Guild Wars 2

all i can say is the warrior feels so fluid and powerful.

the guardian feels so restricted

Why did you come back then?

necro as my main, i agree w op about warriors being powerful to the point where it felt cheap and “bargain bin-ish” …at least for me.

but as a newbie guard, i have yet to find out how they compare to warriors

A Warrior can be the perfect DPS, a very good condition damage dealer, a very good supporter (banners, horn, etc), a good tank (only a guardian can be a better bunker than a warrior) and have a lot of very good elite skills.
A Guardian can be the best bunker in the game and a good support class. You can’t be a dps whitout losing all the things that make you a Guardian. And you can’t be a condition damage dealer. Ah, your elite can be good only sometimes in wvsw (the healing tome) and no more.
And you can’t build a strategy on your virtues because your game is based on your role and not on your virtues.

Yes, the Warrior is a little bit fluid and powerful.
But if you want to be a supporter the guardian is the best.

EpicTurtle.9216:

Why did you come back then?

^^ So much this.

I am currently testing the warrior profession on potential weaknesses, if anyone followed the discussion in the profession balance sub forum. And I had a epiphany about a GS/Hammer Meditation build for guardian… nothing revolutionary, but I was just playing some rounds with it. Using hammer #4 and then porting to them to surprise and push them kilometers away is super awesome. I love it. And the guardian, I play as a glass cannon, feels very powerful in chaotic fights, but he is less resilient when he is focused, I must admit that.

However, I find guardian fighting fluent, the only thing that kinda feels bad after playing a warrior some some time now is the 10s cool down on weapon swap

I feel the other way, warriors feel just bland in PvE for me, as a guardian I’ve always got something i need to be on the look out for, do i need to place a WoR, do i need to place a SOTA, will i need stability here, or will protection be more beneficial for my group?

As a warrior, you just slot your skills and you’re done with it, very rarely do you need to change them up.

My warrior seems like a snoozefest sometimes. And everyone thinks that you’re easy to play/known for being bad. I like my warrior for the burst damage.

I’m levelling a guardian though because I want to defend nodes/help players. My warrior just feels goofy.

Warrior doesn’t offer me the challenge that Guardian does. Everything seems to come much to easily with them. Guardian is a decent middle ground for that easy/challenging spectrum of the classes I have played so far.

guardian does more DPS than a warrior

cough

^ But at the cost of losing a lot of sustain and team support. In example: you will not find a single serious PvP team wasting a slot in a DPS Guardian, so the only Guardians you will find in competitive PvP rosters are bunkers, whereas in the past NA Legendary Tournament in 3 out of 4 teams from the semifinals they did run double Warrior.

Yes, you can have fun with a Guardian using a DPS build, but you lack variety of builds compared against the options available in Warrior, and you have 0 chances of playing Guard in a competitive team filling other role than being a bunker.

Guardian DON’T do more damage than a warrior. If you know how use a warrior you can swap weapons and deal a very large amount of damage. More than a Guardian.
I’ve see a recent post where someone has calculated the dps of guardian and warrior. And the warrior can deal more damage.
If you play alone, or in spvp, or in a group whitout a warrior, you can see easy that a guardian can’t deal the same amount of damage of a warrior. The warrior can obtain 15+ stack of might just using elite, utility and finishers, and stay easy whit 15+ stack of might for all the time (expecially in spvp —> ham-bow build), give firefields that can be blasted easy and give 18+ stack of vulnerability to the enemy. All that using a DPS build.

A DPS guardian can’t obtain might. Or can if you’re Not a full dps class. And can only give 9 stack of vulnerability (and only if you use sword+focus build). You can use the Staff to obtain might, but in a team fight or in a boss fight or in wvsw you stay whit a Staff for 9 seconds, reducing your dps by a lot.

Whit the same buffs/debuffs, a Guardian can deal a damage similar to the damage dealt by a warrior, but can’t deal more damage.
If you find a noob war that don’t know how to do a really good dps build and how to awap it’s weapons, a guardian can deal more damage. But if the war know how to play a guardian can’t deal more damage than a war.
A Guardian can deal 10k whit the GS skill 2, but a War can deal 9k whit Evisherate (whitout traits). A Guardian can increase it’s damage whit the GS by 35% whit traits . The warrior can increase it’s axe damage by 30%+7% on eviscerate.
But the auto attack dps is better.

Silv.9207:

Guardian DON’T do more damage than a warrior. If you know how use a warrior you can swap weapons and deal a very large amount of damage. More than a Guardian.
I’ve see a recent post where someone has calculated the dps of guardian and warrior. And the warrior can deal more damage.
If you play alone, or in spvp, or in a group *whit*out a warrior, you can see easy that a guardian can’t deal the same amount of damage of a warrior. The warrior can obtain 15+ stack of might just using elite, utility and finishers, and stay easy whit 15+ stack of might for all the time (expecially in spvp —> ham-bow build), give firefields that can be blasted easy and give 18+ stack of vulnerability to the enemy. All that using a DPS build.

A DPS guardian can’t obtain might. Or can if you’re Not a full dps class. And can only give 9 stack of vulnerability (and only if you use sword+focus build). You can use the Staff to obtain might, but in a team fight or in a boss fight or in wvsw you stay whit a Staff for 9 seconds, reducing your dps by a lot.

