Guild Wars 2

Guard or Protect Me?

Is Guard similar to Necros “Rise”? The tooltip is weird.

Guard used to be cool, but now it just kills your pet. I say use “Protect Me!”. That shout is a stunbreak, protection and CC in one.

The two aren’t really interchangable even though it might look like it at first glance.

Guard acts as a 5 target aoe linking your pet with you and 4 other friendly players. Your pet will take 50% of the damage those 5 targets would have taken. And you will gain a stack of might every time your pet takes damage. Either from the transfer or even just normally.

What this means is that guard is a defensive/support oriented skill that enables you to punish the person/persons hurting your team with the copious amount of might you gain from the skills use.

In other words is a retaliatory skill. Blunting the initial strike and hurting them for it.

Protect Me is a bit different. When use yourself and 4 other players will be stun broken. The next time YOU take damage your pet will taunt that individual towards him. You also gain protection.

At this point the most powerful/reliable part of the skill is the aoe stunbreak. As the taun can be cleansed/stunbroken/stabilitied.

With this in mind Guard and Protect me actually work best in my experience when they’re both on the toolbar. Protect Me to peel for you when an indiviudal is hitting you and you need to get away.

Guard when your team mate is being ganked,pressured or you are going toe to toe with a build that out melees you. (Guard can let you melee pretty evenly with a warrior or theif for a short time as long as you avoid the stuns)

I find Guard to TECHINCALLY be the stronger of the two due to its nature as a might stacking tool as well as its group support capabilities. Your more likely to save someone with a damage reduction than a stun break they are not expecting (assuming non TS groups). As most people will not be able to capitalize on a stun break they don’t know has happened as many of htem will pop their own instinctively.

That combined with its synergy with nature magic (Any might you get your pet gets as well making it really easy to bounce 25 stacks of might between you and your pet through heal as one)

Though in that case Protect me ALSO has synergy with Nature Magic due to its protection. When copied it provides a decent amount of protection.

TLDR; In my experience these skills work best when there both on the bar together as they cover different situations. They aren’t really interchangeable. But if you can only pick one. Pick whichever you will be more reliably able to utilize based on your opponents composition and your own teams coordination (from a pvp perspective)

Edit: In reply to the above post. Ive been a full shout ranger pretty much my entire game time since releaes. Guard killing my pet is one of the LEAST common things that happen in my gameplay. Its just timing on when you use it. And even if it DOES kill the pet. You do still get 25 stacks of might out of it and probably not dead team mates. Cause having dead team mates is a bad thing (Unless there twits. In which case sometimes I don’t use the skill even when I could have and just laugh. But then im a bit of an kitten)

If I only had to choose one? Guard. No question.

PVE, WVW, or PVP?

In PVP and PVE I have protect me on. Honestly though if it’s PVP I also have sick’em on right now to counter all that stealth that’s out there. It’s an off button for the thief. You didn’t ask but in PVP I’d take Sick’Em over both choices.

spvp sorry, in wvw solo roam I just choose protect me

bunker ish > guard or both protect me
Squishy Roamer>protect me.

Yes, for roaming PvP? Protect Me then. Definitely. You can lock an opponent, and prevent them from healing or escaping, with timely uses of Taunt and Protect Me.

It depends on both the situation and what pets you run. I would never use Guard with feline or bird type pets. They are just too squishy to absorb that much damage. Also, it is important to remember that Protect Me is a 600 radius stun break.

With tanker pets, Canine or better, Guard becomes more viable. That said, I generally prefer Protect Me in PvP and WvW, finding the value of an AoE stun break generally outweighs damage reduction.

For PvE, Guard is probably taken 60/40 over Protect me.