131 replies to this topic

[nurt]

The fact that guardians have multiple viable builds that fill different roles is actually a good thing not a bad thing.  Every profession should have at least 2 or 3 viable builds that play differently and fill different niches.

[JaxSilven]

nurt, on 03 December 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

The fact that guardians have multiple viable builds that fill different roles is actually a good thing not a bad thing.  Every profession should have at least 2 or 3 viable builds that play differently and fill different niches.

Although this is true, I believe it was the implication was that running 2-3 bunker Guardians on a team can mean the players don't have to be at a higher skill level to beat another team and just will due to their builds.

[Aodan]

JaxSilven, on 03 December 2012 - 01:03 AM, said:

Although this is true, I believe it was the implication was that running 2-3 bunker Guardians on a team can mean the players don't have to be at a higher skill level to beat another team and just will due to their builds.

Due to the comp. Guardians do not have a high skill ceiling when it comes to playing them very well.

Thus in terms of viable home defenders currently in meta, none of them can beat a grd, other than another grd (which is really just delaying and still causes a pull of resources) or a trap ranger.

That means every other profession in the game will lose to a grd who is a far point harasser, this is very apparent in the fact that most comps that run dbl grd with a offensive harasser, send ONLY that grd, which creates a pull in resources for the other team which = unfair # advantages even if that grd can't cap (which any decent harass guard can easily neut against anything other than a grd). That doesn't seem balanced at all compared to other professions where it can be a 50/50 most of the time on evenly skilled players.

Also keep in mind the best bunker atm is a grd. Combine that 2x Virtues, the new Renewed focus and that Grd has access to strong control through GS and Hammer, it's a no brainer why to bring two grds in a comp.

My issue with this is most of the teams winning paids or "grinding" them is using two grds. Anyone who runs that comp and doesn't can see a clear night and day difference in the difficulties of playing paid.

Edited by Aodan, 03 December 2012 - 02:26 AM.

[JaxSilven]

Aodan, on 03 December 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

Due to the comp. Guardians do not have a high skill ceiling when it comes to playing them very well.

Thus in terms of viable home defenders currently in meta, none of them can beat a grd, other than another grd (which is really just delaying and still causes a pull of resources) or a trap ranger.

That means every other profession in the game will lose to a grd who is a far point harasser, this is very apparent in the fact that most comps that run dbl grd with a offensive harasser, send ONLY that grd, which creates a pull in resources for the other team which = unfair # advantages even if that grd can't cap (which any decent harass guard can easily neut against anything other than a grd). That doesn't seem balanced at all compared to other professions where it can be a 50/50 most of the time on evenly skilled players.

Also keep in mind the best bunker atm is a grd. Combine that 2x Virtues, the new Renewed focus and that Grd has access to strong control through GS and Hammer, it's a no brainer why to bring two grds in a comp.

My issue with this is most of the teams winning paids or "grinding" them is using two grds. Anyone who runs that comp and doesn't can see a clear night and day difference in the difficulties of playing paid.

Yes, I agree. When I said 'builds' I did actually mean composition ^^

[ArcherHenchman]

Aodan, on 03 December 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

Due to the comp. Guardians do not have a high skill ceiling when it comes to playing them very well.

Thus in terms of viable home defenders currently in meta, none of them can beat a grd, other than another grd (which is really just delaying and still causes a pull of resources) or a trap ranger.

That means every other profession in the game will lose to a grd who is a far point harasser, this is very apparent in the fact that most comps that run dbl grd with a offensive harasser, send ONLY that grd, which creates a pull in resources for the other team which = unfair # advantages even if that grd can't cap (which any decent harass guard can easily neut against anything other than a grd). That doesn't seem balanced at all compared to other professions where it can be a 50/50 most of the time on evenly skilled players.

Also keep in mind the best bunker atm is a grd. Combine that 2x Virtues, the new Renewed focus and that Grd has access to strong control through GS and Hammer, it's a no brainer why to bring two grds in a comp.

My issue with this is most of the teams winning paids or "grinding" them is using two grds. Anyone who runs that comp and doesn't can see a clear night and day difference in the difficulties of playing paid.

