Guild Wars 2

A mixture between pvdooring and glorified pve farming events like the “world bosses”?

Picture the current latest Maguuma maps, but being like a open payerkilling areas.

I’m fairly sure that the Karka Queen can be easily (slowly) be defeated with three players, and probably by two. But, is possible to beat KQ alone? Any advices about class and builds?

I wonder which spec would be less competitive in PvP: spirit weapons guardian or condition traps dragon hunter…

The specialization sounds and looks as uninteresting as was expected to be; no need to move from my med guard niche, neither from PvP or WvW.

The only susprise is the cheesy name. So overall I’m happy with the ANet work: the new guardian skills won’t outshine the current builds, so I will not be force to use my guardians in cluncky ways.

Longbow Brawler. Revenant already uses the hammer as a ranged weapon, so the guardian using a longbow as a mele weapon makes sense (and fits the picture).

Fashion Mage.3712:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Guardians already have support coming out the butt.

I really hope the new spec will be decently offensive with some good CC.

Otherwise they are just giving the guardian more of what it already has.

Considering that the current guardian meta is a fairly selfish meditation build, I disagree. The specialization should be supportive, but offer a different kind of support than what shouts do (the longbow is a good start already).

The specialization should be nothing short of A M A Z I N G to make me ever think to move away from meditations. And by “amazing” I mean “offensively”. I would not play a tank build, even if provides 50k HP.

ArenaNet should erase all amulets except celestial, in oder to make the game “more fair to balance”.

PvP was already severy lacking in therms of flexibility, disabling stats points from trait lines will only go deep in that lacking.

Sunshine.5014:

I’m glad that we finally can remove the pseudo choices in the current traits system.

• no more specing to a line just to get the stats out. I can finally move points out of water because I don’t need the extra +300 but from it to survive anymore
• everyone can select 3 from 6 trees. It’s much easier to balance. Everyone can select 3 grand master traits now! So much more variety
• use amulets/gears as the main way to spec for trait. You can trait defensively, and wear a Berserker amulet! Or trait offensively, and wear Cleric/Solder
• useless traits are being reworked! Less traps and pseudo choices

Thank you ANet. The news made my day!

Quating myself in another thread:

As far as I can see, the new system will have a lot less room to variety:

1) There’s only 3 choices in each step, whereas in the older we have 6, 4 and 3.
2) You can’t chose to get two neither three traits in the same step. In example: currently for a Warrior you can spent four points in Discipline and get Destruction of the Empowered (VIII), and Mobile Strikes (X) both of which are in the second tier. With the new system you will never be able to take 3 traits from the first tier, neither 2 from the second tier.
3) If a tier has three bad traits you will be force to take one of them. You no longer can skip garbage level traits. This part is specially cringe worthy taking in consideration how much tier 1 traits are filled with crap.

Flexibility will be hurt.

Black Box.9312:

Medi guard is terrible against anyone that can kite. It’s also pretty bad against sustained condi pressure. Combine the two (i.e. engineer) and you’re little more than a sitting duck.

Replace the sword by a scepter; most of builds that can kite at range or rely on conditions can easily be negated just using that weapon. Then they can chose either flee away or die. Eles -and to some extent longbow warriors- are the true bane of med guards.

The problem with the sword is that lacks any sort of cc, so the gap closer it gives will only let you to stay close a few seconds. Then, classes as necros or mesmers or engineers will evade you and land tons of cripples, interrupts, stuns and knockbacks while trying to keep you away and kill you with ranged AoE or single target attacks. Then, if you have a sword you probably will try to follow them, doing 0 damage, eating all of their wells and mines, etc. to finally die, powerless.

But with a scepter you can keep doing damage, nailing them with high burst while using blocks, blinds and evades, with a low cost of opportunity in those actions. I remember how in the past necros used to be a hard counter to me, and turret engineers were a impossible task. Since I did move from sword to scepter I find them fun to fight.

As far as I can see, the new system will have a lot less room to variety:

1) There’s only 3 choices in each step, whereas in the older we have 6, 4 and 3.
2) You can’t chose to get two neither three traits in the same step. In example: currently for a Warrior you can spent four points in Discipline and get Destruction of the Empowered (VIII), and Mobile Strikes (X) both of which are in the second tier. With the new system you will never be able to take 3 traits from the first tier, neither 2 from the second tier.
3) If a tier has three bad traits you will be force to take one of them. You no longer can skip garbage level traits. This part is specially cringe worthy taking in consideration how much tier 1 traits are filled with crap.

Flexibility will be hurt.

In the beta before the release of the game the guardian had the same HP than the warrior, but the testing in PvP fastly proved that with such base HP a guardian bunker could handle three foes at time. Between nerfing the proactive defenses and nerfing the health ArenaNet did chose to nerf the health.

