Guild Wars 2

1) What’s the survivability and damage like with mace + shield?

WEAK

2) What should my traits look like to maximize survivability but still be able kill enemies when I’m clearing locations for exploration?

I don’t know yet.

3) What stats should I be looking for on my armor and sockets?

I go with toughness and vitality. The default values are abysmal. Can’t compare with warriors, for example.

Daboris.6730:

You also have to understand, dungeon-wise at least, that your utility choices and group helpfulness are both huge factors on your survival; ie., you can take Retreat! for open-world use, but in a dungeon it’s much less useful.

While I agree that skills and traits tend to have situational usefulness, I disagree with the example you give. The extra aegis on retreat is very nice when tanking a single opponent.

At the moment, I’m using the blinds and aegis combination to negate enemy attacks. Against multiple enemies I get completely destroyed, but it’s excellent against a single enemy. Unless it’s a warrior, in which case I get one-shotted. Or a ranger, you can’t do anything about being kited. Or a mesmer, you can’t stop all those attacks. Or a necro, they put up too many conditions to purge. Etc etc. Frankly, I’ve never solo’d anybody.

The aegis/blind concept means using for powers like “Retreat” (for a bonus aegis) mid-fight, and not just to run away.

The 1h sword has a blind on it’s second power and the third is a big damage dealer. I paired this up with the focus which has another blind and (imho) one of the best guardian powers: a triple block bubble. On my second weapon set I use sceptre for it’s range (first and second powers) and it’s immobilise (third power). Paired with this I have the torch, which has a PBAoE-come-range attack as power four and an awesome fifth power which delivers high short-range damage in a cone.
So that’s:
Sword & focus
+Sceptre & torch
My traits are wrong, (and I’m waiting to get to the next respec) so I can’t really give advice in that respect, suffice to say it should involve the one-handed weapon 15% crit, and whatever blinds and aegis powers you can find.

Where skills are concerned, I mix it up a lot. “Save Yourselves” and “Retreat” work remarkably well in WvW. Because I hate underwater combat, I use the spirit weapons and try to get them to fight for me.

It should be noted that no matter what spec you go with, in WvW you are a kitten and you just have to suck it up or reroll.

The numbers on whirling wrath are far too high. Someone must have put an extra 0 on the end or something. Oops, butterfingers!

Krathalos.3461

Guardian is tied for the lowest HP with Thief at 10,805.
They don’t have OP survivability. If anything, their survivability is about average.
Also, toughness makes less of a difference than vitality.

Finally, a voice of reason.

MoosieOfDoom.4926:

I really dont know. I just get really close befor using it. Then it seems to do fine. But a little to far and you seem to miss alot indeed.

Meby it is designed to be used that way?

Sorry for not giving a anwser :P

Ah that makes sense. Thanks.

Power #2 on the spear (Zealot’s Flurry) misses a LOT. It seems to be a disproportionately high rate of misses. Do you think this is a bug or is the skill designed to be almost useless?

Deacon.6249:

nvidia just released new drivers

Are they recommended by Arenanet?

Sometimes the pointer actually disappears.

Please can we have less invisible players? They are unfun.

DPS Adjustment

All damage is reduced by 20% to give better passive defense to me.

Clearly, you don’t understand.

My point is that we require passive defense and all we have is active defense. I got 1 shotted by a whirling warrior (I’m 50 boosted and he’s 80 in WvW zone, but still, rubbish for a class that is supposed to be amazing at defense).

Shimond.2478:

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.

The point is that passive defense is virtually non-existant, which is emphasised by your point.

The guide is ridiculously optimistic about the capabilities of the class. For example:

3) You are not defined by your weapon. You are not limited by your weapon. While it’s true that certain Traits do encourage the use of certain weapons, remember that Traits are not at all permanent. Look, just because you have a Trait that gives you +15% Crit with a one handed weapon doesn’t mean you can never ever use a staff or a hammer. Be flexible.

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.

And:

Active Defense: Regardless of your style of play, your Guardian—any Guardian, in fact—will always have defensive abilities available to them. Defensive abilities are defined as abilities that mitigate damage, remove conditions, protect allies, apply boons and provide healing.

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

The guide is ridiculously optimistic about the capabilities of the class. For example:

3) You are not defined by your weapon. You are not limited by your weapon. While it’s true that certain Traits do encourage the use of certain weapons, remember that Traits are not at all permanent. Look, just because you have a Trait that gives you +15% Crit with a one handed weapon doesn’t mean you can never ever use a staff or a hammer. Be flexible.

