I’ve never been a fan of melee in any game. Why stand in the middle of a storm of metal death and pain when you could instead stand on a nearby hilltop and throw fireballs at people? So during the beta weekends I decided to get the guardian out of the way so I could be justified in my shunning of the profession. What actually happened was I played my guardian for the entire beta weekend, then the next beta weekend, and now my Asura guardian is tearing it up all across Tyria.

You’re probably saying to yourself “That’s great, but so what? I don’t care that you’re a sucker that will get taken in by the first new thing he sees.” First, that’s incredibly hurtful and untrue. Second, the guardian stands almost fully apart from the other professions in terms of play style and abilities. In terms of the old MMO Trinity, it is able to fulfill all three roles (Tank, DPS, Healer) simultaneously, where the other classes have to specialize to achieve the same results. It’s also the only class that’s capable of single-handedly protecting an entire party from any kind of attack for an extended period of time through the use of its unique skills, the Consecrations and Virtues, in addition to the mountains of crowd control that it has available at any given time.

I’ll be exploring the abilities and gameplay of the guardian over the next few articles, but in the meantime I’d strongly recommend giving it a shot. You have nothing to lose, but you might be gaining a brand new favorite class.