I think that is ok: despite being weird to have the same HP as a cloth based class (elementalist) a fight between dps guardians and warriors oftenly favors the first ones.

But must be asid another thing: in this game classes names has low meaning outside the looks of their armors (and even less with the new attires). A celestial elementalist has more sustain than any heavy armor user.

Apoc.2459:

Idk if its just me or what but DPS guards just apsolutely suck. theres like one good build but its got a huge skill requirement and its total glass, if you try to build some surviveability into it you have no damage. try to put some damage back into it and its too squishy again. or you end up inbetween where you cant survive or deal damage at all.

I do use this build in PvP:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR7dlsApcoVDxbI8DRRDRljNY/BZQXe9BkABAA-TJBBwAcuIAAeCAjLDUc/BA

Mostly a triple meditation build, but with a 01661 arrange and using a cleric amulet. It gets near 17k HP, 3K armor, 1750 power. The sustain is very good (heals over 1k x evade, has meditations, shelter, a ton of blocks and blinds).

Due Focused Mind trait and the Pack runes fury is almost constantly up, so the crit chance is around 40% (more than enough for procs with Vigorous Precision). Of course lacks the beastly burst of a pure dps from a meditation zerker, but can sustain a lot more damage (the difference in armor and basic HP is huge) and still provide a notable stream of constant damage and good AoE damage.

Another option is going hybrid with a carrion amulet and a 62600 build. You will have similar problems in terms of survability (as with zerker builds) but at least you will constantly burn people, no mater how much you miss landing hits on targets.

Extreme.8350:

roaming scepter guardian LOOOL

I was going to argue with you about I guess that you were the kind of player which thinks that gs #3, sword #2, hammer #5 and Judge’s Intervention (pick three of the four) is enough to prevent a good player from kitting you at range (is not), or how easily a warrior with a bow can fight you in his own permenent field of flames while outperforming all regenerating a guardian could dream about, or how a necro or a engie can release so many AoE cripples, chills, fears and dazes that all those weapons (mostly useless 2 mts away) wil deal next to no damage and how easily a scepter fixes most of those problems..

Then I saw your historial and became aware that I was wasting my time. I only post this to save time to other readers :) .

Beast Sos.1457:

..how boring conquest is until I played SH. I literally cant get myself to play another match if its not SH. I felt like in each game of SH I would have a different role and every game felt unique. In conquest the games feel pretty much the same every time. We need a lot more than just this one map and I hope Anet is working more as we wait for the expansion.

Good to see that some of the players bored with conquest will leave the Conquest arena. Who knows? Maybe PvE players which only enters in the PvP hall to accomplish the daily achievements will turn towards Stronghold, leaving Conquest for people really invested in fighting another players.

As for me, I really expect that Stronghold will have his own, segregated queque. Because no way in hell I’ll spent time in a “PvP mode” which is mostly a Player vs Monster race (a very easy one, must say). Calling Stronhold “PvP” diservices PvP in the same way that PvDooring empty keeps and karmatraining outnumbered servers in WvW diservices de “WvW” name.

Overall the game is very friendly to newcomers, you can earn experience at fast rates doing a lot of different things (from PvE exploring, events, dungeons and fractals, collecting and crafting, WvW and PvP). Some general advices for players using guardians:

• Unlock all the weapon skills as soon as possible. Keep a unit of any of them in your inventory (don’t be worried about their quality until you reach 80) and change them from time to time to being familar with their skills.

• The game resources are out there for everyone, so there’s no “competition” to collect the mineral ores, trees, etc. Equally, monsters and events can be farmed in teams without hurting anyone’s drop. Take advantage of this: staff autoattack is one of the best “kill farmers” in the game due the reach and number of enemies you can hit in each attack (5). Is a very useful tool in most aspects of the game for guardians. Scepter is good weapon for long range poking against dangerous foes. Greatsword and hammer are great for AoE melee combat, sword for single target fights and mobility. The focus is more effective than the shield for this class. Once you reach level enough to go to PvP (20?) enter in the PvP hall and practice those weapon skills against the training dummies.

• Due adquiring new traits is now more expensive than when the game was released I would suggest you to spent your skill points in this order of priority:

Healing skills: Shelter, Signet of Resolve.
Utility skills: Shouts, Meditations, Consecrations.
Elite skills: Renewed Focus, Tome of Courage.

Unlocking the traits has priority over unlocking the other skills; spirit weapons, signets and ones with very limited usage -which includes racial skills) can wait.

• Since seems that you will be focused on PvE probably your most used skills would be Wall of Reflection, Stand Your Ground! and Hold the Line!

