Guild Wars 2

With hammer and stab on VoC celes engi is actually pretty beatable since everybody uses slick shoes now and in teamfights they are probably your easiest target (only with hammer tho).

And if you spend 4k hours on one of the arguebly easier classes in this game and you’re still performing bad maybe you’re just not as good as you think you are? ^-^

Sauncho.8076:

And med is ok, but other classes can fulfill the burst role better because they have escape mechanisms and can travel from point to point faster.

If you continue to advance this belief that guardians “are in a good spot,” I swear we will never excel and continue to be placed on the bottom of the priority list.

Guard has less mobility than other zerker classes, yes. Guard also has way more support in form of cleanse and stability and more sustain than the other zerker classes and has the edge in matchups against other zerkers. Quit talking like guard would be outclassed. And quit crying for buffs. It’s seriously disgusting.

It often happens to me when my target stealthes or I change my target during the windup so I think it could have something to do with that. It also happens a lot when I’m lagging. :<

Nah, Mooobs is right, the 5th is definetly guard judging from eu team comps atm.

Sauncho.8076:

Are you kidding me….so because one player had some success with a medi/hammer build that’s now considered meta. Please…. the truth of the matter is guardians are a dying class in the current “meta.” Our representation was low in the last tournament, and there weren’t even any guardians in the finals.

Most top teams on EU play with medi guard nowadays, the hammer build is meta, there are even people rerolling to guard. You don’t really have any reason to cry tbh.

That being said people are gonna be sheep and just copypaste the stuff that won the last big tournament like it happened every time. You should keep in mind that the other builds are still legit and better in many matchups. Builds aren’t set in stone and you should always adjust a few things depending on the comp you’re facing. ^-^

As other already said blind on VoJ, cleanse on VoR and stab on VoC make them very situational and impactful if you trait them. I don’t really see a problem with the meh passives though. Strong passive effects are boring and bad game design if you ask me. :<

Arken.3725:

Keksmuffin.1450:

What’s your problem with glacial heart? It’s really strong, every top guard takes it when they go hammer meditation. The fact that it procs on crit doesn’t make it worse than hydromancy. It makes it better because it will always hit when it procs making it a really reliable source of damage if you have intel sigil.

This trait is by no means incredibly strong. It’s used because other options aren’t as strong. This doesn’t mean Glacial heart is any good, you’re essentially choosing between the best of lesser evils.

I just think as a Master, it should have a little more. Like I said, if you want to keep it only attached to hammer, it needs to be that much stronger due to such a limitation.

Wat. On squishy targets in pvp it’s 2k or more and it’s instant which means it never misses and there is 0 counterplay to it. Buffing the damage or reducing the cooldown would be kittened.

What’s your problem with glacial heart? It’s really strong, every top guard takes it when they go hammer meditation. The fact that it procs on crit doesn’t make it worse than hydromancy. It makes it better because it will always hit when it procs making it a really reliable source of damage if you have intel sigil.

Meditations are neither good for WvW zerging nor for dungeons. :<

Dirame.8521:

Keksmuffin.1450:

Divok.6514:

In the 1v1 you are locked into a character (so therefore a class) for the entire month. This way you can’t cheese so easily as there will be at least 1 thing your build cant handle

You can still counterbuild a lot without switching classes. I was guard the whole time and I didn’t have a single hard matchup the whole cup because I got lucky brackets and engi is just too easy to counterbuild against with any class. :<

I think the reason why you won that 1v1 is because people don’t know how to counter the condi guard (and you should totally beat Rangers as well). And sure you can counter build but good players know how to deal with their counters on a 1v1 level.

I disagree with both your statements. There is no way for an engi to counter a condi guard, even egun or elixir r don’t help if I know that they have it

Also there is no way for guard to counterbuild a condi survival ranger with sbow s/d that either takes empathic bond and survival of the fittest or bark skin depending on your build. Of course it’s still beatable either way but there is no way that I could get myself an advantage against that build.

Apart from that I would have sugested round robin aswell but I knew that that would take way too long.

You realize that there’s a chat option for not seing these emotes in your chat? :<

Divok.6514:

In the 1v1 you are locked into a character (so therefore a class) for the entire month. This way you can’t cheese so easily as there will be at least 1 thing your build cant handle

You can still counterbuild a lot without switching classes. I was guard the whole time and I didn’t have a single hard matchup the whole cup because I got lucky brackets and engi is just too easy to counterbuild against with any class. :<

I think 1v1s are too matchup based to make a 1v1 tournament single elimination if you want it to be somewhat fair.
I should know. I kinda cheesed the last ESL 1v1 cup by going condi guard against engis (sorry thijsken :<) while the only thing that I couldn’t have counterbuilded (condi ranger :<) lost his match in the other bracket.

