Guild Wars 2

Hello. Got my first toon, a guardian, to 80 about 2 weeks ago.

I am having major issues vs. warriors and thieves (mainly thieves) in wvwvw

Currently I am running full Knight’s armor, full Knights accessory, Corrupter hammer(with 5% crit booster)/ Mystic claymore (w/boon removal) and 6 piece dolyak set.

Roughly:
HP 16k-17k depending on weapon
Armor: 3.3 k
Toughness 2.2k
Power 1.65 k
Crit: 43% with hammer, 49% with claymore

Spec: 0/10/30/30/0 (empowering might, AH…)

I am fully stocked up with omnomberry pies (66% chance to life steal on crit, +70 precesion) which brings crit with claymore to 53%

I usually play with a mesmer and elementalist friend. So I don’t necessarily want to spec for solo.

Running with the utilities.. save yourself, 5 sec cc immunity + retaliation skill, teleport

Warriors: Do a ton of damage to me. I can win about 50% of the fights, but I am certain these are undergeared players and ahve less experience then myself. I have found that dodging that “whirl-wind” move allows me to survive longer… but really is just prolonging the inevitable. There always comes a point in the fight where the warrior takes control and my heals aren’t enough to keep up with the damage they are putting out.

Thieves: Wow. Disregarding inexperienced players… I get rofl stomped. I am getting smacked for 2-3 k crits and I can’t even catch this class. For instance last night I went head to head with a sylvari thief. I port directly to him hoping for a bit of surprise factor.. he dodges, I stun, drop my ring… and he’s gone. Next thing I know he is running around me shooting pistols. Drops my health by 15-20%. I switch to greatsword and leap… gone again. For the most part this continues for the next 30 seconds with him finally getting in close and destroying me.
I read someone say they were able to fight a theif AND rez 2 people? If I stand still and let a thief beat me I am dead in 5 seconds flat. Is it possible to stack more then 2200 toughness!? I see others say they eat thieves alive. I don’t want to be rude and call BS… but I have not had this experience with equally geared individuals at all!

I am aware that my damage isn’t super high, but I crit every two hits and a dish out .8-3.5k with my range of attacks. Given my build, surely this isn’t horrid.

Would like to have more success vs these classes but vs evenly geared opponents I find them completely untouchable. I don’t mind a loss, but when the fights are this lopsided I am searching for other’s opinion on what I can practice or change in my set-up to be more successful.

Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome. Thanks all!

Sounds like you just need more practice.

You should only be losing to thieves that constantly hit and run into a re-stealth. Glass cannon thieves that come straight for you, which are the vast majority, should be easy. Use greatsword’s #4 and stand in it to stack retaliation. Leap out of it with #3 to get more retaliation. Use a protection boon source when they start spamming heavy damage. Before the thief stealths, use #5 to get him chained, but don’t pull in yet. Usually they’ll get themselves to under half HP just from retaliation. When they do start to run, use Judge’s Intervention to stay on them. When they stealth, pull them in with the second part of #5 and whirling wrath, making sure to active Virtue of Justice. That kills at least 50% of thieves.

Against greatsword warriors, just learn to dodge 100blades – stun break their bull’s charge immediately. That makes most of them a walk in the park. Just be careful when you use your binding blade pull into whirling wrath. Preferably, wait until their 100blades and whirlwind are on cooldown so they can’t hit you back or escape your whirling wrath. If they use Endure Pain (take 0 damage from direct attacks), don’t pop cooldowns against them. If they use Frenzy, dodge/kite/CC them until it ends. Learn both those icons.

I would recommend using a different rune set. I use Forge for the protection boon at 50% HP. Earth also works, though may not be as reliable. You could consider a more offensive set as well.

Warriors hit for high damage but they do not deal enough to ever kill a guardian. You can negate all their bursts easily and your sustained is just as good as theirs. Just stay on them and trade hits and they will drop before you.

