Guild Wars 2

I main ranger and there is no practical use for this skill. What is it for? It is a shout with a cast time that makes you pet guard something? Why? What is there to guard?

Also please don’t say “It’s used for perma regen and swiftness because of its low cool down” because that doesn’t answer my question, doing that just makes it a trait activator whilst ignoring its main effect/mechanic.

It stealths up your pet on the area you targeted, gives it protection, and the pet will stay there until a hostile passes close enough to that spot, in which case it will engage before going back to the spot. Basically, the pet will ‘guard’ that spot rather than follow you around. With the new wonderful pet leash range of course, you still have to stay close.

Go to a world boss event with your bear use ‘Guard’ at the boss location. Go out of aggro range, alt tab and resume browsing the ranger forum.

I used it only for the perma regen and in dungeons where it can help your cat survive some random boss AoE.

It has a lot of utility on paper, but most of it is useless in all game modes. Seriously it’s only real use is toxic afking of any possible PvE event.

Wayfinder.8452:

Go to a world boss event with your bear use ‘Guard’ at the boss location. Go out of aggro range, alt tab and resume browsing the ranger forum.

I used it only for the perma regen and in dungeons where it can help your cat survive some random boss AoE.

It has a lot of utility on paper, but most of it is useless in all game modes. Seriously it’s only real use is toxic afking of any possible PvE event.

Frontline wvw with natures voice and spirits unbound after dec 10. Natures voice covers boons all the time makes it harder to rip or keep corrupted. And spirits are generally awesome. So, ya, there’s that in december.

Chopps.5047:

Wayfinder.8452:

Go to a world boss event with your bear use ‘Guard’ at the boss location. Go out of aggro range, alt tab and resume browsing the ranger forum.

I used it only for the perma regen and in dungeons where it can help your cat survive some random boss AoE.

It has a lot of utility on paper, but most of it is useless in all game modes. Seriously it’s only real use is toxic afking of any possible PvE event.

Frontline wvw with natures voice and spirits unbound after dec 10. Natures voice covers boons all the time makes it harder to rip or keep corrupted. And spirits are generally awesome. So, ya, there’s that in december.

Yeah, that has been popping here and there. It might be good, but we’ll see. I can hardly consider any spirit build frontline for WvW. Mid at best. The patch next month looks very solid for PvE and WvW.

OP stated that he doesn’t want the topic to be centered around perma boons though.

Wouldn’t it be better if it was just an instant cast shout that just stealthed your pet and gave it protection. That way you could instantly react if your pet was about to take some serious damage.

Renner.2574:

Wouldn’t it be better if it was just an instant cast shout that just stealthed your pet and gave it protection. That way you could instantly react if your pet was about to take some serious damage.

Most definitely, since it wouldn’t reset the pet combat status all the time (engage, no disengage and guard, now reengage, wait guard again, ok reengage).

i noticed that using guard to send my pet into combat, the pet would use one of its cool down skills and not just auto atk. where sometimes when i just send the pet in with atk, it would sometimes auto atk OR use one of its cool down skills. ill play around with it more and see.

other than that ive always used it for the protection on my pet, the regen and swiftness.

side note: for anyone who is going to test this, keep in mind the pet skills do have a cool down. when i use guard too soon, the pet just auto atks from stealth. swap your pet and i bet it will open up with one of its 2 cool down skills.

hmm ok after playing around with it more, ive seen my pet auto atk after using guard. unfortunately my theory is wrong =(. its only use is the regen swiftness and protection for your pet.

I only use it with Nature’s voice in a support build. Which is nice. If slightly awkward to keep having to re-sending the pet in if it’s a long fight, but it’s also situationally useful to move the pet away.

and I’ve been wondering why I keep seeing it in builds posted around…I thought I was missing something….evidently not.

Wayfinder.8452:

Chopps.5047:

Wayfinder.8452:

Go to a world boss event with your bear use ‘Guard’ at the boss location. Go out of aggro range, alt tab and resume browsing the ranger forum.

I used it only for the perma regen and in dungeons where it can help your cat survive some random boss AoE.

It has a lot of utility on paper, but most of it is useless in all game modes. Seriously it’s only real use is toxic afking of any possible PvE event.

Frontline wvw with natures voice and spirits unbound after dec 10. Natures voice covers boons all the time makes it harder to rip or keep corrupted. And spirits are generally awesome. So, ya, there’s that in december.

Yeah, that has been popping here and there. It might be good, but we’ll see. I can hardly consider any spirit build frontline for WvW. Mid at best. The patch next month looks very solid for PvE and WvW.

