It’s a good thing the game isn’t balanced around each class just bringing one thing where they excel. Seems to me what we have is exactly the meaning of balance; bringing many tools to the table that are useful.
Moot point, because classes like warrior, engineer, and elementalist do exactly that, bring many tools to the table that are useful. And they do it better than guardian, while also being able to deal decent damage at the same time.
You are implying that these tools a guardian have are not useful and, and I’m inclined to disagree. Guardian does bring unique tools to the table and does have good damage. No other class can bring the amount of party-wide projectile defense, blocks, condi clear, and stability while doing very respectable damage, like a guardian can.
The guardian in its current state is a cry for a support class in a game that encourages self-sufficiency. It requires allies to support in order to be effective even though the goal of the game’s balancing system was for every player to be able to hold their own regardless of what class they choose.
Party-wide projectile defense? Wall of reflection is good, but can simply be sidestepped (unless you’re standing directly inside it, by which point you’re AoE bait), SotA only works while the bubble is up and if the AI is in the correct location, and shield 5 is a limited skill on a laughable weapon. Feedback and swirling winds do a better job of this while also requiring less sacrifice to incorporate into a build, and most classes have other means of self-defense against projectiles anyway.
Guardian is still good as an aegis-bot, but other classes have dodges and blocks actually incorporated into their weapon skills. It’s a nice failsafe, but hardly crucial.
As for condi clearing, guardian has been far from the best for a while now. Shoutbow warriors and elementalists do a better job for parties while again sacrificing less, and most other classes have traits or skills that give easier access to self-condi removal. They also have more access to sustain that far exceeds the capabilities of VoR, granting more of a buffer against condition damage.
AoE stability is another thing that a guardian can do nicely, but this also is just a failsafe for when someone else screws up. Every class has stunbreaks, and again, the game encourages self-sufficiency, so there are many builds that find other sources of CC protection.
And a guardian cannot bring all of these to the table while also dealing good damage. First of all, a guardian is unique in the fact that it cannot implement a viable condition bunker build. That’s already strike one.
Furthermore, for a guardian, investment in defense comes at the cost of offense, and vice versa. It has very few attacks with naturally high damage coefficients, and is extremely reliant on multi-hit projectile attacks for damage. This requires heavy investment in both power and precision, either through traits or gear, for these multi-hits to crit consecutively to deal respectable damage. This also limits the potential of the intelligence sigil, which many defensive builds rely on to successfully deal bursts of damage. And, since such a large amount of these powerful attacks are projectile-based, any form of reflection hard-counters it.
Beyond this, guardian is very limited in the form of CC, which is quite crucial for a primarily melee class to deal damage. Guardians are kited very easily because our gap closers are on melee weapons that don’t have any sort of cripple, chill, or immobilize.
Our one ranged weapon (even if staff counted, the damage is just too low even on glass builds) has a very slow projectile that loses effectiveness beyond roughly 600 range. Its only saving grace is an instant ground-targeted pseudo-AoE that also has a single-target immobilize. This is not enough to save the class from this glaring weakness it will suffer from in its downtime.
I’ve played the class for thousands of hours. Even now, it’s still my favorite out of the bunch, and I’d love to say that it’s worthwhile. But I just can’t anymore, because it’s been stagnating on the balance front since launch. Even rangers and necros, which were once considered laughing stock, are more formidable than a guardian now. It’s little more than a pug stomper at best now, and if these past balance updates are any hint, it’s gonna be staying that way.
TL;DR – Guardian is currently a support-oriented class in a game that encourages self-sufficiency over relying on others, which is why it is lacking in comparison to other classes.
