Guild Wars 2

Solo Queue
Ditch MMR for matching within league.

I’ve played Guardian as a main since the head start 3 years ago up until the week raids came out. The Guardian brings nothing to the raid that other, better, classes can bring. Well except for one thing that is, terrible DPS that isn’t worth thinking about. Anyone who says they do decent damage has never played another class except maybe Mesmer. Earlier this year when I decided to map complete on my Elementalist I was shocked at how much damage I was doing compared to a Guard.

I’m just saying. It needs to be put back in.

Obtena.7952:

I think you’ve missed my point completely.

Make your case about the state of PVE Guardians without reference to other classes and maybe you have something compelling a dev would pay attention to. The state of a class ingame is not dependent on the state of any other. Revs do everything better? OK … how does that make my Guardian any less effective in it’s role conceived by the devs? I doesn’t.

Alright I’ll take this challenge. The guardian hits like a wet noodle and is completely useless in the Gorseval fight because it doesn’t do enough damage to make that DPS check. Since both Gorseval and the adds require more sustained DPS than the guardian brings (it’s all burst so it works fine in open world PvE and dungeons where nothing has health) it is impossible to deal enough damage to finish those fights with that trashy class.

PS. I was a Guardian main for 3 years and I took the uselessness (and the fact that my fears were realized with how good Rev was) of this class as a perfectly fine reason to make my Elementalist my main. I have never ever changed mains in an MMO before in my 11 years of playing them.

As someone who has played Guardian main for over 3 years the short answer is yes, Guardians are that bad. The long answer is that Guardians have never honestly been good damage and if you only play Guardian you wouldn’t have noticed it. Guardians have amazing burst but then they have terrible sustain so that hurts them over the entire fight especially since all the fights are sustain DPS fights. If there was a fight where you could only attack the boss for 10s every minute then Guardians might have a spot for damage but there isn’t one.

For myself I pugged VG on my Guardian as a tank and when my group killed it we decided to form our own guild for raid purposes. We pushed to Gorseval and noticed very quickly that Guardians were horrible for that fight so 2 of use rerolled to alts we had. I went Elementalist which does way more damage and tanks better too while the other Guardian went to Revenant which does insane damage for the amount of work it has to do. The change to using stuff besides Guardians pushed our damage up high enough in order to succeed on that fight. My group is now on Sabitha and have her down to 25% health and I will say I really do not see the purpose of a Guardian for that fight.

The main problems with the Guardian are the fact that everything it does it outclassed by another class. For half of its utilities the cooldowns are way to long because they are balanced around the fact that Guild Wars 2 was not made with main healers in mind but now we have Druids and the Guardian did not get an update in their supportive utilities. Sanctuary on a 120s cooldown? What is that kitten? Hollowed ground lasting for 10 seconds on an 80 second cooldown while the Revenant has the road that lasts for 6 seconds on a 12 second cooldown is one of the largest jokes I have ever seen. Though this is totally expected because all game companies hate on the “bubble/shield/protection” character and over-nerf them (case in point of how many unblockable attacks there are now compared to when the game came out and how many projectiles can’t be reflected).

I expected to be able to make my legendary backpiece at the same time as PvP players can.

So Anet, when am I ever going to get to actually craft my fractal legendary back piece? I will be completing the precursor today but unable to finish the actual back piece. Meanwhile PvP players can work on and finish their legendary backpiece even though the stat changing property of a legendary serves them next to no use.

doddbox.8153:

It’s actually extremely obvious to tell who is performing poorly at Gorseval, you don’t need ALERTS saying Paul Butler Balls is underperforming you can evidently see him failing to immobilize, clear orbs, tank and so on.

Gorseval might be easy to tell who is failing the mechanics of the fight but when you have practiced them over and over and are getting to the last phase (3? 5? whatever) then you need to know how you can achieve that final 2%. I will say my successful kill at Gorseval had my group continue the boss after someone failed the 2nd glide so we decided to go for the 4th updraft during the last phase but it would be nice to know if we needed to go for it all along or only because we had a dead.

Also as an elementalist I’d like to know if Glyph of lesser elementals is worth it nowadays because summons don’t die anymore or if it is still totally trash to take.

Except that the green circles do not one shot, they just do a ton of damage (you have probably noticed some people do not go down when they blow sometimes). Meanwhile Gorseval’s World Eater is a true one shot.

Gorseval would win easily. The reason for this is that the lightning strikes do damage while world eater just completely kills the effected targets (through invulnerabilities).