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.

I have a FPS problem in Charr city (I have been there twice). When I leave the city, the problem remains. I can clear it by reloading from character select.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

I am SO glad that I’m not alone in believing that the combat needs to be altered. I hate being one/two-shotted for no apparent reason. That’s the WORST thing that can happen in a game.

Shield of Absorption “Create a dome around you that pushes foes back and absorbs projectiles” doesn’t absorb cannonballs. Cannonballs are projectiles and should therefore be absorbed.

Boone.7132

If you step up to a boss you will get killed in short order, even using blinds, stuns, dodging, etc liberally. You find yourself stepping out melee range just to let your skills recharge.

I’ve had this experience in AC dungeon and on champion mobs. Defensive powers don’t reset quickly enough, you run around circle kiting. Abysmal design imho. Unless there’s some secret way that Arenanet intended people to spec to play tankier? To which I would ask, “Why do we have to spec a particular way?”, and “why can’t everybody from that class do that thing by default?”. Or is this something to do with this new spaced-out class design (freedom to choose) we’ve had imposed upon us?

frodamn.3706:

This is going to be a very short post, because of a very simple reason.

Arena net have said many times there is no holy trinity anymore, everyone can do everything, and everyone can choose what to play.

Thats great and all and I really love the concept, but something doesn’t add up.

Healing power: A stat for healing.

Why is this in the game? It just separates the idea of a holy trinity, because if you are gearing for healing, then you are “a healer” and then can not deal damage as much as you could be therefore you arent “a dpser”

I dont understand the reasoning behind this? I understand why you would have condition damage and power separate, but the healing stat seems out of place.

1. I agree.
2. Why is this in suggestions?

My random thoughts on this: I still don’t fully understand the reasoning behind the classes. The ones with healy abilities, what are they supposed to be/do? Is there no “supposed to” anymore? If that’s the case, and speccing for healing isn’t an option (it really is not an option), what’s the point being able to heal a bit? Is everybody supposed to chip in? If so, who’s tanking? Why do the people who are tanking die so much? Oh, there’s nobody healing them…. why not? Because they’re healing themselves. It’s a mess from the bottom up. Needs attention and some kind of explanation somewhere.

mnguyen.5142

why is raulph lauren polo 4x as expensive than say hanes or old navy

Because people are prepared to pay it. Cultural armour on the other hand… the vendor would be out of business.

Willowleaf.5721:

I was quite surprised to find that about the gears being damaged in WvW. [..] It does not make sense.

IMHO It’s a backwards step.

I agree. I think they should get rid of the (extremely expensive) cost to respec but make it so you have to be out of the combat zones to do the respec.

I play a lot of WvW.
I went with one of the builds someone mentioned here. Here are some factors to take into consideration;
a) It was a spike build, so it has nothing to mitigate damage in itself, but I can’t even muster reasonable output,
b) My character is only 45, so I don’t have access to the full trait spec of the build.

What is a reasonable a build for WvW? I find myself switching skills depending on whether I’m in open field/keep assault or keep defense (“feel my wrath… my tiny, weak, 20 second long wrath”).

I’m getting stomped every single 1v1. What am I doing wrong? It seems enemies wipe me in 20 seconds. Which is pretty good. If I was playing another class it would be over more quickly. I can usually get shield of wrath and shield of absorption off before being crushed.

I just get DPS’d down too quickly. What’s the deal with the massive DPS? Is everybody else a glass cannon? What’s going on? Why have I only got 12k HPs?

I feel extremely weak and heavy armour seems like a joke. Is there no passive mitigation at all?

Sadpandas.7489:

I really enjoy the fact that they can wade into the thick of battle and not only survive but be very useful at the same time. Not many professions can withstand prolonged engagements without either dying or having to back out

Sorry I didn’t get to the end of your text, but judging by the above assumption, you should go with Ranger.

I agree with the OP except on the symbol of swiftness. I think it’s fine. It gives you and your allies a speed boost and slows enemies by tagging them as “in combat”. I think that’s all it’s for.

I would like a simple passive toughness booster.

I concur. Some viable alternatives would spruce up this aspect of the game. Having said this, since we do have one solid heal, there’s no urgency for the implementation of said alternatives.

You will be able to judge whether cultural armour is are fairly priced by the percentage of the population who have it. I bet it’s less than 1%.

I believe you can do cast them while knocked down.

If they’re going to change hammers, they could kill two birds with one stone and make it a ranged weapon (somehow).

