damage by-passes toughness and deals direct damage making it draining on a class with low max hp.

Yes they have plenty of ways to remove conditional damage (requiring specific traits) but it’s still their bane due to the low hp (the main issue here). You can block massive spikes but you can’t block continuous bleed, you can remove it a few time but when it comes from normal attacks it will severely hampen your survival rate.

For the record I do main guardian so i’m fully aware of how tough it is to even take one down(seriously it’s a lot of effort) still the main reason I die is to the continuous conditional damage like poison and bleed.

It could just be the way I run (all three utilities remove conditions as does my signet heal passive and another passive trait) but I’ve never found conditions to be a problem except when I’m just up against overwhelming odds. The trick with bleeds is to let it stack up a bit before cleansing them, as they do pitiful damage initially. Poison also is manageable for the most part though cleasing it before using a big heal is necessary. Burning is the one you need to remove asap, and of course any kind of output impacting ones like weakness.

In PVP I fully agree with folks saying that the overall survivability is very high. I don’t have any problem when fighting other players that don’t regularly do over 10K of damage in 2 or 3 hit bursts. In PVE, however, I’m finding that the low HP cap is a real concern. There are numerous dungeon bosses that have very high damage attacks that either deal multiple hit combos or repeat much faster than you can refresh shield or regen cooldowns. Now, don’t misunderstand, I appriciate that it is supposed to be difficult. The issue is that, if I have a boss that will range or AoE attack every 10-15 seconds with a 2-3 hit combo for more than my base HP and I’m largely a melee class, I’m pretty much sunk. My options are to throw on a staff and heal in the back or swat awat with a scepter for minimal damage and be mainly a buff bot.

Obviously, those are needed components of a party and I’m find playing the role. I think the issue people are having is that it isn’t what they thought the class was geared towards. This is understandable if you haven’t been following the development of the game and class for a long time. Even if you understand that this ins’t a trinity game, a class defined as the “defensive masters” can be disapointing if you get wiped out by one combo in mele range.

This isn’t a new issue. I played a “paladin” in the early stages of another game where the class was described as a “tank” class but, in truth, it was a healer-light/buff bot. The mechanics are different here, clearly… I just think that people are still having a disconnect between what they thought the class would play like and what it does play like.

Malediktus.9250:

Its a guardian, how can we guard things without a truckload of health and armor?

By not letting the big sharp heavy object hit us.

Game designer Anthony Ordon on tanking and defense:

A common mistake that I’ve seen people make with guardians is assuming that they should be taking damage for other people. In my experiences, absorbing damage with your hit points is about the worst way to play defensively (second only to trying to heal people who are doing this).
For guardian, make sure to give consideration to the abilities that proactively mitigate, prevent, or better yet, reflect damage. These are harder to get right because they require more precise timing. But it feels really great when you plop down that wall of reflection, and return that blast of whatever for thousands of damage to the thing that threw it at you

Source

Please stop promoting this outdated idea that health and armor are what let you play defensively.

RizziVanizzi.1532:

because otherwise guardian would be op. damage mitigation of the guardian is insane.

Do you mean “Insane for 3 seconds or something and then back to being the same as an Elementalist”?

Eveningstar.6940:

Game designer Anthony Ordon on tanking and defense:

A common mistake that I’ve seen people make with guardians is assuming that they should be taking damage for other people. In my experiences, absorbing damage with your hit points is about the worst way to play defensively (second only to trying to heal people who are doing this).
For guardian, make sure to give consideration to the abilities that proactively mitigate, prevent, or better yet, reflect damage. These are harder to get right because they require more precise timing.

Why, if that’s the case, is there WvWvW? Why is there constant battle if your powers aren’t available all of the time, especially if it’s about precise timing? If that’s the case then powers should not be on cooldowns. What’s the point being ready to time a power if it’s not available 90% of the time?

Don’t get me wrong, this game is beautiful, and for the first time in ages I have a feeling that it’s a world. It’s a great piece of work, but the combat system is completely wacky.

