Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone.

I’ve been playing this since beta, and Guardian is my favorite class, hands down. Weaknesses and strengths aside, no other class speaks to me as powerfully as Guardian. With GW2 still so new to all of us, we’re all still discovering the underlying mechanics, tactics and builds that will eventually constitute our metagame.

I’ve been experimenting a little with traits, tinkering with them and seeing what works for me. I’m a level 49 guardian now, and I’ve been running with a thief partner. This is my build, which has been very good to me.

20 Radiance

*Justice is Blind
*Blind Exposure
*Renewed Justice

5 Virtues

*Inspired Virtue

What It Does

This is the bare minimum for this build. The build focuses on constantly available Virtue of Justice and maximized potential for Virtue of Justice. Under this build, Virtue of Justice does the following.

*Apply 3 stacks of Might to all nearby allies
*Apply blind to all nearby enemies
*Apply vulnerability to all nearby enemies
*All nearby allies inflict five seconds of burning (~1000 damage at my level) on their next attack

Virtue of Justice is available every time your target dies. If you’re leveling solo, running events which involve lots of enemies or run with a partner, things die very very quickly. Expect Virtue of Justice to be up at least once every single fight, and multiple times when up against multiple enemies.

This build is not so effective against boss champions and tougher veterans, but for general leveling and group play, I find it immensely satisfying.

What do you think? Do you all have any interesting builds to share?

Since you posted a build aimed more at damage. This is my support build. Currently Level 50.

Armor
-Full Hearty
Weapons
-Vigorous Greatsword
-Vigorous Sword, Vigorous Shield
Jewelery
-Full Amethyst of Vigor

Traits
(Valor 10 Points) – Purity for condition Removal
(Honor 10 Points) – Superior Aria for 20% recharge on Shouts
(Virtues 10 Points) – Retaliatory Subconscious to still damage when i get put into a state to where i cant attack.

Slot Skills
- (Retreat) Free Block for the group and swiftness when clearing large area’s.
- (Save Yourselves) Gives me a ton of boons as well as transfers all allies conditions to myself. You see here where purity comes into play .
- (Hold the Line) Give the party protection and regen. Ok so this skill works great in combination with both Virtue of Resolve and Virtue of Courage.

Ok so thats my build with gear combo. Moderate damage. Good damage Mitigation. Decent support skill’s. This is my take on a tank type character. Obviously you need to know how to dodge as you can still be flattened but with a outright block up a good amount of the time means you can just stand there reviving downed allies without fear of joining them a lot or just stand at the mob soaking attacks. Any question from those that have them feel free to message me or post here and ill try to get back to you.

I distrust all Theorycrafters. Cookie cutter builds, while they may be efficient or powerful, are also boring and pedantic. I prefer to play for fun. Theorycrafting takes the fun out of the game, which makes baby puppies sad.

Drakkon.4782:

I distrust all Theorycrafters. Cookie cutter builds, while they may be efficient or powerful, are also boring and pedantic. I prefer to play for fun. Theorycrafting takes the fun out of the game, which makes baby puppies sad.

Most people like to be as effective as possible. The unfortunately side effects of a level-skill-gear based system is that there will always be the ‘best’ build incorporating the most appropriate skills and armour based on the play style you’re using.

Feel free not to take peoples advice but don’t criticise people for wanting to be effective; and I seriously doubt they are sitting there not having fun, hating the world… being more effective in my opinion increases fun and decreases frustration.

I sympathize with your mistrust of cookie cutter builds, but this isn’t really deep theorycraft, nor is it an attempt to exclude builds. We all have builds; these are just some that I happen to like.

Actually I encourage everyone to offer their suggestions, variations and even to break the build open. I like seeing what everyone else is coming up with.

In a game like GW2, you probably can’t ever have a cookie cutter build anyway. At least not in the way we used to in other MMOs. Performance is decoupled from builds because traits generally enhance very specific strategies rather than your ability to perform a particular role.

Lubrication.8734:

Most people like to be as effective as possible. The unfortunately side effects of a level-skill-gear based system is that there will always be the ‘best’ build incorporating the most appropriate skills and armour based on the play style you’re using.

See, that’s the point that destroys your argument for Theorycrafting. “Based on the play style you’re using,” by definition, says that there isn’t one best build out there. It also reinforces my point about finding your build by taking the traits and skills that are the most fun to play. That is exactly what I advocated when I said not to trust Theorycrafting. Figure out what makes your character fun to play and take those improvements.

