Level 28 GF: Does it get any better at higher levels?

[Deleted User]

Leveled my Guardian Fighter to 28 recently, and I'm not really enjoying this class much.. He is kinda squishy; thought he'd be able to take hits better then he currently is. And, his damage suxx.

Does GF's get any stronger (offensively and defensively) at upper levels? When will I start to see a boost in coolness?

tang56

At Level 60 you're a freaking beast. Below that...errrm it's okay.

[Deleted User]

tang56 wrote: »

At Level 60 you're a freaking beast. Below that...errrm it's okay.

Well, thanks! That is most encouraging to hear. I was thinking about ditching him..

koochengbeeru

you'll be OK once you reached 30.
Damage-wise --> Frontline surge will help with your AoE

btw...are you going DPS,Full Tank or Buff Build

mhblis1

Also as in any game the fighter calls is much more gear dependent. Make sure your weapon has the most damage you kind find on it at your current level. Blue swords in the late 20s-40s I found made such a difference.

yerune

At 35 you'll be able to spec for threatening rush, that will be a big game-changer.

karaad

I've seen GF's out parse some rogues and even GWF's before. A GF in our guild usually comes within a couple hundred thousand of me and parses above almost all rogues in our groups all the time.

danteichigo3

some1 is the biggest nab on the world e.e

fimconte

karaad wrote: »

I've seen GF's out parse some rogues and even GWF's before. A GF in our guild usually comes within a couple hundred thousand of me and parses above almost all rogues in our groups all the time.

Probably bad CW / bad TRs then.
Alternatively, in some dungeons mobs you punt off ledges give their full hp as dmg to the person who knocked them off.
On my GF in DV I had ~6mil more than GWF/TRs since I was tanking all the adds and just knocking them off with Bulls/Surge.

Also TR -> WR on 10+ mobs sucked together by a Singularity = ~10-15k dmg per mob every every 3.3s.

Most TRs just don't know that WR has no target cap.

fuumanchuuu1

I hope you are kidding. From 1-60 GF was the most OP class I've played in this game.

mconosrep

danteichigo3 wrote: »

some1 is the biggest nab on the world e.e

0/10.

/10char.

frarii

Dying as a GF in the questing is so hard that i didnt die a single time till i tried Mad Dragon and didnt die again till i was 50 or so... seriously...

mconosrep

frarii wrote: »

Dying as a GF in the questing is so hard that i didnt die a single time till i tried Mad Dragon and didnt die again till i was 50 or so... seriously...

Not quite sure about this. Bosses with lots of adds where kitting is the best solution can be more difficult on a GF. That having been said my current GF is 46 and only came close to dying once.

mhblis1

Mad Dragon and Grey Wolf Den were the only places I struggled as a GF leveling. That said I was always partied with at least one other person and had a cleric companion.

zaarel2

After playing wizard classes for years and leveling one to 60 here I decided to roll a GF for fun. I have leveled him to 28 and died only once because I went AFK for awhile. My GF is so durable it has me wondering why I havent been a tank forever lol.

nexdine

I thought about posting this thread myself, but we'll see how it develops. I came in after first making a GWF Sentinel and getting him to level 60, and there was literally no time from level 1-60, even in dungeons, when the GWF didn't feal like a beast. Tough all the time, not just behind a shield, and laying down AoE like nobody's business. It was also a fun class to play, with the sprint, and ducking, and the massive overhand blows. But of course, nobody wants the GWF in teams because it has inferior aggro generation even if it is a tanky spec (sentinel) so I rolled a GF.

And boy howdy does it suck around 30. In normal gameplay it's fine, because nothing is hard in the normal gameplay. You can just wade in and toss at-wills and encounters at them and they melt away, but that ignores the defining class feature, the shield. The shield is great against anyting one-on-one, but... this game is all about the trash spam. And if the GF finds himself in a trash spam situation, the health bar just vanishes, and he has no dodge, so he has to turn his back on SOMETHING. Either the boss he's tanking, or the 10 adds on his back. Trying to apply the mark with tab is a pain, if you lose it by turning to face something besides the boss or if the boss teleports behind you it takes an eon to re-apply it, and you have to open yourself up for half a second to do it, which usually means the boss can get a hit in to cancel it immediately.

I thought I'd really enjoy the GF, but right now playing it feels like a chore. Main questline is no problem obviously, but the main questline goes away at 60. Having a sucky experience as soon as it gets hard (dungeons) doesn't really seem at all promising.

But it may well be the way I play the character, or the fact that at level 30 EVERYTHING teleports or flies (Demons and imps and all that other stuff that never stays in front of the shield), so I guess I'll grind out more levels and seeing if the time investment is worth it.

But for pure fun-factor, the GWF is so so much more fun.

fondlez

If you ignore, or at least do not rely on, the terrible tanking mechanics of the class (basically anything to do with the guard meter and "marks" for tanking) and just stock up on some defensive stat like regen, defense/deflection or even Lifesteal, then the class is a little bit more playable.

Basically, if you treat it as a tanky dps, a bit like a single target version of a less fun GWF, then it is not so bad. Oh, and Griffon's Wrath at early levels is your friend while levelling. You want as many charges on that thing to stop nonsense special moves from your target.

s3z3

oh my. Conqueror\Stalwart GF is second best pvp class and a welcome addition to any t2 party. My main is TR and now making GF toon... I'm thinking about going for GF as my main cause he's tanky as f*u^c*k and does cool deepz.

tang56

nexdine wrote: »

I thought about posting this thread myself, but we'll see how it develops. I came in after first making a GWF Sentinel and getting him to level 60, and there was literally no time from level 1-60, even in dungeons, when the GWF didn't feal like a beast. Tough all the time, not just behind a shield, and laying down AoE like nobody's business. It was also a fun class to play, with the sprint, and ducking, and the massive overhand blows. But of course, nobody wants the GWF in teams because it has inferior aggro generation even if it is a tanky spec (sentinel) so I rolled a GF.

And boy howdy does it suck around 30. In normal gameplay it's fine, because nothing is hard in the normal gameplay. You can just wade in and toss at-wills and encounters at them and they melt away, but that ignores the defining class feature, the shield. The shield is great against anyting one-on-one, but... this game is all about the trash spam. And if the GF finds himself in a trash spam situation, the health bar just vanishes, and he has no dodge, so he has to turn his back on SOMETHING. Either the boss he's tanking, or the 10 adds on his back. Trying to apply the mark with tab is a pain, if you lose it by turning to face something besides the boss or if the boss teleports behind you it takes an eon to re-apply it, and you have to open yourself up for half a second to do it, which usually means the boss can get a hit in to cancel it immediately.

I thought I'd really enjoy the GF, but right now playing it feels like a chore. Main questline is no problem obviously, but the main questline goes away at 60. Having a sucky experience as soon as it gets hard (dungeons) doesn't really seem at all promising.

But it may well be the way I play the character, or the fact that at level 30 EVERYTHING teleports or flies (Demons and imps and all that other stuff that never stays in front of the shield), so I guess I'll grind out more levels and seeing if the time investment is worth it.

But for pure fun-factor, the GWF is so so much more fun.

Helm Hold sucks while leveling a GF. Especially sucked when the mages spawned every 5 seconds outside the tavern about 1/2 through the questline.

kaiorion

Weird. My experience is completely the opposite. Leveling up seems almost too easy and I tear through just about everything except those giant shocktrooper commander demons. Those take a couple of minutes to kill, due to the amount of hit points, but still go down easy. The teleporters always have a tell, so just hit one of your charges right as they do and you'll zoom right to them or just spin 180 for the legion devils.

Mark is fine, just understand that mobs will finish their attack animation before coming to you and a couple of types seem to be immune to the taunt effect.

Ditch griffon for, I think it's front line surge as soon as you can and replace your shield bash with threatning rush. Spam villains menace.

Only block the big hard hits and remember block only works from the front.

Don't stand in <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.

In groups, I usually place second or third in dps and I'm having tons of fun running around charging, cleaving, and knocking stuff down and leveling fast.

frarii

People has the idea of other MMOs tanks, and this is a new for them... you have to move, you use the shield to block big hits, but nothing else, i love this GFs, seriously, im starting to think we are seriously OP...

nexdine

There are better options for DPS than the GF, so I don't see why anyone would create a DPS GF. I mean, except enjoying playing one perhaps.

