Guild Wars 2

can someone explain me why guardians have so low hp pool
with vigil exotic armor focused on pow/toug/vit i have only 16.5k hp while warriors have 27k-30k thats like twice my hp and they hit hard twice/tripple/5x as my dmg.
My dmg is soo low compared to others, i hit with whirlwind wrath like 2.5k dmg max, autoattack hit 400dmg, cant kill anyone on 80 lv, ranges kick my kitten casters too, and thief and warior kills me in like 3 sec in burst. my traits are 30-10-30-0-0 focused on meditation heals and greatsword.
accessories , rings , amulets are all on valkyrie set (pow,vit, crit dmg)
other weapon is scepter , focus whos dmg is 350 per hit (thats too low)
and i get dmg 3k all the times in wvsw fighting 1 vs1 or 5 vs5 its same dmg.

attack is 3k, crit 20%, power 2k.

am i doing something wrong or what?

Maybe Guardian doesn’t suit your play style?

Here’s a hint: Investing in Crit damage when your Crit chance is only 20% is pretty much a waste.

i like guardians a lot but maybe they need to buff its hp pool at least to 20k with vit power and tough gear

For the hundred millionth time, we don’t need an HP buff. We have a large array of defensive utility skills, this is why we aren’t chugging along with the same HP a warrior has.

If the guardian had around the same HP as a Warrior, that would be ridiculous.

Polle.6908:

If the guardian had around the same HP as a Warrior, that would be ridiculous.

To add on to this, it would also make warriors dangerously close to being redundant.

A Guardian with HP equal to that of a warrior would be horrendously OP.

I have 20.2k Health with Power/toughness/Vitality gear, I also have 300 from my Tree. Seams fine to me… I could get away with 15k health at the moment, but find 20k gives me wiggle room.

We had more health and healing in beta. I am still not convinced those changes were necessary. They made changes based on spvp where people hadn’t worked out how to play their classes. Things are much different now.

I feel we need about 15% more health to basically make up for our lack of mobility.

I am not sure what builds people are using without crit, but they are not really builds I want to play.

they have low hp pool because you can’t have everything all the classes have their strength/weaknesses.

Low actual HP != High effective HP

Our damage mitigation and HP regen options are tremendous.

Roctod.7290
For the hundred millionth time, we don’t need an HP buff. We have a large array of defensive utility skills, this is why we aren’t chugging along with the same HP a warrior has.
October 17, 2012

wtf…you dont have 10 heals, warrior is pushing and kicking your kitten and when you use all your heals what then, warrior is on 70% hp you on 20% what, run? yea….
but i think game is starting to be like wow, unbalanced as hell…
all i see now are mesmers, warriors and hunters. (seeing ppl in towns, wvsw saying they are op right now, starting to think that too)

Burst damage will destroy you before you can activate this supposedly wonderful active defence. That’s why HPs are so important.

i cant agree more with svarty because warrior came and destroyed me in like 3 sec of burst, stun braker and dodge haven’t helped me at all.

If you’re getting destroyed by warriors in 3s, seriously reevaluate your gearing choices and how you actively avoid damage. Even when I go for an offensive Guardian for hot-join, with 30 in Valor + Knight’s Amulet, I easily have 2.5k armor with 19.8k HP. That’s more than enough to deal with any sort of threat in the game at the hot-join level. This is all retaining 38% crit chance with +47% crit dmg. Also, Zeal is a terrible trait line, the only reason to invest pts in it is for spirit weapon builds (20pt max), you’ll get better mileage by investing it elsewhere.

If you’re having trouble surviving as a Guardian, you’re just not quite at home utilizing all its skill set yet and you can get better. The Warrior has higher passive stats but the Guardian has a plethora of active defenses. If you use it at ill-opportune times and have it on CD when you really need it, you only screwed yourself over.

Ragnarox.9601:

i cant agree more with svarty because warrior came and destroyed me in like 3 sec of burst, stun braker and dodge haven’t helped me at all.

