Guardian Popularity

[Trejgon.9367]

1 minute ago, Axl.8924 said:

Its relevant in that performance wise seems pretty ez to pick up and perform well on in a fractal from what i felt from playing it.

Sure you could argue that its not the same as performing well in raids, but i had less trouble staying on my feet in fractals than i do with chronomacner.

 

Again you seem to be missing a tiny bit of a detail, that I was at no point talking about CURRENT situation but contesting a claim that guardian was top performant in all game modes overall SINCE GAME LAUNCH which was back in 2012. And I was specifically talking about period between launch of the game in 2012, and October 2015.

 

Which was 6 years ago. So again how is your modern, post-PoF experience relevant to how class played over 6 years ago?

[Axl.8924]

Just now, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

 

Again you seem to be missing a tiny bit of a detail, that I was at no point talking about CURRENT situation but contesting a claim that guardian was top performant in all game modes overall SINCE GAME LAUNCH which was back in 2012. And I was specifically talking about period between launch of the game in 2012, and October 2015.

 

Which was 6 years ago. So again how is your modern, post-PoF experience relevant to how class played over 6 years ago?

 

I mean i have no idea how it was played 6 years ago, but it seems pretty ok and simple to play and fun.

[Trejgon.9367]

Just now, Axl.8924 said:

 

I mean i have no idea how it was played 6 years ago, but it seems pretty ok and simple to play and fun.

 

so why quoting me when I spoke about situation over 6 years ago in the first place?

[Axl.8924]

10 minutes ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

 

so why quoting me when I spoke about situation over 6 years ago in the first place?

 

I mean its relevant to popularity no? i see plenty of guardians.

And i've seen DH in some videos for SPVP and Firebrand taken for strikes. I saw mightyteapot play Firebrand.

 

They must have some viability if there is play.

[ArchonWing.9480]

On 7/15/2021 at 12:29 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

 

overall:
adverb
/əʊvərˈɔːl/
taken as a whole; in all.

 

Taken as a whole pre-hot guardian was niche class, not top performant.

 

 

"strong builds" which were still nowhere close to a number of other classes. Yes I have seen guardians kicked from dungeon runs just because "guerdians bed, cannot deepz" (typing intentional to underline my opinion on people that did this).

 

And no, awfull lot of people DID care about party composition in dungeons, because better dps, meant faster clear, higher chances of clear in most cases, and higher clear times meant more clears within same time which meant much more money out of it. You think why people camped cof p2 so hard?

But back then, people had no idea what dps was either and without arcdps or proper benchmarks resorted to a lot of hearsay. That resulted in people thinking that hundred blades was the best thing ever because big numbers. The opinions of pugs and especially who they kicked is worth almost nothing now, much less back then.

 

Ironically, the presence of DPS meters probably helped build diversity, contrary to popular opinion.

Edited July 17, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Axl.8924]

14 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

But back then, people had no idea what dps was either and without arcdps or proper benchmarks resorted to a lot of hearsay. That resulted in people thinking that hundred blades was the best thing ever because big numbers. The opinions of pugs and especially who they kicked is worth almost nothing now, much less back then.

 

Ironically, the presence of DPS meters probably helped build diversity, contrary to popular opinion.

 

I got a question for you:

With the new sistem how much might gen can you get with resolution farm on DH? and is it easier to maintain might on firebrand or is it easier on DH?

Edited July 18, 2021 by Axl.8924

[ArchonWing.9480]

17 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

 

I got a question for you:

With the new sistem how much might gen can you get with resolution farm on DH? and is it easier to maintain might on firebrand or is it easier on DH?

I don't think might has really changed, since the Radiance traits were dependent on the boon being up, as opposed to what the boon did; Whether it is resolution or retaliation doesn't matter.  Firebrand has it easier with Mantra of Potence and also a low cooldown heal to trigger the resolution on heal trait if necessary.

 

In instanced content you usually should have 25 might anyways from support, so this is usually only relevant solo of if you're playing power quickness firebrand in which case you provide might through potence (only relevant in fractals and on the very high end; condi firebrand is generally just easier in most cases), also should probably take signet share anyways.

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Axl.8924]

Is it better to focus on other stats since you get access to fury? like berserker and or valkrie instead of assasins?

 

Since fury is readily available ez with a switch of weapons.

[Trejgon.9367]

On 7/17/2021 at 9:23 PM, ArchonWing.9480 said:

But back then, people had no idea what dps was either and without arcdps or proper benchmarks resorted to a lot of hearsay. That resulted in people thinking that hundred blades was the best thing ever because big numbers. The opinions of pugs and especially who they kicked is worth almost nothing now, much less back then.

 

Ironically, the presence of DPS meters probably helped build diversity, contrary to popular opinion.

 

lack of dps meters, and overal potential misguideness of big chunk of the community does not make an argument to call what was back then a niche class, into a "top performant". Also just because there is no arcdps to parse dps as it happens in applied scenario, does not prevent buildcrafters from running numbers and concluding which combination of classes, stats and skills will result in shortest kill-count - heck that's what people did in preparation for those speed-clear record runs that were so popular back then.

 

And even in those speed-clear record runs in cof, guardian was not even prominent character. the only dungeon where guardians were prominent was arah, because well timed and placed wall of reflection was capable of oneshotting the most annoying boss of all paths. Which is still hardly "top performant".

 

It was introduction of dragonhunter espec that moved guardian into spotlight that it "enjoys" to this day. And it was achieved by adding in the one thing core guardian was missing through whole vanilla days - dps to rival the other "dps" classes.

[ArchonWing.9480]

2 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

 

lack of dps meters, and overal potential misguideness of big chunk of the community does not make an argument to call what was back then a niche class, into a "top performant".

Nor does anecdotes of people being kicked either, but here we are.

 

I wasn't arguing that guardian was a top class, either so not sure what those quotes are for.

Edited July 19, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[draxynnic.3719]

Such anecdotes do indicate, at the very least, that guardian wasn't regarded as a top performer back then.

 

Furthermore, while we could say that the average PUG had a... shall we say, twisted idea of what was effective, there were speedclear guilds and such back then that probably did have as good idea of the actual relative performances of different professions as anyone could back then. They didn't use guardians. I don't think it's credible for anyone to argue that pre-HoT guardian was a secret top performer that everyone missed, except maybe after the pre-HoT trait system redesign.

 

In the HoT days, dragonhunter was pretty much viewed as a noob killer in PvP. In instanced PvE, it was a decent power DPS build, but generally not a meta pick.

 

It's pretty much just Firebrand that rounded it out to be a top performer, since it meant that guardian now has a high-demand support role, a strong condi DPS build, and a decent power DPS build, and having all three in one profession makes it a good profession to "main" and a flexible profession to bring to pugs when you don't necessarily know which role you'll be asked to take. With the PvP nerfs to Firebrand, it's hardly a top performer in sPvP right now - core guardian is currently the best sPvP support build, but over the last year or so that role has had a tendency to end up going to to the support build that floats to the top after the previous one was nerfed to death. 

[Trejgon.9367]

16 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Nor does anecdotes of people being kicked either, but here we are.

 

I wasn't arguing that guardian was a top class, either so not sure what those quotes are for.

 

You qouted my response to DeceiverX, and attempted to provide counterarguments to my arguments against DeceiverX's claim that guardian "Was overal top performant since beginning of the game". Hence (maybe unintentionally) you implied support to their claim.

 

Also I was not providing "anecdotes of people being kicked" I have actively refered to dungeon speedclearing comps, as during vanilla days that was the highest end of pve content - and every record break attempt run was recorded on YT and you can see which classes were used there. And those comps were usually made by people whom did heavy maths on stats, traits, and skills.

