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guardian in wvw
DrWookie
Member UncommonPosts: 263
So I'm wondering If anyone has any experience playing a guardian in wvw. While I know this game wants to eliminate the 'Trinity' I tend to like to help my teammates. While I know I would continue to fight I winder if people feel like the rewards/advancement is limited as a guardian if you spend some of your time supporting. The game doesn't seem to reward healing and 'buffing'. I didn't get a chance to play guardian but I wonder if people played guardian plus something else and felt if the advancement/rewards were less for the guardian, at least if they noticed. Particularly loot seems to be based on who damages the enemy and so if say 50% of your skills are support, I would imagine you would end up with a lot less loot since your 'participation' is seen as inferior.
Anyone with any experience to compare? Thanks.
Comments
Well, you barely have to tag things to count as having contributed to defeating an enemy. I'm not sure about WvW, but at least in PvE, there's only two levels of credit for an enemy... 0 or 'you contributed'. usually a single hit counts as contributing.
I did a couple events where almost all I did was rez people, and I still managed to get a gold. It helps if you toss out a well placed AoE every once in a while, or maybe summon something like the sword/hammer that can attack even while you're supporting. Most of the supporting abilities are also attacks (At least on weapons), so that helps too.
I can't say this for sure, but in wvw I believe the amount of damage you do effects your xp and chance of loot when players killed. I have damaged many many enemies and gotten no credit when I watch them die, which makes me think the amount you do matters. I can't say that for sure, but its the best explanation I have for why I don't get xp when I damage some enemies in wvw.
Given that, I just worry that if I devote even 50% of my skills to support, I will be disadvantaged. Your contribution for attack/defend also appears to be solely based on kills as far as I can tell which would further compound the issue.
I'm not saying I plan on trying to go full healer, but still every skill you use that deals No damage would seem to take away from the damage you do, which would reduce your perceived 'contribution'.
The game does reward rezzing or getting people up from downed state. Players dedicated to doing that are often needed in WvW. Guardian has a lot of abliities that can interrupt and knock players away when they are trying to 'finish off' your team mates as well. Knocking players off keep walls is also very satisfying.
In WvW most of the battles fall under a PvP dynamic event such as 'repel the intruders', 'take the keep' or 'destroy the caravan'. This is the meat of any XP, Gold and Karma rewards in WvW. Whether you are supporting, rezzing or fighting you will gain contribution towards the event. Medals though, from what I've seen, seem to come mainly from killing players yourself.
Every class can support just as much a Guardian though in one way or another; with buffs, regens or heals. Guardian can fight just as well as any class also. You just don't see people running support builds on other classes often though because a lot of people who want to play support migrate automatically towards the Guardian, because of the name.
Guardians can really change the tide of a battle with some of their skills. If you are looking at particulars, Conscreations are VERY powerful is they are placed correctly and strategically to provide combo fields and impassable barriers. I also believe that generating combo fields that help kill enemies constitute an exp bonus for you (I've tried it out a few times in the BWEs) where I get a moderate amount, and in terms of event medals, I always get a gold. It also helps to have a ranged weapon and the fact that Guardians are one of the classes that has a lot of access to combo field generators.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/359874/Aerowyns-Video-Compilation-of-ALL-things-Guild-Wars-2.html
Scepter + Shield for #1
Sword + Focus for #2
All kinds of win in WvW as a Guardian.
Very much a support role, but of course once you get level 80 and have your Trait lines maxed, you'll be able to do hella damage via conditions (burning) too.
Well, healing & buffing doesn't currently seem to contribute to participation points.
However, there is not a single class that should be doing nothing but healing & buffing. Not even the guardian.
Guardians do have good boons & heals, but even if you're specced heavily into such a spec, there are still a lot of support skills that involve attacking the enemy. For example, one of the most annoying support skills the guardian has is the spectral hammer. Which proceeds to float around knocking people on their arses. That one skill alone will give you contribution, just from hitting things. You don't even have to be that much damage, but you do need to be attacking enemies.
One thing a lot of people seem to forget is that there is just as much offensive support as defensive in this game. For example, if you are stunning, dazing, blinding, chilling, fearing, knocking back, etc. you are also preventing damage to your team. Giving protection & regeneration is great, but there's more to support than being a buffbot.