There’s four possibilities:

1) This is the best Warrior ever
2) You choose poorly when picking your gear, attributes & traits
3) You’re low level with bad gear and he’s level 80 with exotics
4) You’re bad

The Guardian is the hardest profession to kill in the game, regardless of HP. You’ve got one heal, yeah, but that should be the last thing you use. You’ve got your Virtues which can be traited to add blind, regeneration & protection. You’ve got tons of shouts to add buffs, give conditions…and traited they can remove conditions. Altruistic Healing is stupidly powerful to regaining Health. You’ve got blocks, knockdowns, knockbacks, Line of Warding, Ring of Warding and Sanctuary.

I can walk around Cursed Shore aggro half a dozen mobs, and beat them down without even needing to use my heal, sometimes not even being knocked down below half my health.

If you think the Guardian’s HP is too low, you’re playing the class wrong. It’s strong enough as it is, and would be the God Class if it had the medium (ranger/mesmer/engineer), let alone high HP pools (warrior/necro).

Vigil exotic armour? You mean armour you transmuted vigil skins onto, or the vigil set of rare armour?

I agree that we don’t really need more HP than we have, for the most part. However, it does feel awkward in terms of lore to have a Guardian with the same base HP as a Thief or Elementalist. I wish there was a solution that solved the lore issue but didn’t provide too much of a buff to the Guardian at the same time.

Is there a lore explanation for hitpoints in general…?

Guardians evolved from Monks & Paragons. Both of which were ‘hang back and stay out of the fight, and if you get involved you’ve got plenty of buffs to keep yourself alive. It makes perfect sense from a Lore standpoint.

I run the same Guardian build in sPvP, WvW, and PvE. Let me tell you, there is definitely a reason our HP pool is so low.

I regularly run with a ranger, 1-2 warriors, an elementalist, a mesmer, and an engineer. Of all of these people I’m nearly always the one alive and kicking at the end of a fight. I’ve escaped zergs of 30 players in WvW, pulled off stupid stunts in PvE (soloing 12 risen is fun, as is soloing chunks of AC explorable), and I’m usually the person ressing the rest of the team when they get downed.

Other classes generally have higher health pools because they take more hits. We on the other hand have the ability to mitigate an obscene number of hits. With my build, I can completely stop up to 10 hits in a burst, and that’s not including the 3 seconds of invulnerability from the elite. I also have obscene AoE condition removal: a full condition pull from all allies, two other shouts traited to remove conditions, 3 condi removals from traited Virtue of Resolve, 3 extra if I use the elite to renew VoR and pop it again, and a healing signet that removes a condition every 10 seconds. That being the case, I can completely cleanse off even a condition necro’s spam every few seconds, and I can do it in an AoE, while fighting, without interrupting my weapon skills.

I’m also regularly landing autoattack crits of 1.6k, and my hammer’s 2 will frequently land for nearly 4k. Not trying to make myself out to be some super-guardian elite player (I’m not; I’d consider myself average or slightly above average at best), but rather trying to convince you to consider that the Guardian itself (more specifically, its health pool) might not be the problem; it’s perfectly possible to make very damaging builds that don’t die easily. The “trick” (if there is a trick) is to realize that for the Guardian, sometimes your best offense is indirect, through throwing boons everywhere, using those boons to boost damage, and staying alive long enough to output consistent damage, even in melee range with a boss.

ShadowbaneX.6273:

Guardians evolved from Monks & Paragons. Both of which were ‘hang back and stay out of the fight, and if you get involved you’ve got plenty of buffs to keep yourself alive. It makes perfect sense from a Lore standpoint.

Just because they share similar abilities with those professions is in no way indicative of where they currently stand. They wear heavy armor and are suited for front-line combat. Are you trying to tell me that a profession like that should be in the bracket of the lowest innate HP pool?