Guardians have a VERY high skill cap. They just don't need to be approaching the skill cap in order to be substantially successful. They have a huge amount of passive skills wherein their actions are irrelevant for determining the total outcome. Put on retal? It isn't up to you to determine how effective the skill ends up being damage-wise, the burden is shifted to your opponent. Burn on block? With aegis up you don't determine whether or not someone's getting burned, they do. But its going to happen regardless of how good you are at guardian. Guardian is about more than just surviving on points once they've been capped. That's the easy part.

I also don't think the best bunker atm is a guardian. In terms of selfish point holding power, elementalist is hands down far more difficult to kill and decap on. You can set an ele up to be invulnerable 5+ times during a single 100->0 situation, have near-constant uptime on vigor and regen, higher passive self-healing than guardian and FAR higher condition removal potential. Against a guardian, they take around 3 minutes to decap on and that's mostly if the guardian is very good. Unlike guardian they can survive a necro + X or ranger + X. They just won't do very much for you while they're doing it. They do provide more tangible support as the side point holder on map 2, though, as they can throw skills down off the cliff, whereas most guardians are relegated to scepter autos. Guardians, however, provide a lot more support between their light fields, knockbacks, stability fields, book, sanctuary, symbols, etc in team fights. Shaman builds leveraging condition damage are a bit squishier on ele, but they put out substantial aoe control and damage, at least on the point.  

The european teams are starting to complain about the scepter dagger bunker ele build for a reason. Mist res with mercy runes can't be dissuaded with aoe + the strongest downed state ability in the game + stronger skillset vs the necro and ranger point cracking builds that defensive teams are relying on.

[Aodan]

ArcherHenchman, on 03 December 2012 - 10:01 PM, said:

Guardians have a VERY high skill cap. They just don't need to be approaching the skill cap in order to be substantially successful. They have a huge amount of passive skills wherein their actions are irrelevant for determining the total outcome. Put on retal? It isn't up to you to determine how effective the skill ends up being damage-wise, the burden is shifted to your opponent. Burn on block? With aegis up you don't determine whether or not someone's getting burned, they do. But its going to happen regardless of how good you are at guardian. Guardian is about more than just surviving on points once they've been capped. That's the easy part.

I also don't think the best bunker atm is a guardian. In terms of selfish point holding power, elementalist is hands down far more difficult to kill and decap on. You can set an ele up to be invulnerable 5+ times during a single 100->0 situation, have near-constant uptime on vigor and regen, higher passive self-healing than guardian and FAR higher condition removal potential. Against a guardian, they take around 3 minutes to decap on and that's mostly if the guardian is very good. Unlike guardian they can survive a necro + X or ranger + X. They just won't do very much for you while they're doing it. They do provide more tangible support as the side point holder on map 2, though, as they can throw skills down off the cliff, whereas most guardians are relegated to scepter autos. Guardians, however, provide a lot more support between their light fields, knockbacks, stability fields, book, sanctuary, symbols, etc in team fights. Shaman builds leveraging condition damage are a bit squishier on ele, but they put out substantial aoe control and damage, at least on the point.  

The european teams are starting to complain about the scepter dagger bunker ele build for a reason. Mist res with mercy runes can't be dissuaded with aoe + the strongest downed state ability in the game + stronger skillset vs the necro and ranger point cracking builds that defensive teams are relying on.

I'm simply going to state disagree on multiple things you've said, I'm keeping up a bit on the EU side of things and I agree with your last statement about Mist, but that is no different than an engi and elixer S. The strong part of an Ele is it's condition removal without having to build into it heavily, mobility, and flexibility. A good thief will still pop an ele in a blink of an eye with good focus, thus why I disagree with Ele being a node defender after the nerfs to staff.

As far as guardians, I find it hard to believe you would state such a statement if you play Engi, Mes, or even Ele at a competitive level, as they have a high ceiling, guardians however do not. All of their builds since beta have been fairly straight forward and easy to master.

[Skyro]

I don't think they were complaining about normal Mist Form skill, they were complaining about the downed skill mainly because you can choose where you end up. Thus it is much much easier to zerg rez an ele than any other class. They should make it so that you can't control where you land.

[ArcherHenchman]

Aodan, on 04 December 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

I'm simply going to state disagree on multiple things you've said, I'm keeping up a bit on the EU side of things and I agree with your last statement about Mist, but that is no different than an engi and elixer S. The strong part of an Ele is it's condition removal without having to build into it heavily, mobility, and flexibility. A good thief will still pop an ele in a blink of an eye with good focus, thus why I disagree with Ele being a node defender after the nerfs to staff.

