Guild Wars 2

So I main a guardian and mostly do PvE and dungeons, however, I would also like to try things like WvW roaming and fractals every once in a while. I was wondering if this build (mostly made for PvE) would at least be okay to work in those different areas or if I’ll need to completely change my traits and gear.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlYgaDHHSNEf4ESWhCE7RFlRw31DIKiaIA-jAyAoLBZKCMRIQJwioxWXLiGraBTVSEV7NKiWNA-e

Here is the shout variation

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAsdRlYg67mFyKEf4ERWhVi9AjZsjXPcoCZIA-jAyAoLBRKCIRIQJwioxWZLiGraBTVSEV7NKiWNA-e

For almost all dungeons I think a ranged weapon is important. The reason is that if you cant stand the heat you should leave the kitchen. being able to go ranged is important. Also shouts are important then so if you stay alive you stay supportive. My preference is the staff as second weapon (beside the GS) cause the empowerment is an awesome party buff. Besides that if skipping, the staff skill 3 is awesome to boost the speed and skill 5 is great for blocking enemy’s that try to follow you. For regular PvE you can go more selfish, but still, being able to go ranged is for me a must.

You need to look at the guardian fourms. And leave the staff at home unless its for clearing plants in TA. Empower is awful in pve because you lose all the damage you could be doing with that might due to thr staffs awful auto attack. Heads up though there might be a build that lets you do everything. But you wont do everything well. There are specalized builds for a reason.

I run three builds. One for WvW another for pve dungens and open world and a third for high level fracals. 49ish. Only the WVW build uses the staff. I use hammer for fractala and sword/focus and great sword for everything else.

Edited cause my phone is a pain.

Talyn still hasnt seen the awesomeness off the staff, but some day he will see the light.

Honestly I don’t know why people insist on giving bad advice here when someone ask for help. Staff? Really? Staff on a guardian is like the old Bearbow ranger, only in many cases worse. A good team can stack more might with a fire field then a guardian can give with the staff and it last a lot longer.

It can get you kicked out of alot of parties, see this post if you have any doubts

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Zerker-guardian-with-staff/page/3#post3589553.

And a post from someone who knows alot about the Guardian class https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/page/2#post3364731

Its not a matter of seeing the light. Its a matter of how little use you get out of the majority of the skills.

1. Weak auto attack
2. Small heal if not specked for healing, even then its not great
3. Swiftness causes light field instead of fire combos = No might stacking
4. Empower… the little might it gives could be gotten from other sources
5. Will stop a charging mob but otherwise not exactly gonna help you kill anything.

The staff is sub-par except for support, and even then it is only used in certain areas.

Talyn.3295:

Honestly I don’t know why people insist on giving bad advice here when someone ask for help. Staff? Really? Staff on a guardian is like the old Bearbow ranger, only in many cases worse. A good team can stack more might with a fire field then a guardian can give with the staff and it last a lot longer.

It can get you kicked out of alot of parties, see this post if you have any doubts

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Zerker-guardian-with-staff/page/3#post3589553.

And a post from someone who knows alot about the Guardian class https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/page/2#post3364731

Its not a matter of seeing the light. Its a matter of how little use you get out of the majority of the skills.

1. Weak auto attack
2. Small heal if not specked for healing, even then its not great
3. Swiftness causes light field instead of fire combos = No might stacking
4. Empower… the little might it gives could be gotten from other sources
5. Will stop a charging mob but otherwise not exactly gonna help you kill anything.

The staff is sub-par except for support, and even then it is only used in certain areas.

You are just so wrong!
Yes for damage it is poor. But the purpose of ranged is to stay ranged when melee is impossible, keep that time frame as small as possible,

The speed is excellent
The line of warning is excellent to block people.
Empower is better then any other source

Plus I never get kicked out of party’s and often got invited again.
I guess it is you who doesn’t know what you are talking bout. just the fact that you dont know what to do with the staff doesnt mean it is sub-par, it is much better then a scepter. specially with the offhands possible.