A thief can never kill a guardian. It’s impossible. You can negate their burst easily and it’s crap anyway, and their sustained is virtually non-existent. You are hitting them harder than they are hitting you and they drop in a tenth of the time, if not less. Don’t forget that you can still hit them while they are stealthed, it just doesn’t target. Just switch to your greatsword and when they disappear, use WW or Binding Blades (or just your auto) and pummel them to death. The only hard thing about the guardian vs. thief fight is ensuring that they don’t manage to escape and cheat you out of the kill when they’re losing. Having a scepter or signets helps for this.

The important thing is to just stay on your target and don’t let them run away. Guardians have super high melee damage so you will never lose a close range 1v1 brawl.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Warriors hit for high damage but they do not deal enough to ever kill a guardian. You can negate all their bursts easily and your sustained is just as good as theirs. Just stay on them and trade hits and they will drop before you.

A thief can never kill a guardian. It’s impossible. You can negate their burst easily and it’s crap anyway, and their sustained is virtually non-existent. You are hitting them harder than they are hitting you and they drop in a tenth of the time, if not less. Don’t forget that you can still hit them while they are stealthed, it just doesn’t target. Just switch to your greatsword and when they disappear, use WW or Binding Blades (or just your auto) and pummel them to death. The only hard thing about the guardian vs. thief fight is ensuring that they don’t manage to escape and cheat you out of the kill when they’re losing. Having a scepter or signets helps for this.

The important thing is to just stay on your target and don’t let them run away. Guardians have super high melee damage so you will never lose a close range 1v1 brawl.

This is true for most sitations. But, it was this one time I encountered a thief who knew what he was doing. Regular backstab/high burst thiefs are countered by retaliation or shelter. But he was P/D, and thiefs with that set up can easily stack 6-11 bleeds constantly, no matter what kind of condition removal you have. Try and remove it, he applies new stacks a few seconds later. Try again? New stacks. Alright, this is okay, since he is a thief, he is squishy. My only problem is that I can not reach him in any way, because of his almost permastealh and culling issues. P/D thies are the only ones I have problem with because of the stealth mechanic being a problem in itself. They can invest almost everything into offense and still be able to have quite decent survivability through not being seen.

I survived through many stacks of bleeding, but ended up bleeding to death. He can stack bleeds on me while stealthing afterwards, just watching me bleed to death. From now on, I never take on fights against thiefs, because of the fact they can be invisible for 70% of the fight. Mostly because I might run onto a P/D thief.

Ive tried thief myself, but stopped playing because I do not want to win because a few issues in the game itself give me an upper hand. Sorry if Im being too negative, its just how I see it. But, Im gonna go ahead and try the hammer against them, and try Ring of Warding to see if that gets em.

It might be worthwhile to have a mace/shield or scepter/shield set handy, at least until you get used to everything a bit more. Having shield #5 available to push a thief back and mess up their burst combo will, if nothing else, help you learn to predict when things are going to happen. Flinging a thief back will tell you loud and clear that you predicted their movements correctly. The mace can also block an attack for you.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily the best way or even the only way to train yourself, but having visual cues has always helped me. Perhaps it’ll help you too.

Edit:
IMHO the dolyak set isn’t worth the 6-piece bonus. It’s just 30hp per second and it doesn’t scale with your healing power. I’ve had a lot of luck running a full shout bar with soldier runes, pack runes and Dwayna runes. I settled on runes of the pack for the extra boon spam and swiftness duration — if you’re using AH, this will heal you quite a bit.

Also while Judge’s Intervention is a very useful skill, I swapped it out for a full shout bar. I’ve found that it’s more trouble than it’s worth, except for when I’m using hammer and staff builds. I use “Hold The Line!” + “Stand Your Ground!” + “Retreat!” mostly. I used to run “Save Yourselves!” until I realized my other shouts were more useful in team play.

That’s just my experience/style though, hopefully you’ll grow into your own soon.

