Guild Wars 2

The mmo community is fragile. Look at any other mmo message board and I can guarantee you reading through some of the threads will be enough to make you go bald.

Mesmers are generally a nightmare for an offensive build guardian. I’m currently running a bunker meditation, retaliation build with a mace+shield/Hammer and the results have been just splendid.

While guardian dps is quite respectable, there are other professions capable of dishing out larger bursts than guardians ever will. It is a trade off for having some of the best utilities in the game.

I love it! The female norn stretching backwards in midair looks amazing!

1/13.4th doesn’t seem very much. It’s certainly not enough to kill a Warrior, so I’m calling bull on Mr Wizardauz’ comment:

13th of the damage in one hit may not be much but if you factor in bleeds (which can stack), burning and damage from your own guardian, it can give the illusion that the warrior blew himself up. I’ve had damage build warriors and other guardians wipe themselves clean. Thieves tend to disappear and run away.

You rarely get kited in GW2 and when it actually happens, its not for a long period of time. Guardians have plenty of options of closing gaps through snares, teleports, walls and leaps. Depending on your build, the guardian is actually one of the best 1vs1 professions. I often cringe if I have to fight another bunker guardian 1vs1.

Learn to LOS like a boss.
lol
I don’t go anywhere alone. Guards are designed to run with a pack. If you’re trying to run lone wolf you rolled the wrong class.

Unless you’re running a completely dud build, there is no way you will get steamrolled 1vs1. One of the strengths of a guardian is being combat effective in pvp 1vs1. You will become a better player if you learn to fend for yourself.

1/ Most people will agree that #1 for scepter needs a speed increase or a rework similar to how other melee weapons combo. I probably want the the devs to make it more interesting to use so the latter.

2/ I think zealot’s defense is ok the way it is. The rooting and missing on strafing targets is annoying but the damage is causes is quite decent and really punishes rooted or stationary targets. It fits the role well of the 1sword as a more offensive option with a shield. The ability does auto target and thats enough for the time being.

3/ Shield #5. You are looking at the skill from a wrong angle. PvE It is mainly used as a interrupt and breather. The heal from the detonation is quite handy as well when you’re running out of options. The main use of #5 in PvP is node defending. The mass knockback easily sends enemies flying out of contested areas and this skill has great synergy with the Hammer abilities. It does seem odd that the shield offers no additional blocking but the play style revolves around retaliation and boons not block.

The healing detonation tends to not popup on occasions. Spamming seems to be one of the problems.

Damage builds are 50:50 in win/lose ratio depending on who gets the jump, who picked the right utilities, weapon sets and who is the smarter player. There are just so many variables that will effect the outcome of any 1vs1 fight.

If you really are struggling this much, I suggest changing your traits to meditations and retaliation. I won’t point too specifically because I don’t want to turn this into a cookie cutter build thread. But I will say that with this setup I haven’t lost a 1vs1 fight yet. Most people will end up blowing themselves up , but you’ll have to play around to your own style in the end.

Inspired Virtues… am I the only one who dislikes this trait line GREATLY? The only good thing there is the Master of Consecrations because Consecrations are just too awesome to pass, but everything else is just… wrong.

Placing points into radiance requires you to rethink how you play the guardian compared to a straight off damage build. Advantages of the virtues line won’t be noticed unless you fully devote your traits, weapon setup and utilities towards it including your elite.

Renewed focus goes hand in hand with the virtues line which suites the role of a support/bunker build. I find radiance not so good if you place the rest of your points in Zeal and radiance. Virtues have these types of cooldowns because they are group buffs. When you activate these it depends on the situation of the fight. There will be times where your opponent will be dead within 20 seconds because they killed themselves with retaliation and activating your virtues simply speeds up that process before reinforcements arrive.

The virtue cooldown problem can be solved with our elite skill which has a relatively low cool down compared to the tomes. The virtues line changes those skills into something you have to use more liberally in combat and the quicker you adapt to this, the more fights you will win.