[ArchonWing.9480]

18 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

 

You qouted my response to DeceiverX, and attempted to provide counterarguments to my arguments against DeceiverX's claim that guardian "Was overal top performant since beginning of the game". Hence (maybe unintentionally) you implied support to their claim.

 

Also I was not providing "anecdotes of people being kicked" I have actively refered to dungeon speedclearing comps, as during vanilla days that was the highest end of pve content - and every record break attempt run was recorded on YT and you can see which classes were used there. And those comps were usually made by people whom did heavy maths on stats, traits, and skills.

 

Yea I suppose it did seem like I was supporting Deceiver's claim when I was more just disagreeing with the other point in particular. But just note that just because I disagree with something in your argument, doesn't necessarily mean I support the other side.

 

I suppose from 2021's point of view, it just seemed really hard to take people from back then's opinions seriously. I mean running cof p2 is basically like farming fractal 42 or w/e and nobody cares about that.

 

And yes there were very niche speedclear groups that did have an idea; I didn't know you were referring to them kicking guardians from parties. The first thing that came to mind was your 4 warrior pug party in a cof run. And in any case, I just don't think it's anything compared to today when anyone can access snowcrows or dt benchmarks.

 

I mean I guess it's not accurate for me to say the game didn't have any difficult content back then.

[Trejgon.9367]

13 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

And yes there were very niche speedclear groups that did have an idea; I didn't know you were referring to them kicking guardians from parties.

 

Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeechnically speaking they weren't kicking guardians from the parties, it was more like, the math people that were responsible for theorycrafting the composition for the next run were not picking guardians to the runs at all. those were highly organized groups after all.

 

13 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

And in any case, I just don't think it's anything compared to today when anyone can access snowcrows or dt benchmarks.

 

Well I would say it was the core of people that ultimately grew and made those benchmark sites, and things like snowcrows happen later on. Snowcrows after all as a website, is run by a guild that specializes in.... raid speed runs 🙂 Just as raid speedrunners are dictating raid meta nowadays, dungeon speedrunners dictated dungeon meta in vanilla days.

 

And again I only brought up pre-hot days because of that other person claiming guardian being top performant in all game modes, since game launch in 2012. It's all fair to complain about guardian being top performant in to many fields now, but I don't exactly like when past is being misrepresented for the sake of discussion on current state of things.

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

 

Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeechnically speaking they weren't kicking guardians from the parties, it was more like, the math people that were responsible for theorycrafting the composition for the next run were not picking guardians to the runs at all. those were highly organized groups after all.

 

 

Well I would say it was the core of people that ultimately grew and made those benchmark sites, and things like snowcrows happen later on. Snowcrows after all as a website, is run by a guild that specializes in.... raid speed runs 🙂 Just as raid speedrunners are dictating raid meta nowadays, dungeon speedrunners dictated dungeon meta in vanilla days.

 

And again I only brought up pre-hot days because of that other person claiming guardian being top performant in all game modes, since game launch in 2012. It's all fair to complain about guardian being top performant in to many fields now, but I don't exactly like when past is being misrepresented for the sake of discussion on current state of things.

 

Yea, I suppose that is fair. Even back then, we mocked CoF lol, and because of power creep I guess a lot of us forgot dungeons were where it was at especially with the gold nerf.  So I know the meta existed-- at the very least I knew necro was a bottom performer xD  All kinds of reasons make memories more cloudy when you had a player base that was making complaints about not having enough money to wp lol.

 

As for the Arcdps part, I mostly brought that up, because it's just easier to justify yourself with it.

 

But uhh, at this point, I don't want to argue on people's behalf, so let's see if there's any follow up.

[DeceiverX.8361]

I think you guys are getting too hung up on DPS and not what I actually said about something being performant.

How you want to measure "performance" is entirely relative dependent on the benchmarks you want to measure by.  I wasn't talking about DPS.  If I was, I would have said DPS.  But I know that's not true, because we all know what MS Ele and 25/30/0/0/15 thief did for damage back then.  Hell, even I knew warrior DPS wasn't that amazing and was only really good from might and banners.

