Core support guard is absolute trash in current meta

[Deadmoose.6594]

Playing against them or playing one, they get wrecked so easily and do very little to actually support their team. The game mode is so bursty right now, you have to either have a really good dps team with you or playing against bots to stand a chance. Heals don't really do enough compared to how much damage some specs are putting out right now, and the cd's are way too slow. If you go against conditions its game over because there's literally no counter to it.

[Ovark.2514]

Thank god

[Stand The Wall.6987]

fb is better

[Buran.3796]

2 hours ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

fb is better

  No is not.

  Deadmoose, are you talking about ranked? In ATs core support Guard is quite good, but in ranked coordination with team mates ralely exist and most of players will actively avoid your heals and support with the same astonishing efficiency they eat well telegraphed attacks from bosses in Open World. So is not like the build is bad, but doesn't work without a minimum coordination that at ranked usually doesn't exist until you reach plat games (and even there...).

[Kuma.1503]

It's still good, but only if your team is good. The reason why guard and tempest are the two most popular supports is that both are good at preventing damage instead of just healing it. Stability, projectile bubbles, aegis, crowd control, and cleanses are all valuable. But they only buy your team time to make plays. If they don't do anything with the time you buy them, you become useless. 

 

[bethekey.8314]

Noted. I'll add Guard's support concerns to the list behind literally every other classes' that's never even been support viable.

Have you tried blocking 5 times in a row?

[Sovarica.4368]

Sadly scourge does it better and has a lot of aoe and boon rips and rez support and can hold it's own on a duel thanks to the pistol. Too bad Guardian did not get any cool weapons that could compliment the core guard support

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, Sovarica.4368 said:

Sadly scourge does it better and has a lot of aoe and boon rips and rez support and can hold it's own on a duel thanks to the pistol. Too bad Guardian did not get any cool weapons that could compliment the core guard support

This is pretty accurate--scourge is very strong right now

[Deadmoose.6594]

I have some evidence that core guard is underpowered right now. After four losses as core guard, I swapped into WB and instantly won four games. Usually top dmg at least, with some other top stats. Core guard is good for getting healing, revive, and sometimes defense top stat, but that's literally it. If you're farming top stats, core guard is easy but don't expect to win a lot. Could be that I was due for some wins I guess, but I'll keep trying WB and see. I can tell you that I pretty much wreck a scourge as WB, but scourge wrecks me as core guard.

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

On 10/7/2023 at 10:22 PM, Deadmoose.6594 said:

I have some evidence that core guard is underpowered right now. After four losses as core guard, I swapped into WB and instantly won four games. Usually top dmg at least, with some other top stats. Core guard is good for getting healing, revive, and sometimes defense top stat, but that's literally it. If you're farming top stats, core guard is easy but don't expect to win a lot. Could be that I was due for some wins I guess, but I'll keep trying WB and see. I can tell you that I pretty much wreck a scourge as WB, but scourge wrecks me as core guard.

My scourge would eat you 🙂

[Sahne.6950]

On 10/8/2023 at 4:22 AM, Deadmoose.6594 said:

I have some evidence that core guard is underpowered right now.

After four losses as core guard, I swapped into WB and instantly won four games.

i didnt know thats how it works.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

These are always a joy to read.

[Balsa.3951]

On 10/7/2023 at 5:11 PM, Buran.3796 said:

  No is not.

  Deadmoose, are you talking about ranked? In ATs core support Guard is quite good, but in ranked coordination with team mates ralely exist and most of players will actively avoid your heals and support with the same astonishing efficiency they eat well telegraphed attacks from bosses in Open World. So is not like the build is bad, but doesn't work without a minimum coordination that at ranked usually doesn't exist until you reach plat games (and even there...).

ppl who port out of signet of mercy. its crazy.

most buffs get avoided and supp guard is way to.slow.

all guard builds are not good now.

low hp. low mobility

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

these days if you want to play support guardian in pvp you pretty much need to play willbender. neither core support guardian or firebrand have the mobility to keep up with the group and actually put buffs or heals on them, especially when they seem to actively avoid your support.

 

willbender has all the same tools as core but can actually bust a move or two.

Edited October 12, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Guirssane.7082]

On 10/7/2023 at 3:48 AM, Deadmoose.6594 said:

Playing against them or playing one, they get wrecked so easily and do very little to actually support their team. The game mode is so bursty right now, you have to either have a really good dps team with you or playing against bots to stand a chance. Heals don't really do enough compared to how much damage some specs are putting out right now, and the cd's are way too slow. If you go against conditions its game over because there's literally no counter to it.

You can reach plat easily with support guard. It's like legit the easiest thing to play.

[Deadmoose.6594]

5 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

ppl who port out of signet of mercy. its crazy.

most buffs get avoided and supp guard is way to.slow.

all guard builds are not good now.

low hp. low mobility

nah WB has super high mobility, just not a lot of sustain

[Arken.3725]

27 minutes ago, Deadmoose.6594 said:

nah WB has super high mobility, just not a lot of sustain

Blatant lie.  As a WB, you could use 5 mobility skills(sword 2, Sword 5, f1, f2, f3) and still not catch up to classes who have access to superspeed.  Superspeed is king, ports don't do much if you can't stick.  Soft/Hard-cc, superspeed and quickness help with that.  If you have none of these, the ports are useless

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

3 minutes ago, Arken.3725 said:

Blatant lie.  As a WB, you could use 5 mobility skills(sword 2, Sword 5, f1, f2, f3) and still not catch up to classes who have access to superspeed. 

I never thought I'd see the day a guardian defends teleporting like a pre nerf thief. 

This meta is great

[Arken.3725]

3 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I never thought I'd see the day a guardian defends teleporting like a pre nerf thief. 