Shadowwarrior.7159:

My feeling is right now, that a lot of lfg-groups try to get the top dps-classes in order to increase the chance for the kill – which is not wrong, but bad for guardians – as much it hurts me to say it (also maining – nearly exclusivly – a guardian).

I totally agree with this. Though it does get worse because the 2nd boss requires so much DPS that I don’t even think Guardian is viable at all on it outside of the tank role. And the tank role is done better and is more fun to play as an Elementalist which I tried once my raid group decided that we needed to stack DPS for Gorseval.

My fears that I had when Revenant was being shown to be a better Guardian than a Guardian I thought were put to rest these past 4 weeks but with raids I think they were justified and I don’t believe Guardian has much purpose (neither does Thief or Necromancer).

Dirame.8521:

chronometria.3708:

It is uncontrolled and time gated to ten second intervals – it’s also a top tier trait.

It’s people are worrying about that aspect of the dragonhunter, then I`m surprised.

You may see it as small but it’s one of the reasons why Dragonhunters can beat Thieves and other melee classes. The unpredictable CC just does nothing but make fighting them a pain.

Guardians have always made easy work with Thieves, so it’s one in a long list of reasons that Thieves just die to Guardians.

Though as a mostly PvE player, I’d approve of the trait being removed for something else entirely. I don’t take it in PvE (hell, it knocks stuff out of my traps) and I don’t take it in PvP because the condi clease trait is so helpful.

Dante.1763:

Yea well, its the same amount of time out in Verdant brinks. Except it seems people actually care in Dragons stand to try and organize it, unlike out in Verdant brinks where most are only there to get to the later maps, easy rewards by going afk for the entire event and waking up for the night bosses(god that is so annoying).

That’s because Verdant Brink is a terrible map compared to the other 3 that were released. So much of that map is locked behind a time gate that is not on a set timer from what I can tell (someone correct me if Verdant Brink is on a constant reset timer like Dragon’s Stand is) that people are rushing to get what they need for map completion/masteries instead of doing the event.

What I use is the following:
Zeal 223, Virtues 121 (even 111 if you don’t care for the cleanse), Dragon Hunter 111
Zerker gear, Longbow/Greatsword.
Purification, Test of Faith, Procession of Blades, Aegis Trap (name is escaping me at the moment), and Dragon Maw.

Just run in and blow everything up. Space out the traps a bit to capitalize on the daze.

Dragonhunter.

/thread

Stacking also occurs in other MMOs as well. I remember in WoW stacking mobs during Burning Crusade dungeon runs in order to tank and AoE them all down. And that game doesn’t care about grouping up in a ball for buffs (in fact it’s a terrible idea in WoW because of cleaves). Guild Wars just makes it more important because buffs have such small ranges. If the buff range was increased to 900 and actual aggro mechanics were added then you could see people spreading out, wouldn’t change mobs being lured around corners though.

Anet really needs to add into the description of enemies what they are. Mainly so they read: Chills – Taunts – Icebrood. Or something of that nature. I know most enemies you can tell by their name but others, like Experiment Alpha, are guess work.

I would gladly give up weapon swap for tomes as kits. Hell, I would also wear light armor as a restriction (not because I want to have choice in wearing different armor skins…) to make it more monk like.

And for those saying Focus mainhand is over powered because it costs less to make, I laugh at that. My 10+ ascended weapon boxes from fractals and the trading post with cheap exotics by the handful beg to differ on it honestly mattering for an end game character advancement.

choovanski.5462:

-Librarian-

Duel Focus

Tomes as Kits

Loss of Weapon Swap

Buffed Virtues

seems pretty straightforward tbh. guardian becomes a caster with the books, and gets main hand focus as a medium range weapon. I would play the kitten out of it.

So much this. When I heard they were removing tomes for “Feel My Wrath” (amazing) and Signet of Courage (trashy, way to long cast and way to long between pulsing heals) and said that we might see tomes return as a specialization. I was way more pumped and excited for that specialization than for Dragonhunter and bows even before knowing anything about Dragonhunter. I so want to dual wield Anomialies.

Edit:

I can see the tomes now:
Tome of Resolve (Tome focused on healing and mostly like the old Tome of Courage) as a heal.
Tome of Wrath (Tome focused on AoE damage) as the Elite.
Tome of Courage (Tome focused on taking hits with a taunt and protection/blocking skills)
Tome of Judgement (Focused on single target damage)
Tome of Serenity (Focused on buffing other players)
Tome of Conviction (Focused on Controlling others)

God I wish I had that luck, sometimes I roll the clover recipe in order to get T6 mats and clovers are a waste. Anyone want 350 clovers?