I was just wasting my time on the 1v1 server as usual when.. wat.

On a unrelated note Evon Gnashblade Representation Buttons can still not be activated in PvP servers while it works with the Ellen Kiel thingy. Fix plox.

drazeh

jportell.2197:

ronpierce.2760:

jportell.2197:

I agree with Josre on this one. The might nerf was unnecessary. Celestial amulet needs gutted.

I wish people would stop using this word. :P
It doesn’t need gutted. It needs trimmed back. Sledge hammer to builds only reduced diversity, that’s no fun. (I don’t play any celest builds)

The might nerf was anets version of a trim. It clearly didn’t work. So I am hoping when Anet finally guts it. They will actually do what you call trim it. Because Anet has been treating engis, eles, and warriors like their own special little snowflakes for well over a year now.

They treated warriors like their special snowflakes? Staggering Blow damage nerf, Earthshaker damage nerf, Arcing Arrow Damage nerf, Pin Down animation, Impale nerf, Healing Signet nerf, Berserker Stance nerf, Burst Mastery Nerf, Merciless Hammer nerf, Adrenaline change. Probably missed a thing or two. Clearly treated too good.

RiP hambow :<

Cleansing Burst still doesn’t scale with healing power. :<

Why don’t you go intel/energy on both sets? Force is pretty meh in PvP in general and intel on staff means you can hit okish staff 2 which actually does decent damage on valk and you would have more vigor.

^-^

Renewed Focus is really kittening strong if you’re traited for meditations and virtues which is pretty much the meta build for guard atm anyways. You get 2k heal, another blind, another cleanse, two more blocks and stability if you trait that far.

All that stuff on top of the 2s invuln makes it really strong against burst stuff and is one of the reasons why guard is so good at trading damage and killing squishies

If you think you need a secured stomp don’t waste your virtues? Also why shouldn’t it be worth it to stomp with focus 5 if you would win a fight with that?

Stomping usually isn’t neccesary as zerker guard anyways, guard gs has one of the best cleave on downed bodies you can have so usually you shouldn’t be the guy who’s stomping.

Solstice.1097:

idk from my perspective dps guard is pretty good vs glass cannons… it’s the sustain/bruiser builds they have major issues with.

if DPS guard gets any sort of buff, I think it should be a TINY bit more mobility.

I think you just got baited. :<

Since the ESL forums are pretty much dead but the only way of changing anything about ESL is posting there I’m just gonna hope that the PvP forums are not as dead and there are people here who care about this.

My last post on the ESL forums was me qqing about celestial in the 2v2 cup and they banned it a few weeks later so changing something doesn’t seem completly hopeless.

http://forum.eslgaming.com/discussion/3207/please-put-temple-in-the-esl-map-rotation

Zuik.7158:

Anyone want to trade 3ds friend codes for pokemon?

:<

:<

Dunno I would have prefered seing TCG win aswell and I think they deserved it more but why the kitten are you complaining about counter comping? You want to tell me you wouldn’t let people from your team that multiclass switch their class to adjust so you can win money?

GhOst.4019:

Doesn’t oRNG have underage players? or is that TCG now? or maybe 55hp..Hard to keep track of which one of these top teams can’t go even if they win :/

oRNG is the result of Cheese Mode having people who can’t play in WTS. You’re mixing things up. Everybody of oRNG can play. 55HP had underage people but they are able to replace them for WTS and TCG never had problems with having underaged players at all. So yeah. All of them could play.

Against most stuff you can stand inside of the WoR since it’s not a exactly wall but a rectangular field that pretty much has 2 walls.

Some stuff will still hit you if the mobs stand inside of the WoR aswell so just make sure that either only your party stands inside of the field OR only the thing you want to reflect and nobody from your party.

I got mine. :<

Well to be honest you’re fighting bad players, they don’t stunbreak, they don’t dodge, they backpedal, they run terrible builds and you’re farming them with a gimmicky one trick pony.

I don’t know why you get all defensive about it either. If you’re that bad at dealing with critisism that you have to write a wall of text every time somebody points that out maybe you shouldn’t post content on the internet.

Morwath.9817:

Brigg.6189:

No cheese mode?

Also it looks like TCG split into TCG and Orange Logo?

I think Cheese Mode doesn’t exist anymore.