I understand in terms of balance it isn’t feasible to give the Guardian more HP, but don’t try and say that from a lore standpoint they should have lower HP than more than half of the other professions in this game.

Guardians are good. Search the guardian forums for other guides and builds, try them out and see if it matches your playstyle. I enjoy where guardians are at right now. I just wish our healing power scaled better with abilities and I could give more regens out to my allies…. Let’s be honest, I wish I was a more dedicated healer/support than dps but that’s my goal. I’m getting there.

Seriously though… why, from a lore viewpoint, would any class have more or less innate ‘health’? I’m pretty sure the idea of stats is altogether external to lore.

LameFox.6349:

Seriously though… why, from a lore viewpoint, would any class have more or less innate ‘health’? I’m pretty sure the idea of stats is altogether external to lore.

It is very simple. The classes or professions that are most akin to “tanks,” with a few exceptions, are in the highest bracket of innate HP and durability. That is the way it works in most games because it is just logical.

If you blow it slightly more out of proportion you can see what I mean. Pretend that thieves had the highest HP. Ignoring the glaringly obvious balance issues, would that make any sense in terms of lore? Thieves and casters (typically) have the lowest HP and durability because they are able to make up for it in other areas.

The Guardian, strictly from a lore standpoint, should have HP similar to top tier professions, but in GW2 the balancing issues would be problematic since the Guardian has so many defensive options to support their low HP. That doesn’t mean that traditionally Guardian archetype professions/classes should have low HP. It just happens to work best in GW2 that they do.

My HP is 13.8k in full exotic gear lawl.
Despite having a really low hp I can regen ridiculously quick compare to any other class, just go out of the fight for 5 seconds I can get almost full hp from low hp(still in combat mode). I stack a lot of healing power though. Don’t forget I can heal solid 9.2k with my healing skill.
My crit chance is 34% though but my power is only 1.5k.
EDIT : My healing power is 760

I have a lv80 Guardian in full exotics amour (vital, toughness, power) and full exotics jewel and weapons (healing, power, toughness)
I mainly play PVE.
I just want to say the Guardians HP pool does not require any changes.
We have so much survivability and I am insanely tough, I love it!
I honestly feel if you are complaining that the Guardian has to low HP pool, you should not be playing a Guardian or you are just a very bad player.

yea rare vigil armor not exotic, but you all talk about pve, in pve i can kill 2 veterans alone without dropping my hp below 70%, i am talking about wvsw pvp (spvp i dont play i tried once with guardian and beaten a lot so i play spvp with thief who is a killer tho, but with thief i end up killing him in 10 secs when he uses all his mighty heal end he ends up dead anyway), btw i tried all classes, mainly in spvp, thief is best tho, mesmer very good, warrior best dmg. but guardians when use all his defense abbilities person who is attacking you have 80% hp and then what, run away…now i play with greatsword, hammer and pop my hammer spirit weapon and do some real dmg…but with no heals.

The only weakness to guardian low HP is condition damage I can say, which ignore the armor.

Op , you will have to fix your stats, but you must figure out by urself what is best for you
i totaly disagree on a build GS + heals
at the same time you will have to decide on what direction you want to go, burst or tank, glas cannon (not viable imo ) or suport
here is an screen with my stats i consider them balanced

LameFox.6349

Seriously though… why, from a lore viewpoint, would any class have more or less innate ‘health’? I’m pretty sure the idea of stats is altogether external to lore.

How about:

Through rigorous training and countless battles, those who call themselves Warriors have honed their bodies to be the strongest in every facet of their mortal form.

The strength of a Guardian’s soul is unmatched by any foe they may encounter. An enhanced spiritual awareness, earned through intense meditation, has granted them the ability to draw upon power from beyond the mists to aid them in battle.

Use your imagination xD

Roll a warrior, take some damage, hit your heal skill. Note that it barely changes your HP. If I’m dying as a guardian, it’s because I’m making the choice to run in and smash stuff with a GS instead of using range / a shield.