Pretty please? Premades are dumb when solo queueing.

Been there since Guild Wars 1 (kitten you Galrath and only being worth 500xp!). I’m still waiting on the day they let us into that castle.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the dye you get is account bound (even though it doesn’t day it is). So no selling on the trading post.

Piece of trash
Does Not Mesh
Instant Virtues Please
Useless Trait Tree

Edit: Scepter is Better (lol what!?!?!)

I completely understand the plight of the elementalists. As a Guardian I have the same useless class designer. Guardians also haven’t changed much since launch either and sure the Dragonhunter is a change but the spec doesn’t even work with itself and the virtues are broken and don’t work with any traits because they have cast times.

Edit: Forgot to add that “Guardians are in a good place” motto that Anet likes to spout out.

I think rebound should be changed to that the next skill you use gets cast twice.

Laraley.7695:

Azoqu.8917:

First World Problems.

I understand that tempest is pretty horrible but people who are all doom and gloom about elementalist being horrible must be delusional. Best class is still the best class.

You must have some reading issues. All post I see are ‘’tempest is horrible’’ and not ‘’ele is horrible’’.

There are quite a few posts about rerolling and quitting throughout the thread. Yes tempest adds nothing to the class but the class is still amazing. Wish I chose to main elementalist instead of having it as an alt.

root.2859:

Not to mention guardian shield, best joke ingame.

I get a chuckle every time I do reflect on Triple Trouble.

“The only time you get your time to shine shield! And only if I screw up the oh so much better Wall of Reflection. So not really shining, I mean I look cool I guess.”

Riranor.6315:

Azoqu.8917:

I have to ask you all, did anyone else notice that bow #1 would only bounce if the second target was behind the first? I found that really annoying having to change targets all the time in order to hit both. I don’t know if it was a bug I was getting or something else entirely.

“Fire an arrow which can bounce to the enemies behind your target. If an arrow hits a second target, all enemies struck are crippled.”

Thats the skill, not a bug.

I was hoping that was not the case, having to change targets constantly is going to be a pain in the kitten and will continue the theme of the Dragonhunter being super awkward to use. Though that might be the point of the Dragonhunter, to be completely unusable without jumping through hoops to get even the smallest bit of efficiency.

The guardian plays differently depending how you want to build it and what you are doing. For myself in the open world I run a meditation Greatsword+Scepter/Focus build and I try to group up enemies and AoE them all down while using the meditations to keep my health full and conditions off. While in dungeons I run the meta zerk build and the roll of the guardian is to keep enemies blinded, keep aegis on the group, and cleanse the group of conditions.

While in dungeons knowing what to take for the fight is important. If the fight has projectiles then taking Wall of Reflection and Shield of the Avenger are good choices, meanwhile if the fight is condition heavy purging flames and traiting for Absolute Resolution is never a bad idea. If it is just a hard hitting boss retreat is good, as well as Bow of Truth (though people run from the heal like it’s the plague for some reason). Basically dungeons come down to keeping the group alive while doing damage with greatsword and mace.

Edit: As for Dragonhunter, it is hard to say what its role will be. I tried it a bit during the beta and it lost a lot of its virtue support and the traps didn’t mesh well. I could see using the traps with greatsword to do more damage when you don’t need defensive utilities and using the bow just by itself as another option to scepter. I personally think scepter is a fine weapon for damaging targets.

I have to ask you all, did anyone else notice that bow #1 would only bounce if the second target was behind the first? I found that really annoying having to change targets all the time in order to hit both. I don’t know if it was a bug I was getting or something else entirely.

First World Problems.

I understand that tempest is pretty horrible but people who are all doom and gloom about elementalist being horrible must be delusional. Best class is still the best class.

moony.5780:

just a question..how many of u r maining 1 character for 3 years now in gw2? and playing everyday like 1h?

I’ve also been playing one character for the 3 years (about 95%+ of my time is on it). I personally do not have inventory problems because I decided since I only really play the one that I would save and buy the following: Copper fed Salvage-o-matic, Permanent Bank, Permanent Merchant, Permanent Trading Post, and a Mystic Forge Conduit. Worth every penny. Though when I try to play an alt I cry a little and I am thinking of getting another bank contract for my elementalist.

It being a kittenty 10% only would make sense if it increased your allies as well. It should be 20% otherwise because the upkeep of it is quite low except with hammer and mace.

