Guild Wars 2

Defy pain, shield blocking, regen via banners and traits that can give a extra 3 seconds to defy pain Is what made me reach this conclusion.
Am I right to assume this?

You are incorrect to assume this.

Warriors with full cleric’s and spec’d to heal on shouts are pretty beastly tanks, but sadly they can’t compete with the guardians atm.

rickets.1386:

Warriors with full cleric’s and spec’d to heal on shouts are pretty beastly tanks, but sadly they can’t compete with the guardians atm.

How so? Warriors has much more ways to negate damage In a degree that It can compensate for their lack of heal abilities, imho.
I mean, see how many seconds a Guardian can stay alive against a group of 20, In WvW. And compare It with a Warrior, both decently geared/traits/etc.

GustavoM.7605:

rickets.1386:

Warriors with full cleric’s and spec’d to heal on shouts are pretty beastly tanks, but sadly they can’t compete with the guardians atm.

How so? Warriors has much more ways to negate damage In a degree that It can compensate for their lack of heal abilities, imho.
I mean, see how many seconds a Guardian can stay alive against a group of 20, In WvW. And compare It with a Warrior, both decently geared/traits/etc.

OH, i was talking more PvE. Yes they can negate damage but those abilities have long CD’s so after you use them your kind of screwed, where a guardian can just keep filling his HP back up and their group support is miles ahead of the warrior. Don’t get me wrong, i main a warrior and love tanking with him we just have less to offer, support wise, then guardians atm.

And after you blow your 5+3s on 90s cd and 3s on 30s cd? Then what?
Guardians outheal our shoutheal build, which is more viable than the banner regen one.
Warrior survives by controlling the combatflow, knows when to attack and when to back off, we’re not so good at mitigating it and we’re definetly no tanks. We kill before we get killed, that’s it.

rickets.1386:

GustavoM.7605:

rickets.1386:

Warriors with full cleric’s and spec’d to heal on shouts are pretty beastly tanks, but sadly they can’t compete with the guardians atm.

How so? Warriors has much more ways to negate damage In a degree that It can compensate for their lack of heal abilities, imho.
I mean, see how many seconds a Guardian can stay alive against a group of 20, In WvW. And compare It with a Warrior, both decently geared/traits/etc.

OH, i was talking more PvE. Yes they can negate damage but those abilities have long CD’s so after you use them your kind of screwed, where a guardian can just keep filling his HP back up and their group support is miles ahead of the warrior. Don’t get me wrong, i main a warrior and love tanking with him we just have less to offer, support wise, then guardians atm.

Good point indeed,but dont forget our dps and our higher hp pool.I would say there both beastly tanks,bur Guardian has more support spells,where warrior lacks.
But hey,just get both of them and be happy.Heavy armor forever <3

MrSpanktastic.2059:

rickets.1386:

GustavoM.7605:

rickets.1386:

Warriors with full cleric’s and spec’d to heal on shouts are pretty beastly tanks, but sadly they can’t compete with the guardians atm.

How so? Warriors has much more ways to negate damage In a degree that It can compensate for their lack of heal abilities, imho.
I mean, see how many seconds a Guardian can stay alive against a group of 20, In WvW. And compare It with a Warrior, both decently geared/traits/etc.

OH, i was talking more PvE. Yes they can negate damage but those abilities have long CD’s so after you use them your kind of screwed, where a guardian can just keep filling his HP back up and their group support is miles ahead of the warrior. Don’t get me wrong, i main a warrior and love tanking with him we just have less to offer, support wise, then guardians atm.

Good point indeed,but dont forget our dps and our higher hp pool.I would say there both beastly tanks,bur Guardian has more support spells,where warrior lacks.
But hey,just get both of them and be happy.Heavy armor forever <3

Pretty much this, warr shines in offensive, guard in defensive play. Not that both professions can’t do both, it’s just that one does one better than the other. I would never ditch my warrior though, even if we get nerfed to the ground. I second that opinion, get both.

Psybunny.8906:

And after you blow your 5+3s on 90s cd and 3s on 30s cd? Then what?
Guardians outheal our shoutheal build, which is more viable than the banner regen one.

Shield block, traits that activates Defy pain @ 25% health and the mace block on “2” will help you get back to your party/keep/etc.
And I respectfully disagree with shout heals being better than banner regens. I mean, with regen via banners and the regen one via heal can give me a 400 health per tick, with a 1 minute regen thanks to tactic banners (i.e spamming 2 to get a extra 7 seconds on regen, plus the 10% buff duration). With that said, 4k health will be regenerated per 10 seconds, with a heal close to 6k’s, giving me two more options for utility skills (Defy pain, “Fear me!” shout) that can guarantee me a few more seconds to regenerate more 4k health. Wich imho, Is way better than shout heals.

I don’t think having eight seconds of invulnerability qualifies as making you the best tank in the game, especially when half of that time is predicated on you almost being dead.

Warriors have some of the worst survivability, actually. Not in terms of shrugging damage, though. Engineers have their means, so do Elementalists. Guardians obviously. Thieves and Mesmers can mitigate and survive very easily with invisibility, clones, teleports, stealth of all kinds; you don’t need a lot of health or armor when you’re not even being hit.