This meta is great

But am I wrong?  Think about it though, logically.  What good do ports do if you can't stick on your target?  If you have very little means of staying close, what good does it do?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

25 minutes ago, Arken.3725 said:

But am I wrong?  Think about it though, logically.  What good do ports do if you can't stick on your target?  If you have very little means of staying close, what good does it do?

That just means super speed is good, not that porting is not good lmao.

edit : also relic of speed now exists so there’s no excuse to say that a soft counter to super speed doesn’t exist (though it would be nice if there was other more sensible counter play to it)

Edited October 12, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Arken.3725]

Just now, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

That just means super speed is good, not that porting is not good lmao.

You missed most of what I posted outside of superspeed.  Forms of sticking power include the following:

- Cripple

- Chill

- Immobilization

- Superspeed

- Resistance

This is all without considering weapon skills, utilities, traits, ect.  WB has very little of Resistance and immobilization with none of the rest.  

[Deadmoose.6594]

Just now, Arken.3725 said:

You missed most of what I posted outside of superspeed.  Forms of sticking power include the following:

- Cripple

- Chill

- Immobilization

- Superspeed

- Resistance

This is all without considering weapon skills, utilities, traits, ect.  WB has very little of Resistance and immobilization with none of the rest.  

As a roamer its pretty good, you can run around the map really fast and go toe to toe with most classes

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

2 minutes ago, Arken.3725 said:

You missed most of what I posted outside of superspeed.  Forms of sticking power include the following:

- Cripple

- Chill

- Immobilization

- Superspeed

- Resistance

This is all without considering weapon skills, utilities, traits, ect.  WB has very little of Resistance and immobilization with none of the rest.  

I mean you can’t have everything…if you want to be a teleportation god you have to make sacrifices elsewhere…those sacrifices need not have to come from you but other players who want to counter your strategy. Super speed, and CC being one such instance of a player who intends to counter yours.

The fact that you get cc’d when trying to stick to a player is a sign that the game is working: someone is countering your strategy and so you need to develop your own counter strategy to theirs (bring condi cleanse or bring your own cc)

Edited October 12, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Arken.3725]

9 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

I mean you can’t have everything…if you want to be a teleportation god you have to make sacrifices elsewhere…those sacrifices need not have to come from you but other players who want to counter your strategy. Super speed, and CC being one such instance of a player who intends to counter yours.

The fact that you get cc’d when trying to stick to a player is a sign that the game is working: someone is countering your strategy and so you need to develop your own counter strategy to theirs (bring condi cleanse or bring your own cc)

But that's where the problem lies, a good roamer should have at least a few.

Rev has access to the following(not saying rev is the best):

Superspeed, Quickness, AoE Chill, frontal-cone Immob, Superspeed.(Not including weapon skills,utilities, ect)

Scrapper:

Superspeed, quickness, AoE chill, AoE stuns, PLENTIFUL Superspeed, Resistance

I could go on but you get my drift.  WB when it had decent access to Resistance and NOTHING else was pretty good but then they ripped that away.

And with all this said, I'd rather have solid access to Superspeed, quickness, chill and resistance if I had to give up a port or two, easily.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Arken.3725

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

59 minutes ago, Arken.3725 said:

...but then they ripped that away.

Nerfs typically do that. Removing stuff from the game, or nerfing something into uselessness inadvertently removes possibilities for players to counter play one another. It's also how incongruency happens in the overall balance of the game...where person might have all the stuff that "hasn't been nerfed" which was innocuous before, but because everyone else got booted to the curb, this now previously innocuous class is now "overpowered." So whatever happened i feel you on that.

 

Quote

 

But that's where the problem lies, a good roamer should have at least a few.

Rev has access to the following(not saying rev is the best):

Superspeed, Quickness, AoE Chill, frontal-cone Immob, Superspeed.(Not including weapon skills,utilities, ect)

Scrapper:

Superspeed, quickness, AoE chill, AoE stuns, PLENTIFUL Superspeed, Resistance

I could go on but you get my drift.  WB when it had decent access to Resistance and NOTHING else was pretty good

 

I don't exactly agree with the entire premise of these statements though. These are rather arbitrary metrics for what a good roamer needs to have. For instance, I usto roam on my reaper in WvW...i created a god like build (through tons of optomization) that could virtually handle all situations...it could stealth (and escape any fight), it could do a lot of damage, was invulnerable to CC's and near immunity to damaging conditions...it could output nearly all boons, and was really hard to kill because it was so tanky, and caused many conditions like weakness against the foe.

Even with all those things, it was largely countered by ports and speed. Even though the build could do a lot of things, "speed" wasn't really one of them...and so to further optomize it relied on using a ranged weapon to continue pressuring foes who would port or use speed skills.

So even then my roaming reaper, had the tools to be a roamer...in it's own way...and that's kind of what you need to go and do with WB...using other classes to compare yourself to them, is not really how you should be looking at your situation. Whether Anet has made that possible for your class is a real balance question...but In fact that is what things like Weapon-mastery and Relics (and hopefully other stuff in the future) enable you to do : give you access to the ability to define what your build can do in it's own way. Making stuff useful and giving you meaningful options, happens to be the right way to address balance questions (rather than nerfs to other people, or buffs to yourself) because of this fact.

Edit: Btw I still roam around on reaper in SPVP. Same story, just much less powerhouse-like. It lumbers around from point to point, so it doesn't catch a slippery peeper like thief, and doesn't have incredible defenses so it can get nuked by aggressive WB's or GS Rangers. but it has it's strengths in the team-fight, and to assist in the +1 through it's high damage output to drive players away, and reset the defending player on the node. So I play this build very much like a roamer to +1 fights and defend nodes (rather then decap them). 

Edited October 12, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684