Try the healway spec with clerics gear. You’ll simply outheal anything they do and with every shout turning a condition into a boon + purity, you’ll be dropping those conditions constantly. Additionally those shouts give you lots of regen, protection and stability.

Mind you thiefs will generally have too many escape options for you to be able to kill them so it will stalemate.

Are the damage logs (damage done and damage mitigated etc) available post-fight?

I appreciate the responses all. I can say I will immediately be trying something other then the dolyak set starting tonight including the good tactical advice.

@Guanglai Kangyi.4318. Thanks for your suggestions. I actually did not know I could hit them stealthed, I was doging to avoid a backstab. However, from my experience I don’t find your comment to be true for many thieves: “A thief can never kill a guardian. It’s impossible. You can negate their burst easily and it’s crap anyway, and their sustained is virtually non-existent.”

Given that I am outplayed, I have watched 30%-60% of my health drop in mere seconds. I was actually surprised at the lack of mitigation… or am I actually mitigating a ton of damage, where someone wearing light armor would be dead when I am at half health?

Toughness doesn’t affect as much as you think it does. At max toughness it’s only about 35% damage reduction. Hitting 6k with your full glass cannon burst is laughably bad, especially when you’re a thief and using that burst means you’re literally dead two seconds later if it doesn’t kill, because you’ve just used your elite and all your utilities. I think the only class thief burst actually works on is other thieves, since their healing and armor sucks, so you can actually deal enough to kill them.

All you have to do is pop aegis when they stealth. Very easy to block a backstab. The only thing a thief has that you should be wasting time dodging is Death Blossom. Roll with it so you can hit them as they land. Free damage.

Also, pistol thief can’t kite a guardian forever. He’s hitting you for almost no damage and you can run at him faster than he can kite away, and thieves have virtually no healing so even if you only hit him once every ten seconds you’ll probably still outpace both his healing and his damage against you.

Also, you have staff. Staff is super hard to avoid and it kills a thief in like five hits.

The pistol dagger thieves can kill you. They just disappear and kite repeatedly. They are best avoided. They are really only a gank spec, well practiced and not much good for anything else, so just avoid them. D/d thieves are not a lot of problem, generally.

The only time you lose to a theif is if they use perma stealth to win.

However, let me break it down for you. Your 2.2k is quite low to deal with thief or warriors. You should try getting it to atleast 2.6k minimum. You can get it to 2.8k and still retain damage.

You also might want to change runes. I advise going full melandru for the high toughness and minus condition dmg duration plus the minus condition dmg duration food. Should not have any problems with thief at all apart from them escaping or abusing perma stealth to kill you. Just keep swinning with a hammer. If the third hit triggers u know he’s close.

When fighting a thief you want snares.

Using hammer, great sword and JI, i find that i can kill almost any thief i see, or that tries to gank me. The secret is keeping them in one spot, and that is where Hammer 5 comes into play. If the thief is on you just hammer 5, followed by hammer 2 then great sword 2. if they are at range just throw JI at the start of that sequence. Very few thieves can survive that combo.

Learn to channel Ring of warding just before you teleport, it help a ton.

I think hammer is the best thing which works against thieves. Backstab thieves are too easy to counter. One boon to counter a whole class build? lol. Pop retaliation and they will kill themselves. Also, if you are Azura, pop pain inverter for faster down. If you are defensive enough, you can get two thieves to about 30% hp with that boon. Most of them tunnelvisions onto you and forget their health. I had the exact same problem as my old main, thief.

The big problem Guardians have is P/D thieves imo. But Guardians are not made for ganking and roaming anyways, so I can understand that. But in wvw its so fun!.
I recommend going with a group of atleast 3, and maybe teamspeak/skype/whatever. Btw, any snare or Ring of Warding will not work properly against them, since the dual skill they get will port them away outside our ring/away from us.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Warriors hit for high damage but they do not deal enough to ever kill a guardian. You can negate all their bursts easily and your sustained is just as good as theirs. Just stay on them and trade hits and they will drop before you.