• At level 30-35 you can start doing dungeons (Ascalon Catacombs) which will provide you tons of experience, gold and tokens (which can be traded to get good quality gear at 0 cost). This will also help you to learn the basics of the use of evades, blinds, blocks and other game mechanics in which this class in heavily reliant.

The fact that the default chat in the matches is (green) local, instead of (blue) team, and that the game lacks shortkeys to change between chat channels and doesn’t bother to send invitations to everyone in the same team to join in a common chat talks a lot about the level of mismanagement/disdain this part of the game has.

6 = 6
7 = e
8 = custom mouse button
9 = custom mouse button
10 = 10 (I use the fat finger for this one, not much problem since is used from ttt).
Tag target = custom mouse button

First of all, you need a scepter if you want to roam with a guardian. This is not under discussion: is mandatory. You can -or not- use a greatsword, a hammer or a sword, but without the scepter you will be poked at range to death for a large amount of builds -including other meditation guardian roamers, which can slowly crush you while negating most of you damage just running in circles and spamming scepter #1.

Sword + focus + gs can work well against some builds lacking mobility, but that’s all. If you wan to be viable in roaming you need to use the scepter.

Second point: as a roamer, with a guardian you must accept that you will lack the mobility and stealthy features that make some classes as warriors and thieves much more appealing for the role. They not only are way faster than a guardian -which means that can reach camps and cows much faster than you, a valuable feature for any roamer- but also had a massive advantage in terms of disengage. If a thief or a warrior or a mesmer starts to lose the fight they are usually capable to retreat to either a) recover their cooldowns and effectively reset the match in their own terms, or b) leave the fight to hunt easier preys. You will never have those features. That doesn’t mean that you can’t outfight them. That means just two things:

1) If they want to run, you will not be able to catch them, But the way I see that, any time a foe which initially choses to confront you and then flees away is a victory.
2) You don’t have tricky -and lame- panic buttons to escape from a defeat. No stealth or fancy moves to put miles from your enemies.

Of course stealth and mobility is important when you suddenly face a impossible task -like confronting fights outnumbered-. In that cases disengage tools -which we lack- could be nice. But this is how this class works: we are slow, we oftenly struggle to dissengage, so accept that as a guardian roamers you will face a lot of times fights in unfair conditions and you will die because that. No dishonor in that.

Third: as can be guessed, guardians are one of the worst classes to roam, but still this doesn’t mean that we are unable to do the task. Guardians are one of the finest 1 vs 1 duellist in the game, and we scalate very well in n vs n small skirmishes. What I would suggest you -based in my own experience, is: build your character (skills, traits and gear) to be a stronger fighter, not a faster roamer. IMO usingTraveller runes, shouts as Retreat! or weapons as the staff to gain swiftness are a colossal waste of time. Design your build for the kills. You will never outpace some other clases in terms of mobility. Instead of being a mediocre roadrunner choose to a capable killing machine.

Gakeman.5296:

When you rupt shelter from guardian with magnet, fear me, sbow4+basi etc. it still keeps blocking. Pls fix.

Levin

On the other hand, Renewed Focus (the meditation elite which is supposed to be instant cast and to provide 2 seconds of invulnerability) is bugged and can be inturrepted by attacks that push you as ranger’s logbow #4 or engineer’s rifle #4. As result, you get pushed, you eat the damage and you elite enters in cooldown. Bugged from the release.

It took me 1.100 matches in ranked (99,9% of my time in PvP) playing always with pugs and with a 50-51% win ratio.

So, 1.100 matches is a solid prediction for the average joe if can retain a 50% w/l.

The best chances you will have in 1 vs 2 will be with builds which combine either stun locks + heavy burst or sustain damage + burst or sustain damage + stun lock. You need sustain, but also a way to deal constant damage over time or a high burst. Stun locks are VERY valuable due not only they prevent non-condition damage and makes easy to land your own hits, but also due your passive healing keeps working al helping you. Some examples:

• Hammer + greatsword. Works well due hammer can stunlock (in area) and greatsword has a high burst, doesn’t require to spent adrenaline and gives you mobility to gain space. Of course in PvP “gaining space” means losing the mpoint, but in roaming is easy to see why is popular.

• Hammer + Bow. The bow provides almost perpetual AoE damage, helps a lot with condition cleansing and slowly but steadly erodes the HP from your foes. The hammer here is more for cc and damage prevention, but still can output a decent AoE damage.

• Bow + Axe + Sword. Bow’s F1 and sword’s #4 are used to weak the enemy; axe provides lots of sustained damage and a huge burst with the F1.

Anyway: most of classes in this game are fairly capable, if you are able to win in a fair 1 vs 2 fight then they are just bad or lack experience against your build.