Frae and the poser with the pokemon names are in Orange Logo. The rest of Cheese Mode either wasn’t 18 or wasn’t from EU so they couldn’t have played as Cheese Mode in WTS.

And again somebody from my team confirmed that we could play without me knowing about it. This seems to be a theme. Sigh.

Chaith.8256:

Wintersnight.3061:

No one really cares. It’s boring. You either run the same Cele team that the abjured run and try to win the boring sustain game, or play for 2nd place.

This week at the Go4: Both teams run Thief. Both teams run a Cele Engi roamer. Both teams run two Cele pointholders. DoD Runs DPS Ele and Abjured runs Condi Necro

DPS Ele Sustain > Condi Necro sustain.

You are actually wrong, there is no way that Abjured can be construed to be running a higher sustain comp than DoD. Especially because DoD brings a Battle Standard elite. Confirmed you just associate winning with cheesing, ‘sustain’, and meta abuse, while you don’t really know what either team is doing well. Kappa.

Wintersnight.3061:

Dodge or Die got close in Legacy mid ( a burst friendly map), then couldn’t beat the sustain and got 3 capped.

Actually, it was more like: DoD played extremely well, and aggressive, starting to snowball hard, early game, and then Abjured played extremely aggressive and snowballed harder, late game.

#Public enemy #1

Dunno. At least on EU I don’t really see anybody running with more than 3 celes. My team plays with only one celes class and we can still compete.

People should probably drop this AMGLAMESUSTAINCHEESE argument at this point anyways. I’m not a fan of celestial either and I would love to see it just getting deleted or something but I really don’t see the point of complaining about teamcomps. Not like they couldn’t just play it themselfes if they think they have to do so to win. :<

Tom Gore.4035:

Yeah the real question here is why didn’t the other team rush your lord when they hit 350? Did you defend him?

The gate was already opened because I destroyed it while we were regrouping. We went for lord with 2 zerkers. We definetly would have had the faster lordkill so they tried to decap the one point we still had which they managed to do the second we got to 500 points.

And please don’t bring GW1 into this. I don’t know much about GW1 GvG but I’m pretty sure there was no stealth, no portals and no rallying on npcs. Also you can’t just let everybody from your team defend lord on legacy since the other team decapping everything while you overcommit to defending lord is still a possibilty.

So.. yeah.. This topic has been brought up a bunch of times on the forums already. The lord on legacy is just way to weak at this point, often enough granting really undeserved wins by letting you come back even if you fuked up everything.

Let me give you an example. Yesterday in the semis of the Go4 Cup my team was behind with 320-400something points, they had a double cap, we still had people respawning and they were already engaging our last point. On every other map this game would have been lost at this point. We were on legacy though. 3 people from my team just suicided on close one after another to keep it for a few more seconds while my thief and me killed their lord in a few seconds. We made it to 500 points. The moment the game ended we had no points and two people were dead. I never had a win that felt so undeserved.

Even if people come to defend, if the attackers are there before they arrive it’s pretty much guaranteed that they will get the kill.

The main reasons why lord is so easy to get is that it is unchanged since release while all the classes do way more damage than they used to do. A lot of that is to blame on the sigil and rune changes that happened a while ago. The heal from lord is incredibly easy to interupt, giving him stability only works if there is no thief or necro which can just interupt through that.

Also the casters and soldiers that are supposed to “protect” the lord are a joke. If I go for lord I usually just pull with binding blade, use whirling wrath and they are already dead at that point. Either you should make them way more tanky or at least not let people rally from them. I don’t know why rallying from npcs is a mechanic in PvP anyways. It makes it almost impossible to kill people going for lord fast because the possibility that they will rally on a caster that randomly died to AoE is pretty high. Also you should probably make the cast of the heal faster since it often enough died before even getting a chance of getting it off.

On 4/6/2/0/2 with RHS, retributive armor, food and fury you already have near 100% critchance so precision over power is pretty meh.

Also last time I checked minipets were not allowed in record runs since gaining the 7% dps increase with that is considered a bug but I’m not that much into it so I’m not sure.

Harbinger.8637:

As I stated before, bunker Guard is viable. Is it the clear choice this meta? No, there are better options. However, saying it flat out sucks and is useless is a complete fabrication.

I kinda agree with this. Just because top players move on to another build doesn’t mean the old one is horrible all of the sudden. It might not be optimal and only works in certain comps but it’s still a decent build.

It’s pretty much the same with people suddenly claiming that hambow would be dead just because rom rerolled shoutbow. Sigh.