I say they take protection off of number 4 and add resistance with the same duration.

Something everyone is forgetting is that by preordering GWEN you got a free slot (least I believe that was true because my GW1 account does have 9 slots and I never bought one).

Just because the shield got a cooldown buff, does not make it useable (beyond being back up to WoR at Triple Trouble).

Still doesn’t fix the problem with shield…

Josh Davis.6015:

Going to add a change list at the top of the bottom post for updates that I make to the list. Here’s one change we forgot to document:

Guardian

• Shield of Absorption cooldown goes from 30s to 24s baseline.
• Shield of Judgement cooldown goes from 25s to 20s baseline.

The above skills will still be affected by the shield recharge trait and will go to 19s for Shield of Absorption, and 16s for Shield of Judgement.

And Anet shows that they still do not know what the problem is…

God I hope so but Anet is oblivious to the uselessness of some traits so I bet they just forgot to list it because it’s not changing.

Is Empowering Might losing it’s 1 second cooldown? Or is it still useless?

I love the stuff that is coming out. I approve that we will be getting new weapons for each class. But for the love of god A-net, I hope you let us switch between specializations otherwise it will be really easy to screw up a character we’ve spent hundreds of hours on.

The achievement is completely soloable. I did it as a meditation Guardian with the bloodstone debuff food going as well. The key is to just blow everything up in 5 seconds.

Here’s one I put together today to celebrate getting full ascended gear.

Head – Icelord’s Diadem
Shoulder – Scale Pauldrons
Body – Phalanx
Hands – Priory’s Gauntlets
Legs – Phalanx
Feet – Illustrious Greaves
Back – Wind Catcher

oZii.2864:

Shadowfall.6543:

snip

Lets look at the other side of the spectrum and ask would a necromancer, guardian, warrior be able balanced with 10,805 base hp and 1836 base armor with no additional balancing needed? It isn’t as simple and bumping hp and armor up or down.

As a guardian player I would approve of this if only to take warriors down 50 million pegs. Either that or improve my regen virtue!

TLDR: Guardians should stop making suggestions because A-net thinks Guardians are perfectly fine where they are.

I honestly don’t under stand why the guardian community still keeps making suggestions for this class. We had over 400 posts for the December patch preview and not one thing was changed from the preview to the final result.

I know people who play other classes will say we are fine and that our problems are not as important to look at because we are still better off than they are (not to mention everyone hates on the “bubble warrior” in all games). But I ask you to look at all previous changes to the guardian. They have all really been minor tweeks to keep us content and once we get riled up again they give us something along the lines of 3% more condition damage. It has been said time and time again: Why the kitten does the guardian need condition damage?

Oh burning. BURNING? Really? That trait would make sense on a necromancer but for a guardian? Give me a break.

Then there is spirit weapons. I know that necromancers have the same problem with their minions but at least they can summon theirs before the battle. I’m not even going to get into fixing this terrible skill line because A-net won’t even read it anyhow.

(the following is a giant rant that I never did from a year ago)
And something I have to say about a change that occurred long again. When they swapped the abilities around on the greatsword I remember other classes telling us to stop complaining. Yes we are fine now because we have all gotten used to playing with the change up of the bar; no the guardian complaining wasn’t about the nerf to the cooldowns and damage (well not majorly). And for all of you that remember that, if you didn’t play a guardian and you thought we were all big complainers then I suggest this: Change in your options your weaponskill #3 key and they #4 key and jump into WvW. I bet you will have lots of fun as you try to charge/disengage your opponent and waste time doing something else entirely.

There is so much else I want to complain about but I know no one will really care and other classes will just say guardians are fine how they are. Not to mention A-net will probably just delete this.

The only bug they shouldn’t fix gets fixed super quick…

Perikittenor.1892:

True that updating and changing code may result in unexplained behavior to arise,
that in most cases only can be explained to be caused by the jersey devil or other common mythical creature preferably closer to programming, however.

Calling the latest patch a balance, is to stretch it more than blaming it on mythical creatures.

Unfortunate i will probably not be capable to report any more or repost bugs on the guardian topic. 2,5k hours wasted only to realize that i should have played a warrior.

Don’t get me wrong. Every night i will pray to the almighty potato that something will lure me back to a class i though would eventually be capable to do more than one thing.

Relentliss.2170:

Warrior

It has more roles available to it.

With how A-net is balancing the game, just get into warrior for the reason above. The only reason to continue with guardian is because you can’t transfer all your gear to a new character and you have been playing since the start and have to many dyes and ascended items.