Guild Wars 2

They change.3526:

I’m having a hard time understand what a guardian is supposed to do. I keep hearing mixed things and it all sounds like a load of crap from actual gameplay. I hear we’re the priests of the game and buff allies. Then I hear we are tanks but warriors are the true tanks? We have healing magic and so forth. How are guardians supposed to be played.

It really does depend on the build, but generally guardians have the best supportive abilities in the game. They also have the strongest allied healing (and probably also allied buffing) in the game alongside water staff eles.

Guardians can tank really well if built for it, but I suppose warriors are kind of the “true” tanks. Do note I’m saying this in the context of pvp.

There are also the much more offensively-oriented meditation guardians, which excel in short battles due to the bursty nature of their abilities.

^I’m inclined to agree.

Necros seem rather strong in pvp to me. They can make for very good bunkers, their condition spam is pretty crazy, and I definitely wouldn’t say power necros are weak either (mainly because lich form = auto-win, assuming it’s off of cooldown).

Not sure about the other modes, not that I’ve ever seen a necro get kicked from PvE for being a necro.

Sylpheed.8163:

Guardians are fanatics.

Erm, not necessarily. That’s probably one of their themes, but I wouldn’t say all guardians are fanatical.

The icons that have undead/skulls in them typically depict said undead getting wrecked by some light-based spell. I guess the idea behind it is supposed to be “light > undead/evil” and whatnot. It probably doesn’t really fit the imagery of a light spell though.

Thanks.
Disappointing, but at least the mesmer and ele changes look somewhat interesting (judging from the vague pvp changes that have been revealed so far).

Holl.3109:

(preview is sept 5 for those classes)

Source?

Apolo.5942:

1_ Shouts, never use them, too little utility too long cooldown, only use them on specific parts in pve, aka stability for marsh fractals thats it.

2_ Meditations, this is how all skills in this game should be, big noticible impact, low cooldown, exelent.

3_ Consecrations, never use them same problem as 1

Consecrations typically have the cooldowns they have exactly because the utility they offer is pretty huge. Not all consecrations have a high cd though. When I happen to have them equipped, I use Wall of Reflection and Purging Flames 2-3 times a fight.

As for meditations, they only affect the user, which is why they have relatively big effects on relatively short cooldowns. They’re basically the “selfish” utility line with the exception of Merciful Intervention.

And as ArchonWing said, don’t make comparisons that leave out important details.

Rangersix.1754:

Renewed Focus is not seflish as it a) allows you to support much longer because it gives a lot of survivability and b) allows you to instantly reset your virtues, which can be very powerful for your allies (heal, condi cleanse, aegis, protection, blinds, ect…). It’s seriously NOT a selfish elite.

I never said it was selfish, I said it was the most selfish of the elites. It offers much less direct support compared to the tomes, but yes it is still quite supportive, as is everything with guardians.

Rangersix.1754:

The problem with tome of Courage is that it turns the Guardian into a sitting duck. If you’re facing a few experienced players they’ll jump on you the second you cast it and there is nothing you can do to avoid getting destroyed/cc’d apart from putting it away again.

There is actually, as I mentioned with my last post, there are consecrations. For example, place down Hallowed Ground for a guaranteed Light of Deliverance, and if you need to, use Sanctuary as well.
Not to mention the tomes have long-range for a reason. With proper positioning, often times you won’t even need a consecration or two.

Well they deserved attention, as well as all the other unused utilities that the devs are finally tinkering with.

Liking the bow change (let’s hope it actually scales with healing power), and I’m fine with the tome changes providing they don’t do something stupid like removing Tome of Courage’s healing and replace it with something else.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Increasing the base health however would likely necessitate nerfing our defensiveness

For me, active defense and heals > passive defense. If I wanted to facetank things I’d play a warrior.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Don’t use tome of courage. It’s not very useful. The virtues recharge on renewed focus is way better and helps as a secondary source of defense if you get spiked.

Keyword: You. Renewed Focus is the most selfish elite the guardian has, and it’s more commonly used probably because it’s good in bunker builds, it’s easier to use, and it’s more easily inserted into builds. The tomes typically require specific builds and good positioning to be used at maximum efficiency, whereas RF is a panic button that can be used in most situations.
ToC not being useful is very debatable. I wouldn’t recommend it on a build that doesn’t use consecrations (since those protect tome users very nicely), but it simply being “not useful” is just not true.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Generally speaking, if a person wants to run healing breeze, I think running focus offhand would be best as it gives you the personal block to make sure you don’t get interrupted. Also I recommend running with an altruistic healing build if you use healing breeze, as you have said, personal survivability with healing breeze isn’t the best but altruistic healing picks up the slack.

