Guild Wars 2

As I said, though, it is possible for protection to absorb as much (or even more) than the blocks. It really depends on how its used.

And that is why I prefer the shield over the focus. There’s no doubt FOR YOU the focus is superior in reducing incoming damage. The shield is the party tool. My guardian is durable enough as is.

Banewrath.5107:

protection won`t absorb what a focus block will.

Well that would depend entirely on how many people benefit from the protection.

The focus block is only for you.

The problem I have with #5 is the range on it. It literally only works if stuff is meleeing you directly. Extremely short range, and I typically like to fight further back than that. Melee shouldn’t be getting to me in general with rifle/flamethrower.

Elementalists are not the ranged dps powerhouses people assume they are. That’s rangers. Elementalists are the party AE guys.

I suspect most people complaining about the lack of ranged are talking purely from a PvP/WvW sense where wading into melee is instant death (for them).

Nightwind Of Dwayna.3250:

How often do you find that the “heal others” component of HBreeze actually swings the tide of an engagement, though? When I run it, I find that the green numbers over the heads of the good guys are just so small that they make literally no difference taken over the duration of the CD. I am not heavily specced in +Healing, but neither do I completely ignore it.

I’ve used HBreeze, and I don’t hate it, but I think the supplemental heal could be a bit better or the CD slightly (5 secs?) shorter.

I run full cleric so I have a tremendous amount of healing, along with 30 points in the healing line. It’s very noticeable and keeps people from death, easily – which in pvp is the difference between winning and losing.

There’s that ‘viable’ word again. Healing breeze is plenty viable in WvW and when you’re in a support role (specifically staff). I’m constantly running behind or next to people and able to aim the ability JUST fine.

The problem people have with the ability isn’t because the ability is bad.

I’m having no issues with firearms rifle and backup grenades/flamethrower for area effect. I’ll admit I haven’t tried much else, so I can only say that what I’m doing is working fine.

Honestly I only use the flamethrower really for the #2 ‘mortar’ style shot, as it hits extremely hard. I’ll alternate between that and rifle, using the pushbacks from both to keep things at ideal range for it.

It would be nice if it did more than that, but I think it’s actually a decent weapon in conjunction with others.

You haven’t tried grenades underwater, obviously.

As I said, a ‘good’ melee spec. Technically we have a ranged one with the scepter, a similar argument is being made about its use.

Animatus.6197:

Every single class has a good range and melee spec, everyone except guardians, and with this game being so anti-melee its very difficult without a ranged spec

I think most engineers would take issue with you assuming they have a good melee spec.

hm on that note does any class get reliable burning on their #1 chain?

Well if we’re just throwing out “I wish” ideas here, I’d just say make the trident or spear work on land (and reconfigure the skills a bit).

Obviously, since you can’t :P

Keelin.5781:

I kinda remember A.Net mentioning that they do in fact want everyone to be viable in every situation. This is why the trinity is gone.

Giving guardians a viable ranged weapon hardly means that all classes should be the same. It simply means that guardians would have a viable ranged weapon.

Who’s to say that it wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the guardian?
It would probably end up with a fair amount of support skills on it.

Limiting classes to a certain range in a game like this is simply bad.
If you honestly think that i should have less fun in WvW because of my class choice then i don’t know what to tell you.

You chose the Guardian to use a longbow?

Because it’s not the way we were designed. /shrug

People seem to have this idea that all classes should be able to do the same things. I don’t.

And engineers don’t have a ‘real’ melee weapon, what’s your point?

I honestly think some people rolled the wrong profession.

I haven’t had any problems at all, rifle/flamethrower with the option to go grenades for events (and underwater of course).

You can’t faceroll stuff like a warrior (or my guardian) of course, but I wasn’t expecting to be able to out of this class. It takes a bit more finesse.

Valor is fantastic with a mace/shield and Honor (cleric) build.

Some of the other stuff in there is goofy for anything else, though, I agree. Also, I have a feeling we won’t ever see a mace cooldown reduction as the #3 is prettykittenpowerful as is (not to mention #2).

One thing they could consider doing, though it might screw up some weapon skills, is something like what the thief gets with dual wielding. Where the #3 skill changes depending on what combination of weapon + shield you use. This might solve the variety problem people seem to have an issue with. It’s something in general with offhands, you’re only limited to two abilities so if you don’t like either (or even one) you feel like the offhand is junk.

If I recall, the traits the help hammers a lot (symbols and the cooldown reduction) are actually in the Healing line, so I would look there instead of Zeal.

You can’t get cultural armor until level 40/60/80 anyway, and it’s very expensive.

You have PLENTY of options for armor looks outside your racial.

Vigil.3408:

Read through the entire thread and I agree with the general sentiment that shields are extremely lackluster compared to the alternatives.

There should be a real incentive to play as a defensive Guardian; Sword/Board should be rewarded but it’s not – the sword is offensive and the shield is useless. It seems to be contrary to the theme of the weapons/armor. The most defensive weapon set up is Scepter/Focus, which doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

I’d love to see the dev team take a good hard look at Guardians. In beta we had bigger health pools (which helped A LOT). Since that nerf Guardians have never been quite the same. I’m not entirely sure what our role is. We’re not DPS, and if we try to go that route we’re glass cannons with mediocre damage. We’re not healers; Engineers do that better. We not tanks; the health pool nerf took care of that.

Guardians – jack of all trades, masters of none?