Whit the same buffs/debuffs, a Guardian can deal a damage similar to the damage dealt by a warrior, but can’t deal more damage.
If you find a noob war that don’t know how to do a really good dps build and how to awap it’s weapons, a guardian can deal more damage. But if the war know how to play a guardian can’t deal more damage than a war.
A Guardian can deal 10k whit the GS skill 2, but a War can deal 9k whit evisherate (whitout traits). A Guardian can increase it’s damage whit the GS by 35% whit traits . The warrior can increase it’s axe damage by 30%+7% on eviscerate.
But the auto attack dps is better.

WITH. My number 1 pet peeve is people who spell WITH as WHIT.

Swapping weapons to achieve max DPS don’t work anymore for the Warrior Silv. The old 6/5/0/0/3 build is about 6-7% less DPS than a pure Axe or pure GS build right now.

Now this discussion between which have the best DPS between a Guardian and a Warrior is a difficult one, with no definitive answer. They have similar DPS, but that range a lot depending on the situation.

First of all, in Solo Situation a Warrior will have more DPS than a guardian because the Guardian lack so much in the offensive support (might, fury, banner, EA) than a Warrior can bring. But when we talk about DPS that much, we usually talk about party composition and speed run. So i’ll keep in mind that you have both in a good party that can keep up most buff.

Warrior have 2 main type of build. Highest personal DPS (pure axe or pure GS) will give you about 12.5k DPS, while a EA Warrior will have more about 10K DPS.

A Guardian on the other end will usually have a 11k DPS and will drop to about 10K DPS for more supporting build.

Situation 1) If you only gonna bring 1 between Warrior or Guardian. OF COURSE the Warrior take the place, no doudt.

Situation 2) If you take 1 Warrior and 1 Guardian. Usually the first Warrior will have a EA build to boost the party, while the Guardian, its doesn’t really matter. The more support build are good in some situation like Arah, Fractal, etc. But in most situation a full DPS guardian will bring enough support anyway. So in this situation the Guardian will usually have more DPS than the Warrior if you have only 1 of both. Worst case scenario, they will have both equal DPS.

Situation 3) Now if you want to choose between a second warrior or a second guardian? Well you bring something else lol. An Elementalist, a Thief, etc. But if you really want a second warrior or guardian, then a full personnal DPS warrior will be the best and will bring more DPS than a second guardian.

Situation 4) Usually for the Guardian, the 6/6/2/0/0 build is view a the best DPS. But a 4/6/2/0/2 will reach about the same DPS if you can have Aegis up for about 15% of the time according to Obal (I didn’t made that math yet). But if you want to be crazy you can use the build 4/5/0/0/5. In practice, this build is more about 10k DPS. But that build have VERY variable DPS because of 2 things. UC and power of the virtuous. In normal circonstance you won’t have UC up that much and you’ll have between 2 and 4 boons. But when you keep UC up and use Save Yourself to get all 9 boons, then you DPS skyrocket to something like 13K+ DPS, going higher than any Warrior build. Of course the difference is not that high and this is not practical, its just theory and can allow you to make some cool video like Obal 52K whirlwind wrath video, but it still exist.

So ya, Warrior vs Guardian in term of DPS is not really that clear. In some situation, the Guardian have more dps than the warrior. In theory the Guardian can have more dps. But in practice the Warrior usually have more DPS and the Guardian need a warrior, while a Warrior don’t need a guardian. There is no clear single answer here.

I want to point out something about obal’s DPS calculation, it does not account Unscathed Contender, which is a huge 20% damage modifier. In most fight I am able to keep it up 50% of the fight which would bring Guardian on par or above Warrior. But Warrior DPS rotation is much easier, even more now since it’s all about camping Greatsword and don’t rely on something like UC to deal damage.

Joshua, I’ve write it whit my samsung cell. It’s so bad…
And I’m not english u.u
Sorry XD

Trice.4598:

I want to point out something about obal’s DPS calculation, it does not account Unscathed Contender, which is a huge 20% damage modifier. In most fight I am able to keep it up 50% of the fight which would bring Guardian on par or above Warrior. But Warrior DPS rotation is much easier, even more now since it’s all about camping Greatsword and don’t rely on something like UC to deal damage.

In most dungeons or fractals, I have kept UC going more than half the time as well so that its not something that situational. The trait rewards you for knowing how the fight goes, when to dodge and blind. It is much better practice to try to keep that precious Aegis on you rather than facerolling for dps. In other words, with UC the goal to survive and the goal to maximize damage meets at a common point. Beautiful. I even use Energy skills in morning dungeons instead of Strength or Battle for UC only. So the question about rolling a warrior or guardian for dps depends on who you want to be: a grass mower or an unscathed contender.

Note: With a standard hammer build and some boon duration (the 5 points required for PotV and Chocolate Cream), you can have 4 boons on yourself at almost all times (Protection, Retaliation, Might, Vigor). With your Aegis, that makes %5 more damage and with UC that makes %25 more damage. So just by swinging your hammer, blasting around, using your virtues or playing the game actively you can have that bonus damage on most of the times. So along with UC, PotV isn’t also very situational.