Another question again but Guardian?

Sorry that I keep asking questions over and over. So I tried Barberian and Necromancer both fun so far I mean I liked Necros massive DPS. But I do like Barberian´s kill move and such.

But to the question I saw a neat video about guardian and I rely loved the polearm which seams to be Guardian and tempest of Seth only kind of class weapon. So my question is now years later is guardian still the worst when it comes to DPS compared to Conqueror ? Honestly I would love to keep playing barb but man I kind I liked the polearm . But it would not be fun leveling if it´s much slower than say Barb or even conqueror.

Not allot of mmo offers polearm as a weapon and I kind of like that weapon style thanks to Dark souls and legend of Aria.

Dead ppl do more dps then guardians in raids so no. Keep playing your barb is my suggestion.

Dps on polearm is slightly higher than on sword and board, but still lower than dps on every other class.
For leveling it was quite ok and kinda fun, since you have a decent reach and hit multiple targets easily. By pulling more mobs at the same time, you can save some time, but fighting single mobs will take longer than on any other class.

When you hit lvl 80, polearm is still ok-ish for doing solo-quests in Kithai, but in groups/raids there is hardly any spot for polearm-guards. Dps is too low to fill a dps-spot with a guard.
You can tank with polearm, but your aggro and survivability will both be lower than using sword and shield and you’ll still be lowest on dps.

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To level up, pole is the way to go. But once you reach lvl 80, you have to switch to sword and shield, because the aggro with pole sucks, and you won’t be able to do much dps anyway.

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and what I also read Guardian is not even a good tank compared to dark templar so once I hit 80 going for sword and shield is still not that great.

But lets say if I level a barbarian to 80 to have as class to do end content stuff with I could do a gaurdian and just get it to 80 but not do anything end stuff with it ? I mean Polearm looks so neat and kind of fun I was just thinking if it was at least decent enough to go from level 1 to 80 with it or if it would be slow and boring as heck.

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Define a good tank. If its casual tanking (means anyone can tank it like RF crap) no one can beat a good (and good is easy on DT) tali dt in agro. If it really gets harsh guard is definitely a very sturdy option. If good tank means you have agro all time ahead of other tanks (egocentric tanking) guard is only a burst agro wonder. If good tank means you have decent agro (not necessarily with respect to a tali dt but to dps for sure) and dont die easily like a fly guard is a choice for sure. In particular your performance is not heavily relying on optimized gear… I play all 3 tanks with best possible gear in game and was always an agro junkie. I still can outperform a lot of average playing DT with my guard…
Take for instance the 2nd boss in T6. As a guard I can solo tank him with a relaxed smile on my face because I have so many defensive tools at my hand. With tali dt its doable as well if healers perform and debuffs are applied but it stays risky…

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Guardians are great tanks. Every tankclass in AoC has it’s shiny encounters.

Guards have superb initial aggro and burst aggro, while it’s keeping aggro on a high lvl through the fight. DT starts slow but outshines the longer the encounter lasts.

Guards have the highest mitigation and are very tanky, they have a bubble and a lot of tools to survive.

Guard is the best tank while having “early” lvl 80 gear (e.g. t1-t3 and kithai epics) since guard has several aggro- and survivability-tools which work kinda independent from gear while dt needs better gear to shine.
As well there are some fights in higher raids where I prefer guards over dts, since the survivability is pretty awesome.

like many said before me guard is a good class, and while sword and board is the better option for tanking you can tank most content with polearm. its just rare because it doesnt bring any unique selling point compared to s&b, and sadly its alot more boring in the long run since the rotation is super bland

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Yeah but I was thinking maybe I can use polearm for leveling and then go for sword and board when I hit like 80.

sounds like a good plan, and if you like polearm and wanna continue its viable for a long time after u hit 80, its only gonna get gimpy at about t5 and t6.

Years ago I played a guardian, I leveled up to 80 with polearm and continued to play with polearm almost exclusively for several weeks, gearing my guard up in epic Khitai armor. Aggro was kinda good against other tanks tanks, using the “Stall the Advance” AA perk in the right situation gave me a nice aggro and survival boost, solo tanking was often possible if the healers knew how to use their heals (aka not using their blue heal from miles away without ever reaching me with it and so on).

That said, I did that in 2014. People didn’t have as many T4 fully geared characters with super strong rings and now weapons like they have nowadays through RF and Onslaught (not sure though if many people have those weapons already) because those two things didn’t exist back then. It’s definitely going to be a different story today and overall, it’s nowhere near comparable to a Tali DT in terms of damage and probably survivability.

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What you are looking for is actually guardian pvp.

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Well as long as I will have fun leveling with polearm im okey if it´s not the best today. But I will level my barb along side.

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note, that more important than your weapon of choice is your shield control. as a melee you hit basically in 3 directions (left right front/upper) and the more you hit on one side of your enemies, the more likely they will stack their 3 shields to that often attacked side. So one ‘risk’ of playing a Polearm guard is stacking the shields on the right side, because your most spammable combo (flashing arc) ends there. especially for level 80 tanking this becomes a problem. While leveling though you can counter measure that by using the really strong and early accessible Enraging Wound and Brutal Enraging Wound combos and switch to Sword/Shield to apply the counter strike combo. If you use Guard and Counterstrike you a)have combos not hitting the right side and b) have a lot of passive damage, that is independent of enemy’s shielding, since its reflection damage. This way you’re really not that badly setup for questing. just pull 4 mobs and let them kill themselves; also note that reckoning (the ability that can only be used shortly after a successful Flashing Arc or Disable combo) deals massively more dmaage while in offensive stance than in Def Stance, so its a great tool to kill single enemies or finish off the last one alive whe the other 3-4 adds died

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Thanks allot that information will come in hand. I will try to keep it in mind

All the tank classes can tank second boss in T6 if raid knows what it’s doing.

T5 Rune has hugely boosted some DPS classes too while the T5 tank rune,isn’t such a big lift.

I seem to remember making top 10 DPS whilst tanking on Polearm Guard with pretty extreme agro, is that no longer the case? I haven’t tried it since coming back.

You mean in 6 man instance, behind necro pets, right? :laughing: