The Guardian -those early levels

Hey Guys,

As Head of the Guardian Class, it is about time I wrote a Guardian post, this post is not a rule book, it is good advice and help gathered from various sources with some of my own knowledge and experience thrown in. Your equipment, slotted Traits and the way you play is entirely up to you, this is only a guide to help you get to that God like status. I will be adding and editing this post as time allows, I hope to add to it at least once a week, please feel free to add your own comments, if they are helpful enough I will add them to this Guide.

Basic Tips for a new guardian:

1. Slot harasser in your second class slot, you will see an immediate improvement in threat generation. First slot is debatable but I prefer defensive expertise for the added block %.

2. 2.0 speed or faster weapons will help you spam those +threat attacks, you can get away w/o it but it does help in those early moments where the overzealous dps types can be problems. Once you get to 50 you typically can consider slower weapons provided your not pugging it.

3. A basic opening sequence is body pull/run to where you want the fight to be, line up and hit sweeping cut, vexing blow, shield blow, guardian's ward. The first 2 will generate decent threat on multiple mobs while shield blow also does well on the main mob you need to keep. The guardian's ward is just tossed in to help speed up the reactives. Fight at the camp if you are going to tank a ranged mob, if a mez will be used, pull the mobs to you and keep range from teh mezzed mob (to avoid potential heal aggro).

4. Power problems will occur if you aren't careful. Know the costs of your favorite powers and judge which to avoid in long fights. Later catch a breath with trait, and thrill of danger will help once you get them.

5. Don't let anyone else pull unless you know the group well, feel likely doing some variety, or need a ranged pull prior to your getting to lvl 30. Once you get to lvl 30 there is no reason that you shouldnt be the one pulling that I have encountered. If someone else is insistent upon pulling ask them what kind of pull can they do that you can't? I have yet to hear someone tell me of a pull they can do that I can't.

6. Lm's can mez, tell them to mez while you are doing the pull so you get initial aggro. This can avoid the problems where mobs get past you and pop the LM hard.Its important that you tell the LM when you are pulling so they can get their mez off on the incoming mob ASAP. This will help by keeping a mezzed mob further away from the AOEs.

7. Stats over armor value when upgrading is generally a good idea. Make sure to get lots of might, vitality, and will. Some also like to get some agility in there. I personally don't worry about agility too much, but its helpful since it increases your to-hit chance, parry chance, and evade. If you find yourself missing a lot consider using a sword or increasing your agility.

8. Reactive skills are power hungry use them wisely. Block reactives are more power intensive than the parry line, but the block reactives are much better in the threat generation dept.

9. Once you get shield taunt and challenge you will be golden. I personally save challenge for those emergency moments and I use shield taunt as soon as I get the chance. Book 12 finally corrected shield taunt so it does what it says it was supposed to. It now generates threat rather than putting us to the top of the list. Very good skill to spam early and often. However like all AOE's be sure to get a lot of mobs in front of you when you use it for maximum effect.

10. Consider your virtue traits carefully. getting a reduced vulnerability is another level of mitigation on top of the basic damage mitigations and avoidances. Other options are resistances and stats. This is all a personal choice but make sure that you think about rather than just grabbing things at random. Also make sure to re-examine these slots every once in awhile. You might find another set of choices would be more beneficial after that last big gear upgrade.

11. Soloing, Your options for soloing are either stick with the 1h and shield or go with a big slow 2h weapon. I have tried both and prefer the 1h and shield (with overpower). Currently though I have a lot more power than most guardians so the power per skill issue isn't so bad for me.

Brief Skill rundown:

Vexing blow, good threat use w/harasser and it is very power efficient. This will be your bread and butter tanking skill. Use it whenever its up and you do not have a block reactive available.

Shield blow, also a good skill for holding a single mob. This is skill is the only one that causes me to changes targets while tanking. I usually try to alternate which target I hit with this b/c it is very good in the threat dept.

Block reactives, all of these are power hungry but a few shield taunts early in a fight can be very efficient.

Parry reactives, a bit more power efficient for damage done, but not the best for threat generation. Good for soloing though. Thrust has become very valuable now, I recommend you use it in the first parry chain that comes up and then do salt the wound for a really buff DoT.

Catch a Breath, once you get the class trait for it slotted you will find this helps the power problem significantly. Since it does a heal it will generate heal aggro so don't be afraid to use it early if you know the fight will be long. It will let the healer do 1 less heal and generate morale and power. Thats win/win in my book.

Sweeping cut, b/c it hits each mob twice I find this is a good skill to use early when I'm establishing threat. Key thing is that you have 2 chances to hit each mob and that makes it my standard opening attack. Not that power efficient if there are not 3 mobs present.

Guardian's pledge, I use it early in long hard fights to add some more breathing room. Some save it for later but I find that it helps tremendously by putting a bigger difference between my threat level and the healer's threat level. The healer has to heal less, I get more blocks and parries, and healer has saved power for later on in the fight. The key here is to recognize what is going to be a hard fight b/c its a waste to use this skill where you can easily get by w/o it. Other times to use it is when someone goes down (which inevitably will happen no matter how good you tank b/c ppl will step into the aoe, will fall in the death water, will step in the lava etc.) so that the minstrel can rez w/o losing you.

Protection, A wonderful skill that many place on their minstrel. I like to put it on the champ I group w/ because I know he will turn off fervor and tank late in a fight if I have power problems. Anyone who might get aggro or can block is an ideal candidate for this skill. I prefer champs who I trust to turn off fervor if needed, followed by minstrel, captain, and ranger. Last night was the first time I grouped with another guardian. I would strongly suggest if you get 2 guardian's in a group that you cross buff with protection. You will notice a difference.

Thrill of danger, useful skill use it whenever you think you are going to be in a long fight. Using when you get to around 1/2 power is ideal because if 2 mobs or more are around you will get full power. If you wait much longer you will find that 1 mob isn't enough. So if you are going quickly through a series of encounters make sure to use this before the fight is down to 1 mob.

Sting, a good skill for soloing, not useful while tanking.

Engage. Nice skill with 1m cooldown, I highly recommend you save it for when you need it. This skill will get aggro back to you and will slow down runners. It does have a short range however so if you intend to use it be quick about it.

Fray the edge, Nice threat generation with a small bonus of increasing CJ conjunction possibility. It stacks so if you want to get a CJ chance to increase significantly try using this skill everytime it comes up. For maximum effect this skill really needs 2 guardians working together to get the maximum of 5 debuffs stacked. At that point it will be a 15% bonus. If you are raiding the off tank should spam this skill on the bigger mobs whenever possible. Do not bother with anything that has less than 20k health b/c your raid will kill it before you get a real benefit.