New Guardian seeking help with Limitations

[Breidr]

Coming back to the game, I originally started on a Champion, and for the most part, it worked. I never quite got the rhythm of fervor down, despite playing similar classes in other MMOs. I also gave the Beorning a try, because of the rage mechanic, but I find skin changing clunky, it confuses me more than anything.

I thought, what the heck, let's try a Guardian. I've always been a fan of sword and board. Not that far in, I like it a lot. I struggle with keybinds, but the Guardian does something I really like. I have my basic rotation, and my reaction skills have a neat little bar I've set up to click easily. I have been enjoying just mowing down mobs one by one, the speed doesn't bother me. I just hope I can play the class at 150.
I do have some tanking experience in FFXIV, but nothing hard, it was mostly just basic dungeons and bosses. I actually clicked quite well with the Warrior. Keep up Storm's Eye, build beast gauge, use Fel Cleave. I'm sure there was more to it, but I was just doing story content. I'd like to do the same here. I'm just here to kill some Uruks, or whatever.

How does this class shake up at later levels? Some folks say it's one of the easiest classes, some say tanking is a pain. I really want to push on with it, but I want to know what I'm getting into. I have to measure the difficulty with my own abilities and see if it might be a good fit.

 

[Olebenny]

Hey mate, hope I can help

Landscape - Later level landscape content is going to be just as you are experiencing now. Lower level mobs are notoriously underscaled thanks to gradual gear improvements at those levels and side effects of revamping the stat system to make higher level stats easier to manage. With that in mind you might find the sword and board slowing down more and more but there is some guard work incoming in the nearish future that might mitigate all of that. Should be some dps increase and perhaps sword and board won't be all that slow if you enjoy that style of solo play. If you move on to a 2hander at some point you will find that stuff dies way faster, it is up to you for landscape stuff to decide what you want. Thats the theme you will see everywhere on guard forums regarding 1h vs 2h for landscape, its all personal preference. I for one like killing mobs to go faster and the 2h does that much better than 1h + I got the gear/rotation down that survivability is not an issue with 2h

Group content red - Please note that we do not know where the red guard will fall in group content after this update until it actually hits. Should it be atleast viable outside of being a meme then you will need to swap to a 2h. Any type of serious grouping in PvE content where you run red guard with a sword and board will likely get you kicked from the group. You simply need the higher dps of a 2h to not be a laughing stock. You have a healer and a tank and support classes to fill in that loss of survivability when you swap from sword and board to a 2h.

Group content tanking - Guard mainly fills tanks roles and I forsee that remaining the quota even after this guard update comes. Playing a guard for tanking is very easy, normally resulting in a hectic start to fights depending on how many mobs there are followed by afk skill rotations. Guard is not a hard class, tanking is the hard part. Based on your post I think the real question you are looking for is "How is tanking at later levels?" Guard is the tanking class and I personally enjoy it very very much but if your concern is performing well in the content, its tanking in general that will be the difficult part. Positioning, knowing mechanics, being quick on interrupts, timing your cooldowns well and having a high level of raid sense that no other role needs to reach other than maybe Loremaster depending on the fight.

All the tanking classes have their taunts, their cooldowns, and their own unique defenses. I personally like guard the most out of them but its tanking that I truly enjoy, not playing guard, guard is more or less my vessel to tank with. I hope this helps!

 

[Breidr]

Hey mate, hope I can help

Landscape - Later level landscape content is going to be just as you are experiencing now. Lower level mobs are notoriously underscaled thanks to gradual gear improvements at those levels and side effects of revamping the stat system to make higher level stats easier to manage. With that in mind you might find the sword and board slowing down more and more but there is some guard work incoming in the nearish future that might mitigate all of that. Should be some dps increase and perhaps sword and board won't be all that slow if you enjoy that style of solo play. If you move on to a 2hander at some point you will find that stuff dies way faster, it is up to you for landscape stuff to decide what you want. Thats the theme you will see everywhere on guard forums regarding 1h vs 2h for landscape, its all personal preference. I for one like killing mobs to go faster and the 2h does that much better than 1h + I got the gear/rotation down that survivability is not an issue with 2h