As far as guardians, I find it hard to believe you would state such a statement if you play Engi, Mes, or even Ele at a competitive level, as they have a high ceiling, guardians however do not. All of their builds since beta have been fairly straight forward and easy to master.

Uh, a very good thief can't touch a merely decent full bunker elementalist. On any build.  I have no idea where you're getting the idea that they can. A thief will be tasked to killing the necro/thief/warrior/mesmer or whatever other keystone class a team is running, not the point holder. Thieves on trebs, for instance, are expected to straight up abandon the treb if they don't have help vs. a tanky ele, let alone a full bunker one. What you're probably used to are elementalists running very glassy, because since the nerf on evasive, people have gone burstier to make up for the lack of sustained blast finisher utility during fights. Additionally, they're more effective because guardians had a number of their broken skills fixed, meaning that aoeing down a point (which is the fotm meta for a reason) is now more effective with the ele. None of this applies with eles built to burst though. Most eles probably look tanky to  you because the majority of damage that a guardian puts out in most builds is incremental and condition based, which eles shrug off naturally.

If you don't believe me, feel free to hop into a few 1v1s with me. A single air 3 completely neuters a thief's offensive spike even without rock barrier up, mist at 25% hp, svanir, or any other of the solid anti-spike tools that an ele has.

As for guardians, I've seen high level guardian play. I've seen the difference in team effectiveness between when we run a mediocre guardian and when we run a good one. I personally gave you a build that you went onto rave about on these forums for weeks, so I'm kinda shocked that you'd tell me that you knew it all during beta. You're an alright guardian, but you're nowhere near the top of the pack, and believe me, there's a difference in in-game effectiveness. The skill disparity won't be as obvious as with a warrior, thief or mesmer, but it's still very noticeable. I don't think I've ever seen you intentionally roll a hammer 4, but a top tier guardian will be able to every time unless the other intentionally baits with cancelled hammer 4s, but you probably didn't know that, and that would have costed your team a good 150+ points throughout a match as a point that should have remained capped would have been decapped asap.

As for the elixir S thing. Engineers can be bursted down very quickly and don't offer the same amount of up-front mitigation that other classes do. Where Engineers are busy using elixir R to try and pop back up, elementalists get 15 seconds of instant rally. Where engineers get demolished by immobilize (as their condition removal is lacking before they're under 25% hp), which a number of classes can apply consistently, elementalists are nearly immune to it.

And yeah, they were complaining about the downed skill, amongst other things because even if you die on point say, at keep, you can mist off the edge towards your team, and force them to commit multiple people to crossing mid, which gets them facerolled by the current aoe meta. The downed state alone doesn't make the class ridiculous, though. Its the fact that they're incredibly hard to kill in the current meta, then they have a huge set of get out of jail free cards even if they do. They force a stomp because mist resets their hp, which puts someone in the middle of an aoe cluster*, then they're repositioned, and god forbid you didn't follow, because if you didn't, you're now getting immobilized in the middle of the aoe cluster*, or they're far away enough to get ressed safely.

[Aodan]

ArcherHenchman, on 05 December 2012 - 12:10 AM, said:

Uh, a very good thief can't touch a merely decent full bunker elementalist. On any build.  I have no idea where you're getting the idea that they can. A thief will be tasked to killing the necro/thief/warrior/mesmer or whatever other keystone class a team is running, not the point holder. Thieves on trebs, for instance, are expected to straight up abandon the treb if they don't have help vs. a tanky ele, let alone a full bunker one. What you're probably used to are elementalists running very glassy, because since the nerf on evasive, people have gone burstier to make up for the lack of sustained blast finisher utility during fights. Additionally, they're more effective because guardians had a number of their broken skills fixed, meaning that aoeing down a point (which is the fotm meta for a reason) is now more effective with the ele. None of this applies with eles built to burst though. Most eles probably look tanky to  you because the majority of damage that a guardian puts out in most builds is incremental and condition based, which eles shrug off naturally.

If you don't believe me, feel free to hop into a few 1v1s with me. A single air 3 completely neuters a thief's offensive spike even without rock barrier up, mist at 25% hp, svanir, or any other of the solid anti-spike tools that an ele has.