Animus.6073:

ShadowbaneX.6273:

Guardians evolved from Monks & Paragons. Both of which were ‘hang back and stay out of the fight, and if you get involved you’ve got plenty of buffs to keep yourself alive. It makes perfect sense from a Lore standpoint.

Just because they share similar abilities with those professions is in no way indicative of where they currently stand. They wear heavy armor and are suited for front-line combat. Are you trying to tell me that a profession like that should be in the bracket of the lowest innate HP pool?

I understand in terms of balance it isn’t feasible to give the Guardian more HP, but don’t try and say that from a lore standpoint they should have lower HP than more than half of the other professions in this game.

It’s quite simple and I already explained it. Warriors have tons of HP because they need it, same with the Necros. Guardians on the other hand coming from Monks & Guardians, didn’t need the extra health because they relied on their magical abilities to mitigate damage. There’s your lore. To add to it, Eles used their magic and thieves used their speed, that’s why they have lower HP. There’s some Lore for you.

Rayya.2591:

Op , you will have to fix your stats, but you must figure out by urself what is best for you
i totaly disagree on a build GS + heals
at the same time you will have to decide on what direction you want to go, burst or tank, glas cannon (not viable imo ) or suport
here is an screen with my stats i consider them balanced

Nice setup. Good stats too. I might want a little more crit over vitality but you can’t get anymore solid than that. What’s your healing power?

300 healing power
300 cond dmg
is an critical based build for wvw with sigil of fire / perception , so most of the times my crit rate is over 50 % till 54 maximum (without furry), and enough defence to make any thief to cry
low base p attack , and missing burst dmg , but i get no problems to 1 vs 1 any class (except mesmers where i use other weapon)

Animus.6073:

It is very simple. The classes or professions that are most akin to “tanks,” with a few exceptions, are in the highest bracket of innate HP and durability. That is the way it works in most games because it is just logical.

You could leave ‘hp’ out of that statement altogether and the meaning wouldn’t change.

Animus.6073:

If you blow it slightly more out of proportion you can see what I mean. Pretend that thieves had the highest HP. Ignoring the glaringly obvious balance issues, would that make any sense in terms of lore? Thieves and casters (typically) have the lowest HP and durability because they are able to make up for it in other areas.

I don’t think health is measured in points, lore wise. In an environment where everything else was equal, thieves having 30k instead of 10k like everyone else (hypothetically) would make them more durable, which would seem passing strange from a lore perspective… but it’s not equal. So somebody like a guardian can be as ‘durable’ as someone with more hp, because it isn’t just a case of ‘I have lots of life and therefore can absorb more damage’. Maybe you should just look at your health as the red thingy and ignore the number altogether.

Animus.6073:

The Guardian, strictly from a lore standpoint, should have HP similar to top tier professions, but in GW2 the balancing issues would be problematic since the Guardian has so many defensive options to support their low HP. That doesn’t mean that traditionally Guardian archetype professions/classes should have low HP. It just happens to work best in GW2 that they do.

Again, this really just seems to be the weird way you look at this number in your health readout. From a lore viewpoint, it might as well be that everyone only has health ranging from 0% ‘dead’ to 100% ‘healthy’. Whether yours is divided into 10,000/10,000 or 20,000/20,000 makes no difference, because nobody even knows about that concept in lore; you are durable or not depending on how close to death you come when somebody hits you with a hammer the size of a volkswagen.

To use your thief example, if he had 50k hp and most people had 20k or something, if he lost 1/2 of it to a blow that would take 1/4 off someone else, as far as anyone in his world knew, he would be the frailer one.