A thief can never kill a guardian. It’s impossible. You can negate their burst easily and it’s crap anyway, and their sustained is virtually non-existent. You are hitting them harder than they are hitting you and they drop in a tenth of the time, if not less. Don’t forget that you can still hit them while they are stealthed, it just doesn’t target. Just switch to your greatsword and when they disappear, use WW or Binding Blades (or just your auto) and pummel them to death. The only hard thing about the guardian vs. thief fight is ensuring that they don’t manage to escape and cheat you out of the kill when they’re losing. Having a scepter or signets helps for this.

The important thing is to just stay on your target and don’t let them run away. Guardians have super high melee damage so you will never lose a close range 1v1 brawl.

almost fell out of my chair reading this. Thief can never kill a guardian?? Guardians do well against burst d/d thieves, but sword thieves, SB thieves, PD thieves all stand a very good chance against eating guardians. Sword thieves can immo and rock you for 10-25k in a single combo. 2 for immo, mug, auto attack. if they use sword/dagger they will also throw an invis there, hit you with daze, track your evade and 2 you again for another immo. Yes, Thieves can kill Guardians and quite easily usually, dont think they all use daggers

Azure.8670:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Warriors hit for high damage but they do not deal enough to ever kill a guardian. You can negate all their bursts easily and your sustained is just as good as theirs. Just stay on them and trade hits and they will drop before you.

A thief can never kill a guardian. It’s impossible. You can negate their burst easily and it’s crap anyway, and their sustained is virtually non-existent. You are hitting them harder than they are hitting you and they drop in a tenth of the time, if not less. Don’t forget that you can still hit them while they are stealthed, it just doesn’t target. Just switch to your greatsword and when they disappear, use WW or Binding Blades (or just your auto) and pummel them to death. The only hard thing about the guardian vs. thief fight is ensuring that they don’t manage to escape and cheat you out of the kill when they’re losing. Having a scepter or signets helps for this.

The important thing is to just stay on your target and don’t let them run away. Guardians have super high melee damage so you will never lose a close range 1v1 brawl.

almost fell out of my chair reading this. Thief can never kill a guardian?? Guardians do well against burst d/d thieves, but sword thieves, SB thieves, PD thieves all stand a very good chance against eating guardians. Sword thieves can immo and rock you for 10-25k in a single combo. 2 for immo, mug, auto attack. if they use sword/dagger they will also throw an invis there, hit you with daze, track your evade and 2 you again for another immo. Yes, Thieves can kill Guardians and quite easily usually, dont think they all use daggers

rofl I would love to see that happen to a good guardian player lol I really would. 10k on a guardian is likely if they are quite glassy. 25k? where did you dream up this figure? have you been killing lower level guardians with this combo? or them glass cannon ones?

On the first immo the guardian will have aegis block it. So there goes the first hit. The second hit they will either dodge (as they are aware they are being attacked) or they will throw up retaliation and mighty blow or whirling wrath. Go invis? ring of warding or GS5. throw in GS or hammer chain. Dead theif, if not he is already running half way across the map.

Guardians who don’t mitigate thief damage is an easy target. What good is a burst attack if it doesn’t hit? lol

If traited for it Pop virtues (VoJ and VoP) as soon as your aegis is removed. This will give 1 blind, 1 aegis so this will mitigate another 2 attacks.

The only thief build that a guardian should have any trouble with is a perma stealth thief or a condition thief. Condition thief can be countered with runes and food.

Once new guardians get over the “Panic” mode when being attacked from a stealth thief, its pretty much clockwork

A thief single handedly took out 3 guardians last night in WvW. I found two lying in the road when the thief presented himself.

I run with hammer/staff and I couldn’t do much to save myself. The fight was long by thief standards (45 sec or so), but the problem was the perpetual stealth. I’d lock him down with hammer 3, ring of warding, whatever and he’d stealth before I could do much damage. Then he’d reappear a few seconds later in a different spot and repeat.

