Guild Wars 2

Having been having trouble with meditation GS guards in WvW lately and am looking for pointers.

One particular encounter from yesterday has me the most perplexed.

This guard would teleport to me with Judge’s Intervention and then go straight into Whirling Wrath.

Those two skills alone would take half of my 20k hp before I could dodge out of them, and this is with me having a fairly tanky condition build with 1900 toughness and 20k hp…

My question is, why is this guard hitting so hard, and what do I do about it?

1. post the build that you’re using.
2. whirling wrath shouldnt be a problem if against medi guard. (easy interrupt/dodge)
3. try to watch out for immobalize on scepter followed by smite.

all i could think of.

One common medi guardian combo is to chain Judges intervention → smite conditions → F1 Skill → Greatsword 5 double tap → Whirling Wrath

half of those skills are instant cast and if done right will look like only Whirling Wrath. It gets really powerful if you can get some delayed attacks in on it too. cast focus 5 wait a few seconds then cast focus 4, just before it hits JI to the target so you get the bounce to hit as well.

people complain about warrior hitting hard, but at least they can only hit you with one skil at a time.^^

The build is this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnfRjMq0yaNLGsQ1aADhqdLEslArAwd8+CXNA-TFyCwAAeEA4U/RxJAIl+AsK/mcEAmt/wYlgAA-w

Fiorrello.8126:

One common medi guardian combo is to chain Judges intervention -> smite conditions -> F1 Skill -> Greatsword 5 double tap -> Whirling Wrath

half of those skills are instant cast and if done right will look like only Whirling Wrath. It gets really powerful if you can get some delayed attacks in on it too. cast focus 5 wait a few seconds then cast focus 4, just before it hits JI to the target so you get the bounce to hit as well.

people complain about warrior hitting hard, but at least they can only hit you with one skil at a time.^^

They must be doing something else because those two skills alone shouldn’t hit that hard (I would have thought).

GS guards just seem to be melting me the way no other class can.

Maybe I should switch to s/d on the other set and stay in melee range. The fight usually opens with them teleporting and melting me 50%, then I dodge to gain distance and back pedal while trying to land a/t skills. Then after another few hits when near death I would weapon swap and swoop to safety to reset.

Note this is only a problem in WvW. My glassbow ranger does not get hit nearly this hard in PvP…

Its not two skills. Its 6 skills and possibly up to 9 skills. Practically at once.

That’s their opener. It hits as hard as S/F Ele. But once you escape from it, they don’t have many ways of chasing you. The key here is to just kite.

if u need help with medi guard i recommend looking at the most common attack patterns and watching some videos for reference try this 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1-O6pB49ug

A common combo guards do that really screws rangers is judge’s intervention → zealot’s defense, instant port to you followed up by heavy dps whilst blocking ranged damage.
So take a offhand axe and use whirling defense, he will take the damage from wd, stack vulnerability and eat his own zealot defense (reflected projectiles can’t be blocked ).

Also a jungle spider is very good since it has 2 Immobilizes and poison, and never use rapid fire when they have retaliation (or camp longbow when they port in melee range), and stay outside their symbols.
That’s all there is to it really, if all fails you should be able to outrun them.

I find with meditation guards the best thing to do is just keep those evades ready. They are so squishy they come at you hard and fast, so as soon as they teleport or leap at you you know theres one hell of a burst coming (doesnt really matter what it is). Just evade the second you see the teleport or leap and keep evading till its over. This is why I personally prefer A/D, S/T, or S/D, as long as the sword or dagger is in there, because you always have an evade ready and waiting. If you’re caught with A/T out you can be in for a world of pain, like you are experiencing.

Also as a side note, it seems a bit odd to be using GS with a condition build. Is there any particular reason?

Cufufalating.8479:

I find with meditation guards the best thing to do is just keep those evades ready. They are so squishy they come at you hard and fast, so as soon as they teleport or leap at you you know theres one hell of a burst coming (doesnt really matter what it is). Just evade the second you see the teleport or leap and keep evading till its over. This is why I personally prefer A/D, S/T, or S/D, as long as the sword or dagger is in there, because you always have an evade ready and waiting. If you’re caught with A/T out you can be in for a world of pain, like you are experiencing.