I don't have a ton of experience w/ the guardian (it's my 2nd least played class atm), but I did manage to get one to ~20 and they are an awesome class. As long as you aren't sitting in the back spamming regeneration, or healing symbols, you should be getting contribution just fine. The way the system is currently setup, is that you only really need to be a VERY small base damage requirement in order to get contribution, and you usually fill that up in about 1-2 hits. It's not nearly as problematic as some people choose to make it sound.
That actually isn't true. I played WvW extensively as an engineer, and an elementalist. After the first two weekends (before they wiped) my engi was around 44 from all WvW. I asked this in the forums and they confirmed that as it stands now in order to gain credit for defending a keep you have to kill opponents. If you are on the walls rezzing/healing/buffing you will get nothing when the timer counts down unless you actually get kills. As for contribution for attacking keeps, I didn't ask them specifically about that so I can't comment.
I realize that no class/player should ever be 100% support. I'm not planning on doing that. However the basic logic in my head is spinning when I think "Okay if I spend 50% of my time supporting my teammates, which is an activity that I get no credit for, what am I losing out on?". I realize that guardians and support can turn the tide in battle. I'm not asking about how effective a guardian is in WvW...I'm wondering specifically if people who have played guardian AND another class in WvW felt like the guardian's contribution/rewards (both from player kills and events) were worse than the other class they played where they were doing primarily damage.
If we want we could extend the question to ANY class specced as more of a support role. Not 100% support, just focusing on it consistently (I keep using the 50% as a random number, so say 50% of your skills and time are spent supporting your teammates). Do you feel when you play in that roll you are getting less contribution/less loot/less player kills/less badges?
My personal experience has been very different from yours in terms of contribution for kills. On my engi I noticed MANY enemies that I damaged and got no contribution from. Even opponents that I dedicated 3 or 4 of my primary attack skills would be killed by a crowd of 5 or 6 teammates, would get "finished" and I would get nothing. I could never really get a response from the devs about what the exact number (percentage or absolute) is required to get xp from a player kill...but I DEFINITELY noticed many enemies not giving me credit after I felt I had participated. I could make a guess and say that perhaps only the "Top X" number of players get credit (like the Top 3 or 4 players to damage the opponent) but that would just be a guess. Either way I definitely did not experience a situation where all I had to do was land 1 or 2 hits. I had to pretty much focus on an enemy in order to get credit. At least on my engi (which compared to elementalist seemed to have far inferior dmg, so maybe that was the problem).
Little off topic: I played around with the support build for my engi. It was fun but in general I didn't feel like I was contributing enough to the battlefield so I didn't use it very often. Not sure if I'll feel any different playing guardian, but we'll see.
Are you talking about drops? Or exp / karma rewards?
You should always get exp / karma for a mob (or player) you have been actively attacking that has died. Drops are a different matter entirely. Sometimes mobs won't drop anything (they just don't have much to drop), it basically gets destributed as evenly as possible. For most bosses you should get at least something from the boss, even if it's junk, but it really depends on the boss.
If it's just a veteran mob (copper circle around the picture), then drops will generally be low or none. Silver circles with swords have always dropped something for me, and gold circle mobs drop the best stuff.
When it comes to player kill loot drops, it seems to to get skewed a bit more towards damage / who got the killing blow. However, killing players isn't the only way of getting loot in WvW.
You need to deal a certain % of damage to get EXP and loot credit. In massive zergs this can be hard to do. Your bonus EXP (probably loot too) is directly effected by how much damage you do. If you do full damage to someone (usually with a siege weapon) you'll get full bonus EXP credit.
As for event rewards you get credit depending on the event. Assaulting a keep requires you to either do damage (not necessarily kill) walls, siege, guards, tower lords, players, etc. in the area before the guards are killed. Getting credit for killing a dolyak requires you to have dealt damage to the dolyak or it's guards. On the otherhand you can get full contribution for upgrading a camp just by being there and sticking around when the upgraded started, regardless of if combat happened or not.
The system is really awful right now and WvWvW rewards need tweaking in general. EXP is great (when you are dominating with siege), gold and loot is horrible especially at lower levels. It needs to take into account supporting people around you and reward you appropriately for it.
As for Guardian just like SPvP they are the most overpowered profession right now (opinion of course) and a few Guardians can easily overcome a large zerg with their ability to zone people out, support, take damage, and keep people off siege.
IMO guardians has too little ranged. People can kite you alot. AFAIK they can't even use ranged weapons
I play my Engineer as pure support, my goal is to keep my team up longer and stronger while providing as much control to WvW fights as possible. I still get enough medals to be satisfied.... perhaps I do get less than I would if I went damage. Then again .. my team probably wouldn't do as well without me there doing my job, so thats the trade off ... me doing my job enables my clan to get more kills ... which means more chances for me to provide just enough damage to get an award.
It really shouldn't matter though , supports a mindset that doesn't concern itself with what rewards it recieves ... by its very nature it should be a reward to see your team win.
/shrug
They can use a staff, which is ranged.
There's technically no such thing as melee and ranged classes, as all are both.
Seems weird. A guardian, full plated dude with a staff
It's really, really easy to NOT get kited as a Guardian, but you have to build for it - then you will have no problems.
Kind of like every other profession - there are obvious counters to everything, you have to build yourself around the obvious weaknesses.
Scepter + Shield, Sword+Focus (or Sword+Torch) as your two weapons are pretty much your anti-kiting kit.
Bane Signet, Spectral Hammer, some other one that allows you to teleport to a target and light stuff on fire....
Easy breezy.
Guardian's ranged weapon is scepter, not staff. Staff's main attack does have a 600 range and the #2 skill fires an orb that you can detonate up to 1200 range, but it has a cooldown, so I wouldn't classify it as their ranged weapon. The #1 skill on scepter is 1200 range and spammable, but it's a slow moving orb and does pitiful damage.
^^^ Those are my experiences in terms of how the system is set up. And as you said the system seems to reward/focus on the damage you deal, not the indirect roll you play in a battle. Heck while defending a keep one of the most important (and dangerous) things you could do would be to make supply runs to help support the keep's defenses. By running back and forth from the supply camp you would end up with minimal rewards, and would be cut out of the "defend the keep" rewards since you aren't sitting there getting kills. The system as it stands rewards those who focus the most on direct damage to the enemy. Given that, I am concerned about playing a support roll.
Interesting view of a guardian. In all my time in WvW during all 3 beta weekends I can't really recall noticing guardians in battle...either on my team or the opponents. At least there was no moment where as was like "Woah what happened? Oh that guardian did something". But perhaps they were making significant contributions without me noticing. However, all the things that you list the guardian doing to make them powerful (zone people out, support, take damage, keep people off siege) doesn't necessarily directly do large amounts of damage / net them kills, which is what is rewarded. A guardian could play a VERY significant roll in a keep defense (as a support roll, rezzing, taking damage etc...) but get zero rewards if they didn't directly kill an opponent.
I play support not because i have the mindset of "Oh wow I love helping my peers", but mostly just because I tend to like the skills and the thought involved in playing support. I feel like you have to pay more attention to both sides of the battlefield, which for me is fun. If I do that though, I would still like to be adequately rewarded.
Yeah as I said, the Guardian is good for mobility and closing on your target, but the problem is in WvW you're often defending on top of the wall or standing on the ground attacking people up on the wall. Guardian just doesn't have good tools for those scenarios except as support or using seige equipment.
This is very true.
However the most fun you can have is as a Guardian using Staff to block people from getting into the portal into a keep or from setting up their siege at the door lol
I'll take being mobile and useful in the field over being useful in the "Gate Wars" any day haha.
And say in the situation where you are defending you focus on support (since you lack high damaged ranged weapons), you are rewarded far less than the elementalist who is spamming their large assortment of ranged attacks on the enemy, since the "defend the tower" dynamic event's contribution is based on the kills you do. Even if indirectly your support helps those ranged attackers kill more enemies, THEY are rewarded for that, not you.
600m is still outside of melee, so the staff is a ranged weapon that they can use. 1200m for the sceptre is the same maximum range as other weapons, and again is a ranged weapon.
So the statement that they cannot use ranged weapons is simply untrue.
Again I emphasize the use of conscreations: Purging Flames for AoE damage and CC removal, Hallowed Ground for Group stability, Sanctuary for healing/Area control, Wall of Deflection, Line of Warding and SoA are all good area control abilities if used properly.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/359874/Aerowyns-Video-Compilation-of-ALL-things-Guild-Wars-2.html