I feel that Arenanet have dropped the ball.

Yeah Guardians are fine where they are, other than the poor ranged weapons, the ability to take all debuffs and turn them into boons is just borderline op.

Svarty.8019:

Eveningstar.6940:

Game designer Anthony Ordon on tanking and defense:

A common mistake that I’ve seen people make with guardians is assuming that they should be taking damage for other people. In my experiences, absorbing damage with your hit points is about the worst way to play defensively (second only to trying to heal people who are doing this).
For guardian, make sure to give consideration to the abilities that proactively mitigate, prevent, or better yet, reflect damage. These are harder to get right because they require more precise timing.

Why, if that’s the case, is there WvWvW? If this game is about precise timing, then the powers should not be on cooldowns. What’s the point being ready to fire a power if it’s not available 90% of the time?

Don’t get me wrong, this game is beautiful, and for the first time in ages I have a feeling that it’s a world. It’s a great piece of work, but the combat system is completely wacky.

I feel that Arenanet have dropped the ball.

If the abilities have short cooldowns, then the game is no longer about precise timing. Short cooldowns encourage and enable sloppy play and ability spam. You shouldn’t be using a cooldown whenever it’s up. You should be using it at the right time.

Cooldown times are therefore a reflection of the skill’s value and capacity to change the tide of an encounter.

Also, not very many Guardian defensive abilities suffer from overly long cooldowns. It’s just the ones that have a huge effect (Sanctuary, Save Yourselves, Merciful Intervention) that have long cooldowns.

Most Guardian support abilities have moderate cooldowns which should be up every one or two encounters.

Cawesome.1580:

Yeah Guardians are fine where they are, other than the poor ranged weapons, the ability to take all debuffs and turn them into boons is just borderline op.

In 1v1 maybe, but in WvWvW it’s not that hot. Lots more debuffs will come along before the cooldown ends.

Because Warriors have almost no defensive system, Guardians have a lot.

People should stop looking at classes, looking at stats, looking at healths.

This is Build Wars 2 not Pandaland.

Svarty.8019:

In 1v1 maybe, but in WvWvW it’s not that hot. Lots more debuffs will come along before the cooldown ends.

Contemplation of Purity, being also a stun break, is the ultimate ‘oh $#@%’ move. It is not meant to be your go to condition remover.

We have PLENTY of those. Truly, conditions are the bottom of the risks a guardian faces if you set it up right.

Eveningstar.6940:

Svarty.8019:

Eveningstar.6940:

Game designer Anthony Ordon on tanking and defense:

A common mistake that I’ve seen people make with guardians is assuming that they should be taking damage for other people. In my experiences, absorbing damage with your hit points is about the worst way to play defensively (second only to trying to heal people who are doing this).
For guardian, make sure to give consideration to the abilities that proactively mitigate, prevent, or better yet, reflect damage. These are harder to get right because they require more precise timing.

Why, if that’s the case, is there WvWvW? If this game is about precise timing, then the powers should not be on cooldowns. What’s the point being ready to fire a power if it’s not available 90% of the time?

Don’t get me wrong, this game is beautiful, and for the first time in ages I have a feeling that it’s a world. It’s a great piece of work, but the combat system is completely wacky.

I feel that Arenanet have dropped the ball.

If the abilities have short cooldowns, then the game is no longer about precise timing. Short cooldowns encourage and enable sloppy play and ability spam. You shouldn’t be using a cooldown whenever it’s up. You should be using it at the right time.

Cooldown times are therefore a reflection of the skill’s value and capacity to change the tide of an encounter.

Also, not very many Guardian defensive abilities suffer from overly long cooldowns. It’s just the ones that have a huge effect (Sanctuary, Save Yourselves, Merciful Intervention) that have long cooldowns.

Most Guardian support abilities have moderate cooldowns which should be up every one or two encounters.

What if I go from one battle to another in the frantic WvWvW setting? My cooldowns are all used up from the previous well-timed usage (you state yourself that they “should be up every one or two encounters”)?