The Anarchist.8234:

Against pure damage, I have to actively try to die, but the moment conditions are slapped on me, I drop faster than a thief trying to tank.

Thieves are apparently perfectly viable tanks in GW2, or so Anet claimed in a video. Honestly, I think no class at all is suited to tanking because melee isn’t viable at all. In my opinion, all NPCs and players do too much damage. It seems that rather than “all classes are viable in all roles” as advertised, we have got “only ranged classes are viable and there are no other roles”. To me, it seems poorly implemented and needs a heck of a lot of tweaking, perhaps even a complete overhaul.

Knighthonor.4061:

Only stacks in duration, so you condition damage was negated

Not only that, but it gives them more time to dispel it.

The hammer is so slow because the developers don’t want you to use it.

Thanks for this. I can’t see it helping me, because every other class just crushes me with pure DPS, but thanks for trying to help.

Warrior > All.

Seriously, the degree to which the classes are imbalanced is almost unbelievable considering how many beta weekends they’ve had.

Spirit weapons need to just attack stuff instead of waiting for us to be “in range”. Too often they’re out but not doing anything because the enemy are too far away. Plus, they need to be able to attack people on ramparts.

Go naked, you’re just as effective as with armour i.e. not.

ThePatak.6785:

if no one follows the charge, you do just end up looking like an idiot when 3 or 4 warriors turn around and try to eat your face.

I keep trying this. My powers have much too short a duration to be able to defend effectively when the zerg turns. I can pop a few brief shielding spells but when several people shooting at you, being able to block 3 shots or bubble up for 3 seconds isn’t going to help.

ThePatak.6785:

I actively avoid defending towers because scepter damage is mediocre at best, and waiting for Tome of Wrath to recharge is boring.

This is true, but if there’s siege weaponry around, you can still do something. Maybe ask a nice engineer for a mortar?

ThePatak.6785:

I don’t know if I would actually care enough to use the scepter even if it was buffed, just because of my playstyle. I want to be on the frontline cleaving heads, but warrior and thief don’t appeal to me.

I want to do that, but I don’t think it’s a feasible way to play. I think the front line is just for idiots and the second line is where to be if you want to be clicking on “Finish Them”. Make sure there’s someone in front of you for the enemy to shoot at.

I’m “sure” they’ll be looking at their metrics and ensuring that all the classes get a reasonably equal distribution of rewards.

Not.

Here is my Guardian doing what he does best.

khisola.7340:

@Svarty

I’m sorry to hear you’re not enjoying the class. You mentioned that you’re getting hit too hard, but the sword and focus, for example, gives you a total of four blocks (if you include F3) and two blinds in a single rotation. That’s six misses from a mob, player, etc. I know that you know this, but I’m trying to figure out how you’re getting hit.

Maybe check out Silven’s builds on Guildwars2guru? They’re on youtube, as well. That community has been around for three years or so and has a ton of information while these forums are just starting up (not to imply that people don’t know their class here, just that there’s more info over at Guru). His most recent build has made my Guardian basically unkillable (up to a difficult 3v1) with burst that is absolutely monstrous.

Thank you for this, I will give it a whirl.

Please help. It appears to me that tanking is lost in GW2 because healing is lost. It feels like I’m playing World of Kitecraft, and that I get two-shotted if I don’t run around like a headless chicken and patch up if and when I can.

Avatar.1923:

i think there is a ton of strategy and combination and cross class effects and battlefield strategies.
but as it is now, at least for me, game is too quick, i can only really just focus on my toon.
dont try to make me do a combo finisher in your field or reflect projectiles going at you.
maybe ill get better after tons of hours.
as a guardian, i still have a hard time to put my aegis up on time.
gosh, so many buttons on that keyboard.
i seriously doubt people that say the combats are shallow that they have mastered it.
but then again, how much can you master them? its a big and fast firework fest most of the time, not easy!
still fun!

I agree with this 99%. Combos are a nifty idea, but it takes time for me to get the right finisher power and move to a field and by then it’s gone. So despite the fact that we can do our own combos with some of our fire or light fields and the greatsword, I more or less gave up on those and went with one-handers.

I’m finding that the sceptre/shield, sword/focus is a good combination of powers to have, you get all sorts of nice things and a couple of ranged abilities. The cooldown on weapon switching can be a pain, though.

The fun factor is a little wearing after you’ve been pwnt a few times with no success to your name.

Eveningstar.6940:

The basic idea is that you should be fighting all the time, and being intelligent about it. Cooldowns can and do help you, but you’ll get a lot more mileage learning when to dodge, learning to break Line of Sight, and knowing how to get in and out of an enemy’s range.