This is just not pvp. A well timed Aegis can prevent 1shots and pushback similar to how you can time sanctuary or Mace skill #3. The 5 second burn from VoJ is useful for those fights when enemies go out of range/ disappear or teleport. Enemies or champions that just stand there with their thumbs in their bum isn’t a very good example for that virtue. It has it’s uses, just not on easy or zerg encounters.

Guardians are probably somewhere in the middle. Skills 2/3 are quite respectable but is is easy to get lost when comparing to some others…. like a thief where it is just plain annoying.

im not very happy with most guardian skills they are suck and wasting time and slot

There are probably about 4 guardian skills that I can think of that need some rework but other than that I really cannot agree with a bulk of your list. Most utility skills may look lacklustre but you have to understand that they are designed to work with certain specific builds and you will have greater success with them once you find that sweet spot. Also it is not fair to compare utility skills to other classes as each profession already have specific strengths and weaknesses so straight comparisons simply do not work in this situation.

Ones I do agree to a degree

Signet Of Mercy - Apparently the passive offers very little improvement. If someone had the real numbers, it would be great. The revive can be good in Tpvp. The 5 Second cast time can be combined with stability so it is not that terrible. I do find that the signet offers little to no utility and is very clumsy to use. Your revive all teammates idea is ridiculous and completely overpowered. Teammates around bunker guardians are already difficult to kill as it is. Guardians also have the easiest time saving teammates from their downed state through a huge arsenal of shouts, boons and interrupts.

Merciful intervention - I’m not sure if the targeting as been fixed to prevent you from targeting pets and other useless things you don’t care about. It is very situational and the times I have used it, the success rate is quite low. There are other options to get a similar effects as this, which is why I think this skill can use abit of an improvement.

Regarding the tomes - I don’t think that they need too much work. But they do feel clumsy to use and I think it is because of any accidental movement that may throw a skill on cool down without even using it. This problem is universal to alot of our skills that root you down and it is hideously frustrating on the #5 skill.

I cannot agree on

Sanctuary - These type of skills can be very misleading. People tend to think you will go immune but they are still subject to condition damage. I haven’t experimented too much with sanctuary but the reason many of these types of skills to not remove conditions is because the guardian already has 2 meditations, a shout, a consecrate, a trait and a signet that does. These aren’t meant to be “oh ****” buttons so use them to your advantage. You’ll realise that as a guardian, the only time you really have to worry about conditions is if you get bursted by 3 casters who don’t blow everything at once or everything is on cool down. 6 seconds is a long time of protection and can prevent you from being bursted down depending on how trigger happy your enemies are. When allies are inside it, its not like they’re stuck doing nothing….

Shelter - The difference between Shelter and the signet is that one can be combined offensively while the other is a pure defensive heal. I agree that the heal from shelter is somewhat small but the 2s block can actually mitigate alot of burst damage in that time. People who’ve put points in around aegis and blocking will benefit greatly from shelter, but for everyone else, the signet is the better option. The only time this skill is terrible is if you pick traits and other skills that have no synergy with it. The case is the same for half your list.

Renewed Focus - I’ve posted this in other thread regarding our elite skills. I initially hated this elite skill as well. However once you start to utilise your virtues and timing, it is quite fantastic to have and not as selfish as it looks. Placing a few points in radiance to give boons on activating virtues makes all the difference. It has the same nitpicks like sanctuary where conditions still tick but the low cooldown(for an elite) lets this one be used in just about every encounter. Bunker guardians swear by this skill.

I hope this answers some of the skills that may look weak. But I think 80% of the problems is finding a build that makes full use of your utilities. Once you do, most of the problems you highlighted would disappear. The guardian does not need anymore condition removals or boon giving. I would be more concerned on improving the stability of some skills so they don’t feel as cumbersome like accidental movement triggering a full cooldown rotation.

The writing was on the wall and guardians could easily keep almost 100% uptime on retaliation with little to no effort. This change brings the trait inline with the others but shouldn’t change the way guardians are currently being played. So all is good as long as you don’t activate everything at once.

