Curse

FoxBat · Oct 20, 2010, 04:14 AM // 04:14

It's less the organization and more the size that matters, as well as the kind of damage that tends to win games in that size (team-wide degen is really strong when you can't pack party heals.) Guardian found itself pretty marginal in TA for good reason as well, wheras prot can be even more amazing in AB where 8 people pile on a single protted tank in a way that rarely happens in organized pvp.

Swahnee · Oct 20, 2010, 09:53 AM // 09:53

Ok, the scenario of a runner ganked by two warriors + air&snare ele, without any kind of prot is indeed convincing.

However i feel like i need to underline a thing. Since people in GvG know perfectly well that Guardian can absorb hundreds of damage if they keep attacking the protted target, they will must definately swap target, won't they? Unless they aren't try to achieve some positional advantage, for example pushing runners, or pushing a monk who is come out of his backline to heal an overextended guy. In these cases i assume that they will keep pressuring that guy even if he's guardian'd, right?

Than there is the spike scenario. If i know that the other caller is ready to unload adrenaline, i can assume that they are going to spike the caller's target, so i can pre-guardian him to force them not to spike, or to risk an half-damage (sort of) spike, or to spike another target, who will be suboptimal (assuming that the original target was optimal for some reason), which is a win-win situation for me.

So, i think i figured out that Guardian in GvG is more useful for "utility" reasons, such as give a block chance to a caster, not to have him interrupted, or to force foes to change target / spike for less damage. The only cases where Guardian would actually absorb so much damage to make him more powerful than a direct heal is when they are pushing a key target, such as a flagger or a overextended/out of position player. Is it right?

Another question: would you bring guardian if you were sure that you are going to face a pure hexway/pressure team?

Jade Zephyr · Oct 20, 2010, 02:06 PM // 14:06

Pure healers dont become better the better your team is. If anything they become better the worse you are yourself.
Saying your midline characters are supposed to kite/cancel cast all game instead of letting them do their thing is going to lose you a lot more games than it will win you.

Especially since hammer warriors became assassins on steroids (daggers or not) there is no excuse for letting them do 200-300 damage in a combo while also taking out a character for 6 seconds. There is no 5 energy heal in this game that will make it worth not running guardian in such (common) situation.

urania · Oct 20, 2010, 03:36 PM // 15:36

well, if you have the bad luck to come across ce/rip necro or any proper defile defenses necro, guardian will make you cry.

was one of the main reasons why guardian completely died out in ta. that and ofc, the ranger.

Corporeal Ghost · Nov 04, 2010, 12:24 AM // 00:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

well, if you have the bad luck to come across ce/rip necro or any proper defile defenses necro, guardian will make you cry.

was one of the main reasons why guardian completely died out in ta. that and ofc, the ranger.

Corrupt is actually the bar I least liked facing when on monk in RA.

That bar and the constraints it put on team composition was probably the single biggest contributing factor in the demise of TA.

I'm not sure where people get off saying Guardian is "a waste of energy" or "less efficient than ___." If you're pressed for energy, why are you casting Guardian instead of the more efficient option? Just because it's on your bar doesn't mean you should be using it in bad spots. Literally every skill is a waste of energy if you're doing that. The only difference is most of them are pretty black-and-white in terms of when usage is bad. You don't generally Word of Healing someone on full health.

But the real question attempting to be addressed is whether or not Guardian is better than whatever you'd be bringing in that slot instead of it, and that question has a ludicrous amount of variables that depend on everything from your bar to your teammates to the RA metagame and even more esoteric things. The answer for me is to run Guardian, primarily because:

-I use a movement-based personal defense (rather than stances).
-I will often stay on teams that have people with crappy armor and kiting habits because of one strong player.
-My field vision is good enough that Guardian usually hits attack skills (when I'm playing well).
-The skill I would bring instead of Guardian (some kind of second stance, probably) would actually serve exactly the same function, but wouldn't be castable on other people who presumably won't be kiting as well as me and won't have as much armor as I do.
-I find that most teams with no physicals (in RA) have no kill threat.

I suspect bullet three is what pushes not-Guardian over the top for most people, although they won't admit it, even to themselves. Even so, for these people, not-Guardian IS the right call, assuming their primary goal is more wins.

kedde · Nov 04, 2010, 11:28 AM // 11:28

I fully agree with the above, which is why I've never been able to actually accustom myself to play monk bars with no prots. It's just not intuitive, the same way channeltanking isn't.

The thing to consider is whether you're going to seek teams with better compositions and supposedly better players actively by leaving teams and rejoining, or just going for as much wins as you can, which I feel is what most people calling guardian bad are arguing.