Group content red - Please note that we do not know where the red guard will fall in group content after this update until it actually hits. Should it be atleast viable outside of being a meme then you will need to swap to a 2h. Any type of serious grouping in PvE content where you run red guard with a sword and board will likely get you kicked from the group. You simply need the higher dps of a 2h to not be a laughing stock. You have a healer and a tank and support classes to fill in that loss of survivability when you swap from sword and board to a 2h.

Group content tanking - Guard mainly fills tanks roles and I forsee that remaining the quota even after this guard update comes. Playing a guard for tanking is very easy, normally resulting in a hectic start to fights depending on how many mobs there are followed by afk skill rotations. Guard is not a hard class, tanking is the hard part. Based on your post I think the real question you are looking for is "How is tanking at later levels?" Guard is the tanking class and I personally enjoy it very very much but if your concern is performing well in the content, its tanking in general that will be the difficult part. Positioning, knowing mechanics, being quick on interrupts, timing your cooldowns well and having a high level of raid sense that no other role needs to reach other than maybe Loremaster depending on the fight.

All the tanking classes have their taunts, their cooldowns, and their own unique defenses. I personally like guard the most out of them but its tanking that I truly enjoy, not playing guard, guard is more or less my vessel to tank with. I hope this helps!

This convinced me to tough it out, thank you! I really stumbled through DPS in FFXIV. I'd hate to see what my DPS actually was. My warrior though, I enjoyed it immensely. Aggro wasn't too difficult to keep, with some twists, and tank swaps. Aside from that, it felt like a simpler DPS. Beast Gauge, Fel Cleave, and one thing to watch.

It let me watch to fight more, and I liked that. I'll stick with the Guardian, and see where it takes me.

 

[Elmagor]

I just want to note what when we was bored with a lot of Guardians, we have red Guard on Hrimil T2 and he overdamage all hunters and champions. So he wasn't that bad as damage dealer as you can consider

 

[Breidr]

I just want to note what when we was bored with a lot of Guardians, we have red Guard on Hrimil T2 and he overdamage all hunters and champions. So he wasn't that bad as damage dealer as you can consider

I've heard it's a lot better than it once was. The rework will be the deciding factor in a lot of things. I hope it goes well.

 

[SilverPT]

Hi, im main tank now on guardian in end game. The class is a great class to tank and you can learn with kinship to keep agro in smaller instances like 3 mans and scale up the dificulty.

Basic agro build for more than 1 target is run to the mobs group and use war chant and start your rotation on the mobs. Shield taunt can be used and finish all the shield rotation + aoe skills .

After a few seconds you can use challenge
but not before giving the team some time to build a bit of agro to coppy it.

Some Legendary item traceries can hep to generate agro from heals and damage.

So ater using war chant on a big group you can pop "thrill of Danger"+"redirect" to heal yourself as taking damage and reflect to mobs attaking you to grab all that agro much better !

Trait tree is simple on this calss having same traits for all types of instances , you have to keep you mitigations caped and have decent HP , the rest is Fun and keeping mobs on you with back to the team so they give maximum damage to targets.

Use virtues that give you Tactical Mitigation and vitality or HP .

Enjoy the class! You will like it. The higher lvl it gets, the strongher the heals become . Heals are based on Max HP

You will save menny players with shield wall , intercepting all the damage. A true protector from the freeps.

On Solo Mode and Landscape i recomend having a 2H weapond with bonus on the skills damage, aoe damage , max target count and play a bit with the red line .

I just swap belt and weapond and keep my defensive gear so i can still grab a bunch of mobs in red Line. (" your heals are reduced 50% but you deal much more damage")



For tanking yes Blue line gives you heals as you block and menny other bonus to mitigations and endurance staks to boost your mitigations overcap.