The idea I’m trying to get across is that performance in this game is pretty much 80% skill. Movement, dodging, well-timed utilities, and team synergy. The other 20% is probably some combination of gear and traits.

Totally on your side about Scepter though.

Okay, I did the first dungeon on Story Mode and frankly, I dodged a lot, hid behind objects whenever possible (yes, ladies and gentlemen, tanking is not for the brave, go running around a sarcophagus, Conan! That’s a good barbarian) watched for enemies giving tells as to whether and when they would whack me (they rarely did and when they did the tell was too short to do anything about anyway). It just seems that melee has no role at all, that it’s all about ranged combat and if you go near a mob you get two-shotted. The only reason we finished was because we realised that it wasn’t like WoW and you could come back from the spawn after death over and over in the middle of a battle (and we did). Strangely, we all agreed that it was kinda fun, but now I look back it wasn’t satisfying in that we didn’t work out how to win, we just zerged it with a never ending supply of bodies.

Eveningstar.6940:

The combat in this game is mobile and kinetic and depends fundamentally on your ability to fight intelligently, anticipate attacks and evade, and work as a team. Don’t rely on cooldowns to get you through a fight. Keep them there as trump cards to give you necessary advantages at critical times.

Firstly, I’d like to thank you for a sensible and well-reasoned response. Secondly, I think my playstyle is going to be kiting things with sceptre on auto-attack I’ve never known such a flimsy “heavy-armour”/tank class. Kiting? Is that what it’s come to?

Eveningstar.6940:

Svarty.8019:

Eveningstar.6940:

Game designer Anthony Ordon on tanking and defense:

A common mistake that I’ve seen people make with guardians is assuming that they should be taking damage for other people. In my experiences, absorbing damage with your hit points is about the worst way to play defensively (second only to trying to heal people who are doing this).
For guardian, make sure to give consideration to the abilities that proactively mitigate, prevent, or better yet, reflect damage. These are harder to get right because they require more precise timing.

Why, if that’s the case, is there WvWvW? If this game is about precise timing, then the powers should not be on cooldowns. What’s the point being ready to fire a power if it’s not available 90% of the time?

Don’t get me wrong, this game is beautiful, and for the first time in ages I have a feeling that it’s a world. It’s a great piece of work, but the combat system is completely wacky.

I feel that Arenanet have dropped the ball.

If the abilities have short cooldowns, then the game is no longer about precise timing. Short cooldowns encourage and enable sloppy play and ability spam. You shouldn’t be using a cooldown whenever it’s up. You should be using it at the right time.

Cooldown times are therefore a reflection of the skill’s value and capacity to change the tide of an encounter.

Also, not very many Guardian defensive abilities suffer from overly long cooldowns. It’s just the ones that have a huge effect (Sanctuary, Save Yourselves, Merciful Intervention) that have long cooldowns.

Most Guardian support abilities have moderate cooldowns which should be up every one or two encounters.

What if I go from one battle to another in the frantic WvWvW setting? My cooldowns are all used up from the previous well-timed usage (you state yourself that they “should be up every one or two encounters”)?

It doesn’t even have to be WvWvW. I’ve played enough PvE to know that even if I time something well, I still need the power to be available the next time the mob does it’s thing and oftentimes it simply isn’t up. It’s poor integration of different gameplay designs and no amount of apologetics will alter that fact.

Cawesome.1580:

Yeah Guardians are fine where they are, other than the poor ranged weapons, the ability to take all debuffs and turn them into boons is just borderline op.

In 1v1 maybe, but in WvWvW it’s not that hot. Lots more debuffs will come along before the cooldown ends.

Eveningstar.6940:

Game designer Anthony Ordon on tanking and defense:

A common mistake that I’ve seen people make with guardians is assuming that they should be taking damage for other people. In my experiences, absorbing damage with your hit points is about the worst way to play defensively (second only to trying to heal people who are doing this).
For guardian, make sure to give consideration to the abilities that proactively mitigate, prevent, or better yet, reflect damage. These are harder to get right because they require more precise timing.

Why, if that’s the case, is there WvWvW? Why is there constant battle if your powers aren’t available all of the time, especially if it’s about precise timing? If that’s the case then powers should not be on cooldowns. What’s the point being ready to time a power if it’s not available 90% of the time?

Don’t get me wrong, this game is beautiful, and for the first time in ages I have a feeling that it’s a world. It’s a great piece of work, but the combat system is completely wacky.

I feel that Arenanet have dropped the ball.