Guild Wars 2

To much guardians pick offensive builds, 2h weapons / berseker gears on a class who is supposed to be defensive. The reason is simple : looks more efficient in pvp to burst your enemy, and is the only chance to win a pvp .
i consider that we " guardians" need more benefits from toughness so i am going to make some sugestions :
1.Trait :1% toughness is converted intro skill recharge rate :
2. An utility skill : for 10 seconds decrease power by 30% and reduce incoming damage by 30% + 1% of your toughness
3. an defensive Elite skill that could be used for escape ? remove all conditions and give swiftness + regeneration and stability for 10 seconds
4. an block chance when shield is equiped or an boost for virtue of courage when shield is equiped
5. an reduced dmg from criticals (trait) based on our armor or vitality
Maybe i ask for too much, and there is no intention in create “tanks” or chars that can absorb Dmg, however i feel like guardian is not really an survivor in WvWvW compared to thief / mesmer even if should be viceversa

Try stacking Vitality in WvW. It’s night and day over Toughness. I think Vitality is a far superior stat for increasing survivability in World v World situations, because with increased Vitality you can survive conditions longer, and full exotic armor at level 80 offers enough damage mitigation that you don’t need to stack Toughness. Plus, the vitality ratios are better. 1 point in toughness just ads +1 to damage mitigation, while +1 in vitality adds +10 to your health pool. So you actually get 10x more benefit from vitality than you do from toughness.

Once I started focusing on Vitality for WvW, I noticed a big increase in my survivability. If you can get to around 17,000 HP, you’ll be in good shape. With Orb bonuses, a Guardian with around 17K HP will be buffed up to around 20K HP, and then you’ll really be sitting pretty!

please don’t get me wrong. I am already on decent gears , attached are my stats.If you got some sugestion what i could improve please let me know . My WvWvW score is average , or at least i belive that, with over 5000 Kills on WvWvW. The problem i am confronting with , is that i got no escape ability, i get outrunned by any class, . I got no ability to slow down my enemy’s if i get chased , and 1 short imobilize if i use scepter or hammer
comparing to other classes :
thiefs – superior move speed , invisibility… etc
rangers : traps , blinding roots. movement speed pasive
warrior : can easy escape with longsword skills/1 h sword have an long leap
mesmers – like the thiefs -masters of escape
elementarists, aoe slows, 1 invulnerability buf
So as long as i cannot escape my enemy i would like an option to have an increased survaivability, even if i sacrifice some Dmg for that, as i mentioned in my first post

I agree with you. We have two options in large scale WvW battles: melee burst damage with guerrilla tactics, or healing and support. You can try to act as a wall for your attackers, perhaps with retaliation applied, but that can only be done for so long and then you have to back out and recover. Only one of those options provides quantitative rewards.

However, I use a defensive build in WvW for protecting and capturing supply bases where the battles are at a smaller scale. This is what I find myself doing the most since it’s where the guardian is the more effective. If I’m at a gate, I’m killing people on the other side with cleansing flame and staff.

Our escape skills are our shouts. You can get away from most situations with Retreat and Stand Your Ground, or just Save Yourselves if you happen to not get buried in a ton of conditions. Merciful intervention has saved me a few times too. You gotta love teleporting to an ally 100 feet away right before getting downed, but sadly it’s completely unreliable.

I would love if Anet implemented an kill assist reward system for defenders. I’d imagine many players, not just guardians, going into WvW with tanky builds and creating a wall in front of ranged allies. That would introduce new strategy to large scale WvW, beyond just offense.

Yeah, retreat and sanctuary with ground targetting is useful for escape. I go in normally and do as much damage as I can until 1/3 health, then I retreat (gain aegis along the way) and heal and then if they are still pursuing me—I land a good ole sanctuary to knock them down for a bit. Now that renewed focus is not a stationary move, you can use that too for invulnerability. I use rune of lyssa to get the massive boon activation for 5 seconds too. So that’s 3 sec of invulnerability → remove all conditions + 5 secs of every boon. But if you want to roll with the typical rune of monk or rune of water like most guardians, das cool too.