1) The shout has priority due the longer duration and shorter cooldown.
2) Even in a FULL cleric gear the Virtue of Resolve passive healing won’t be able to keep your team alive. For the sustain of the guardians in the raid the critical aspects are: 1) placement and positioning along the fights -trying to prevent AoE damage; 2) self use of healing skills (Shelter and Empower with the Altruistic Healing trait) and 3) the water field blast healings (thanx mostly to the elementalist an the warrior’s warhorn #5 (and guardian’s hammer#2). Renewed Focus cooldown is too big to waste just to recover the F2 passive effect. Keep it for life/death scenarios.

3) Staff must be the default weapons 80-90% of the time. Staff has much longer range than hammer, better (much more spammeable, and harder to evade) AoE damage; provides a large buff in both power and sustain (Empower), helps with the team mobility (Symbol of Swiftnees, along with warrior’s warhorn #4), Orb of Light can be used to destroy defensive artillery in sieges, and Line of Warding is now much more powerful due the changes in the nature of stability. Hammer bust be used for:

a) to blast water fields with #2.
b) to (coordinately) unleash #2 in cqc to immobilize large amounts of foes for your ranged party.
c) to frag from time to time the enemy formations with #5
d) in G vs G, to use the #4 to ward off downed foes from power rezzing attempts.

Circumstantially hammer can also provide a huge AoE damage burst (if you are able to land a few #2 from your party in the same foes at the same time), and some times this weapon is paired with the chill trait and hydromancy seal for larger cc effects, but the problem with hammer and greatsword vs staff is that the staff not only provides much valuable tools but also is a lot more consistent dealing damage due the huge range of the autoattack.

4) Don’t stack staff #3 over the water fiels from your fellow eles. Follow the raid leader toe on toe.

I do play med guard, although with gs/sword + focus or gs/scepter + focus instead of hammer. I also usually wear the cleric amulet instead the berserker one (better sustain playing with pugs in ranked, which mostly is what I do).

Med guardians are a hard counter for thieves in most of cases if the same skill is involved. Is not that dps guardians can’t be defeated by thieves -and some builds can achieve more success than others-, but is really a uphill. Damage from dps guardians also escalates better the most people are around, due their strong aoe skills, whereas thieves excels in surgical strikes against a single target. But thieves are much better in terms of mobilitty, so they they have a much prominent role in rotations, decaping undefended points, etc.

In the same way, I found celestial d+d eles as a true hard counters against med guardians; I wasn’t ever able to defeat that kind of eles fighting against players of similar skill.

As with all the other classes you must play smart and aware about your limitations: if you are playing a burst thief the best you can do for your team is to kill weakened foes and help in transitions and soft decaps. Going 1 vs 1 against a full health med guard usually ends wasting your time. The only landscape in which I think that that behaviour can be productive is if you team already dominates the score and you are fighting the guard with both outside a point just to prevent him for aiding his team mates.

Maelwro.7562:

Hi folks,
I’m looking to craft a set of ascended armor for my guardian; however, i’m in a conundrum as to what to craft. Playstyle includes a lot of open world, a bit of dungeon/fractaling and mix of Zerg WvW and roaming.

I know for WvW group meta, soldier is the supposed way to go; however, i’m looking to craft a set that ideally, I could use in more than just group wvw. For those of you who play multiple playstyles and have crafted ascended armor, is there a particular set you made that worked? E.g., mix of knight, etc. Any comments are greatly appreciated, thanks!

My advice: full celestial stats for the armor. Runer up: full berserker armor.

I did finish my first full ascended armor a month ago, it cost me ~350-400 gold coins and took me 30 days to craft just due the celestial quartz daily cap. The material cost can be reduced farming the stuff, but I had no time for farming so I went buying most of the materials in the BL market.

As in your case, I wanted a set viable for PvE (dungeons, fractals, bosses…) and WvW roaming. Must be said that WvW raid ascendad stats aren’t as crucial due fighting in a clan the raid coordination and skills matters a lot more that your stats. You can raid with exotics as fine as with ascended gear; as long as you follow the melee pack, stack with the leader, use your evades, shouts, empowerments, etc… Timming & coordination >> stats in WvW raid. And you can get build up cheap exotic armors for WvW raid as long as you want.

A second aspect important for my choice in my first ascended armor was the possibility of being used for both my guardian(s) and warrior(s). So let’s talk about the stats:

1) Condition-based stats (carrion, dire, etc.) can be good for some roaming/dueling builds from hybrid guadians and warriors, but must be said that full zerk warriors outperform condition warriors in roaming/small skirmishes, and condition builds are crap in PvE. Leave them.

2) Cleric/Nomad/Apothecary stats are useless for warriors; can be useful for some niche builds in guardian roamers, so forget about them.

3) Soldier/Knight/Cavalier stats are strong in WvW raids, but usually they underperform in roaming and PvE. Can be a good choice if WvW raiding or guild vs guild is your main game mode.

