Guardian Class Discussion~

[bosshunt]

This guy got his head up his bum templar is necessary evil and by making guardian the primary dps you nullify 1/2 their skillset because their crowd control skills are not aoe and dont work on mobs.

So ...:
1) you assume that if Guardian became a viable DPS then for some reason they would not use their CC skills
2) for some reason you have got into your mind there needs to be a primary DPS (which needs to be Templar, of course)
3) you say Guardian is not a DPS, meaning you suggest all of their damage buffs are for the sole purpose of making Blue Drain stronger, and you nullify all of their pure damage skills

Sorry but you make yourself look like you have your head in a place from where you can't see clearly.

[Gank83]

I was just thinking tho.. it will be missing out on Crazy strength, aka 60% strength boost, with only 5% more attack force gain compared to the guardian and but an extra 100% melee gain during crazy swing/powered heavy armor , or am I missing something?

Obviously, they do not need to be on par though - IJS.

Defenders made out pretty nicely. Their burst went from 10 seconds every 40 seconds to 20 seconds every 30/40 seconds. Plus ward getting rolled into empower(although its currently not working) and gaining stone skin....daaayyyum son. So glad I had a str defender before the changes lol. Defender dps probably gonna outperform guard dps sub 120 now, but with the ultimate skill guardians going to be way ahead.

So ...:
1) you assume that if Guardian became a viable DPS then for some reason they would not use their CC skills
2) for some reason you have got into your mind there needs to be a primary DPS (which needs to be Templar, of course)
3) you say Guardian is not a DPS, meaning you suggest all of their damage buffs are for the sole purpose of making Blue Drain stronger, and you nullify all of their pure damage skills

Sorry but you make yourself look like you have your head in a place from where you can't see clearly.

Yeah she does make herself look silly...
1. When does a guardian use his lock down skills. When he's going to combo lol. You don't just cc on a guardian and then run and hide and let the real dps do the job, they're supposed to be one of the real dps.
2. Yup, just showing her bias again. Templars should be viable dps but the concept of primary dps in a game with so many classes and builds is beyond stupid.
3. Main thing I use blue drain for is to prevent them from using a stun break to escape a combo...since draining the red bar is what counts. Blue drain is an important skill no doubt, but I agree with you, its not exactly your primary concern as a guardian(or defender for that matter) to run around and whack someones mana every 20 seconds...its just a support skill to drain the much more vital red bar.

[GM_Karazy]

Defenders made out pretty nicely. Their burst went from 10 seconds every 40 seconds to 20 seconds every 30/40 seconds. Plus ward getting rolled into empower(although its currently not working) and gaining stone skin....daaayyyum son. So glad I had a str defender before the changes lol. Defender dps probably gonna outperform guard dps sub 120 now, but with the ultimate skill guardians going to be way ahead.



Yeah she does make herself look silly...
1. When does a guardian use his lock down skills. When he's going to combo lol. You don't just cc on a guardian and then run and hide and let the real dps do the job, they're supposed to be one of the real dps.
2. Yup, just showing her bias again. Templars should be viable dps but the concept of primary dps in a game with so many classes and builds is beyond stupid.
3. Main thing I use blue drain for is to prevent them from using a stun break to escape a combo...since draining the red bar is what counts. Blue drain is an important skill no doubt, but I agree with you, its not exactly your primary concern as a guardian(or defender for that matter) to run around and whack someones mana every 20 seconds...its just a support skill to drain the much more vital red bar.

Great post again Gank83! Really like the info. What's the combo you keep talking about? I wish we had players who recorded themselves PVPing. That would be fun content to post up and watch on a thread like that. I would like to work on creating a guide with information like this in it, to help our newer players have a better understanding of what exactly is going on with their class. I can tell just from looking at some of the moves, they are definitely 5/5 in importance, like the buffs and the stuns. But what about the other moves? Is Final Crash not worth it? Knight's Mind? Bleed? Please, enlighten me as to why those moves aren't really mentioned! What skill points will you sacrifice for the class ultimate?