Warriors can’t do any of those things. It’s just us, standing there, being pounded on. We don’t have anywhere close to the utility the Guardian has, so ultimately our ability to tank comes down to one of two things: using secondary skills and traits (which don’t work very well at all since they’re only up a couple of seconds every two minutes) or disruption. A disruption Warrior can’t tank exactly, but he can knock enemies around so much with interrupts, so often, that they can’t pour damage into you like an enemy normally can. The problem with that is it only works on one person at a time.

So no, not the best tankers. Not even close. We may not be the very worst, but we’re somewhere in the middle or near the bottom, obviously.

Defy pain is a oshi button and only usable for escaping, but we’re discussing survivability in frontlines. Though I agree that shield is awesome (I never go into spvp without it), mace 2 only blocks one attack and is usable only in a very controlled manner. If you want to outlast and prefer regen, then go for healing signet+adrenal health on top of banners (around 600hp ticks extra if i’m not mistaken). But you’ll be vulnerable to any serious burst and conditions/cc will be your biggest enemy. Don’t get me wrong, banner build is viable in dungeons, situations where you don’t need mobility or as a group support, but imo it’s still not viable in the frontline pvp.
Shoutheal build’s upsides are constant condition cleansing and near 2k hp spamming on 2x 20s/1x 24s cd, two types of heals, since you can sacrifice not taking mending and take signet for passive regen from signet+adrenal health. Bannerbuild will rely on you having a meatshield around you, shouts do not.

I run neither btw, I’m more of a kill or be killed and I would never go into wvwvw without mobile strikes.

Defektive.7283:

You are incorrect to assume this.

^
This.

Take your best “tank” warrior setup and I’ll still take a guardian any day for sheer tankability. Also, shout heals scales terribly. Banner regen is ok as long as noone else in the group gives regen (kind of like warrior bleeds that way).

I’d even venture to say against mobs that aren’t immune to CC my engi can probably out tank any warrior with the proper spec/gearing.

Braxxus.2904:

Defektive.7283:

You are incorrect to assume this.

^
This.

Take your best “tank” warrior setup and I’ll still take a guardian any day for sheer tankability. Also, shout heals scales terribly. Banner regen is ok as long as noone else in the group gives regen (kind of like warrior bleeds that way).

I’d even venture to say against mobs that aren’t immune to CC my engi can probably out tank any warrior with the proper spec/gearing.

I agree, damage mitigation by evading or control > healing.

The difference is that a Warrior provides better offensive capabilities than a Guardian while providing less support. It depends on how much support you need. In many cases, the amount of support a Warrior brings is “enough.” Having too much support CAN be a bad thing but many people don’t realize this. If you have nothing but support you will suffer greatly when it comes to dungeon run times especially in circumstances when you have to pump out damage fast or you become overwhelmed (Ascalonian Catacombs explorable path 3 in the lover’s room is a basic example). In many cases, a fully support specced Guardian is more support than is actually needed. It’s safer, sure, and may be the better choice if you’re running dungeons with people who aren’t very skilled or are extremely squishy but the best dungeon groups will have 5 party members running fairly balanced builds. This will allow everyone to have good enough survivability to avoid dying while dishing out damage that is still extremely good.

Wanna have some fun? Run a dungeon with 5 healing shout warriors who all put the Warbanner in their elite slot. Alternate who drops the Warbanner at each fight so it is present at every fight you do. Have everyone bring different weapons to maximize damage versatility. Make sure someone brings longbow to set up those combo fields and someone brings Warhorn for the Vigor. Laugh at your enemies as conditions roll off of you like they never existed (Runes of the Soldier required obviously) and your health never dips below 90% unless you take a direct hit from a big boss and even then, that’s what your 6 slot heal skill is for right? Nearly permanent 25 stacks of vulnerability on enemies, permanent fury, huge stacks of might, and 0 time kiting while remaining in melee range 100% of the time will mean you provide insane damage. Those combo fields from the longbow are gonna work wonders too. Couple this with the fact that stacks of defiant will roll off of bosses so fast you’ll forget they were even there and you’ve got bosses who are just laying on the ground with 5 Warriors jumping up and down on top of them, beating them out of existence. You don’t even need Cleric’s gear to run this (as healing power really doesn’t scale all that well). The best setup I’ve found: Soldier’s armor (power/toughness/vitality), Berserker’s Jewelry (power/precision/critical damage), Replace the Jewels within the Berserker’s Jewelry pieces with Exqusite Sapphire Jewels (healing/power/toughness) (because a little more healing power is nice and you don’t need THAT much damage), Berserker’s weaponry (Rampager’s on one-handed swords, longbow, and rifle (precision/power/condition damage)) My traits: 15 in Defense – I, Embrace the Pain. 30 in Tactics – VI, Empowered (change this out for IV, Stronger Bowstrings if using a longbow), IX, Quick Breathing (change this to VII, Shrug it Off if not using a Warhorn), XII, Vigorous Shouts. 25 in Discipline – VI, Inspring Shouts, VII, Sweet Revenge. (5 points can be dropped from Discipline and put into Defense if you want one of those traits instead of the additional might on weapon swap). Hmm, looks like I sort of turned this into a build post. Oh well, I should probably post my own thread about this build. Been tweaking it since before Beta and I think I finally perfected it.

This is purely from a PvE/dungeon/WvW perspective. SPvP/TPvP is a completely different story where the amount of support that a Guardian can bring often IS necessary.