I’ve played a lot of RPGs, and done a fair bit of roleplaying, so when the concept of HP comes up and requires an explanation, I say this:

Wrestlers and the like will, over the course of their careers, learn tricks that help them better deal with the blows that they have to take. They may tense up muscles to better absorb a hit, turn to make a blow hit a less sensitive, non-vital area instead of a vital one, roll when they fall to absorb the impact, so on and so forth. Hit points, then, are a numerical representation of the character’s ability to safely absorb damage, a mixture of his innate toughness and his knowledge of how to distribute damage on his form and still keep going.

How does this apply to GW2? It probably doesn’t, but you can still make up lore for it and still make sense. Guardians are spell-casters that happen to be in armor. Rather than relying on an innate level of toughness and raw martial skill like Warriors, Guardians rely on their magic to keep themselves going. They just aren’t as skilled at the finer points of combat due to their different focus. On the flip-side, Necromancers, in their studies of life and death, have an innate knowledge of anatomy, and their dark powers give them an unnatural level of toughness, letting them absorb more damage than most.

There’s your lore.

You can obviously make a case for the lore behind why Guardians have low hp and high durability, since it is currently an implementation in the GW2 universe. All it takes is a bit of creativity and almost any explanation can be feasible. However, I am really just focusing on the archetype of the Guardian, rather than the possible explanations that could exist.

In almost every iteration of the Guardian, almost regardless of the genre, they are seen as durable, “tanky,” and most often have high base HP to supplement their other features. It is not so in GW2, and that is fine because it makes sense in terms of balance; we all know how ridiculous the Guardian would be if it was on par with a Warrior’s base HP.

Answer this though: Did ANet originally design the Guardian with the same amount of HP as the Warrior and then change it later for the sake of keeping balance? The answer is obvious. The original design was high HP. That is enough information for me to make an assumption that ANet believed, as far as lore is concerned, the Guardian was meant to have higher base HP. The only reason their philosophy changed was to keep an even playing field.

It still makes no sense from a lore perspective, and I think ANet would probably agree. If you want to create your own sense for why it is low, that works, but you are reworking the baseline elements of RPGs and it doesn’t mean it should hold true for everyone else.

You’ll find, however, that in most settings that lore bends to mechanics, not the other way around. You’re almost certainly correct in that the Guardian was designed with a high health pool in mind from its outset. That doesn’t mean, though, that lore can’t be made for its current iteration, even if it’s different from how it began.

Though, yes, bantering about minute details like the health pool is silly. Unless you’re like me and happen to enjoy writing explanations for things like that.

i agree with you all but there is a problem, i played lots of rpg’s and all classes with less hp had more attack and dmg to compensate hp/dmg ratio, but here you have lets say way below average dmg , good heal while it lasts , small hp and when you use all cds you cant do nothing but run, you cant kill classes with this low dmg ratio. so i suggest let they leave hp as it is 14-16k but give us twice or tripple dmg like now to be competitive to other classes. (not talking about pve only pvp).
lets compare this to paladins in wow who are healers and dps, dps was very good, while having ok heals. you can be competitive to everybody but here guardians are supposed to be healers and thats i dont like, no real dmg in pvp just few good attacks (sword,hammer and greatsword have 1 atack for max 2-3k dmg and thats it, no steady dmg output, defending wont get you far if someone is on your tail all the times)

@ Ragnarox:

Eh…I don’t know that a comparison to the Paladins of WoW is apt for what you are trying to accomplish. If you wanted to DPS, you had very sub-par healing and tanking capabilities, and that held true for any of the 3 options you chose. You would be strong in one area and sub-par in the others. WoW was a game where you had to make a choice of what role you wanted to play. GW2 is different.

The Guardian shouldn’t really be compensated with more damage than they already have. They don’t have the output levels of a thief or a warrior, but that doesn’t concern me, nor should it concern you. You are able to take more of a beating than they are even though your HP is low. Your effective HP is much higher than they will ever be able to attain, and your toughness outclasses theirs as well. If you don’t want to play a profession that is on the more durable side, then you might want to pick up an alt that is more on the damage oriented side of the spectrum.

