Question: Can you play a ranged Guardian?

[Fluffball]

I do think Guardian had some skills which may be exploited, by using a group of Guardians.

For instance, take 5 Guardians using Staff, lined up against a pile of melee foes. Guardian 1 puts down "Line of Warding" (which foes cannot pass through) and all the Guardians proceed to blast with their auto-attack "Wave of Wrath" (which can hit 5 foes). Every 5 seconds, the next Guardian puts up his "Line of Warding", maintaining the impenetrable barrier, and everyone continues doing their multi-target spammable attack. With 5 Guardians, that gives a full 25 seconds of immunity to melee, while laying down a lot of widespread damage. That seemed very exploitable... Even at relatively low levels, 5 Guardians using their spam skill would lay down close to 100 damage to each of the 5 targets, per use of skill. I think the skill goes 1 x per second, roughly, so thats a 2500 damage to 5 foes potential. If the foes aren't dead, they are surely weakened severely, and now have to face the fully healthy Guardians...

You could concoct a similar theoretical beat down with ANY five players though. Five hammer or mace warriors would keep people permanently stunned or knocked down, 5 thieves (hell, 1 thief) could keep a crowd blinded and crippled and dish out an absurd amount of damage in a compacted time, 5 mesmers could have 25 clones up, etc.

[Erring Ryft]

It also assumes that none of the opposing side would switch to a ranged weapon, or, you know, move.

Side note: Mesmers can have five clones? I always seemed to lose one after I'd summoned three. Coincidence, or is that a trait thing?


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[Alaris]

3 clones. I know of no trait that changes that.

[Fluffball]

Does that include phantasms and any other illusions that may be possible? I could have sworn I read five total illusions. But I've never played a mesmer so I don't even know what the skills do.

[Alaris]

Yup. You have 3 little circles on the interface telling you how many clones & illusions you have active.

You can bring as many clone & phantasm skills as you want, but you can't have more than 3 active at a time.

5 clones would drop you to 16% chance of being hit by chance. Also, shatters would take longer to use at full power, and would be quite a bit more powerful at 5 than 1-2 illusions.

[Egg Shennn]

You could concoct a similar theoretical beat down with ANY five players though. Five hammer or mace warriors would keep people permanently stunned or knocked down, 5 thieves (hell, 1 thief) could keep a crowd blinded and crippled and dish out an absurd amount of damage in a compacted time, 5 mesmers could have 25 clones up, etc.

There is actually a big difference between holding a group of melee (and I'm talking about PVE, humans would get the hell out of the way) held behind a wall of invulnerability, and crippling them or knocking them down for 2 seconds every time their skill recharged. The point was, the Guardians would remain completely untouched, while doing waves of auto attack damage to 5 at a time. The guardian wall has no limit to the number of melee foes it could hold back. Other comparisons have other limits. just like in GW1 shadowform invulnerability was exploited, this has a similar application... Invulnerable is simply on a different level than the other options.

[Fluffball]

There is actually a big difference between holding a group of melee (and I'm talking about PVE, humans would get the hell out of the way) held behind a wall of invulnerability, and crippling them or knocking them down for 2 seconds every time their skill recharged. The point was, the Guardians would remain completely untouched, while doing waves of auto attack damage to 5 at a time. The guardian wall has no limit to the number of melee foes it could hold back. Other comparisons have other limits. just like in GW1 shadowform invulnerability was exploited, this has a similar application... Invulnerable is simply on a different level than the other options.

True, I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm saying you're missing that 5 players of any class can do the same beat down. For example, and I keep using the thief because I learned it well, thieves can throw down a smoke screen that stops all projectiles as well as blinds all enemies that walk through it or stand in it as well as blind all enemies that get hit with projectiles that pass through it. See what I mean?

Warriors have mace AoE KDs, hammer AoE KDs, etc. Any group of 5 people can theoretically wreck some enemies.

[Alaris]

If 5 mesmers or necros keep summoning enough stuff, perhaps foes will never get to actually attack us.

[Fluffball]

I assume five necros make an absolute mess of PvE. I didn't play them but I just don't see how summoners can't NOT wreck the balance. They're on my "must play" list for BWE3. I want to do a lot of melee PvP next BWE.

[Alaris]

I found necro summons to be good, but they hold their own less than summons in other games. I get the impression that 5 necros or mesmers would be less OP than you'd imagine (still OP, but I imagine many team builds would be OP if there's good synergy or good abuse of given mechanics).