It doesn’t even have to be WvWvW. I’ve played enough PvE to know that even if I time something well, I still need the power to be available the next time the mob does it’s thing and oftentimes it simply isn’t up. It’s poor integration of different gameplay designs and no amount of apologetics will alter that fact.

What if I go from one battle to another in the frantic WvWvW setting? My cooldowns are all used up from the previous well-timed usage (you state yourself that they “should be up every one or two encounters”)?
It doesn’t even have to be WvWvW. I’ve played enough PvE to know that even if I time something well, I still need to power available the next time the mob does it’s thing and oftentimes it simply isn’t up. It’s poor integration of different gameplay designs and no amount of apologetics will alter that fact.

You can call it apologetics but I think it’s being sensible.

Long cooldowns on powerful abilities isn’t something endemic to Guardians. Every single class follows roughly the same cooldown metric. So WvWvW—which, by the way, isn’t hectic, but is sporadically hectic in between long stretches of running—doesn’t put you at a disadvantage because of your cooldown time.

Now, if your question is “What do I do when my long cooldowns aren’t up?” then that’s an issue of playstyle, and the answer is always going to be, in one way or another, “Fight.” I realize WvWvW presents some challenges to Guardians owing to our lack of versatile ranged options, but this is a problem totally independent of our cooldown game.

As for PVE, what PVE are you talking about? General leveling? If an encounter ends in 10 seconds, chances are I don’t need my cooldowns to win it. I’m not using long cooldowns like Shield of Absorption in every single fight.

If fights end fast enough that my cooldowns won’t refresh between encounters, then I’d have wasted them anyway. If you’re having 30-40 second encounters (which really does happen in dungeons, and they get even longer with champions), then you need to learn to time them appropriately.

The other thing to remember is that cooldowns will never, ever, ever substitute for good play. You need to learn to dodge, learn to kite, learn when to attack and when to switch and when to move. You’re asking for short cooldowns, high armor and high health in order to “guard” your teammates. None of those require any degree of real skill.

The combat in this game is mobile and kinetic and depends fundamentally on your ability to fight intelligently, anticipate attacks and evade, and work as a team. Don’t rely on cooldowns to get you through a fight. Keep them there as trump cards to give you necessary advantages at critical times.

I’m willing to bet a lot of your trouble with combat in this game—PVE or WvWvW—can be improved tremendously by improving your playstyle. But I will happily admit that there’s still a lot of work ANet can do to promote good balance as well. Slashing cooldown times and pumping up Health/Armor won’t achieve that. All that does is discourage smart play.

Eveningstar.6940:

The combat in this game is mobile and kinetic and depends fundamentally on your ability to fight intelligently, anticipate attacks and evade, and work as a team. Don’t rely on cooldowns to get you through a fight. Keep them there as trump cards to give you necessary advantages at critical times.

Firstly, I’d like to thank you for a sensible and well-reasoned response. Secondly, I think my playstyle is going to be kiting things with sceptre on auto-attack I’ve never known such a flimsy “heavy-armour”/tank class. Kiting? Is that what it’s come to?

Svarty.8019:

Eveningstar.6940:

The combat in this game is mobile and kinetic and depends fundamentally on your ability to fight intelligently, anticipate attacks and evade, and work as a team. Don’t rely on cooldowns to get you through a fight. Keep them there as trump cards to give you necessary advantages at critical times.

Firstly, I’d like to thank you for a sensible and well-reasoned response. Secondly, I think my playstyle is going to be kiting things with sceptre on auto-attack I’ve never known such a flimsy “heavy-armour”/tank class. Kiting? Is that what it’s come to?

I sympathize, honestly. I feel like Guardian relationship with the Scepter is a shotgun wedding. It’s our only ranged option. It’s not so good. But we better learn to love it.

There’s a bit more to kiting than sceptres. To be honest, I think maybe I used the term “kiting” poorly. I really should’ve said distance management, but that sounds like something you put on a business card.