Also as a side note, it seems a bit odd to be using GS with a condition build. Is there any particular reason?

Purely for the mobility. I find it much easier to get around with GS than s/x. But I forget how much you need the evades/poisons of s/d against wars and guards.

against medi guards, most use either scepter or sword mh, focus offhand , and gs

u need to avoid gs2, easy to read right before they cast it, and u need to avoid the skill 5 of focus , avoiding those 2 skills will mean he wasted all of his ‘instant’ burst, and can only do overtime continious damage

ofc the meditation wich cures 1 condi and damages deals a lot dmg, but thats not rly avoidable so i wont mention it(its instant and i rly dont know exactly when guards use it, its as well in a 15 s cd)

anyway if u avoid those 2 said skills above they would have wasted focus 5 (45 s cd), teleport medi (40 s cd) , and a 10 s or so gs2 cd

the focus 5 is pretty important to dodge tho, it can hit up to 20 k if he is a troll and uses focus 5, offensive tome + teleport(like meteornado or wellbombing w lichform)

barely someone does that cause the other elite is way more valuable, anyway thats it

the trick of of guards is, that they teleport to you, use WW and smite condition and deal heavy dmg, they burst u down.
My bro invented that off guard build with bullet punch and i know that the best way to counter med guards is CC and…RANDOM DODGES
it sounds awful but when he rages, then because a ranger random dodges and the whole burst (a burst u cant really predict cause of teleport and such) is wasted.
Then the guard has a problem, his burst is on cd for 30-40s. He goes on sustain.
When u got it to survive his burst with enough hp YOU need to make more pressure than him. Med guards gain their survivability from engaging with their meds (2K heal each med – after patch the elite too). They are walking targets when they have everything on cd and average guards do that.
In short:
- use cripple, chill, immob – guards have bad mobility, u hurt them a lot when they cant get to you
- try to random dodge the burst or survive it with prot and weak
- most guards enter the fight with the burst, when they are close enough they port and start the combo.
. i think 6 in WS and NM is the best way to counter them hard. its a bit skillless coz semi bunker but it works quite good against them

snow.8097:

the trick of of guards is, that they teleport to you, use WW and smite condition and deal heavy dmg, they burst u down.
My bro invented that off guard build with bullet punch and i know that the best way to counter med guards is CC and…RANDOM DODGES
it sounds awful but when he rages, then because a ranger random dodges and the whole burst (a burst u cant really predict cause of teleport and such) is wasted.
Then the guard has a problem, his burst is on cd for 30-40s. He goes on sustain.
When u got it to survive his burst with enough hp YOU need to make more pressure than him. Med guards gain their survivability from engaging with their meds (2K heal each med – after patch the elite too). They are walking targets when they have everything on cd and average guards do that.
In short:
- use cripple, chill, immob – guards have bad mobility, u hurt them a lot when they cant get to you
- try to random dodge the burst or survive it with prot and weak
- most guards enter the fight with the burst, when they are close enough they port and start the combo.
. i think 6 in WS and NM is the best way to counter them hard. its a bit skillless coz semi bunker but it works quite good against them

nope random dodges r… too random(sounds weird ye)

anyway every guard w gs will use the teleport after precasting gs2, its an obvious thing

if they run hammer they either precast hammer 2 or 5, on 5 they suddenly stay still, then teleport to u and lock u in there, hammer 2 is straight forward damage, but barely some medi guards run hammer

u can watch the animations and time the dodge..

edit: well it might be difficult to most ppl, as i either roam all day or sit in dueling arenas and duel all the time, barely doing smth else so i m pretty used to it..

First of, remove that greatsword from this condi build for a sb, and use s/d instead of a/t or use s/t and a/d. Second, remove that signet of the wild for something more usefull. Even with these changes, i feel like your build have several lacks (from a spvp player perspective cuz i never do wvw) however, you should have the matchup on a medi guard especially if you are in an opened area.