Guardian WvW

I am new to the game but it seems that guardian is not really viable unless your run firebrand support and run in a large zerg. Does anyone know a viable dps spec, dh seems underpowered and the long bow is weak due to abilities being predictable and easily avoided.

The guardian largely shines in groups. There are some decent builds though that you can also run for when you are not in a big group. You can find many different builds for lots of roles and how to play them on this website.

For Dragonhunter, pulling people into your traps tends to be your biggest source of burst damage. Try getting some Runes of the Trapper (with Power gear like Marauders) to give you a bit of stealth and superspeed as you set your traps. The stealth will also make it easier to just kittenjam people with point-blank True Shots.

You can also try an anti-blob condition build (all Burning, basically) using vanilla Guardian, DH, or FB — core guardian has higher overall damage, DH gives you slightly better mobility and a cover condition, FB has useful secondary utility.

Guardian kinda is that support which gains strength from fighting in a group.

It's not impossible to roam solo as Guardian if yu know how to play yur cards right tho.Guardians have alot of on demand, no nonsense, cooldowns through their virtues, and playing around those together with yur weapon combos and utilities are key to dueling enemies, and when that fails, they can escape combat with proper usage of teleports, Aegis, healing, and invuls.

even core guard is ridiculously strong. doesnt matter if power, condi or support. same with firebrand.

Dh is amazing as condi & power too... maybe a bit less in terms of support

As always on these forums you are going to have some people say that they are the best and some that they are the worst, when the reality is rather somewhere in the middle or (what is more accurate but even more rare in discussions) that they over a span of progression match up rather differently depending on where you are on your journey to learn the class relative the common swath of opponents or against matching levels of experience.

The typical one-trick trapper DH is a pretty solid pub-stomper that lets you play offensively in low vs. low content and can then be used to roam. Past that, in mid-mid content, you will have quite long time of feeling underwhelming when you are looking to get a bit more out of the class and where opponents are a bit more apt at avoiding your basic burst setup. So, the middle that makes up quite a large stretch of your progression is perhaps the weakness of the class. Then, I would say it splits off a bit. If you're looking at roaming (1vX or so) the class never really excels anymore whereas if you're talking about duelling it is arguably making a return in the higher-end gameplay where you and your opponents are all quite versed in the common classes, their builds and CD's.

There are also a couple of off-builds that are pretty decent if we're talking about some mid-level roaming but those lend themselves better to clouding or small-group roaming given how the class is built (with low-mobility and control but plenty of neat supportive options that are decent on yourself but grows once you have friends to crossfeed and synergize with both mechanically and tactically).

Also, once you start scaling up more, the typical Minstrel FB is still the staple build, sure, but there are a bunch of more or less useful options and power-core Guardians have probably surged enough in popularity that they are considered more than just off-meta now. Assuming you're playing in zergs rather than blobs (ie., squads that are not constantly full or near-full) there are plenty of things you can tweak a bit to spice up different builds with different ways to work burning into hybrids with either power, healing or something else.

Vallun has made a bunch of more WvW-leaning build guides lately, with a couple of Guardian builds, that is a good starting point from which to adapt and make your own. You could check out his Youtube channel.

Core power guard or support firebrand are 2 very strong builds for zerg fights.

power guard has very strong damage spikes and gives decent support. Can easily be altered into a DH for traps, to kill enemy's who are not sticky f.e

@subversiontwo.7501 said:As always on these forums you are going to have some people say that they are the best and some that they are the worst, when the reality is rather somewhere in the middle or (what is more accurate but even more rare in discussions) that they over a span of progression match up rather differently depending on where you are on your journey to learn the class relative the common swath of opponents or against matching levels of experience.

Vallun has made a bunch of more WvW-leaning build guides lately, with a couple of Guardian builds, that is a good starting point from which to adapt and make your own. You could check out his Youtube channel.

I checked out his channel that is perfect thank you! I not really used to this large scale playstyle.

Vallun commander build poggers 'u are the commander'