The basic idea is that you should be fighting all the time, and being intelligent about it. Cooldowns can and do help you, but you’ll get a lot more mileage learning when to dodge, learning to break Line of Sight, and knowing how to get in and out of an enemy’s range.

The idea I’m trying to get across is that performance in this game is pretty much 80% skill. Movement, dodging, well-timed utilities, and team synergy. The other 20% is probably some combination of gear and traits.

Totally on your side about Scepter though.

Eveningstar.6940:

The basic idea is that you should be fighting all the time, and being intelligent about it. Cooldowns can and do help you, but you’ll get a lot more mileage learning when to dodge, learning to break Line of Sight, and knowing how to get in and out of an enemy’s range.

The idea I’m trying to get across is that performance in this game is pretty much 80% skill. Movement, dodging, well-timed utilities, and team synergy. The other 20% is probably some combination of gear and traits.

Totally on your side about Scepter though.

Okay, I did the first dungeon on Story Mode and frankly, I dodged a lot, hid behind objects whenever possible (yes, ladies and gentlemen, tanking is not for the brave, go running around a sarcophagus, Conan! That’s a good barbarian) watched for enemies giving tells as to whether and when they would whack me (they rarely did and when they did the tell was too short to do anything about anyway). It just seems that melee has no role at all, that it’s all about ranged combat and if you go near a mob you get two-shotted. The only reason we finished was because we realised that it wasn’t like WoW and you could come back from the spawn after death over and over in the middle of a battle (and we did). Strangely, we all agreed that it was kinda fun, but now I look back it wasn’t satisfying in that we didn’t work out how to win, we just zerged it with a never ending supply of bodies.

I don’t get it either. Yes we do have alot of defensiv tool but it is not like ANY of our offensiv waponse do provide those things. 2h and 1h swords have the bar minimum of deffensiv stuff so is the tourch. The warrior is way better of with an agressiv build the guradian on the other hand has to go defensiv becaus the devs said “FU offensiv Guradians you do to much in spvp we gone nerver you everywhere to the ground” well as a PvE and WvW player I say you kitten it up in a majore third degree what the guradian does and what he can choose. If you don’t pump youself up with though and vit gear you die fast, but on the other hand you lack dmg that way and as supporting does not give you loot we are kitten. We need to balance offense and deffens to the last bit and still be on the downside while the guy how is supposed to be a jack of all trades does everything well. Yes me mad atm. It is just not fun this way.
Hell we don’t even have a ranged option and the only conditon dmg condition we can use is burn , which the warrior also can speck into for what ever reasone.

The game is great and the ideas are awesome but get the sPvP there own balancing only becaus it it op in 5v5 or 8v8 does not mean you have to mack us suffer when we do dungeons and majore world bosses.

@Svarty.8019 It would be no big deal to run away and hit from afar if not hitting from afar would be like doing nothing

Svarty.8019:

Eveningstar.6940:

The basic idea is that you should be fighting all the time, and being intelligent about it. Cooldowns can and do help you, but you’ll get a lot more mileage learning when to dodge, learning to break Line of Sight, and knowing how to get in and out of an enemy’s range.

The idea I’m trying to get across is that performance in this game is pretty much 80% skill. Movement, dodging, well-timed utilities, and team synergy. The other 20% is probably some combination of gear and traits.

Totally on your side about Scepter though.

Okay, I did the first dungeon on Story Mode and frankly, I dodged a lot, hid behind objects whenever possible (yes, ladies and gentlemen, tanking is not for the brave, go running around a sarcophagus, Conan! That’s a good barbarian) watched for enemies giving tells as to whether and when they would whack me (they rarely did and when they did the tell was too short to do anything about anyway). It just seems that melee has no role at all, that it’s all about ranged combat and if you go near a mob you get two-shotted. The only reason we finished was because we realised that it wasn’t like WoW and you could come back from the spawn after death over and over in the middle of a battle (and we did). Strangely, we all agreed that it was kinda fun, but now I look back it wasn’t satisfying in that we didn’t work out how to win, we just zerged it with a never ending supply of bodies.