@ alejhondo

I use a similar build (as your shout build) for my guardian. The only difference in trait are : In valor i use VI over your II. In Honor i use VIII over IX and in Virtues i use VI over your II. Also i use full berserker for my gear (armor, trinkets, weapons) and superior rune of the scholar. Because seriously from you trait alone you have crazy defense already. Well thats for PvE at least. And at last i use GS with Scepter/Focus. For my utilities i use Hold the Line, Stand your Ground and Retreat. For elite i use renewed focus

When i go in WvW is switch 3 traits (i don’t retrait i just switch stuff). In valor i switch my retributive armor for strength in numbers. In Honor i switch my VIII for IX. After that i switch most of my gear. I keep 3 berserker trinket and swith the other three for cavalier. I switch my armor for Soldier armor with superior rune of divinity. For my weapons i switch for Soldier Staff and Hammer. Usually it take less than a minute to change everything and be ready to go in WvW or PvE. For my utilisy i only switch retreat for Wall of Reflection and my elite for Tome of Courage.

Edit : For staff in PvE. I don’t like it, but i don’t mind my friend using it. The scepter have better single target DPS and the focus block is a powerful tools to rez people. While the staff have poor range and poor single target dps, its good for AoE, CC and give might. Anyway both should be avoid as much as possible. If you can’t melee for the whole dungeon you are doing something wrong. For fractal its another story.

mercury ranique.2170:

Talyn.3295:

Honestly I don’t know why people insist on giving bad advice here when someone ask for help. Staff? Really? Staff on a guardian is like the old Bearbow ranger, only in many cases worse. A good team can stack more might with a fire field then a guardian can give with the staff and it last a lot longer.

It can get you kicked out of alot of parties, see this post if you have any doubts

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Zerker-guardian-with-staff/page/3#post3589553.

And a post from someone who knows alot about the Guardian class https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/page/2#post3364731

Its not a matter of seeing the light. Its a matter of how little use you get out of the majority of the skills.

1. Weak auto attack
2. Small heal if not specked for healing, even then its not great
3. Swiftness causes light field instead of fire combos = No might stacking
4. Empower… the little might it gives could be gotten from other sources
5. Will stop a charging mob but otherwise not exactly gonna help you kill anything.

The staff is sub-par except for support, and even then it is only used in certain areas.

You are just so wrong!
Yes for damage it is poor. But the purpose of ranged is to stay ranged when melee is impossible, keep that time frame as small as possible,

The speed is excellent
The line of warning is excellent to block people.
Empower is better then any other source

Plus I never get kicked out of party’s and often got invited again.
I guess it is you who doesn’t know what you are talking bout. just the fact that you dont know what to do with the staff doesnt mean it is sub-par, it is much better then a scepter. specially with the offhands possible.

What is this I don’t even

For a start, I assume you are arguing on the premise of non-speedclear groups. You can run just about anything in dungeons, but staff will always be a suboptimal weapon due to the tactics speedclearers employ, especially stacking and LoS-ing.

Even with Obal’s setup your staff autos will only hit 2k or so with crits. Staff 2 hits hard, but compared to the other weapons it just doesn’t hit hard enough to be worth it, and to make things worse it’s a big projectile, which renders it susceptible to reflects – if the orb gets reflected, you are forced to detonate it to restore functionality, which sharply increases its cooldown.

Symbol of Swiftness… it’s a symbol, and a targeted one at that. Symbols do respectable damage, but if you really wanted to use symbols for damage a hammer outclasses it anyway, so there.

Empower is trash if your group stacks might or has a meta LH ele. You’re much better off using Hallowed Ground for the increased boon duration and blasting it.

Line of Warding – this is useful for trash, but a hammer’s Ring of Warding does the same job, and casts faster too. This is a remarkably useless CC for champion and legendary bosses because of how short the disable is. Trash skill for trash mobs.

My conclusion is that staff is still a bad weapon for fights. I’m sure the rest of the dungeon forum regulars can offer a better explanation than I do though – explanation is not my strong suit.

Well as I said, I have run many dungeons in many types of groups. I have never been kicked out a PuG in my life and I always used my staff as secondary to my greatsword.

Yes you are right that empowerment has better alternatives. This means that in a pug you should make sure your stack isnt blocking others. Same goes btw with shouts. I see so many times guardians shouting at the same time instead of timing it better.