I can understand you feel the guardians are not defensive enough if you honestly believe the SCEPTER is our most defensive weapon.

Try the mace sometime. Honestly if you’re geared, traited and skilled right, you don’t even need an offhand to be tougher and more defensive than any other profession in the game. The shield is just a plus for group defense, and that’s why I use it.

Very good in a support role. I wouldn’t suggest solo levelling with it.

In PvE I typically hit all the melee players since they’ll be behind the mobs while I’m in front (that’s why it was designed that way).

I actually take that trait, so I guess I’m nobody too, cool!

Yea I just think all you’re really getting is 75 power and 75 vitality, which isn’t bad but just not sure that really supports the build’s goals either. I’d have to look again at what’s available to give a real suggestion.

Daedalus.3954:

Hence the Carrion Gear, if you didn’t see it I stated I have about 1900 Condition Damage.

Yea I meant your rune selection.

I would focus less on condition duration and more on condition damage. As you point out, cleansing nullifies the duration whereas the damage is always constant since you’re not stacking like a bleed.

Personally I find group protection more beneficial with my skillset than yet another block (or blind, which is in effect the same thing). I’m plenty tough on my own, it’s nice to be able to extend some of that to others.

Far as I know it’s visual only, not effect.

As I suspected this is more about WvW and PvP, I’ll let you guys debate about that.

Compared to the other classes I’ve played, the guardian seems to (again, keep in mind I focused on defense) have the largest margin for error when playing – the most forgiving combat in ability to take hits.

My engineer for example while I have a lot of abilities to keep things at ranged, if they fail me or I pull to much I’m in for a world of hurt. Similar with my elementalist. In fact I rerolled from my elementalist to guardian because I was just not getting how to play it (I guess) and kept getting downed.

It can be a tremendous difference if it’s on a big hit (which you see coming in pve for example). I just feel like it’s a bit vague to have honest feedback on, as our experiences are going to differ massively depending on what we’re playing as and what against.

It helps if you clarify what kind of build/weapon you’re using. I have absolutely no problems at all with our survivability using mace/shield and a cleric suit with honor/valor traits for example.

Leiloni.7951:

He means viable as a good dps weapon. Not simply viable to use in any spec/role but a specific one.

And far more than the greatsword are ‘viable’ in this capacity.

Mougen.6702:

I actually agree with this. As a guardian I find myself avoiding water as much as possible. I’m mostly build around tanking so it always takes me a bit longer to kill things even on land than it would for most other players. That being said, the trade off is that I rarely die and am able to take on 5+ creatures at a time. Underwater it takes me FOREVER to kill even weaker creatures and that’s using the spear. The only real problem I have with this is it takes a big chunk of the game that could be quite fun and turns it into drudgery.

I’m in the same boat. I imagine if I were traited with stats towards raw damage I’d find it a better experience, but I’m not about to change my entire configuration for underwater only play.

All the weapons in our arsenal are viable, stop using that word.

They also all function differently. Buffing the attack speed on the mace would be counter to its very design function (defense/protection).

Nevermind clearly I’m getting trolled here. Let’s keep this thread clean.

Svarty.8019:

Should be reworded to: Survivability depends on active power use. Otherwise you’re as soft as an elementalist. There is no passive defense.

Armor is passive defense, and we have more of it than elementalists do. It won’t let you survive avoidable big hits sure…but they’re avoidable.

Svarty.8019:

I would argue that:
-Traits, weapons and skills are all very defining and not as easily flippable as you make out.
-I can’t switch traits without summoning up vast quantities of gold.
-While I can use a hammer, there are mechanics in place to prevent me eqiupping it mid-battle.

Untrue, the actual weapon specific traits can be swapped out when out of combat just as your skills and weapons can be. You can’t choose a new LINE, but you can absolutely reconfigure your selected traits in a line.

If you’re going to be switching to a weapon midfight, it needs to be one of your two equipped. That doesn’t mean you can’t carry more in your bag when you’re encountering particular enemies you know a weapon is strong against.

For example I ALWAYS had a staff in my bag for travel and event support. Greatsword too for offense when I was running mace/staff equipped.

eh I haven’t found escape to be a problem with our condition cleanses and the staff (line of warding + swiftness). Most of our offensive weapons (sword, greatsword, scepter) have some form of gap closing ability on them, as well.

I will say I adapted to a shout build for WvW though, as I wanted to be more mobile (and also used staff primarily instead of mace/shield).

Burn does more damage per tick than the other two dots until you have bleeds stacked really high. It stacks duration (as by default it doesn’t last long because of the high damage it does). It can provide us with a lot of damage if you go into conditions with a sword/torch build. Otherwise it’s just a nice plus (conditions ignore armor/toughness).

Just wanted to add agreement that I find underwater as a guardian to be painful. Spear does decent damage but at the cost of survivability and while trident provides that…it pales on the damage.

Similar to what I run though I focus on meditations instead of shouts and use the signet heal (and signet cooldown from radiance). Cleric gear with deep honor/valor and mace/shield is pretty tough, very tanky.

+90 healing per the wiki, not bad but probably not worth the utility slot for that alone (if the on use effect is subpar).

Most meditations suck? The two I use are two of the most powerful abilities in our arsenal (contemplation of purity and smite condition – no surprise there being former monk skills).

Also being able to grant the passive part of virtue of resolve to everyone around us is pretty major to me.

Some probably need work, but you can’t just lump them all under the ‘no good’ category.

Grats on the sticky, very good stuff in here.