You get somewhat less condi clear than a virtues guardian, and you don’t get a secondary access to stability. Your virtues are on a longer recharge too with an altruistic healing build. But you’re tanky as hell and you get to use healing breeze which is boss.

What you’re describing sounds more like a tanky guardian using healing breeze than a supportive one. I mean, all guardians are supportive in one way or another, but AH alone typically makes a guardian’s primary role bunkering/tanking. Although, using Healing Breeze does make it strike much more of a balance between tankiness and support. A purely supportive guardian running consecrations/ToC/Healing Breeze would carefully position at mid-range whereas your kind of guardian would jump into the fray and take a lot of hits, but provide less support.

Is there any help you’re looking for in particular, or would you just like help for the general build?

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that taking Healing Breeze will make your allied healing rather powerful, but it’s not quite the best heal for your own survivability. Same goes for Tome of Courage pretty much.

- Smite (Scepter #2) becoming a symbol.
- Wave of Wrath (Staff #1) doing something supportive.
- Cleansing Flame (Torch #5) getting a range buff and no. of targets buff.
- Merciful Intervention actually targeting the lowest health ally in range.
- Bow of Truth scaling with healing power.
- Scepter Power and Focused Mastery gaining an additional effect each.
- Elite Focus decreasing the cooldown of tome elites (or all elites). Wouldn’t mind it becoming a grandmaster trait if that was what it took to balance it.

Edit: Wouldn’t mind Healing Breeze becoming a consecration or something.

It’d be nice if staff #1 actually did something supportive.

Apolo.5942:

Fashion Mage.3712:

A guardian can be a lot of things. A paladin is just what you want it to be.

Sorry no, you heal, you wear plate, you are a paladin, you want to make it original then make it original and DIFFERENT, dont borrow the class troupes and expect to be ok to pull a 180 on it.

Funny, I don’t remember paladins using staves, scepters, tomes, and other magical foci. Not to mention guardians have low health, and around half of their abilities are based on or named after monk spells from GW1, with a few skills being named after or based on ritualist abilities (shelter, spirit weapons) and a few being named after paragon abilities (the shouts). There’s also the correlation between a guardian’s different virtues and a monk’s different prayers (justice virtue and smiting prayers, resolve virtue and healing prayers, courage virtue and protection prayers).

If anything, a guardian is a monk playing dress-up in heavy armor. However, as much as I’m a fan of monks, I know that the professions were likely intended to hold different archetypes depending on how they’re built. Although maybe some professions represent certain archetypes a little more heavily.

The guardian profession can be a lot of things, and a “paladin” is most certainly one of those things, but a paladin is only one of the things it can be. Maybe one of the archetypes a guardian was intended to represent wasn’t “ninja guardian” or whatever, but don’t merely call a guardian a paladin. It comes off as extremely simple-minded to me.

Rangersix.1754:

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

Just the fact that they drop waterfields, makes them infinity more useful than a ‘healing’ Guardian.

Maybe in a big WvW zerg or with someone who can reliably spam blast finishers (most cannot as far as I’m aware of), otherwise, not in your wildest dreams. Not to mention one would have to use their typically limited blast finishers which could have been used on other fields (or already have been and are thus on cooldown).

Healing Breeze alone outheals like six water blast finishers. Not that a healer guardian would only support and sustain allies by healing, as Aza pointed out.

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

Zealot’s gear should work nicely on a healer guardian in WvW (wish it was usable in PvP), although I don’t think using a mace with it is the best idea since you’d likely be rather squishy due to zealot’s not offering much self-survivability. I’d personally use a scepter&focus/torch and a staff, support at a safe (mid-long) range while dealing decent damage with the scepter, and only get close when I need to. The staff goes nicely with the scepter too since it allows you to kite with it better via SoS (#3) and LoW (#5).

This should work nicely: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNArdWl8ApXoFDxeI0ENR8gkd5xprKA2Xj2F-TVyGABAcCAwTJ4Q7PwmmgKV+l7hAIS9ATq+DBPBgAAIA3sObzdG4n/8n/8n/sf+zfuzduzSB4syI-w
You can make alterations as you see fit (eg. swapping out Consecrated Ground for UC, swapping one tome elite for the other, and so on).