4) Celestial stats are just wonderfull as well rounded choice. They provide more stat points that any other combo, and the overall stats in your character can be adjusted in a large extent just replacing your amulet, ring and earrings (which can be easily afforded with laurels). PvE? Celestial armor + full zerk trinkets & weapons. WvW raids? Celestial armor + a soldier/knight/cavalier mixture in trinkets & weapons. The same with roaming/duel builds. Celestial is also one of the best stats for warriors in small roam teams (hambow, shoutbow).

5) Berserker stas (along with Assassin’s, Valkirie…) are the best in most of the PvE content and in dueling/roaming; they are usually too squishy for a WvW raid frontliner, but you can adjust your sustain changing your weapons and trinkets.

So, overall, celestial and berserker provides the larger amount of usefullness at multi tasking (performing in different game modes) and flexibility (being viable for the current two heavy armor users)..

VOIP greatly enhances the team performance, and would be a lot more fair if the game has this device implemented by default -specially more fair in conformed vs pugs matches-.

But we must be realistic here:

1) Integrated VOIP would be expensive to implement, and PvP is one of the parts in this game which provides the least earns to ArenaNet, due usually the players focused on competitive PvP doesn’t care as much about fancy skins or PvE commodities.

2) Taking in consideration how badly the netcode sometimes performs in this game -specially here in EU- and that VOIP chat weights a lot more than the vector data from the matches one can only guess HOW LAGGY could the game run if over the current features it would carry an extra layer of real time 5 vs 5 talk in every match.

What about replacing Signet of Fury by Signet of Might? I think that the miss of adrenaline can be compensated by the anti-block properties of the signet once is activated.

Is really bad, due it stands you in a place, misses most of attack past 200 unit range (except against non movable targets), gets canceled if you moves and the damage spike is meh (even landing all the hits) taking in consideration that is a single target skill.

The only decent feature is the projectile defense. The autoattack and the teleport are good tools, but sword 3 needs some love from the developers.

@KotCR: I appreciaty your effort, but even in PvP the handicaps of the shield are pretty evident:

1) The bubble knockback doesn’t compete with other classes in terms of decap potential. Most of times if you fight against a single holder the chances are that they will overcome you in terms of pushes, knockbacks and other cc in a 2:1 to 3:1 ratios.

2) The bubble does nothing to prevent melee damage, neither AoE damage. If you fight against a Warrior most of the damage He will deal to you will come from the F1 burns. Things are even worse against other classes with spamable AoE attacks as necros or eles. So, at least 3 classes from the current meta will see you with a shield and then smile.

So shield is basically outperformed by focus in BOTH dffensive and offensive capabilities.

I guess that in a WvW, with the stability nerfs, replacing the current sfaff + gs/hammer meta by staff + x/shield COULD work (specially in the incoming maps, with so many funnels and cliffhangers), due in that situation a few guys releasing AoE knockbacks in serial could end wrecking a zerg. But this is theoretycally, must be proved.

For now, just doesn’t cut. I would like to see the focus and shield skills in guardian EXCHANGED due shields looks a lot better and fits better the lore, but currently focus is a lot better so I will keep my anomaly in my left hand for a long, long time.

D/D celestial ele. Best sustain/tankiness in the game while slowly melting everything around with AoE damage, plus decent mobility.

Sometimes if you face a skilled player you could care about what’s doing, but most of times can be played in auto mode just clicking the skills in the proper sequence without having to worry about what’s happening around. Is like running a hamster’s wheel.

Dondagora.9645:

Well, Stability isn’t overpowered anymore, definitely. And CC is supposed to be infuriating and annoying, that’s it’s whole purpose[AKA you should not be having a blast when you get CC’ed], to make sure DPS doesn’t go running amok and unchecked. It’s also one of the core principles ANet promised the game’s balance would revolve around[DPS, CC, and Support].

How could have been stability overpowered in the past? As long as I can say most of the kills in raid guilds were provided by the “focus parties”, which are mostly composed by necros.

If all, ranged AoE damage is the broke part of the game: provides more dps than melee with less risk, and spamming circles, fragging and using arrow charts require low to no skill.

Also, I’m not sure of how much the new system (based in stacks instead of seconds) is behind the abhorrend lag I’ve experienced the last two days in wvw (which reminded me a lot the early days of culling and massive rubber banding).

PPT score is basically determined by coverage, and most of times there’s 0 things you can do about it.

Fights, in the other hand, can be unpredictable and exciting, no matter how disparity the numbers apparently can be. As Coldtart said, if you play for the fun the choice is obvious.

