(edited by Zeivu.3615)
Mesmer PvE Guide
The Leveling & Open World Compendium
The Leveling & Open World Compendium
(edited by Kaiyanwan.8521)
Hey all, I’ve come back to GW2 after a pretty long hiatus.
After playing for a good while on my warrior, I jumped on my guardian main. Thus began my spiral into despair. I’m slowly becoming convinced that nobody at ArenaNet plays guardian.
I’ma just rattle off a list of my gripes with the profession. Before someone cries, “Well I don’t see you offering any solutions to these problems”, yes I have, many times in the past and I will again. The point is to show how broken I think guardian is.
Your mileage my vary from mine but here’s goes.
- Pigeon-holed into mostly support roles. I LOVE melee support paladin style roles and guardian certainly doesn’t fail at support. Unfortunately, GW2’s design favours support the least, to put it lightly. The guardian’s strongest role is the least needed and often mocked by others.
- Zeal is still really bad. It attempts to promote cross-trait synergy but it tries way too hard to the point that it can’t stand on its own.
- Zeal seems to focus way too much on spirit weapons. Spirit weapons are also still rubbish so there’s a bunch of wasted traits AND skills.
- ANYTHING to do with condition damage is completely wasted on guardians. Until we get reliable sources of damaging conditions outside of burning.
- Ironically, there’s a little too much emphasis on damaging conditions in regard to some zeal and radiance traits. Wasted.
- I don’t see how a primarily front-line melee class still has no cripples and barely any other way of slowing foes. Warriors, heck, ANY other class can easily keep pretty much anyone in the intended range of their weapon for a decent amount of time. Conversely, they will all, always run circles around a guardian, regardless of how many teleports people claim we have.
- Everything that was ever wrong with 1h sword is still there. Sword 2 may as well heal foes. I can talk for pages on my issues with sword. The only other sword skills in the game that don’t have a cripple or leap finisher belong to thief but at least they get immobilise, two teleports and condition removal instead.
- Almost zero combo finishers outside of GS and hammer.
- Only one ranged option, scepter. Which has no projectile finishers, unreliable pseudo-aoe that looks like a symbol but isn’t and an all too brief immobilise.
- No stuns. At all.
- No dazes outside of Tome of Courage.
- Zeal again.
- Shield skills need love, still. Arguably the most iconic guardian weapon but barely used by any.
- Zero passive increased move speed traits/skills.
- Only three sources of swiftness across the entire profession.
- Almost no variety in the types of combo fields.
- Compared to the other professions, I find guardians traits to be far too stand alone. By that, I mean that outside of radiance 1, 3 , VI, Zeal I, the various the symbol traits and EM + AH, it’s hard to make a build where a lot of the traits play off of each other in meaningful ways. Unlike what I’ve seen on other professions.
I think I have more but I’m tired.
There are plenty of things that I think guardian does well but most of those fall into the category of stopping damage (which I love), administering boons (which other classes can do well, too) and healing, which, again, is under-valued in GW2’s game design. I love the idea behind guardian and I want to see the guardian reach the heights of its potential, it’s just that the execution needs a little more work in my opinion. I feel like we’re mostly support in a game that doesn’t need it much and are slow movers in a combat system that favours movement.
Thank you for reading.
Silver Stormshield – Guardian
Kaimoon Blade – Warrior
Fort Aspenwood
Kaimoon Blade – Warrior
Fort Aspenwood
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
“No, I don’t.”
Attachments:
Lillizypp – Asura Mesmer
[Soul] – Ring of Fire
[Soul] – Ring of Fire
Attachments:
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
Desktop: 4790k@4.6ghz-1.25v, AMD 295×2, 32GB 1866CL10 RAM, 850Evo 500GB SSD
Laptop: M6600 – 2720QM, AMD HD6970M, 32GB 1600CL9 RAM, Arc100 480GB SSD
Laptop: M6600 – 2720QM, AMD HD6970M, 32GB 1600CL9 RAM, Arc100 480GB SSD
Game Designer || iREVOLUTION.Design \\
“A man chooses; a slave obeys.” | “Want HardMode? Play Ranger!”
“A man chooses; a slave obeys.” | “Want HardMode? Play Ranger!”
Tanbin – Ranger / Thief / Ele
Maguuma
Maguuma
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Crafted: Meteorlogicus, Incinerator, Juggernaut, Sunrise, Bifrost, The Dreamer, Kudzu
Am I legendary yet!?
Am I legendary yet!?
Serenity now~Insanity later