As for the main topic, I prefer to take signets (I love passive bonuses), pets, summons, and anything that has a lot of buffs or debuffs, even if they’re individually small. It hasn’t been hard for me to find something that each of my alts can take, regardless of class (and I play 7 out of 8 of the classes). For Traits, I don’t look at the per point buffs so much as the 5/10-point bonus abilities/buffs to see which ones go in the direction that I want to take my character. I have yet to find a class that doesn’t have a 30/30/10 build I don’t like.

On my Ranger I have the passive signets, Summon Owl, Summon Wyrm, and Healing Spring. Haven’t gotten him to his Elite skill, yet, but as he’s a Norn, that’s going to be Wolf Form (he is a Wolfborn, after all). I prefer longbow for distance and rain of arrows, but if I need to go melee, its Sword and Torch.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#zmoc0VcMocVnVxa00xoRaMMcb

On my Guardian, I prefer the passive signets, Summon Mystic Sword, single heal and mass debuff/aggro grab (Battle Roar, he’s a Charr). Weapons are either Greatsword or Staff or Scepter and Torch. If I’m feeling saucy and want to pull a huge group, I’ll switch Torch to Shield.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#zMcmcz0zmRmLcx00axMoqmcVo

Engie is fun. All the Turrets and Grenade Belt. Thumper, Rifle and Healing. Weapons are either Dual Pistols or Rifle. Iron Legion bleeds Steel. It’s the best mix of “Ranged Do Not Touch” I have ever seen. During Beta my Engie was an Asura and I switched out one of the turrets for the Anti-Matter Generator. Ah, good times.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#zMMM000zohMac0xxa0msbcabV

Those are my three mains so far. I have 4 more I’m toying around with. If I figure something out about them, I’ll let you know, OP.

Drakkon.4782:

I distrust all Theorycrafters. Cookie cutter builds, while they may be efficient or powerful, are also boring and pedantic. I prefer to play for fun. Theorycrafting takes the fun out of the game, which makes baby puppies sad.

Theorycrafting is it’s own enjoyment. If you don’t get any satisfaction out of learning the ins and outs of your class and sharing ideas with others, you’re doing little more than messing around aimlessly.

Builds only become cookiecutter when people with little imagination latch onto a thought out build without trying to make it their own.

It’s one thing to not enjoy something, but it’s another thing entirely to call out people for enjoying it.

If you don’t like theorycrafting, fine. Nobody said you needed to. But you did kind’ve walk into a theorycrafting build and give everyone the bird, Drak.

I want to focus on a Greatsword guardian build. Where should I designate my points because ill need damage and tankiness?

Drakkon.4782:

I distrust all Theorycrafters. Cookie cutter builds, while they may be efficient or powerful, are also boring and pedantic. I prefer to play for fun. Theorycrafting takes the fun out of the game, which makes baby puppies sad.

Have you considered that theorycrafting might constitute as one of the fun elements for many people? Also, efficiency IS fun. :P

Can someone link me a build for a tanky build for my guardian?

My stats are:

Attack: 3126
Crit: 62%
Armor: 2101
Health: 10,805

If I put on full gear that has vitality over precision, while keeping power and condition damage, my health only reaches 17k, while dropping down to about 28% chance to crit. I am wondering what the best balance of items is and should be. I just got done going through the Arah explorable mode before the servers were taken down. Even trying to focus on dodging and staying alive, it seems the greatsword just causes more death and damage to me than good. I can deal a good amount of damage, but survivability is just not there. I mean, my gear is crafted and rare quality, except for my helm and greatsword, which are exotic. I just feel as though if you focus on damaging traits and weapons, you are better off ranged.

To add to the discussion of maximizing, the trade off of crit to attack is:

200 atk = 1% crit

I already did the math…

Basically if you were willing to trade off some attack for some critical chance then balance it such that the atk you give up is less than 200 for every 1% of crit chance. Conversely, if you will decrease your crit chance by 1%, try to get at least 200 atk in return. ASSUMING 0% increased crit damage.

You may convert atk and crit chance to the corresponding Power and Precision attributes as their formulas will complicate it a bit.

Also, increased critical damage % will decrease the 200atk in the above equation. Recalculating is gonna bore me so i won’t do it.

Exumerr.3829:

Can someone link me a build for a tanky build for my guardian?

I’d be happy to try! You’ll need to clarify what you mean by “tanky” though. ‘Tanking’ as a role doesn’t exist in this game, and therefore, while in other MMORPGs, ‘tanking’ automatically constituted survivability and high threat generation, you’ll need to elaborate on what ‘tanky’ means to you.

Do you want a build that improves your personal toughness and survivability? Do you prefer surviving through regeneration and self heals? Or do you want to maximize the availability of Aegis? Is there a particular weapon set you prefer?

That’s one of the cool things about builds in GW2. There are no “Tank” or “DPS” or “Healer” builds. Builds revolve around very specific tactics.