But as I said, the issue isn't the main questline and leveling, that's a doddle with just about any character. I just find the shield mechanic extremely difficult to use effectively in add spam situations, it's markedly inferior in my view when fighting many enemies than your basic dodge. But I've only been at the GF a brief while, so it may be me.

magsondare

nexdine wrote: »

And boy howdy does it suck around 30. In normal gameplay it's fine, because nothing is hard in the normal gameplay. You can just wade in and toss at-wills and encounters at them and they melt away, but that ignores the defining class feature, the shield. The shield is great against anything one-on-one, but... this game is all about the trash spam. And if the GF finds himself in a trash spam situation, the health bar just vanishes, and he has no dodge, so he has to turn his back on SOMETHING. Either the boss he's tanking, or the 10 adds on his back. Trying to apply the mark with tab is a pain, if you lose it by turning to face something besides the boss or if the boss teleports behind you it takes an eon to re-apply it, and you have to open yourself up for half a second to do it, which usually means the boss can get a hit in to cancel it immediately.

When solo you can kill all the trash with a single Enforced Threat and set of 3 Cleave swings. So long as the boss isn't doing a big-red attack it won't hit for much and you can easily afford to put your back to it in order to clear the trash, which actually hits harder and since there's 3+ of them... yeah, clear trash and worry about the boss once the trash is down. Bosses are easy when they're by themselves, but trash will kill you fast, so kill it faster 1st.

And forget you have a Tab key. Seriously. Completely forget about it. Well no, you can use it for ranged pulls, but that's it! And don't worry about if there's a mark on anything. It's a stupid mechanic with how it drops in an eyeblink. You build plenty of threat without it when in a group, and solo you don't care if it's marked or not, since.. hey, it's just you.

But it may well be the way I play the character, or the fact that at level 30 EVERYTHING teleports or flies (Demons and imps and all that other stuff that never stays in front of the shield), so I guess I'll grind out more levels and seeing if the time investment is worth it.

Trash dies so fast that it doesn't matter if it's on front of the shield or not. The things with 3-bars of health can be a bit less fun, especially if they teleport behind you. I actually skipped Helm's Hold when leveling due to me working other characters so my GF actually leveled from 20 to 38 just from Leadership and the daily Invoke xp, so I dind't have that particular annoyance, so I dunno what to tell you there, though. I'm about to head to Mt. Hotenow, though, and a lot of the flame elementals there teleport, so... we'll see how it goes, I guess.

I do know that when I picked the GF back up and started Vellosk and so forth that there were several fights that I recalled being ... if not hard, at least annoyingly frenetic ... on my DC, CW, and TR, but the GF went in and simply took care of business. No muss, no fuss, and overall probably about the same amount of time in the fight since I wasn't kiting around and/or dodging all the time, though it did feel slower since, well.... our AE's decent with Cleave vs trash, but our single-target isn't anything to write home about until higher levels. I'm 56 now and ST boss fights still kinda make me think "gonna be here a while." I expect to make 60 this weekend and have my final dps feats added in and I expect it's gonna feel a lot faster for me then. Anything's faster than a DC, after all ;-)

FWIW, I'm using Rokuthy's "Hybrid dps/tanking build"

kaiorion

Some things I found really helped me:

You're not an immovable mountain with 90% damage reduction. If you play that way, you're gonna get your face smashed in.

Stick and move. Stay mobile. Use your charges.

Don't rely on block to handle more than 5 consecutive hits. Move.

Only worry about blocking big hits.

If you're surrounded, Enforced Threat + Frontline Surge will kill most minions. Enforced Threat + a couple of Cleaves works too.

If you're still surrounded, take a step back or charge out of the group.

Don't use tab to mark, except to pull a single mob from across the room. Use Threatening Rush and Enforced Threat instead.

If you need some health, Fighter's Recovery + unloading your encounter powers with a couple of cleaves will pretty much fill your health bar.

jaymadiv

yerune wrote: »

At 35 you'll be able to spec for threatening rush, that will be a big game-changer.

yes, yes it is.

jaymadiv

kaiorion wrote: »

Some things I found really helped me:

You're not an immovable mountain with 90% damage reduction. If you play that way, you're gonna get your face smashed in.

Stick and move. Stay mobile. Use your charges.

Don't rely on block to handle more than 5 consecutive hits. Move.

Only worry about blocking big hits.

If you're surrounded, Enforced Threat + Frontline Surge will kill most minions. Enforced Threat + a couple of Cleaves works too.

If you're still surrounded, take a step back or charge out of the group.

Don't use tab to mark, except to pull a single mob from across the room. Use Threatening Rush and Enforced Threat instead.

If you need some health, Fighter's Recovery + unloading your encounter powers with a couple of cleaves will pretty much fill your health bar.

all good advice. especially regarding movement.

you can move and then be back on your target in a flash with Threatening Rush. don't try to block *everything*. you won't be able to. You need to be able to determine what to block, what to avoid, and what to take.