Hang on, are you talking about Caudecus’s Manor or Ascalon Catacombs?

Because AC is monstrously hard and stupid. I just don’t see it as a satisfying and well-designed place at all.

its not hard or stupid, its perfectly doable if your team doesnt rely on melee
guardians either need more health/toughness to make melee more viable or get a decent ranged wepeon with at least 1200 range and damage which is higher than doing a scratch in opponents health bar (or at least harder to evade than scepter).
600 range of staff is a joke and so is the damage of staff.

Another solution would be to count supporting someone to get a kill as a kill of yours, too and grant lootrights/event participation. I am not going to play support if I wont get any loots anymore.

My lvl 80 Guard wearing some fairly nice gear and her health boosted with trait points walks into WvW with 18-19k health,

My nice new little lvl 10 baby Warr with no trait points and starter armor walked into WvW rocking 27.5k health,

I loled,

I don’t even bother playing my Guardian anymore, it’s boring in the extreme, and it’s obvious that Anet simply want us to be nothing more than a “buff-bot” and a resser of downed players,

And if thats the case, then removing the trinity was pointless, also in the extreme, you might as well simply go back to having healers.

I think the Game is fantastic, I think the Game World is fantastic, but with regards to stats, skills and traits the whole game is a complete mess, and nothing is more of a mess than – Guardian.

Woa – well… okay..

Now I am not a guardian, I play a warrior – however, a friend of mine.. infact two of the, play guardians, my one friend he plays mainly with greatswords, and I believe he weapon switch to sword/shield or sword/focus, not entirely certain on that one – but he keeps telling me how laughable easy it is to play a guardian, since he has a ton of mobility due to teleporting of some kind.

Where as my other friend, who plays support, in dungeons specificly, pretty much never dies, or goes into down state… ofcourse he does, but very rarely – without him I know with the setup I have I would be downed several times more than I otherwise would in a dungeon fight against a boss.

Guadians got utility to both block attacks for himself as well as his team mates while inside that circle of his, which btw has saved me a tremendiously amount of times, my friend with the greatsword is quite capable of actually DPS’ing as well as to avoiding death through dodging cleverly, I have to dodge as well, and I am specced toughness/vitality on my warrior.

I really don’t think that guardians low HP pool is such an issue as you might make it out to be – I honostly see Elementalists go down a lot more often than I see guardians go down, and elementalist while having several methods for being at a range compared to a guardian, then imagine being an elementalist with a dual dagger set up, or atleast just a single dagger in the main hand ?

Being able to actually dodge does a lot in this game, you do get the time to actually do it – We defeated the first boss in Ascalon catacombs exploration mode while actually killing his 2 adds, and then switching to him after those two were down.
He’s extremely tricky yes, but we had me as a warrior, my friend as a guardian, both of us were melee, then we had a ranger, and my other friend as a greatsword guardian for dps – we learned to anticipate his pull which is followed up by his whirlwind attack, so we learned to dodge the pull – this actually helped us a lot, we ofcourse had to res one another from time to time, but not once did we have to respawn ourselfs and head back from the waypoint while the battle was ongoing.

I agree its a really difficult fight, but downed state is really part of the game, you really just need team mates who actually knows how to help you get up from a down state, and you’re usually good to go.

Guardians has extreme survivability if you know how to use the tools, and can be extremely tough to take down.
Same thing with warriors, but just because warriors has a large HP pool and high amount of mitigation, doesn’t mean that we won’t get 4 shotted or 2 shotted for that matter.

If my cooldowns as a warrior is used, I have to dodge out of the fire to avoid taking damage, or I will simply die. No amount of HP will actually save me from that – we don’t have nearly as much HP regen as a Guardian does, or for that matter the same amount of healing utilities as a guardian has, if we did, warriors would be extremely OP, same thing goes for Guardians – even in PvP they are extremely difficult to take down >_<.