I’m not sure why the class is designed to stealth so much. He did this vanishing act about five times before I finally succumbed to the bleed stacks.

I couldn’t read all post here but i will tell u my point of view.

I play almost only spvp so i can tell u that thief shouldn’t kill a guardian (we have the upper hand), especially two (like somebody writed earlier). The main thing is weapon choice and triats. Easiest way for you to do well agains the thiefs is to equip focus and pick up Stand Your Ground. Focus can block few attack in row – and almost every thief likes to spam lots of HS after backstab, and SYG gives u retaliation that shot up every stupid HASTE combo than they can produce in they face.
One thing to notice – if u want retaliation to work rly well, get some easy protection
…and toughness is rly good dont listen to others

P/D thieves are just freaking annoying. You pretty much HAVE to run scepter/torch to even have a chance against them because of their extreme mobility and stealth. Most times its better to just walk away than fight for 5 mins and end up getting ambushed by other teamates. D/D thieves or S/D theives are pretty easy due to aegis eating opening attacks. Pistol whip is somewhat annoying but stun breaks negate it for the most part.

Warriors are all about evading the big attacks. Bull rush quickness 100b is the only decent burst they really have and its the same as pistol whip, stun break and avoid.

Since you do have 30 in valor i suggest you use shelter if you arent. Not only can you stunbreak then cast it to negate the damage but every block will give you a stack of might. Blocking a full 100b, pistol whip, or any multi hit attack (like our own ww) can instantly change a fight with the amount of might stacks you get.

If I see a single thief when I’m also alone, i just leave them alone. If they run ranged, I have no hope of beating them, and if they decide to go d/d they’ll just stealth the first time their precious HS spam doesn’t affect me. Same goes for d/d ele’s, though they are much more annoying since they can tank better than guardians can. Warriors are not generally a problem unless they go ranged…which, again, forces all guardians in WvW to always have the scepter equipped. Which then limits our mobility or dps overall.

Guardians are most effective in small-to-mid-sized groups, where you maximize your own self heals and party buffs, and gives you enough burst through coordinated fire to quickly down thieves and eles. Guardians are one of the best balanced classes for straight-up PvE, but in PvP it requires an enclosed space and an over-aggressive opponent to actually be really effective.

Take the bunker build, for example: it’s dependent on others to actually kill things, the guard is just there to force skill cds on enemy players. The crithammer is a good enough build, but suffers from a lack of range. If someone wants to run from us, there’s not a whole lot to do about it.

TL;DR: Find a group, stay near them. Focus fire is your friend, and get used to being severely gimped 1v1…aka, you gunna get kited.

2.2k toughness or armor????

Running full knights and 30 valor that would have to be actual toughness not armor.

i wrote on other topics before
Best vs thief is 1 h sword +focus. The damage output will be lower in general compared to other weapons (gs /hammer). However an blind every 10 seconds from sword + 1 from focus every 20 seconds, ( and 3 blocked attacks from focus) will make him fail too much c&d and force him to use stealth utility’s in order to retreat. Judge’s intervention will damage thief even stealthed and will help you chase him. Purging flames (trained for ground target) can make him leave his shadow refuge if he is in trouble . this 2 ability’s combined with virtue of justice can do 5000 + damage on an thief. Scepter’s smite is also great vs them , since they got paper deffence , an smite +imobilize will do 2000-5000 damage to an thief

You should not be losing more than winning vs warriors since guardians have more ways to beat a warrior than a warrior has to beat a guardian. Survive the initial attack with damage mitigation skills and mow them down with solid DPS. Warriors will always win a few because of the damage they can do in a short amount of time but a guardian on average should get the better of them.

With thieves you just have to hope to land your hardest hit on them. Mighty blow works for me. Wall of reflection can work against the average pistol thief.

I’m talking in more chaotic WvW situations that is.

In WvW…..

As my Thief, if you’re equipping anything but Sword+Focus, I’m going to kill your Guardian every single time we engage.