 

Because really, aside from those hyper-niche math speedclear groups which literally nobody here was part of - where the meta at one point was 5 thief running 25/30/0/0/15, guardian was still a solid contender for clearing content, ESPECIALLY for unorganized or lower-skill groups and at the very least most of my guild has always acknowledged its performance was comparable enough when executed well - such as when actually maintaining aegis running Unscathed.

 

There's a video of a guy soloing P3 Arah from years ago with a guardian while literally AFK.  It doesn't get much more "Performant" in terms of raw efficacy of clearing content, than that.  Guardian helped people -including themselves - succeed at the game.  Moreso than every other profession, and by a significant margin.  The only, singular exceptions to this are: D/D cele ele in sPvP solely because there was not a limit per-class (this immediately changed to favor guard+necro combos afterward), and speedclear groups optimizing for encounters most of the time.  Half the speeclear comps from back in the day only actually functioned on certain paths because of the mechanics favoring DPS and nothing else.

 

I won't argue against DPS numbers because frankly, nobody here actually has them.  Speed clear groups didn't use guard.  They also only used two classes for 90% of their content based on boss size/encounter.

 

And in the other modes, Guard has always been performant.  Medi goes back to launch and anyone saying guard hasn't completely and totally dominated WvW since launch is outright lying.

Edited July 26, 2021 by DeceiverX.8361

[draxynnic.3719]

People soloed Arah on literally every profession. GW2 release encounter design was set up so that theoretically, if you played perfectly, you could go through pretty much every encounter without taking damage. At best, you could say that aegis, stability, and projectile blocks gave guardian some more margin for error, but other professions had other sources of margin for error like teleports, larger health pools, and allies that could draw enemy fire.

 

sPvP, guardian has never been absolute trash tier (although there have been period where you just wouldn't see it in tournaments, particularly during HoT where the top guardian builds were pretty much regarded as noob killers as I said before), but until the firebrand meta post-PoF, I don't think it was ever one of the S-tier builds.

 

WvW is pretty much a "you need stability in zergs, so of course a profession who gives a lot of group stability is going to dominate there" scenario. (There's a little more to it than that, but that's pretty much what it boils down to.)

[Trejgon.9367]

I love how quickly DeceiverX dropped "top" from "top performant".

 

Yeah, sure vanilla guard could "perform" in all game modes, but your original claim wat that it was overal TOP performant. And no, adequate performance is not same as being "overal" best. Had guardian been top performant in vanilla days in pve, then top end of pve spectrum back then, would use it. They didn't. Had vanilla guardian been top performant in spvp, you would see it all over the place during that time, and again, even then they were not used all that often.

 

The only place you could try to defend "top performance" of vanilla guardian is again WvW, and again, guardian in wvw during vanilla days was only so prevalent, because he was best source of group stability. In all other fields guardian would get outperformed by quite a number of classes.

 

As for soloing dungeons, I would like to point out that besides arah which was indeed cheesable with wall of reflection, for every other dungeon the first solo runs recorded were NOT done in guardians. I don't think I recall any guardian solo run of AC, that would predate firebrand release, just to name one example.

 

Trying to claim guardian to be top performant since the very launch of the base game, means either not having any knowledge of what was the game landscape during that period, or is flat out dishonest projection of modern situation on the past. The latter one seems to be awkwardly popular trend in public discusion in the last couple years.....

[DeceiverX.8361]

8 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

I love how quickly DeceiverX dropped "top" from "top performant".

 

Yeah, sure vanilla guard could "perform" in all game modes, but your original claim wat that it was overal TOP performant. And no, adequate performance is not same as being "overal" best. Had guardian been top performant in vanilla days in pve, then top end of pve spectrum back then, would use it. They didn't. Had vanilla guardian been top performant in spvp, you would see it all over the place during that time, and again, even then they were not used all that often.