OP stated that he doesn’t want the topic to be centered around perma boons though.

Spirit death isn’t nearly as penalizing as it used to be, they had a few patches that really increased average uptime without making it too OP.

Renner.2574:

Wouldn’t it be better if it was just an instant cast shout that just stealthed your pet and gave it protection. That way you could instantly react if your pet was about to take some serious damage.

It would be better by far, so +1 to you.

Chopps.5047:

Wayfinder.8452:

Chopps.5047:

Wayfinder.8452:

Go to a world boss event with your bear use ‘Guard’ at the boss location. Go out of aggro range, alt tab and resume browsing the ranger forum.

I used it only for the perma regen and in dungeons where it can help your cat survive some random boss AoE.

It has a lot of utility on paper, but most of it is useless in all game modes. Seriously it’s only real use is toxic afking of any possible PvE event.

Frontline wvw with natures voice and spirits unbound after dec 10. Natures voice covers boons all the time makes it harder to rip or keep corrupted. And spirits are generally awesome. So, ya, there’s that in december.

Yeah, that has been popping here and there. It might be good, but we’ll see. I can hardly consider any spirit build frontline for WvW. Mid at best. The patch next month looks very solid for PvE and WvW.

OP stated that he doesn’t want the topic to be centered around perma boons though.

Spirit death isn’t nearly as penalizing as it used to be, they had a few patches that really increased average uptime without making it too OP.

Spirits were nerfed hard. No more double actives or pulsing infinite duration blind. Plus they have a 5 limit aoe which counts the spirits themselves when 5 players aren’t around.

Don’t mention the 50% nerf to sun spirit and 33% nerf to storm spirit incoming. It will be the death of the build.

In Spvp guard is really strong at making your pet sturdier, which is important when you’re also using empathic bond. A lot of the power of rangers in Spvp does come from their pets, and the permanent protection and regeneration makes it disgustingly hard to burst down a pet before you can swap it out and rebuild the buffs.

You can cancel the movement restriction with the f1-f3 commands, which essentially makes guard a permanent protection (for your pet), regeneration, and swiftness.

Rangers simply lose so much effectiveness when their pets die, and guard makes them significantly sturdier under fire.

Renner.2574:

I main ranger and there is no practical use for this skill. What is it for? It is a shout with a cast time that makes you pet guard something? Why? What is there to guard?

Also please don’t say “It’s used for perma regen and swiftness because of its low cool down” because that doesn’t answer my question, doing that just makes it a trait activator whilst ignoring its main effect/mechanic.

Guard is my favorite troll tool with canines. It allows for your canines to almost always land their knockdowns when fighting someone who knows what cues to look for. If you can’t see the pet, that’s the best time to let your pet use its special skills.

Plus the tankiness is great. I wouldn’t run it all the time when roaming in WvW if it didn’t get the extra boons, but there are definitely niche situations in which this utility shines.

Guard reads like a skill that was meant to do something far more useful than the final iteration we see.

I have a feeling it’s something leftover from the original vision of GW2 that had things like energy for skills and a Ranger elite that let us deploy 3 pets at once for a short while.

The version we have now is mostly just a tool for deploying Nature’s Voice’s boons with 100% uptime.

Like most ranger shouts, it is a poor attempt at matching group utility of other classes’ shouts.

Ranger has some of the worst utility pickings after mesmer (whose only good utilities are veil, portal, field, feedback, and mantras with restorative trait; the illusion utilities and mimick are terrible).

Storm spirit is just bad for PvE, the shouts are bad, the signets are bad without signet of the beastmaster trait (and signet of renewal is a horrible 60 second cooldown stunbreaker that also kills your pet). Signet of the Wild is pitifully low healing for non bunker builds. Muddy terrain is situational, and traps require heavy trait investment to work as a mediocre comparison to necro marks/wells and engineer grenades.

I use it to distract Champions so I can run in and loot the chest unhindered while my pet tanks him. XD

Guard exists solely to make Natures voice (Nature XII) useful imo. In that vein I’d prefer they simply made it pointblank cast to save having to waste time targetting it

Guard, like Search and Rescue, used to be useful before it got nerfed. I understood the problems with most pets (that didn’t fly) being able to go up the walls, but for those flying ones, it made no sense that they can’t ignore height barriers when attacking.

And for those wondering about the Search and Rescue nerf…it used to rez dead allies. Now it’s not even worth a slot, considering it can only rez downed allies now. I miss the days of being able to send my pet to rez a dead party member during dungeon bosses. The pet felt so useful then. T_T