As my Warrior, I’m going to kill you every single time we engage. You just can not handle the damage my build puts out, nor do the damage needed to kill me. Running 3100 attack, 3200 armor, and over 50% crit hit (65% crit with full adrenaline) with Knights Armor, you just do not stand a chance as a Guardian in killing me.

That said, I have a fully exotic gear 80 Guardian as well. I do something I’m sure others do not, which is change food “in combat” on the fly. If I’m dodging, I eat my 40% endurance regen, if I’m attacking, I eat my 60% chance on crit to get life steal, and so on. Because I change foods out often, I have a much better chance on my Guardian to kill Warriors, and Thieves.

With 4 fully geared 80s, each with three sets of level 80 exotic gear, my Guardian has become the most unfun for me to play because of the nerfs, which ironically, my Ranger has become the funnest though they still need to fix some bugs for the Ranger.

The biggest issue I have with my Guardian is lack of gap closers, in comparison to the massive amount of snares, roots, stun’s, knockdowns that are out there. I feel like I spend more time chasing someone, rather than fighting them. This was recently made worse when they gave three classes 25% run speed on their Signets, making the Guardian, and Mesmer the slowest classes in the game.

jkctmc.8754:

In WvW……

As my Warrior, I’m going to kill you every single time we engage. You just can not handle the damage my build puts out, nor do the damage needed to kill me. Running 3100 attack, 3200 armor, and over 50% crit hit (65% crit with full adrenaline) with Knights Armor, you just do not stand a chance as a Guardian in killing me.

Shelter eating a 100b and giving me might on every block would say otherwise. Not saying warriors arent tough and can deal alot of damage but even the best geared are still killable. Its just dependant on avoiding the big bursts they can do, and using the right defenses at the right time. Focus #5, shelter, and aegis use can negate alot of damage warriors can put out. Te biggest thing is just watching for the quickness buff with warriors. The second you see it throw up a block and eat their burst.

Bakitten291:

jkctmc.8754:

In WvW……

As my Warrior, I’m going to kill you every single time we engage. You just can not handle the damage my build puts out, nor do the damage needed to kill me. Running 3100 attack, 3200 armor, and over 50% crit hit (65% crit with full adrenaline) with Knights Armor, you just do not stand a chance as a Guardian in killing me.

Shelter eating a 100b and giving me might on every block would say otherwise. Not saying warriors arent tough and can deal alot of damage but even the best geared are still killable. Its just dependant on avoiding the big bursts they can do, and using the right defenses at the right time. Focus #5, shelter, and aegis use can negate alot of damage warriors can put out. Te biggest thing is just watching for the quickness buff with warriors. The second you see it throw up a block and eat their burst.

I don’t use Greatsword brother. And “if” I have the quickness buff up on my bar, I’m going to stun, or knock you down long before I use it. <grins>

@KensaiZen “However, let me break it down for you. Your 2.2k is quite low to deal with thief or warriors. You should try getting it to atleast 2.6k minimum. You can get it to 2.8k and still retain damage.”

It’s possible to get toughness to 2.8k? Im using full knights armor, accessory, and superior dolyak which is all toughness. It puts me at 2.2k. Besides for a weapon what else can bring me up 600 tougness?

I think he meant 2.8k armor.

Dps specced warriors shouldn’t be a problem you deal good enough damage, use renewed focus, aegis and shelter heal to block bursts, or just dodge. More tanky warriors can be a possible problem since they have more hp than you etc. fun stuff. Just make sure you’re doing enough damage.

Any more than totally dumb thief is problem to anyone, not only guardian, since they can possibly just keep blinking until your skills are on cooldown and wear you down. You can try hammer 5-2 gs 2 (+some added burning) but unless the thief is really dull under level 80 with crap equipment, he won’t die from that by any chance. Don’t think they’re glass cannons, because they’re likely to have just enough armor and hp to survive a little burst you throw at them. Luckily for you they can use stealth and heal anytime then come back at you again until you die or get extremely lucky with your crits/aoe to get them downed finally.