Black Box.9312:

kitten.1685:

“AoE of scepter”
hahahah what?

Smite isn’t as strong as GS symbol or WW, but it’s harder to see, is ground targeted up to 1200 range, and has much less downtime. People often underestimate it.

Smite is not an AoE. Each of the 16 hits that go down in the target area can only hit one target so it basicly becomes less effective the more targets there are. :<

The main thing scepter has over sword is the 2s imob that is pretty much not dodgeable. If you think that scepter was underwhelming you probably wasted your imob a lot and just used it to hit smite or something.

The imob is basicly your only way besides pull and teammates CCing stuff of hitting decent players with whirling wrath. It’s also a good way to secure hitting smite condi, leap of faith or telegraphed stuff from your teammates.

Also having two melee weapons means that you either go all in on somebody or you’re doing no damage at all.

That being said in some situations/matchups sword can be better than scepter, there is some stuff that doesn’t really care about the imob (warriors with dogged march, rangers with s/d) and stuff where range won’t really help you and you want to stay close to them all the time anyways (mesmers, s/f eles) and sometimes having one port more can really help to get on a point before it’s decapped or to stay on a kiting target in a teamfight or just for general mobility if your team gives you targets to port to.

If scepter wouldn’t have this sik imob I would probably play GS sw/f aswell.

Inb4 Mooobs disagrees with everything I said. Aparently writing his name with three Os works.

kitten.1685:

Interupt mantra up?
Cast ZD or WW and instantly cancel cast and laugh as no chaotic interuption procs.
Then immediately go ham on auto attacks
Repeat until mantra is completely depleted and just go ham some more.

Ok now Ill answer your questions on the 3 builds you mentioned
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?
Shatter – Hopefully not open field, I have the advantage when able to use LoS (when running sword/focus gs).
CI: Do I know the mesmer? Do they spam mantras or wait for animations? Regardless I dont actually attack until you burn your power lock. I usually will bait WW+ cancel as if you think im going to JI into you and then after you use a mantra I’ll just burst with symbol autos or BB autos.
Condi: Is it super lame bunker condi or shatter condi? Bunker mantra condi I should probably not engage. Shatter condi is easy as I just dodge shatters as normal and blind sword 3s.

How do you feel about your odds of winning?
Shatter: 95%
CI: 80%
Condi Shatter: 95%
Condi Bunker: 10%
Strategies and tactics?
Opening with RoJ+ JI + Sword autos is usually the best opener for all 3. Dodge mirror blades and shelter BF shatters or just shatters I dont have a dodge for. BB when they enter stealth cuz they usually dont have a dodge. Land every smite condition, train with sword autos, usually I win.
Which type of Guard build do you feel best fights Mesmer?
Sw/f GS is probably the best build vs mesmer.
What Guard skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?
RoJ, smite condition, BB. If you land these every time you will win almost every time.
How do you feel about Mesmer in general?
Countered by guardian.

Pretty much. I would like to add one thing though. I won against every single shatter mesmer I faced on the 1v1 server with my offhand-weapons-only-condi-guard. It’s pretty op. c:

Also Binding Blade can sometimes 1 shot mesmers because they bodyblock projectiles that were supposed to hit their clones. Not like you could rely on it but it happens every now and then.

Saiyan.1704:

I think these type builds should be in the same league as condi engi, ranger, and other similar builds. Unless those specs got a 3 score too… which I doubt. Even though the spec itself isn’t my play style, the build itself is on par with zerk meds in terms of consistency.

I’ll get on the site and vote, for the simple fact that condi excels against other builds that Zerk Meds have trouble with. That in itself is worth a higher grade.

EDITED
Oh and try playing with geomancy + torment sigs. It does more damage in groups as apposed to a single condi condition; doom or Earth.

It’s true that condi/hybrid guard kills some stuff that the usual zerker guard has problems with (most notable engi) but that allone doesn’t really mean anything in a 5v5 gamemode. Condi thief freekills condi engis while zerker thief is pretty much countered by them. Does that mean condi thief is viable now?

Also torment sigils proc on crit and with carrion you have less than 10% crit chance. I don’t really see how that would be worth it.

Altruistic Healing is pretty selfish and unnecessary sustain stuff in dungeons. Your utility bar seems pretty random. Apart from that you’re not too far off.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR8dlsApXolCxZI8DNR8QlbKOG2+BtQlBQDA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdD5dRAA4JAQp6PmpEEA-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR8dlsApQolCxZI8DRR8QlVKa9H0CbQlBQDc1RA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdD5dRAA4JAQp6PmpEEA-e

These are pretty much the 2 common builds for dungeons depending on how much utility you need. You can swap some utilities, traits and weapons depending on the encounter.