Ragnarox.9601:

so this is vs those 2…thieves can be killed but eles…hardly almost impossible.

vs hunters: condi hunter destroy guardians easily. power can kill us if hes moderate skilled.
vs mesmers: shatter can be killed, condi is deadly to guardians.
vs necro: it depends how skilled is the necro, condi build melts guardian.
vs warrior: hambow and shoutbow destroys guardian with ease.
vs engineer: guardian don’t have any chance to win.

I found celestial bruisers (d/d ele, shoutbow war, engineers) almost impossible to kill in 1 vs 1 while fighting for a point.

But I didn’t find rangers or necros too hard to beat, mesmers are a very tie matchup, and hambows and most of thief builds are a easy mode win for medguards in most of circumstances. Some of those characters had better mobility or disengagement, but in n vs n medguards provide a very nice AoE damage to the equation.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

It was broken in the first place that you could put two guardians per party and be almost completely immune to CC, because let’s face it it would’ve been almost impossible to strip the stability. Now you actually have to time it for when you need it instead of just putting it up and forgetting about it. This should also greatly reduce the nonsense of stacking insane amounts of retaliation from blasting light fields since you’re going to cut the number of guardians per zerg by half. People will adapt, guardians will still be used, everything will be fine.

That’s not true.

First of all, stability doesn’t magically prevent you and your team mates from suffering damage, so under enough dps pressure all the stability of the world would mean nothing: a conformed raid of well coordinated guild can be melted just by pure damage if confronts enough AoE damage.

Second, the most used combinations in formal raids are either having 2 guardians + 2 warriors and 1 necro x party (with the backline based on eles, necros and thieves orbiting the heavy train) or having a pure heavy backbone with g+w and the focus party (necros, eles) again orbiting the heavies. In both circumstances, stability was achieved mostly by rotating the Stand Your Ground! between the guardians. Problem is, SYG is a short duration stability with a medium cooldown, and most of fights in G vs G or G vs Zerg stand for minutes. So the use of SYG require a lot of skill, experience and coordination. And I have no reasons to blame people which took the effort to learn to play and to hone their skills for crushing a bunch of wannabees doing PvDoor despite being outnumbered. I like when a game rewards skill, not numbers or coverage.

Third, in the past the game already had tools enough to disable stability (mostly using necros to reverse boons, plus eles with static fields), if they weren’t enough to wrek a guild was due poor coordination, bad timings or crapy dps, which in any case was fault of the blob, not the system.

Fouth, the main reason due guilds with barely 25 players can crush blobs of 50+ players -and will keep the same- is due sustain and skill. The new changes may or not may change a bit the meta, which is irrelevand due bad blayers will keep dying again and again no matter how much you put in a zerg due that’s what happens when you rely on numbers and passive stats ainstead of experience, practice, awareness and skill.

I must say also that I don’t play raid guardian since the last spring, I get bored about them. So personally I don’t care too much about the changes.

Zackie.8923:

roll a warrior boys

Current shoutbow warrior is the older guardian bunker; no surprise about how mad are in the warrior forums: both are equally boring.

Garbage. I’ll force me to change from sword to scepter in PvP, pew pew pew. Don’t see a problem in WvW due in raid I did leave the guardian boat to the warrior one long time ago (probably will swich again to necro).

Meanwhile Renewed Focus is still buged: some skills that interrupts it can cancel the invulnerability despite supposely being a instant cast, and you both receive the damage and the elite is put on 90s cooldown. I can undertand that sometimes the game game lag/desync can make to miss your skills, but you must either receive the damage (so you didn’t cast RF and therefore can’t be in cooldown) or RF is in cooldown -and therefore you were invulnerable by 2 secs-.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Shout support guardians however do bunker quite well, they just can’t bunker while putting out CC and damage like an elementalist can.

They are good holders, at the cost of doing small damage. A bunker guardian trying to hold a point against a celestial ele, engie or warrior will end either losing the point or dying and losing the point. Maybe fighting n vs n the guardian bunker will have similar sustain and better team support, but those bruiser builds will melt the floor with their area damage.

The math works great… against the practice golems in the mist. Litany is useless in any other scene.

zone.1073:

Guardian is one of the most powerful classes in the game right now. Extreme 1v1 potential and team fight capability, and has probably the strongest and most reliable burst in the game. They win national tournaments.

At equal skill any current guardian build will lose against a bruiser in 1 vs 1.

Guardians are now used as complements to thief due in Legacy of the Foefire if both teams runs 4 celestial classes the first one to take the center will win the match: without 2 dps classes is almost impossible to take down celestial bruisers in reasonable time, so they can run in circles around preventing the decap.