Today I swapped up my utilities and ran:
- save yourselves
- pain inverter (im asura)
- hold the line

Made sure my omnomberry pie’s were up

Definitely more success with these utilities in 1v1’s

jkctmc.8754:

Bakitten291:

jkctmc.8754:

In WvW……

As my Warrior, I’m going to kill you every single time we engage. You just can not handle the damage my build puts out, nor do the damage needed to kill me. Running 3100 attack, 3200 armor, and over 50% crit hit (65% crit with full adrenaline) with Knights Armor, you just do not stand a chance as a Guardian in killing me.

Shelter eating a 100b and giving me might on every block would say otherwise. Not saying warriors arent tough and can deal alot of damage but even the best geared are still killable. Its just dependant on avoiding the big bursts they can do, and using the right defenses at the right time. Focus #5, shelter, and aegis use can negate alot of damage warriors can put out. Te biggest thing is just watching for the quickness buff with warriors. The second you see it throw up a block and eat their burst.

I don’t use Greatsword brother. And “if” I have the quickness buff up on my bar, I’m going to stun, or knock you down long before I use it. <grins>

You act as though playing against guardians doesn’t come along with having stupid amounts of stability/stun breaks.

Kerithlan.1659:

jkctmc.8754:

Bakitten291:

jkctmc.8754:

In WvW……

As my Warrior, I’m going to kill you every single time we engage. You just can not handle the damage my build puts out, nor do the damage needed to kill me. Running 3100 attack, 3200 armor, and over 50% crit hit (65% crit with full adrenaline) with Knights Armor, you just do not stand a chance as a Guardian in killing me.

Shelter eating a 100b and giving me might on every block would say otherwise. Not saying warriors arent tough and can deal alot of damage but even the best geared are still killable. Its just dependant on avoiding the big bursts they can do, and using the right defenses at the right time. Focus #5, shelter, and aegis use can negate alot of damage warriors can put out. Te biggest thing is just watching for the quickness buff with warriors. The second you see it throw up a block and eat their burst.

I don’t use Greatsword brother. And “if” I have the quickness buff up on my bar, I’m going to stun, or knock you down long before I use it. <grins>

You act as though playing against guardians doesn’t come along with having stupid amounts of stability/stun breaks.

You can’t stun break a knockdown, and you sound like you think the Warrior only has access to one stun. While your stun breaks are on long cooldown timers, my stuns, and knockdowns are on smaller timers, thanks to the Mace Adrenaline ability.

Even if it becomes a battle of attrition, because you’re a meditation build, I still win the fight.

You can’t stun break a knockdown

Sure can.

I am currently playing with 3 stunbreaks (JI, SY, SYG), Invul Elite and Shelter when running solo and dueling. I haven’t finished my sword/focus set so there are still more blocks to come. Add to this my Aegis on F3 and my Blind on F1 and i can block, avoid or break virtually any stun/knockback/knockdown you try to apply on me if i manage to see the animation and react fast enough.

I also got near perma-vigor to dodge some of those attacks.

jkctmc.8754:

Kerithlan.1659:

jkctmc.8754:

Bakitten291:

jkctmc.8754:

In WvW……

As my Warrior, I’m going to kill you every single time we engage. You just can not handle the damage my build puts out, nor do the damage needed to kill me. Running 3100 attack, 3200 armor, and over 50% crit hit (65% crit with full adrenaline) with Knights Armor, you just do not stand a chance as a Guardian in killing me.

Shelter eating a 100b and giving me might on every block would say otherwise. Not saying warriors arent tough and can deal alot of damage but even the best geared are still killable. Its just dependant on avoiding the big bursts they can do, and using the right defenses at the right time. Focus #5, shelter, and aegis use can negate alot of damage warriors can put out. Te biggest thing is just watching for the quickness buff with warriors. The second you see it throw up a block and eat their burst.