[PenguinJoe]

Great post again Gank83! Really like the info. What's the combo you keep talking about? I wish we had players who recorded themselves PVPing. That would be fun content to post up and watch on a thread like that. I would like to work on creating a guide with information like this in it, to help our newer players have a better understanding of what exactly is going on with their class. I can tell just from looking at some of the moves, they are definitely 5/5 in importance, like the buffs and the stuns. But what about the other moves? Is Final Crash not worth it? Knight's Mind? Bleed? Please, enlighten me as to why those moves aren't really mentioned! What skill points will you sacrifice for the class ultimate?

He is talking about the The (in)famous OS/CS/KS guardian combo.

If it can run its course it can kill a vit character that has a reasonable damage drop (i.e. not 80% DD) in a single sequence. But that combo sequence is engraved in stone and can be interrupted really easily. A quick stun in the middle of it and your damage peters out as your opponents walks away... or kills you. Guardians take a fair bit of skill and timing to play because they can't simply run around hitting folks with 20k regular damage whacks at the rate of 3-4 per second or nuke folks with a 200K damage whammy.

[Gank83]

Great post again Gank83! Really like the info. What's the combo you keep talking about? I wish we had players who recorded themselves PVPing. That would be fun content to post up and watch on a thread like that. I would like to work on creating a guide with information like this in it, to help our newer players have a better understanding of what exactly is going on with their class. I can tell just from looking at some of the moves, they are definitely 5/5 in importance, like the buffs and the stuns. But what about the other moves? Is Final Crash not worth it? Knight's Mind? Bleed? Please, enlighten me as to why those moves aren't really mentioned! What skill points will you sacrifice for the class ultimate?

Basically your combo is order swing + crazy swing.

Before the update when OS was 30 second duration with a longer cooldown, the ultimate goal was to use OS, hit for 20 seconds(well like 18 seconds since your skills tend to not instantly activate), then use CS for the last 10 seconds for maximum damage. It almost never worked...if you didn't have Roha's Blessing and Stoneskin active at the same time you generally just ended up cc'd or crushed by a templars overwhelming dps advantage. If you did have all those goodies buffed, someone would generally just debuff you and you were pretty much just trash at that point for a couple minutes while you waited on cooldowns. This is why guardians(well most classes to be fair about it) have been useless as DPS for so long. You'd get a decent combo once every few minutes, and if your combo went absolutely flawlessly(which is almost never did) you would approach templar like dps for a few seconds every few minutes...or you could just play a templar, do DPS a guardian would hope to do for the last few seconds of a perfect combo all the time, and just pop reflect and not have to worry at all about debuffs or cc.

Anyways...the way I play it now that things have shorter cool downs is I just pop OS while engaging someone. Since I get to use it more often, but at a shorter duration, I am less interested in trying to maximize it and more interested in just laying it on as often as possible. I'll use OS, rush to hold them in place, then blue drain so hopefully they won't be able to use a stun break. I'll then use CS to start laying on the damage. I keep an eye on the duration of rush, and time out stunner accordingly to keep them in place. After hitting my stunner I generally hit Final Crash and Knight Symbol to get some spike damage near the end of my combo. Ideally I get them in before CS runs out so they benefit from the CS damage bonus as well. Basically the way I look at it is I can lock a single target in place for 14-15 seconds with Rush/Stunner, even though my OS lasts for 20 seconds I'm aiming to make effective use out of it for 14-15 seconds as trying to make full use of the 20 seconds means they get a 5-6 second window to do something to wreck my combo. This is just speaking from how I've been playing in PA since its all I've really done post update, if its a smaller scale fight with less potential random stuff going on around you that can mess you up, or a group on voice chat I'm sure its a lot more practical trying to maximize your OS a bit more.

Anyways, as far as skill builds go...buffs, stuns OS/CS/KS are the most important, there is a little variance in builds depending upon dual wield vs dagger/shield, and I feel like a few of the skills I have aren't better than ones I didn't take...its just a simple matter of not having points for everything, but really the only skills I'd personally never take would be blessed aim since I never miss anyhow and change mind. When I get to the ultimate skill I'll probably be stripping points out of assault crash. I maxed it back in the day before Knight's Aim existed as it was guardians only aoe and I solo'd a lot, but with now with the passive aoe its not that I don't still use assault crash or that it isn't useful, its probably just going to be the victim of being the skill I'd least mind losing.