As for guardians, I've seen high level guardian play. I've seen the difference in team effectiveness between when we run a mediocre guardian and when we run a good one. I personally gave you a build that you went onto rave about on these forums for weeks, so I'm kinda shocked that you'd tell me that you knew it all during beta. You're an alright guardian, but you're nowhere near the top of the pack, and believe me, there's a difference in in-game effectiveness. The skill disparity won't be as obvious as with a warrior, thief or mesmer, but it's still very noticeable. I don't think I've ever seen you intentionally roll a hammer 4, but a top tier guardian will be able to every time unless the other intentionally baits with cancelled hammer 4s, but you probably didn't know that, and that would have costed your team a good 150+ points throughout a match as a point that should have remained capped would have been decapped asap.

As for the elixir S thing. Engineers can be bursted down very quickly and don't offer the same amount of up-front mitigation that other classes do. Where Engineers are busy using elixir R to try and pop back up, elementalists get 15 seconds of instant rally. Where engineers get demolished by immobilize (as their condition removal is lacking before they're under 25% hp), which a number of classes can apply consistently, elementalists are nearly immune to it.

And yeah, they were complaining about the downed skill, amongst other things because even if you die on point say, at keep, you can mist off the edge towards your team, and force them to commit multiple people to crossing mid, which gets them facerolled by the current aoe meta. The downed state alone doesn't make the class ridiculous, though. Its the fact that they're incredibly hard to kill in the current meta, then they have a huge set of get out of jail free cards even if they do. They force a stomp because mist resets their hp, which puts someone in the middle of an aoe cluster*, then they're repositioned, and god forbid you didn't follow, because if you didn't, you're now getting immobilized in the middle of the aoe cluster*, or they're far away enough to get ressed safely.

My point with the ceiling of a guardian is much lower than a lot of other professions. A good player behind a guardian is always going to make a huge difference but among the current pool of great/competitive guardians, there isn't one that comes to mind that can play any build better than I could. What I've ran into esp with players like kaypud and others is it boils down to if we are playing dbl grd or not and how we choose to counter it. As I'm not currently running with a team atm, since this last patch I've only go to face teams in pugs and we did pretty decent 300+ as a pug against teams and I played either Home Point Offensive Guard or Retal Far point harass, pics on my imgur for ref.

I'm simply stating that being "pro" at a guardian isn't as hard as being "pro" at other professions. Being good translates to any profession but IMHO grd/nec are the easiest to get there.

[ArcherHenchman]

Aodan, on 05 December 2012 - 12:39 AM, said:

My point with the ceiling of a guardian is much lower than a lot of other professions. A good player behind a guardian is always going to make a huge difference but among the current pool of great/competitive guardians, there isn't one that comes to mind that can play any build better than I could. What I've ran into esp with players like kaypud and others is it boils down to if we are playing dbl grd or not and how we choose to counter it. As I'm not currently running with a team atm, since this last patch I've only go to face teams in pugs and we did pretty decent 300+ as a pug against teams and I played either Home Point Offensive Guard or Retal Far point harass, pics on my imgur for ref.

I'm simply stating that being "pro" at a guardian isn't as hard as being "pro" at other professions. Being good translates to any profession but IMHO grd/nec are the easiest to get there.

The "I can do it as well as the best" hubris is both incorrect and a poor argument in general. Once you start recognizing what guardians do besides standing on points and surviving you'll start seeing where the limits of your play lie. This isn't to be mean, either. I know you get a lot of flak on the boards from hyperbads in response to opinions which are widely held at the upper tier of play, but don't let that fool you into believing you're sitting on top of the mountain when you aren't.

[nurt]

double guardian is not even a good team comp, especially double bunker.  you can run a glassy ball guardian and a bunker, which imo is cool (build diversity is good), but i wouldn't say it's the best comp right now.  

really, guardians are fine right now.  also i never realized the difference between a good guardian and amazing one until i started playing with kinnu, but trust me, there's a difference.

[beadnbutter32]

Excellent rant, but a bit repetitive.
Sad to see there are no convincing counter arguments other than wait and see, which unfortunately does not retain players.
I am a PVE kind of guy, and even though I sometimes get curious about pvp, the current situation is not attractive.

Also loved "World vs Doors" comment.