I don’t use Greatsword brother. And “if” I have the quickness buff up on my bar, I’m going to stun, or knock you down long before I use it. <grins>

You act as though playing against guardians doesn’t come along with having stupid amounts of stability/stun breaks.

You can’t stun break a knockdown, and you sound like you think the Warrior only has access to one stun. While your stun breaks are on long cooldown timers, my stuns, and knockdowns are on smaller timers, thanks to the Mace Adrenaline ability.

Even if it becomes a battle of attrition, because you’re a meditation build, I still win the fight.

You can indeed use stun breaks on knockdowns – I do so frequently in PvP, breaking them and getting back on my feet in a fraction of a second rather than 2-3. Stun and Knockdown are functionally the same thing – only the animation is different. Test it yourself on the Warrior NPC in the Mists – you can instantly end any knockdown he uses on you with a stun break. If your opponents aren’t using stun breaks on your knockdowns, it either means that their stun breaks are on cooldown, that they’re trying to save them for later in the fight, or that they’re simply bad.

Also, not to say that your Warrior spec can’t or doesn’t do well against Guardians, but the most popular/powerful stun breaker the Guardian has is Stand Your Ground, which can be traited down to a 24 second cooldown (not terribly long) and which grants 5+ seconds of Stability on use. That’s at least 20% uptime if you have the trait, which isn’t bad at all for something as powerful as Stability. A Guardian using it will block all CC for that period, so it doesn’t matter how many control skills you have on your bar.

Speaking from my own experience, I play a tanky DPS Guardian in PvP, and when I face CC/Damage Warriors in matches, I’ll combine SYG with Blind and Aegis to soak up the CC and create a window to exert my own pressure, which is also a mix of CC and damage. Aegis, Blind, Immobilize, Stability, knockdowns, knockbacks, dodges with perma-vigor, and Renewed Focus are all a part of my defensive rotations, and unless a Warrior is entirely dedicated to CC, he’s not going to be able to keep me down through all of that (and if he is, he’s easy pickings for other reasons).

Again, not saying that you’re not capable of locking down and killing Guardians with your build – I’m sure you do so on a regular basis. However, there are many ways Guardians can respond to CC outside of stun breaks, and good ones are going to make themselves hard to pin down through their various sources of mitigation.

jkctmc.8754:

Kerithlan.1659:

jkctmc.8754:

Bakitten291:

jkctmc.8754:

In WvW……

As my Warrior, I’m going to kill you every single time we engage. You just can not handle the damage my build puts out, nor do the damage needed to kill me. Running 3100 attack, 3200 armor, and over 50% crit hit (65% crit with full adrenaline) with Knights Armor, you just do not stand a chance as a Guardian in killing me.

Shelter eating a 100b and giving me might on every block would say otherwise. Not saying warriors arent tough and can deal alot of damage but even the best geared are still killable. Its just dependant on avoiding the big bursts they can do, and using the right defenses at the right time. Focus #5, shelter, and aegis use can negate alot of damage warriors can put out. Te biggest thing is just watching for the quickness buff with warriors. The second you see it throw up a block and eat their burst.

I don’t use Greatsword brother. And “if” I have the quickness buff up on my bar, I’m going to stun, or knock you down long before I use it. <grins>

You act as though playing against guardians doesn’t come along with having stupid amounts of stability/stun breaks.

You can’t stun break a knockdown, and you sound like you think the Warrior only has access to one stun. While your stun breaks are on long cooldown timers, my stuns, and knockdowns are on smaller timers, thanks to the Mace Adrenaline ability.

Even if it becomes a battle of attrition, because you’re a meditation build, I still win the fight.

As was said earlier, knockdowns are removed by stunbreakers. Also even then our virtues are always useable no matter what, so even if knocked down we still have an aegis application, a heal, and if traited a blind. Guardians also have a ton of blinds that could very easily ruin your knockdowns as well, from the gs and 1h sword leap, focus #4 (that can apply 2) and the already mention virtue use. Just because you can have a ton pf knockdowns doesnt mean all of them are going to land.