 

The only place you could try to defend "top performance" of vanilla guardian is again WvW, and again, guardian in wvw during vanilla days was only so prevalent, because he was best source of group stability. In all other fields guardian would get outperformed by quite a number of classes.

 

As for soloing dungeons, I would like to point out that besides arah which was indeed cheesable with wall of reflection, for every other dungeon the first solo runs recorded were NOT done in guardians. I don't think I recall any guardian solo run of AC, that would predate firebrand release, just to name one example.

 

Trying to claim guardian to be top performant since the very launch of the base game, means either not having any knowledge of what was the game landscape during that period, or is flat out dishonest projection of modern situation on the past. The latter one seems to be awkwardly popular trend in public discusion in the last couple years.....

 

I love how you inserted "Top" in the first place.

 

Which has a different primary definition from "Most" btw.

 

This whole tirade of yours has been a non-argument.  I'm not arguing about the guard being the best at everything individually, but at everything holistically, over the span of the game's existence.  Which I said, as well, quite early on.  Which I said, as well, I was not referencing any specific data point.

 

Because really, Guard has always sat at the upper end of the charts when played well, even from launch, and can be desired in pretty much any scenario.

 

Honestly I'm beginning to reconsider my thoughts on the post content of this subsection if this is how most of the discussions normally go with people falsely quoting and whatnot.

[artharon.9276]

I am frequently seeing 3 or more guards in my t3/4 fractals groups. Nice to watch them have their fun. 

[draxynnic.3719]

Oh, hey, it's the "quietly change your position and then pretend it's the position you had in the first place and everyone else is being irrational" tactic. The difference between "most performant" and "top performant" is pretty much academic - most people would look at them and interpret them as being the same thing.

 

If your argument is now simply that guardian has been viable all along, then... what's the problem? A profession is supposed to be viable. It's a problem when a profession drops out of the viable range, but hardly a sign of developer favouritism when a profession is always viable - viable but not overpowered is where every profession should be aiming to be, and in guardian's case, they pretty much got the core fundamentals right before HoT released in a way that they didn't for other professions (and that's why guardian hasn't needed some of the deep reworks that other professions have had).

 

When it comes to discussions of balance pre-PoF, "guardian is in a good place" was as much of a meme as the engineer "purity of purpose" meme. However, this is something that I think came from players not thinking on things from a developer perspective. Guardian players at the time were jealous of other professions being OP in various fields (just like players of other professions are jealous of guardian versatility now) when from a balancer perspective, "viable but not OP" is what they're aiming for.

 

Ultimately, though, I tend to view arguments based on past balance states to be irrelevant. I see a lot of arguments in these sorts of discussions that could basically be summarised as "my profession was dumpstered at some point, so it's only fair for this other profession to experience being dumpstered at some point as well". Well, no. Just because a profession has been viable - not OP, but viable - for as long as it has been in the game does not mean that it somehow needs a visit to trash tier just to even the ledger. The only real argument to be made is the current balance state.

 

So where is that?

 

In PvE,  guardian has a good power DPS build, a good condi DPS build, a support build that brings a highly valuable boon (quickness), and a hybrid condi/support build. None of them are benchmarking in the "you'd be stupid to bring anything else as DPS" level. It's arguably the most efficient source of quickness, and being able to bring stability and aegis as well is definitely a big plus, but it has competition in that area.

 

In WvW, it's... pretty much as it is in PvE, except that the highly valuable boon is stability instead of quickness. Again, though, it does have competition, the most direct being scrapper. I think it does win out there, but some profession is always going to be slightly more efficient at any given role.

 

In sPvP... firebrand got nerfed into trash tier, pretty much. I'd rather see a firebrand on the enemy team than on my own, because nowadays they're pretty easy to take down. They've got a meta build in core support guardian, but... eh. As commented above, it's pretty much there because the support role keeps getting nerfed, but is important enough that the least bad floats to the top in organised teams. 

