State of the GWF and GF - From a 9k+ GWF

teptep

I've been playing the game a lot, and I see a lot of complaints about everything on the forums, so I'm going to give you my perspective since I have played through basically then entire game. I know a ton about GWF and a decent amount about guardian fighters.

Basically, guardian fighters are currently useless, as many of you know the aggro tables are really broken. Clerics outshine guardian fighters in every way, if built properly they are so much better than the guardian fighter, they survive much better and offer a TON more to the team, they can even beat the guardian's DPS. All smart guilds/partys and running dual cleric teams with 3 dps end game.

So, off to the GWF. GWF are a pain in the *** to level and they are weak during 95% of the game. This is because their damage on their abilitys scales so low (40-50%) of their weapon damage. So unless you have an amazing weapon at every level, you will have a horrible time leveling, even then you will still go through a ton of pain because GWF aren't very tanky at all for being a "guardian" class.

GWF start to shine at level 60 once you get a decent weapon, I suggest doing PVP right away for the PVP lvl 60 weapon, its one of the best weapons in the game and you can farm it in under an hour. So jump into pvp, and let me warn you though PVP is really unbalanced, control wizards will make you sit afk cause you won't be able to move, trickster rogues will crit you for your total healthbar (tank amirite), you won't be able to kill clerics or guardian fighters if they built properly. So enjoy your 1 hour of hell while you farm your weapon.

Anywhom, once you receive that weapon you can start farming dungeons, but let me tell you that your team relies on you so much once you start getting into higher dungeons that YOU are the guy to kill 90% of the monsters and if you don't have amazing gear, the adds will wipe your party so make sure you farm the **** out of dungeons/pvp until you move on to the next level. Btw, how you kill mobs late is pretty much by holding a mouse button and going afk.

If you got any questions, go ahead and ask in this thread.

xxaznpchanxx

Are GWF worth rolling purely for the end game worth pve/pvp wise? I've been trying to play one of the non fotm classes and not sure, I'd like to still DPS, can a cleric achieve decent DPS aswell as utility?

teptep

GWF is the weakest class until end game, even then he is pretty awful in PvP but well needed in PvE. Cleric's DPS is pretty much the lowest out of any class so not really.

xxaznpchanxx

Alright thanks for the reply. I decided just to be a heal bot :P

ebonson

Couldn't a CW take care of adds just as good of not better than a GWF?

teptep

CW can "take care" of adds really well, in stakes of pure AoE DAMAGE, GWF beats the CW.

ragnathoth

Thanks for the heads up, looking forward to end game pve now.

kidbs

teptep wrote: »

CW can "take care" of adds really well, in stakes of pure AoE DAMAGE, GWF beats the CW.

Depends on the CWs build. The are both very close.

yamface9

Hey can someone give me some pointers on what to build on gwf? I really do feel the lack in dps when I'm leveling, I can just see the dps charts.

I'm lv38 and I'm using:
weapon master strike, wicked strike
restore strike, flourish, takedown
don't know about daily

but I read somewhere that slam is some op move that gwf have, but it looks so weak reading the tooltip. Have I been specing the power points wrong?

misocapnist

To preface, if you have separate responses to my questions for PvP and PvE please include both and identify them =D

As far as encounters go, do you generally stick with the same 3 for 95% of situations or do you change them frequently?

Same question for class features.

Have you tried much variety in terms of feats? If so, how did it go with the more unorthodox builds?

Are there are particular abilities that you have tested and found to be generally useless (or outshone in 95% of situations by another move) [i.e. Come and Get It, Daring Shout, Roar, Punishing Charge]

cihuacoatl

Hate to say it but I must agree with the state of the GF.

T1 we do fine... T2 our weaknesses bugs and function in the party disappears. GF bring almost nothing to the table in T2+ from what I can tall and from talking with my guild.

2xDC is the way to go... not to mention GF cannot tank kite hardly at all because you cannot block and kite... and perhaps it is just me but I find it sometimes better to judge run out of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> than tank it at least for bosses.

xantris

While I won't pretend to know the full score on the GF, as an 8300 Rogue... there is a significant difference in difficulty for me in an instance that has a good GF that knows how to hold aggro; and one that doesn't have a GF or a bad one (which is ultimately the same thing). A good GF makes my job a ton easier, I can keep DPS uptime on bosses and dangerous adds significantly better, and those runs go far smoother.

I don't know what some GFs are doing differently from others, but the good ones are extremely beneficial members of a party and seem to hold aggro pretty well, even when I'm doing several million more damage than my counterparts.

teptep

Sorry, went afk for a bit. Anyways, for damage and "op" move, most of GWF's damage comes from weapon master's strike, tab ability and slam daily. Other than that the most popular choice is Indomitable Battle Strike which does a ton of damage in a small aoe. Other 2 choices aren't too important, like I said, skills don't scale very well and are quite weak.

As for gentlemen number 2, encounter abilities, I switch them up for PvP and PvE. PvE encounters do not matter too much, I usually stick with Indomitable Battle Strike, and other 2 can be switched out accordingly. For PvP I use flourish, takedown and Indomitable Battle Strike because it is a big wombo combo that does a ton of damage. For dailys I use slam (cause OP in every AoE teamfight) and Cresendo mainly for PvP because it does a ton of dmg and is unavoidable. For class features I almost always stay with weapon master's strike and go to the one that grants u extra strike (forgot name) for pve (its insanely strong), and the control/stun resist for PvP.

For my build I enjoy PvP so I built more PvP oreinted, just whatever fits my style really. Destroyer obviously for max damage potential, picked up all the skills that seemed the most usefull.