A mace-user should probably run cleric’s gear (or celestial maybe) since it offers some more survivability besides healing power, whereas the intention behind zealot’s gear is probably more to support via healing and still deal a good amount of damage (think mage/healer hybrid).

Regeneration that you apply uses your healing power, but it only starts ticking after other people’s regeneration effects wear off that were applied before your regeneration (at least I believe that’s how it goes). Regeneration also scales very well with healing power.

Empower, Regeneration, and Selfless Daring aren’t the only things which scale nicely with healing power either. Off the top of my head, Orb of Light scales extremely well with healing power, Heal Area from ToC scales nicely with healing power, so does Healing Breeze, Virtue of Resolve (active), and Writ of the Merciful.

A guardian can be a lot of things. A paladin is just what you want it to be.

Apolo.5942:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Keksmuffin.1450:

Apolo.5942:

I would much rather they made the guardian tougher, with more sustain while on the offensive and increased the miserable hp pool. No the trait that its 6 deep and we need for something else does not count.

Much rather they made it an all in class, but a proper paladin, than a rogue wannabe in meaningless plate armor.

No? I don’t want to be a warrior clone, I want ports, bursts, fast stuff. I like the idea of a suporting glasscannon class but in order to make glass work in this gamemode you need to be somewhat mobile.

ninja guard > facetank warrior clone

^This.

I prefer being squishier and having that power moved somewhere else more interesting (typically to ability power).

Play a thief or a mesmer

Play a warrior.

edit: Ninja’d

I wouldn’t mind SoJ on much if it wasn’t arbitrarily nerfed in pvp.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Apolo.5942:

I would much rather they made the guardian tougher, with more sustain while on the offensive and increased the miserable hp pool. No the trait that its 6 deep and we need for something else does not count.

Much rather they made it an all in class, but a proper paladin, than a rogue wannabe in meaningless plate armor.

No? I don’t want to be a warrior clone, I want ports, bursts, fast stuff. I like the idea of a suporting glasscannon class but in order to make glass work in this gamemode you need to be somewhat mobile.

ninja guard > facetank warrior clone

^This.

I prefer being squishier and having that power moved somewhere else more interesting (typically to ability power).

^That. Even if one does manage to land it all properly, chasing around an ally with it isn’t really ideal. “Clunky” is indeed a very good word for it. It’s still effective, but very clunky.

My guardian, Tomimori.
The Ancestral Outfit looks amazing. So happy that was released; it really got me the kind of light armor, monk-y look I’ve always wanted for my guardian.

Nine conditions cleansed is nothing to be laughed at, and it’s the primary reason the skill is decent at all. I just think it should really get a range buff; it tends to be quite difficult to use because of that. The limit of targets it can damage and the limit of targets it cleanses should be made separate as well (or at least it should prioritize cleansing).

I don’t think the skill was really intended to be offensive in the first place (but if it was, they failed at making it so). Personally I very much enjoy how it has the potential to be so effective supportively, but I dislike how difficult it tends to be to use because of its low range.

Not that I necessarily object to your proposed changes.

^What he said. “Getting breezy”, I like that phrase. :p

From my experiences with it, Healing Breeze serves different purposes when it’s used on a squishy character as opposed to a tanky character. For squishy characters, it would typically be used to protect them in order to give them time to do whatever they’re supposed to do. For example, I tend to play with a glass cannon staff elementalist on my team. With healing breeze and a few targeted consecrations, I can effectively protect that elementalist for a long duration.
On the other hand, for tankier characters, I’d say Healing Breeze does an excellent job of sustaining them. It’s easier healing tankier characters too.

It isn’t exactly the best heal for bunkering or personal survival though, but I very much enjoy that trade-off personally.

From my experience, guardians and eles make for the best healers. Ironically, I find that a healer guardian is pretty fragile and thus needs to position at mid-long range, whereas a healer (staff) ele is more bunkery. Still, I think a healer guardian’s allied healing and overall supporting is more potent than an ele’s unless their water fields are blasted a lot. With Tome of Courage, a guardian outclasses pretty much anything in terms of healing. Guardians basically become healing monks when they use it after all.

Necros can also heal their allies quite well.

Personally, I find consecrations are usually better for protecting your allies rather than when used to bunker for yourself. They also go fairly well with the tomes since one can lay down their consecrations and then safely use the long cast-time spells from tomes (which are also quite supportive in nature).

Generally, I think you can expect a build using consecrations to be squishier and more supportive than what you were previously using (based on my experience with consecrations).