But arguably, the main reason due Orange Logo did run a guardian was because Tage uses guardian as his main class, not due guardians were in good spot. They aren’t, they are outside the meta. Same happens with Mesmers and -to some extent- Rangers.

choucs.4507:

You can’t just Sword 2 from one side of the building to mid floor and hunt zerkers like you used to.

man up and deal with it, stop getting carried and get skill

Yep, because replacing sword for scepter and melting you with auto attacks/Chains of Light/Smite burst takes soooo much more skill…

ArenaNet already was able to make that a class with a shield and a mace as main part of his depicted concepts not longer uses shield or mace in any place of the game; sword 3 is already useless, I guess that nerfing 2 is the final nail in the coffin for that weapon.

creepmatic.9435:

Yes, guardians are not in a good spot, srry.

Edit: Dashing Strike in action http://us.battle.net/d3/en/class/monk/active/dashing-strike

But can be argued that outside Ele, most of classes aren’t in a good spot, also. Even Engineers, which are currently pretty strong in PvP and roaming, are next to useless in WvW raids. Guardians did fill roles in most of the aspects of this game -and by the way: I did never like the bunker builds, I’d rather play as underdog dps than the boring holders, including the current shout Warrior meta-.

As for dashing strike, remembers me the Black Desert’s warrior playstyle:

But in that game every class is uber mobile, with tons of close gapers and moves to escape from combat. Must also be noted another big difference with Diablo’s Crusader and Black Desert’s Warrior: that we have an almost entirely useless weapon: the shield.

The shield is a central part of our iconography as class (our icon is a shield engarved with the seal of healing, and a guardian wielding a shield and a mace deceptively heads our class description in the official page), but ironically neither shield of mace have a role in the current guardian builds (and as a “healers” we are largely surpassed by Eles and Warriors).

So… yeah, I think that guardian is currently in a good spot, as long as you aren’t looking for a tank, or a mace + shield wielder, or a healer or a character for support roles -which are largely unnecesary in the PvE part could be irrelevant after the incoming balance nerf patch-.

creepmatic.9435:

And What I find even more stupid is meditation builds that go Honor deep. Everyone knows you are going honor to inflate your vitality. And to make it worse we further have a GM that magically gives you another 300 vitality. How lame can this be?

For over the last three months I did only play my guardian, using a 0, 1, 6 (I, X, XII), 6 (V, IX, XIII), 1 build with greatsword/sword + focus and a cleric amulet. Despite not being a great player and playing only in ranked mode with random pugs I had no problems keeping a 50% w/l ratio.

I known that I lack burst but still I’m able to take down most of the zerk builds in PvP due my near 17k HP and my sustain (I heal ~1200 HP x evade, for me and teammates). I provide support to my team in the form of AoE blinds, blocks and heals, plus the knocback/projectile shield from Resolute Healer, sometimes a true game-changer skill. While I’m unable to kill celestial d/d Eles and Engies and sometimes I was one-shooted by a thief + thief, thief + mesmer burst combo, in few ocassions I was also able to kill two thieves at the same time. I cand stand long duels vs bruisers, despite I’m in disadvantage against some variants.

So far my only doubts are about replacing of my sword by a scepter; scepter is stronger against players which kite at range, or in WvW (where the damage is a lot larger) or when you’re playing in a team for sync focus. But in n vs n fights with pugs? Sword provides much more performance, imo.

Bunker guard is still very capable holding points against zerker foes -specially if the opponets are melee fighters-. The problem is that Bunker guardian -which also usually excels in team support- is designed to being able to hold until the help arrives, and usually sacrifices a lot of dps. This means that in solo games (hotjoin) is a lot less efficient than in a conformed team in which your team mates are aware of when you really need assist.

This problem was exacerbated with the rising of the celestial meta, which bring us a new kind of “off-tanks” like elementalist, engineers and warriors wielding celestial amulets which are able to have a huge sustain while retaining more dps power than the usual guardian bunker.

This doesn’t mean that our bunker builds aren’t viable -in fact, well played can be still very strong-, but they are a lot more vulnerable to some combos, and to foes kitting at range or through conditions.

Meditation builds instead (really “off-tanks”, due they aren’t allways dps builds) lack team support and -usually- sustain to large degree, but have a much more proactive gameplay.

I’m not sure about which of those two roles is more effective, but until the tournament in the last weekend I was under the impression of guardians (holders or not) were being progressively displaced from the meta in the NA teams, and having some problems in consistency in EU teams. But after seeing Tage’s performance in Orange Logo I think that there’s room for the guardian class in the meta as long as is played with skill, no matter the build.

Mythos.8196:

What about skill points, do I pump it pre-80 or just save it and wait till level 80 and then find a build and start pumping it

You will get a lot points from different sources in the game, specially for your main character (after reaching level 80, each new xp level barr you fill will grant an extra skill point; plus ~210 skill points avaliable from the world map, and also you can get skill points from both PvP and WvW rewards).

