How do you beat a Vanguard?

Because most people are idiots. If a Marauder loses to a PT, he's an idiot, he's an idiot. Tell me how you can beat a Marauder, please. If you're kiting a Marauder, he's a pretty bad Marauder.

Crippling Slash=no kiting because PTs have no way to seperate themselves unless they use a Mez/stun, which is then mitigated with a Charge.

Obsfucate is casted at the beginning of a fight, so only the TD hits and the Rail Shots are worthless. Saber Ward is a 12 second CD so a stun will not let that wear off. The DPS of a Marauder is higher and the defensive ability of a Marauder is better.

I say it again, PT is one of the squishiest classes in the game when it's a Pyro PT. They have 2 defenive CD's, a 25% bubble and a 15% heal. Marauders have Berserk, which makes 18% healing and can be used VERY quickly, Cloak of Pain is 20% damage reduction, Undying Rage extends the life of a Marauder by 5 seconds, Phantom can Vanish while my dots tick on you, Saber Ward increases defense by 50% and decreases tech damage by 25%, Obsfucate takes away 90% of your accuracy.

Missing Rail Shot=50% of your damage done. A fight with PT vs. Marauder is a DPS race and a PT is woefully underprepared, end of story.

You attempt to say you kill Marauders all the time, but you have submitted no evidence as to WHY a PT can kill a Marauder. They can't kite them, they can't outdamage them, they can't outmitigate them. All they can do is get lucky by jumping on a Marauder who is not paying attention and get lucky with RS procs

EDIT: Many Grammar and "adding information" edits

You seem to be confusing damage done at the WZ w/ actual burst damage. You see, a Darkness Sin has a TON more weak AoE than a PT, whereas most of a PT's damage is heavy single-target damage.

They're worlds apart when you are comparing actual damage numbers in a 1v1 situation; a Darkness Sin could never hope to match the type of pressure that a good Pyro PT will bring. They do more damage by surviving longer and outdamaging them in the long run; they beat Pyro PTs because of their defensive cds and healing, not by outdps'ing them.

A Mara, on the other hand, survives by outdps'ing a Pyro PT and blowing defensive cds to outlast the punishment the PT can bring. If you aren't willing to trade cds w/ a PT, then you are pretty much asking for them to kill you, because as I said earlier, both of these classes output very similar dps.

The only difference between a Pyro PT and Mara dps-wise is that a Mara has more staying power in a 1v1 situation. There's a good reason Pyro PT is widely considered the 3rd most OP 1v1 class.

I just find it funny when people try to argue that this class or that class is better than this class when it comes down to the player behind the class, not the class.

A good player whose better than you will outplay you regardless of what class they are using yet this seems to be ignored and blame is thrown on the class.

"Clearly that class is better than mine cause I'm not supposed to lose to it".

Just makes me think that these people have been face rolled a lot by classes they feel shouldn't be able to :P.

So thumbs up to all the good players out there, keep face rollin punks that blame class .

Um no, in a typical 'this class is overpowered' screenshot the guy doing the mega DPS will generally have no deaths or at least next to no deaths, since that's usually a necessary criteria to do insane DPS.

Therefore the survivality issue itself is solved by the fact that 'awesome DPS screenshots' already selects upon a relatively rare occurence (no deaths). Therefore, if PTs consistently do more damage on single target than either Marauder or Assassins, in the relatively rare time where they didn't die, they should easily have top DPS. They'll definitely beat a Marauder, who is pretty much single-target, and even Darkness doesn't pad that much DPS via Wither (and PTs have some AEs to use, not great ones but does cancel out some of the differences)

If you mean that a PT can pressure someone by randomly getting lucky with procs of course that's true, but that's just luck. Railshot, being a melee-based attack, also has far more counters compared to Force/Tech types.

I'm sure it has happened at some time that a Pyro PT goes through a WZ without dying, and yet I don't see screenshots of them doing 500K+ like Marauders are doing or the 700K+ Darkness can do. At least, if such screenshot exists, they certainly aren't talked about as much compared to the two other DPS classes.

I usually don't think too much about people at the bad end of matchups. Some classes do end up as auto-lose against PTs but that's not within my power to change. Sometimes you'll get half of the WZ being a Marauder or an Assassin, so I consider those two classes the standard metric to judge power by. Compared to those two classes, a PT is nothing special. They might be strong compared to rest of the classes, but there sure are a lot of Marauders/Assassins out there.

If you let an Arsenal Merc free cast on you then you deserve to die. Charge+Interrupt will see them dead. Arsenal Mercs are the easiest class to 1v1.

EDIT: Arsenal Mercs do great damage.....when left alone. The top damage dealers we had to deal with were 2 Commandos named Chubbs and Iopata who were specced whatever the mirror of Arsenal is for Commandos. They were pumping out high DPS until we marked them and sent me and Aeion to take them out (both Marauders). Where they melted people when left alone, they could barely take anyone down 25% health once they are focused. Interrupts destroy Tracer missle, and Marauders have a plethora of interrupts.


TL;DR If you lose a lot to Arsenal Mercs/Grav roun specced Vanguards, especially if you fight them head on, you are either insanely undergeared or don't know what an interrupt is.

Tracer Missile is a 1.5 sec refresh. My interrupt is on a 4 second refresh (reduced 2 seconds because I spent 15 points on tactics). 1.5 sec < 4.0 sec....see the problem now? I have 2 stuns which amount to 6 seconds total which have long refresh timers, my damage as a Vanguard is not very good (if you want storm you have to spend 20 points in shielding). All this adds up to a very dead Vanguard in champion gear, you simply cannot stop tracer missiles they will kill you every time. I won't even mention the fact they can stun you, knock you back and heal themselves.

My gear is pretty decent. i'm level 38 and i have 6 oranges with very up to date modifications. and the other slots are all in the mid 30's with greens/blues. The exception to this is my belt, which is like a level 28 blue.

EDIT: My weapons are both equipped with purple quality hilts that i made, and purple quality crit gems.






As for the specific type of vanguard, i'm unsure. I don't seem to ever do well against any of them.

I'm talking about our shield absorbtion.