Personally I’d just like MI to target the lowest health ally in the area rather than the nearest ally. I find the ability is great for teleporting in at the last moment and then saving an ally, but if you have another ally next to you at full health, it’ll teleport you to him instead.

It being ground-targeted would be nice, but then it can’t be used to teleport through walls, making it less suited to saving allies (which I’m pretty sure was the original concept and intent behind the skill, hence the name).

Moobs.8231:

Staff Auto
Doesn’t do dmg, doesn’t support. What’s it for? Idk either but it breaks all the windows on one side of Clocktower in one auto, that’s cool right ?

Loved this part, even though it’s kind of sad. :p

Tyreal.5230:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Rangersix.1754:

Yeah, well, how effective was most of that healing? Just because you can burst heal for a few second and then basically be dead in the water for a few minutes, doesn’t make you an effective healer.

While Tome of Courage is down, a guardian with healing breeze and a staff will heal for around 120k per minute (so 720k in 6 minutes) in group healing.

healing for 2000 per second does not stop a zerker player from bursting you down in 2 seconds. If you are a 18k HP ele and a mob hits you forv25k with one attack or 15k with two seperate attacks you will still die. healing is only as effective as your damage mitigation from blocks, blinds, protection or…. dodge rolling. But if you are doing all those things already you aren’t taking damage and if you are it is very little. Thus healer is useless. The same way my DPS medi guard cuts through a warrior’s healing signet and still kills them in a few seconds.

On the contrary, burst healing another player should probably provide enough time for them to kill a zerker player (2000 health per second is merely the average, the amount that can be restored in a short amount of time is a lot higher than that as far as I’m aware). Of course they’d still need to dodge where appropriate, healing might not save them forever but it will give them the opportunity to kill the zerker before they’re bursted. Not that a healer guardian only heals.

Is hitting for 25k with one attack even possible in PvE? Is hitting for 15k with one attack even possible? From my experience in PvE, it certainly doesn’t seem like it (not that I do PvE much, but I’ve never been one-shotted by anything). That said, people can usually run whatever they want in dungeons and still be fine. Of course, zerker gear is the fastest way to complete dungeons.

Rangersix.1754:

Yeah, well, how effective was most of that healing? Just because you can burst heal for a few second and then basically be dead in the water for a few minutes, doesn’t make you an effective healer.

While Tome of Courage is down, a guardian with healing breeze and a staff will heal for around 120k per minute (so 720k in 6 minutes) in group healing.

Reborn.2934:

Fashion Mage.3712:

^
Also, I think Tome of Courage heals for around 50k per minute in group healing with Light of Deliverance followed by Heal Area spam.

once every 3 minutes . full warriors pt do cof in 6 minute

That’s not how per minute averages work sweetie. In 6 minutes Tome of Courage will have done 300k in terms of group healing just by itself. If you still think that’s insignificant, well then that’s your problem. :>

^
Also, I think Tome of Courage heals for around 50k per minute in group healing with Light of Deliverance followed by Heal Area spam.

If you ask me, the trait should do a little bit more anyway. ;>

Tarsius.3170:

Ah nice find.

When you activate Consecrated Ground it actually swaps consecration skills to ground targetted alternatives, so as you are probably correct that it’s legacy code.

I am therefore curious if:
a) -33% condition duration is broken too
b) it exhibits its “old” behaviour of allowing multiple condition cleanses by running in and out of the circle repeatedly.

That sounds like a pain to test, so I’ll probably just leave that to someone else. :p
If it really doesn’t decrease the duration, I wonder if that applies to Hallowed Ground’s boon duration as well. I know that displays the 20% boon duration icon at least, I’m not sure about Purging Flames.

As for running in and out of the circle, from what I tried it didn’t remove any conditions.

I tested it with a friend who put exactly 3 long-lasting conditions on me. Traited it very clearly only removed one condition. When I removed Consecrated Ground, it cleared the three conditions with no problem.

Presumably this glitch occurred when they changed the functionality of purging flames to remove three conditions and add the -33% condition duration effect, whereas it used to only remove one condition when you entered and exited the field. However, consecrations traited with Consecrated Ground are treated as different skills (which has another bug associated with it, but whatever), so presumably they forgot to completely change the functionality for the traited Purging Flames skill.