Said this, in previous iterations of the game gaining traits was a lot faster and cheap, so now skill points must be spent a bit more carefully. Some skills that I think that are a MUST for any rookie Warrior (in no order):

1. Healing Signet
2. Dolyak Signet
3. Balanced Stance
4. Endure Pain
5. Berserker Stance
6. Shake it Off!
7. For Great Justice!
8. Kick
9. Bull’s Charge
10. Stomp
11. Fear Me!
12. Signet of Rage
13. Battle Standard

Be aware also that in any trait line not every trait has the same degree of usage; i.e.: in Discipline (III) Warrior’s Sprint is very demanded, whereas (II) Thrill of the Kill is mostly useless. This web is usefull what kind of builds you can expect:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

Rememeber that you can try the basics of those skills and traits and gear -sort of- in PvP at no cost.

phokus.8934:

Stop over to the Mesmer forums and see how bad it is that they’re giving us shield rather than a main-hand that we so desperately need.

I’m very confident about ArenaNet giving to each class a set of 5 new weapon skills. So far seems that Engineers will get a hammer, Rangers a staff, Necromancers a greatsword and Guardians some kind of bow… I bet that if the Mersmers will get a shield (off hand with only 2 skills) they will also get a -currently undiscovered- new mainhand weapon with 3 skills.

As long as they doesn’t bring us a trident will be fine

Mythos.8196:

What about the race for warrior? It doesn’t really matter right? I started with charr

And what about the items dropped from monsters, they are not worth picking up early right?

Race doesn’t matters in terms of stats: all have the same ones, and the same movement pace (which means that larger races as Charrs and Norns seems to walk slower that Asuras, but mts/second are all equal). Race skills are weak and remain mostly unused. The main factors to chose a race -and size- is how much you like the animations, how cool they look and how much they cover your vision in jumping puzzles. Personally for Warriors I would go big (all my 2 Warriors and 2 Guardians are Norns).

Crafting is useful for 2 purposes: gives you experience (you can rise from 1 to 80 just crafting is you have enough materials, which probably will not be your case) and gives you the chance to equip yourself at cheaper cost than the Black Lion market. I would suggest you to rise at least armorscraft to 400; weaponsmith and jewelery could be also useful -although at level 80 youy probably will equip yourself with ascended amulets, rings and erarings traded by laurels-. Anyway: the two top tier stats in this game are ascended and exotic, and you will do fine in full exotic at 80 in both PvE and WvW (PvP uses a normalized gear system: you can play with your level 1 character in PvP in equal terms -despite you must unlock a few sigils and runes-).

For leveling in PvE the best way is to pair a longbow with any other weapon you want. Longbow provides excellent AoE damage, good single target damage, both candition (burning) and physical damage and (with traits) condition cleansing. Gretsword provides mobility and burst damage, hammer and maces gives you a ton of crowd control, the axe has a huge sustained damage, swords are hybrid weapons with mobility, defense and conditions… The best you can do is to try out all of them.

The good news is that this is a game in which you reach top level in no time and then you have a ton of not mandatory things to do (dungeons, fractals, WvW, PvP, high level crafting and fractals, etc.). Also, experimenting with builds and gear is prety cheap compared against some games in which making a mistake in the gear selection means wasting a tons of time and resources.

tom.7468:

Its every man for himself anyway compared to other games there is almost nothing you can do to compliment other builds its just dps.

I disagree. I like the current amount of sustain in the game because makes harder to one-shoot targets, so instead a single lucky burst you need a good pace and a purpuseful use of your skills and cooldowns and a good team coordination to achieve success.

There’s also the resurrection mechanic, which gives a lot of room for teamplay and comebacks. And so far seems that most of tournament matches ends due the top score is achieved, not due reaching the time limit, and with a fair number of kills.

TheFamster.7806:

Now we see more class diversity, and who would have expected meditation guardian to be included in the meta to replace thieves when we all knew that thieves were the top of PVP meta since the beginning of time.

I’m all for leaving celestial stats as currently they are, but don’t say med guards are meta due they aren’t. NA teams (at least the most prominent one: Abjured) doesn’t run guardians at all, and I myself run a med guard just due bunker guard is plain boring, not due meds are competitive. Still, I’m happy about bunker guardian being kicked out the PvP beta -and soon outside WvW, I hope-. Too many years without relevant changes, imo.

I would say celestial armor. With Melandru runes for WvW raid and Hoelbrack/Pack/Balthazar/whatever for PvE or “roaming”.

Celestial armor provides a decent boost for every stat, and you can adjust your tankiness, your busrt damage and your healing or condition damage swaping the trinkets and weapons. And assuming that you’re crafting a ascended one, it will be also useful for a Warrior if you want to reroll.

Glad to see the change will not affect a bit the build I play (meditation guardian).

Will be even worse when the expansion bring the stability nerf.