“renewed focus” was the buf i neded , i did not expected to be so efficient, but combined with “save yourself” helped me today to escape from 1 vs 7
is not easy on field as it looks on paper, you risk a lot to show your back to an thief when you are 6000 hp left , only with “retreat”
Thx A-net

There’s plenty of opportunity to be a defensive Guardian already. I think maybe you’ve been playing too much PvE or WvW, as most people spec damage there – Which skews your perception.

What you’re looking for is a ‘Bunker’ build.

Bunkers are users who build to survive as long as mechanically possible to stall enemies and whittle them down with damage-over-time.
They’re extremely effective; Bunker-builds are currently the best way to win sPvP.

Bunker Logic:
If everyone can handle 1v2, then the enemy can’t capture any points.
If they can’t cap, it’s your team that’s moving forward and winning the game.

How good it is for WvW is another story, since no one can really deal with getting ganked by 3 to 6 enemy players.

Guardians don’t need major additions like your suggestions – You just gotta look harder at what you have to work with.

DreamOfACure.4382:

There’s plenty of opportunity to be a defensive Guardian already. I think maybe you’ve been playing too much PvE or WvW, as most people spec damage there – Which skews your perception.

What you’re looking for is a ‘Bunker’ build.

Bunkers are users who build to survive as long as mechanically possible to stall enemies and whittle them down with damage-over-time.
They’re extremely effective; Bunker-builds are currently the best way to win sPvP.

Bunker Logic:
If everyone can handle 1v2, then the enemy can’t capture any points.
If they can’t cap, it’s your team that’s moving forward and winning the game.

How good it is for WvW is another story, since no one can really deal with getting ganked by 3 to 6 enemy players.

Guardians don’t need major additions like your suggestions – You just gotta look harder at what you have to work with.

i dislike that you replay without read the content, wich i doubt you read , since i already posted that i am pleased, got my escape ability “Renewed Focus”. i do not seek for “new build” advices in this topic , i made few sugestions for defensive guardians.
Regarding WvWvW i consider myself decent ( u can see my WvW achivements attached ) , i just needed an escape / extended survaivability ability , and my request is solved with the today update.
It is nice that you express your " bunker theory " on my topic,but i do not see the connection.

“So as long as i cannot escape my enemy i would like an option to have an increased survaivability, even if i sacrifice some Dmg for that, as i mentioned in my first post”

Bunker = increased survival. It’s an option. Just not what you want to do.

I like your sentiment, but unfortunately your suggestions I find to be too powerful. Elements of each may be implemented, but with much smaller effects and not without serious drawbacks.

Like several posters has said already, there are some escape utilities like ground-targeted sanctuary, stand your ground for the stability, staff, save yourselves and retreat for swiftness, wall to block projectiles, and also line of warding, which you can use before you start running. Tome of Courage can also be used somewhat to temporarily beef up. Also, use and love shelter in WvW. That said, we will never have the escape abilities of thief and mesmers – because that’s a part of their design mechanics: a thief is supposed to be sneaky, and a mesmer is supposed to be confusing. A guardian is not either. We can be defensive, but not necessarily good at running away from imminent stomping.

In WvW, I don’t really find myself dying overly much, even though my armor is only about 2400 and HP around 14000. Part of the reason is that I am usually running in groups (not necessarily zergs, but groups of a few). The survivability of guardian goes up a lot in these situations (not just because of AH), but because of your ability to strengthen the group or harass the enemy through ground control skills like wall of reflection, shield of absorption, line of warding, etc.

Finally, I find that extra toughness or HP to be not that particularly useful in most WvW situations. When I die in WvW, it’s mostly because I take huge amounts of damage very quickly, which is probably caused by my stupidity for overextending into the enemy line, wanting to spike a downed enemy too much, or getting into a hopeless situation (like 1v7 or something). I play full support with those stats (bubble guardian), and I find it to be quite sufficient.