Guardians conflict : Lore vs Actual . Opinions

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

Just as a right upfront statement I main a Guard and have done so constantly since beta but I also run to varying degrees every other class/profession in the game.

That being said there seems to be a real disconnect between what the Guard was discribed as both in the lore of the game and other discribitions of the class in the beginning of the game and where we are now with the class. This was brought to mind for me by some of the responses to the Poll question about what should the Guards next weapon be and alot of people made comments about the theme of the guardian not being one to dual wield (sword or mace etc) . Where that idea came from I'm not sure except that we didn't have it on the Core Guard so now it's carved in stone some where.....Rubbish! We were suppose to be a melding of the Monk and the Paragon and from that somehow we became a Pyromanic who apparently failed at getting on the Track team and is really near sight except when we where our DragonHunter corrective glasses. All jokes aside some of these preconceived limitations make absolutely no sense to the class except as handicap just for a handicap sake.

Where do you want to see our favorite misunderstood main go from here. (And yes I want us to get a spear or polearm for land because I still see us as the True offshoots of the of the Paragon not the Warrior!).

[RabbitUp.8294]

Guardian was supposed to be a supportive tank that buffed their party and protected by putting themselves at risk. This is their class description in-game to this day. It's not a novel concept, a lot of games and MMOs in particular tend to have a straight tank and an off-tank that can also act as a healer, like Wow's Paladin. But with gw2 lacking traditional roles, that never translated into anything.

 

In reality, other classes can do all of those better than guardian ever could. Even when their design philosophy swifted and healers were suddenly a thing, they never went back to fix guardians purposefully neutered skills, like they did with Ele. They even gave Ele and Necro a revive-based flavour, which used to be heavily tied to GW1's Monk identity, that guardian is supposedly a spiritual successor of.

 

Instead, guardian's identity is solely defined through things they can't do.

- They are one of the slowest classes.

- Their range is lower than other classes, both on weapons and group utility, without compensation.

- Their heals have to be worse than other classes, because they have Virtue of Resolve.

- Their active defenses are not allowed to be good, because [???].

- And even things like what you mentioned, that they can't dual-wield, but to be honest, I don't mind it that much. There are still more than enough weapons for a couple more elite specs and I would rather see something new than an off-hand version of a weapon we already have. Even lore-wise, it's hard to justify that it's a weapon we were using for 5 years, but hey now you can do new tricks with it.

 

What's funny is that you have the devs swearing they care about class identity and using it as a balancing factor, and then you log in the game and you have your cloth mesmer tanking and guardian stuck playing dps.

[draxynnic.3719]

Since it seems to be my post there that you're objecting to:

 

There is nothing officially saying that 'guardians can never dual-wield, never, ever'.

 

However, dualwielding is generally presented as a configuration employed by specific kinds of fighters. They're either the highly dextrous type, who have the coordination to wield two weapons effectively and who prefer to rely on dodging and parrying with an offhand weapon over using clumsy armour and shields. Or they're the berserkery, all-out-damage-at-the-expense-of-defence types.

 

Guardians are neither of these. They've been described as methodical, tactical fighters by ArenaNet, relying on a mix of martial skill, heavy armour, and magic to overcome their enemies rather than employing the mobility of thieves and rangers or the overwhelming aggression of warriors (note: these examples are not intended to be exhaustive). Therefore, dual-wielding does not fit the overall feel of the guardian, whose fighting styles are more akin to a traditional knight (plus magic).

 

With that said, one of the possibilities for elite specs is to take a profession out of its usual comfort zone. For an elite specialisation that is based on the guardian going into a fighting style where dual-wielding makes sense, then it would, well, make sense to give them a suitable weapon as an offhand. However, it would have to be something that fits with the theme of the specialisation, not something that is thrown in just because.

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

Just to be clear I wasn't objecting to your post or the Poll you were doing I was just commenting on and asking other people views on the state of the Guardian as stands presently versus what it had been described as when the game started. My personal hope is to have the class expands it's scope some what and to be to fulfil the roles it was billed as. Do I think the class( including the various sub specializations ) is terrible? No but it could do with some work on the trait lines to give them a little more synergy, possibly tweak some of the weapons (Staff: if you want to make it a support weapon than make it a support weapon and with small changes it could be) I also wasn't implying that dual wielding should be done arbitrarily in any way but should fit a concept.

[draxynnic.3719]

Hrrrmn. On a more general perspective:

 

It is disappointing that the heir to monks is overshadowed as a healing profession. That said, I'm inclined to see how Firebrand develops further before I commit to saying that guardian absolutely needs to have more healing. It probably could use some in general terms, but that could be a matter of number tweaks to healing Firebrands over going in a new direction entirely.