 

So to return to the topic... I think there are three factors to guardians being popular:

 

The first is that it's versatile. With power, condi, and support builds, there's a pretty good chance that you could rock up to a group and fill whatever gap they have without being able to switch professions (which is valuable if you only have the opportunity to level and equip a limited number of characters). It's this versatility that I often see in "I'm jealous of guardian, nerf guardian" arguments, but first, having multiple builds doesn't mean that any one is overpowered (and when one is, the appropriate measure is to nerf just that build, which is something we've seen done - the guardian stacking meta for some raids happened because it was possible to chain the quickness elite to get permaquickness from a group of otherwise DPS builds, and that got nerfed, as did the mesmer equivalent a few months later). From ArenaNet's statements, they want professions to be versatile. Guardian having a lot of useful builds isn't a problem that requires guardian to be nerfed so it can be boxed into a single role - the problem is that some other professions don't have that versatility.

 

The second is that guardian shares equipment with other professions that offer highly desired roles, so once you get ascended (or, better, legendary) with a guardian (or vice versa), it's easier to have other professions in reserve. Warrior is always useful to be able to switch to for banners, and revenant rounds out what guardian offers with an alacrity build, and both use the same armour and have similar weapon options. Mesmer has a different armour set, but currently shares every weapon with guardian except pistol, so apart from armour it's also an easy transition to make. If you can go up to a group as a guardian but say you can switch to warrior, rev, or mesmer if that's needed, there'll probably be few groups that can't find a space for you.

 

The third is that guardian is stable. It hasn't had any major reworks to its core functionality since before HoT, apart from the changes to spirit weapons, and even the pre-HoT trait overhaul didn't really change their playstyle that much. If someone liked guardian back in 2015, or even as far back as 2012, it's unlikely that any of the changes made since will change that. This is in contrast with some other professions that have completely changed their playstyle at least once in that timeframe, potentially causing players who previously mained one of those professions to switch when they found that they didn't enjoy the new version.

Edited July 28, 2021 by draxynnic.3719
Wrote HoT when I meant PoF

[Trejgon.9367]

9 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

 

I love how you inserted "Top" in the first place.

 

Except, your original post to which I answered said that "guardian was overal top performant from the beginning of the game".

So what you seem to be doing is changing your stance, an pretending you didn't even made original disputed claim that was proven wrong just to avoid admitting to making a wrongfull claim.

 

9 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

This whole tirade of yours has been a non-argument.  I'm not arguing about the guard being the best at everything individually, but at everything holistically, over the span of the game's existence.  Which I said, as well, quite early on.  Which I said, as well, I was not referencing any specific data point.

 

No you just said that it was overal top performant in whole games history, and tried rebute first counterargument with "look up what overal means"

 

9 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Because really, Guard has always sat at the upper end of the charts when played well, even from launch, and can be desired in pretty much any scenario.

 

And again, no, guard has climbed to those top charts only after expacs started dropping. Before that there were ALOT of situations where it was not deemed desirable to bring guards.

 

9 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Honestly I'm beginning to reconsider my thoughts on the post content of this subsection if this is how most of the discussions normally go with people falsely quoting and whatnot.

 

"falsely quoting" good one xD The only touch I did to the quotes of yours is to chop it in blocks for easier addressing.

 

And on that note I think I will end my contribution to this thread, because since past has been sorted out (although due to your shift in stance over admitting to make wrong statements), and as draxynnic already said present is where we should be looking at in the first place, there is no comment I could make on the present state of the guardian, that would not have been already made by someone else. I agree with very elaborate post of draxynnic just above mine on pve and wvw aspects, in sPvP I can't really judge since I don't play guard in sPvP, and overal I play little of sPvP, probably to little to have any reasonable sample size to judge popularity. in my limited sample size of daily rankeds I meet guardians about as commonly as any other class that is not a necromancer. And then they do happen they are dragonhunters 99% of the time.