It is very possible to compete with other classes in PvE and PvP, I would even say we are close to the top-tier, if not the top. That doesn’t mean we would be keeping up with other classes on a damage meter or something of that sort. You have to approach your view of the Guardian completely differently from your view of the Paladin from WoW.

i didnt liked paladins in wow because they could oneshot pretty anybody there i mostly played dk’s because i like them a lot. not that big dmg like paladins but good steady dmg… here i like guardians, they are ok, but if compared to others they are low mediocre support class, with no dmg future but i will try to find suitable build for myself, tried almost all but i have plenty of time figuring it out.

Well if you cant do damage with a guardian its you thats bad, not the Class.. Do some research or reroll to thief so you can spam 3-3-3-3-3 or something .. The HP pool is enough.. And again, if you dont know how to use your abilities the right way then its still not the HP pool that is wrong, nor is it the Class that is bad…

pls do not troll like hjulstad, i dont like trolls, troll somwhere else if you are so pro, i just put my opinion on class., and looking some opinions how to play right from experienced players not trolls.

The fact is even though harsh, Hjulstad is spot on, the class has damage so it can almost twoshot stuff in wvw and the effective healthpool is larger then a warriors, if you just know what you are doing.

The fact is i find people that state that the hp is to small or we lack damage to be the trolls, either that or they simply dont understand.

Unless you are completely glass cannon and hitting another completely glass cannon or extremely lower level person in WvW there is no way you are almost two shotting anything. Other than that I completely agree with you.

ok Op i see you look for an detailed explanation
Guardian’s dmg is influenced by more factors
first you got your burn who is arround 2k dmg without no condition dmg on items
second : you got retailation : an buf that will reflect arround 600-800 dmg /hit
3: you got an heal of 8300 hp at 0 healing power or an heal who block all atacks for 2 seconds,
4. you got protection buf : 33% dmg reduction and aegis , wich is once pasive , first hit in combat and once u can activate it
5 : superior armor to warrior
compared to warrior that have :
1 poor heal
1 buf that makes him imune to dmg for 5 seconds
ciritcal / p atack buffs
area attack on greatsword that can be simply dodged , thanks to “V”
so intro an 1 vs 1:
warrior use his combo , wich if is dodged he is like dead
guardian can start with focus off hand , block 4 atacks /blind his enemy / take 2k of his hp with burn +5 hits advantage meantime , then switch to great sword
and you want :
more hp : 30 points on virtues + runes with bon duration : u keep retailation up almost 100%
more dmg: well as you told in your first post u do hits up to 2500 , so with 5 hits advantage …

Animus.6073:

Unless you are completely glass cannon and hitting another completely glass cannon or extremely lower level person in WvW there is no way you are almost two shotting anything. Other than that I completely agree with you.

I hit for 5,5k with mighty blow, and no im not a glasscanon, in wvw. Sigil of intelligence makes me force crit it on swap and with 55% crit i have over 75% to crit two in a row, so yes i ALMOST 2-shot people in wvw with about 3200 armor to back it up with.

Basically its mb+chain+mb and its over, its more then 15k of damage and stil no, its not a glasscanonbuild. Its not even berserker gear.

LameFox.6349:

Seriously though… why, from a lore viewpoint, would any class have more or less innate ‘health’? I’m pretty sure the idea of stats is altogether external to lore.

If you want a hand-wavey explanation, it’s probably because the guardian is more akin to a spiritual fighter and less a brute force, physically-powerful warrior. But I mean, it’s kind of a silly question. Why do bears in Blazeridge have more health than bears in Gendarran? It’s not like the bears are more powerfully trained in Blazeridge or something, it’s just a narrative and mechanical convention used to advance the game.

My understanding from the developers is that virtues exist to offset the guardians lower base health. Guardians regenerate health through virtue of resolve and get a free block from virtue of courage. There are several abilities at the guardians disposal that grant aegis. Defense, then offense.