Purging Flames when traited with Consecrated Ground is glitched and it only removes one condition instead of three.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Purging-Flames-with-Consecrated-Ground

I tested it with a friend who put exactly 3 long-lasting conditions on me. Traited it very clearly only removed one condition. When I removed Consecrated Ground, it cleared the three conditions with no problem.

Presumably this glitch occurred when they changed the functionality of purging flames to remove three conditions and add the -33% condition duration effect, whereas it used to only remove one condition when you entered and exited the field. However, consecrations traited with Consecrated Ground are treated as different skills (which has another bug associated with it, but whatever), so presumably they forgot to completely change the functionality for the traited Purging Flames skill.

People underestimate a guardian’s allied-healing so hard it’s not even funny. When they’re both using healing builds, a guardian’s healing is quite possibly just as good as an elementalist’s healing (if not better).

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

brannigan.9831:

The guardian that won the North American TOL used healing breeze as his heal skill. So no you don’t need to use shelter.

/thread

Indeed. Healing Breeze is one of (if not the most) underrated abilities in the game imo.
If you ask me, it’s what makes healer guardians decent.

As it tends to be with all weapons (underrated or otherwise), it fits nicely on the right build.

Aza.2105:

Fashion Mage.3712:

The torch can be a life-saver supportively if someone gets bursted with conditions, providing that skill #5 removes as many conditions as it implies it does.

I believe it removes 9, one per pulse. Torch is awesome and underrated.

Agreed. I mean, that’s pretty much like a full-cleanse for allies on a 15 second cooldown (untraited).
I wouldn’t really say it fits bunker guardians well since it has little-to-no self-benefit, but for builds that forgo tankiness in favour of support, I’d say it fits quite nicely. The damage it offers isn’t too shabby either.

The torch can be a life-saver supportively if someone gets bursted with conditions, providing that skill #5 removes as many conditions as it implies it does.

Vargamonth.2047:

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Seems like a close-minded way to view things to me. Even if shouts might be optimal (I don’t believe they are personally), it doesn’t mean they’re the only things that are viable or competitive. This especially goes for certain game modes.

It’s extremely close minded, yes, but that’s what we can infer from the last Ready Up video (I tried to be sarcastic for my whole post; don’t know if I achieved it :P).

Sorry, I only realized you were being sarcastic now that you mentioned it. I thought it was kind of odd considering the views you expressed in the post you made a few days ago about the ready up. :>

Honestly I don’t really care if ANet has their own personal tunnel-vision on the classes, just as long as they don’t balance things based on that tunnel-vision (even though they probably will).

I think they fit specific builds quite nicely, but generally speaking, they’re not normally worth taking imo.

^Seems like a close-minded way to view things to me. Even if shouts might be optimal (I don’t believe they are personally), it doesn’t mean they’re the only things that are viable or competitive. This especially goes for certain game modes.

A guardian that deals high damage as well as having high healing/support (ie. zealot gear guardians) would be extremely squishy because they’d have extremely low hp and armor as well as few-to-no escapes. They’d be bursted before they can reliably heal by pretty much everything that isn’t full-bunker unless they’re positioned at a long range or have fail-safe abilities like Hallowed Ground or Sanctuary (both of which have long CDs). That’s not to say they’re bad necessarily, but they have big weaknesses to offset their advantages and they play pretty much the opposite to how guardians typically play (super squishy mid-long ranged dps/support). So it’s not “conceptually broken”, it has clear weaknesses and is easily countered by anything with a little burst.

Svarty.8019:

• Why does Guardian have cone abilities (shield #4 & Healing Breeze) when he is supposed to be in front of his allies?

Quite frankly, the kind of guardian that would be using Healing Breeze probably wouldn’t want to position themselves on the front lines in the first place (despite the devs insisting that all guardians are front-liners). Healing Breeze is a very supportive heal and it isn’t all that good for a bunker build. For me, merely having it equipped should shift your role to more of a mid-ranged healer/support rather than a close-ranged bunker/support.

I’d love longbows, and spears would be nice too.
I think the longbow could be a long-ranged damage/healing weapon with low bases for both, but high ratios so that it’s generally only one or the other (as in, primarily a damage weapon or primarily a healing/support weapon). Alternatively the longbow could just be a pure damage weapon, and an on-land trident could take over the long-ranged support part.

The build seems more bunkery than it is supporty to me (that’s not to say it isn’t supportive though).

Xaylin.1860:

Considering your rather high crit chance you might also consider Sigils of Water instead of Renewal.

I believe that’s how Sigil of Water used to work. It doesn’t proc based on crits anymore.