Also this might be helpful:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Coulter.2315:

Unfortunately you’ve now created something which can create 5 Confusion for 11secs from range so the instant you do address the real problems with the weapon you’ll have a monster.

They are really good at doing this kind of stuff. Buffing something again and again at the wrong spots, then finally giving it the one buff that it needed and suddenly all the small buffs it got before matter and it ends up being OP. Best example is probably D/D ele finally getting celestial after they buffed all kinds of small stuff like burning speed, frozen burst and cleansing water.

I hope they will finally start thinking about what a class/weapon/trait actually needs before they just mindlessly buff stuff that seems underwhelming.

“Counters

Well played condition engineer/necro
Well played S/D thieves"

I can kill engis with this build without mainhand weapons and you call it a counter to this build? wat

Also I think it’s pretty ridicolous that Greatsword is the default choice in this build, especially now that torch got buffed.

I think the build is still really niche and deserves a spot right next to condi mesmer, condi ele and other stupid 1v1 specs.

So uh… you complain about people who complain about meditation guard having good matchups against their classes and then complain about necro having a good matchup against your class? Did I miss something?

Apart from that I think meditation guard has a slight advantage over pretty much every necro build apart from condi necro with rabid and unblockable marks. Even that is pretty winable though.

While you’re at it make the standard model for engi less ugly. :T

Traveler rune is horrible for your damage but so is crest of the soldier so I guess it doesn’t really make a difference.

eugenstash.8610:

This build does just fine for me in PVE. Frankly, i could run naked and do well in PVE. But, i run this build because I like it and it has performed just fine. Keep up the good work Nhymz!

If you think you would still do well naked why do you need altruistic healing? :T

Black Box.9312:

Booms.2594:

Thief takes so much effort to beat since if they land 1 mace crack its gonna be close and if they land 2 then its over and you lost gg..

It still really kittenes me off that when a thief steals from a guardian they get a skill that gives them something that we don’t even have.

What are you talking about we have this sik daze m8 http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pacifism

On a srs note: Condi/hybrid/whatever guard brings basicly nothing to teamfights, meh cleave, barely any noticeable aoe, barely any support, no burst at all and it doesn’t even have any defense over standard meditation guard baring some extra health.

It would also be nice if you could drop this stupid “people will avoid your burst easily when you play zerker guard” argument already. If you can’t set up bursts or at least get some decent damage off with a 1/2s casttime imob that is basicly undodgeable, smite condi that does up to 4k instant damage and a port that lets you hit pretty much any skill if you precast it from a LoS, then maybe you’re doing something wrong. Stop randomly porting with gs 2 and hoping that people will tank it maybe. :T

I don’t really like hammer because every skill, especially 3 and 4 are so situational that it is a pretty bad weapon in 1v1s and still pretty meh in 2v2s.

The stab on f3 is also very situational, in many situations it’s kind of unneccesary since a well timed aegis would do pretty much the same. It’s cool against engis and eles though, giving you and your team stab when there is an ele with shocking aura or an engi runnning a arround with slick shoes it can be pretty nice. Also it can be nice in bigger teamfights where one aegis wouldn’t be enough to secure the stomp.

Basicly hammer sc/f 01616 is stronger in teamfights and it’s nice for some coordinated wombo combos but it’s a lot weaker in smaller fights and 1v1s. Since these smaller fights are kind of what zerker guard is best at I’m not really a fan of the build.

Also you give up even more damage which means you can’t kill mesmers and teefs that well anymore which is kind of your job as zerker guard.

I personally switch from 21614 to 01616 against celestial comps that have no mesmer/teef because the stab makes me last longer against eles and engis, it makes me more useful in teamfights and I probably won’t go for 1v1s anyways if there is no zerker and no hambow on the other team.

The only elite that really does anything offensive is tome of wrath. Use 4 for fury and quickness when you have free time when a boss is not attackable yet or something and throw it away again since actual weapon rotations do way more damage than anything you could do with the tome. Obviously using a 180s cd just for some low duration fury and quickness is pretty meh so I wouldn’t even bother with it.

It’s been a few months since the last time I changed my elite from renewed focus to something else on any of my guardians in any gamemode.

I guess if you REALLY want something that does damage even if it’s really underwhelming and kinda useless you could also use the hounds of balthazar. They usually hit for 2k smth and then die and they have 240s cd but hey.