[draxynnic.3719]

3 minutes ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

in sPvP I can't really judge since I don't play guard in sPvP, and overal I play little of sPvP, probably to little to have any reasonable sample size to judge popularity. in my limited sample size of daily rankeds I meet guardians about as commonly as any other class that is not a necromancer. And then they do happen they are dragonhunters 99% of the time.

I haven't played guardian in sPvP for over a year, mostly because I'm looking to get sPvP achievements on other professions (if I was to advocate for any profession to become overpowered in sPvP right now out of personal advantage, it'd be warrior, since that's the profession I still need a lot of wins on).

 

But yeah, my experience fighting guardians has been that firebrands are pretty much paper nowadays, a far cry from the months where you cried if the enemy had a firebrand and you didn't. Support guardians are... about where supports generally fit outside the firebrand dominance period: a solid asset for their team if given the opportunity to support freely, going down quickly if focused and not rescued. Brawling-oriented guardian builds are competent brawlers, but don't seem to be outliers unless you or your team is overly reliant on conditions - they're absolutely there, but engineers and necros still seem to be stronger in that area.

[Doggie.3184]

On 6/6/2021 at 6:44 PM, Hogwarts Zebra.8597 said:

statistically speaking, whatever class u see someone playing will likely be the class they main. It's highly unlikely veterans will switch mains because of a change as this, although new players who just recently chose their main and still aren't very invested into guardian may switch to something else

 

True considering I'm still a Thief main from beginning despite intense torture, broken builds, nerfs every patch, entire playstyles deleted entirely, and etc constantly. 

 

I've often found Guardian to be the most stable and well designed class (or Anet's sugarbaby) personally.

[DraconusShade.4590]

On 7/3/2021 at 6:03 PM, Caeledh.5437 said:

I happened to just be looking at the total number of posts in these forums and wasn't surprised by necro being way out in lead at 40k.

 

I was a bit surprised that Guardian was in last position with only 14.1k.

 

But I suppose it does make sense.

 

My original main character was a Guardian. Partly because I usually play healers in MMOs. But GW - at launch - was a very unwelcoming place for healers. And still is relative to especially older MMOs.

 

On top of that, I was just reading another post about someone rediscovering hammer as a weapon they'd forgotten Guardians even have. And everyone responding well, yes, we have them but they're almost totally useless and that's why you almost never see players using them.

 

A bit like spirit weapons. Perma they'd be cool as hell. But they weren't so like the hammer, I just forgot about them. Eventually ANet made them not pets at all.

 

Guardians aren't completely broken and unplayable but they're also not fully functional.

 

Thematically and graphically, Guardians are great, though I'm not at all a fan of Firebrand's religious bent. And I never really understood Dragonhunter. Bow, nice, thank you. But Dragonhhunter as an elite extension of Guardian, doesn't really make sense.

 

Guardian = defensive and virtuous. I'm into that.

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian

 

"Guardians are devoted fighters who protect their allies and smite their enemies by drawing from the power of their virtues."

 

But both Dragonhunter and Firebrand went full religious zealot.

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragonhunter

 

"The dragonhunter specialization will look to viciously purge the lands of dragons and their ilk, with longbow and traps now at hand."

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Firebrand

 

"These zealous lorekeepers are skilled in conjuring magical fire, and they use axes and mantras in close combat."

I think you are mixing up the meaning of zealous and religious zealotry because of how often the word is used together with religion.

 

As per the dictionary definition "zealous" only means to show great energy or enthusiasm in the pursuit of a cause. Dragonhunters hunt dragons with zeal and Firebrands guard Elona's history and knowledge that Joko tried to destroy with great zeal.

 

Where is religion coming into this? If anything the whole "virtuous" warrior stuff from base Guardian makes them more aligned with religion than the Firebrands. 

While I agree with DH making little sense I completely disagree on the religious bent of DH and FB because it is non-existent.