I often die while casting Renewed Focus.. it makes you immune to incoming damage sure, but if you have conditions on you like burning, poison, bleeding and you use it at low health, then you can die from the dot damage. I actually used to like it too, but i died way too often from casting it in tpvp at low health.

I had this problem as well as I used to treat it as an “oh ****” button when I’m extreme low health but forgot that I had 6-10 stacks of bleeds on me still. I found that being more liberal with renewed focus is a good thing and you shouldn’t be afraid to use it when you’re 40% health and you’ve already activated your virtues.

The elites are very build specific. I used to run with tome of courage but found the casting times frustrating to deal with especially when the whole thing goes on cooldown because you accidentally moved.

I used to hate renewed focus but slowly have changed my mind about it. Guardians who placed runes into improving their virtues would understand as many Bunker builds rely on activating their virtues for boons and retaliation. This is why so many damage builds get ripped to shreds by bunkers because they blow all their abilities at once hoping for a quick kill. Renewed Focus has saved me countless times in pve and php but for anyone else who doesn’t have any points in virtues, they won’t be getting as much out of it.

Someone did some tests with the GS and Hammer single target wise, and they’re apparently not that much different. The relative low cooldown of hammer’s #2 makes up for the huge burst damage that GS #3 gives. AOE control and DPS though nothing comes close to the GS. But node defending, 1vs1s the hammer is the best option.

Hammer #4 and #5 are very powerful in pvp. #3 does require you to lead your target sometimes but works wonders when they’re trying to escape. I’ve found the hammer the most useful in small group skirmishes and mace/shield in clear 1vs1.

The 7 second nerf is indeed painful to swallow, but after some pvp games I didn’t really notice a difference in the outcome of the fights. You can still get around 80% retaliation uptime even as a bunker guardian by making use of your virtues and shouts. So in the end, 1vs1 fights last a little bit longer so you got to wonder how powerful bunker guardians were before the nerf.

Several utilities really make the class perfect for these dungeons. Stability and Wall of Reflection have saved my groups countless times. I personally prefer the hammer over the staff as it gives control and good damage.

I recently had a go with a build concentrating on virtues and had some decent results in group play and pve group encounters. Even without speccing into virtues, I occasionally still use aegis to block stomp attacks that I cannot dodge and burning for extra group damage, though I feel more comfortable activating knowing my elite skill is off cool down.

I can see this build working very well in Spvp since activating a virtue also grants retaliation so that aegis being wasted on a chain attack isn’t so bad afterall.

Solo pve I still prefer going 20 in damage as a full defensive build wasn’t very fun to play.

lol, why use a shield for protection boon? It lasts 5 secs and has a 30 sec cd. Its easier, more effective to just use hammer skill 1. Its not a cone, it has no cd, it has a large radius if you take the trait that increase symbol size. There really is no real reason to take the shield AT ALL. Not even for weapon swap.
Wall of Reflection> Shield of Absorption
Hammer chain> Shield of Judgement

While I think the shield feels completely empty when the skills are on cool down, you cannot compare Wall Of Reflection to Shield Of Absorption since one is a utility skill and both can be used at the same time.

Shield Of Judgement does feel like it is lacking something by itself but with the correct traits, 20% cool down reduction and +90 toughness, the shield is quite handy.

In my own personal experience, you will have more success using a a greatsword. Its one of the few situations where you’ll actually go down faster trying to spec defensively.

*It does the most burst damage and you can bring groups of destroyers down before they can do too much.

*The self combo will remove conditions which alot of the damage comes from.

*The GS also does not rely as much on burn damage compared to the one hand sword.

*Additionally, using meditation skills and the rune that heals every time you use one will become very handy against destroyers or any enemy that deals alot of condition damage.

The Hammer fairs ok as well but I prefer the blind/chain pull and burst damage from the GS as opposed to trying to control the destroyers.