But the issue is that no ranged weapon is optimal, it is a known issue with guardians, but in my opinion the staff is more usefull then a scepter with a focus or a shield.

So lets compare (and dont give me rubbish like hallowed ground is better, Yes it is for an utility skill, but comparing utility skills with weapon skills is just bleh).

(damage according the wiki, so not counting downleveling, or boosting from multipliers like power or crit damage).

Wave of Wrath vs Orb of Wraht
Staff 222 damage per second, hitting up to 5 enemy’s
Scepter 280 damage per second, single target.
So yes scepter scores slightly better, but only when it is single target. when there is more then one target the staff wins.

Orb of light (and detonate) vs Smite
This one is difficult to compare. To have a good effect of Orb of light you need to detonate it on the right time. Smite is a ground target skill. So both have an handicap and much depends on players skill. If the orb is detonated at the right spot it deals more damage (and heals party members) but it is imo harder to master then placing the ground target right.
So this one depends fully on the players skill-level.

Symbol of swiftness vs Chain of light
The symbol wins on pure direct damage (and also has a shorter casting time).
The swiftness only has an advantage when skipping foes. So it comes to the secondairy effects of chains of light. the imobilize is in dungeons not often important. For trashmobs you dont care and almost all bosses are imune to it anyways. So 3 stacks of invulnarability for 6 seconds (3% damage increase for 6 seconds) is nice, but other classes can do this much much better, including the warriors that arfe very popular in dungeons as well. So the symbol wins this one in my opinion.

Empower (staff) vs Shield of judgement (shield) vs Ray of judgement (focus)
Shield is the most offensive skill. the protection is a nice bonus.
Ray is dealing lesser damage then shield, but gives direct healing and blind.
Empower is dealing no direct damage, but can boost the damage output. But through empower you gain 57% more DPS for your full party. Off course you have to time it right to not interfere with other might stackers. On top of that it gives an healing that is superior to the healing of Ray.
This one is clearly won by empower. Even when there is allready a full stack of might, the healing is significant enough to make a difference. Shield is second and ray third in this one.

see next message….

Line of Warding vs Shield of Absorption vs Shield of Wrath

Line of warding has limited use in fights. But it is an absolute winner when it comes to succesfully skipping foes if you know the dungeon well.

Shield of absorption. This one has no use in skipping, no use against bosses so is only slightly usefull against trashmobs you are actually killing.

Shield of Wrath: Blocking the attacks is usefull but only for yourself (if stacked up it still only blocks for yourself). In most fights it will get destroyed, but if it doesnt the damage is significant.
Just because the limited use of other effects of line of warding, I give shield of wrath the win on this one.

So all in all, on each individual skill the staff scores actually pretty good. on the first 3 skills a skilled staffuser can be more effective then a skilled scepteruser. The amount of playerskill needed is however higher (and prolly the reason it has such a bad name in your view). For the final two skills, empowerment is a winner (if timed so it doesnt interfere with others).
Also the two alternatives are not better when it comes to the combination of those two skills.

Also keep in mind that the use of a ranged weapon is for those situations where it is hard to stay melee. You switch over when it is going badly. So it is good to have a weapon that is actually helping the party up instead of down.

Due to the limited range I do agree that staff is not optimum in all situations. There are fights where you need a lot of mobility. In those situations I always anticipate and will bring a scepter focus so im not that limited to range. (AC p1 endboss, and HotW p1 endboss comes in mind).

But as my main secondary ranged wepaon I always pick staff.
As said, I never got kicked out of a dungeon pug and it happens that people add me to the friendslist to pug with me again in the future.

The issue here is that the staff does take more expertise to handle well, but with the right expertise it IS the better option. Don’t judge the staff cause some people dont know how to handle it right!

Staff is a PvP weapon. A world vs world weapon. If your spamming it in PvE is bad. I am not gonna to waste time replaying again. I only hope that the information related here will keep others from making the same mistakes you are with spaming staff one auto through half a fight.

Talyn.3295:

Staff is a PvP weapon. A world vs world weapon. If your spamming it in PvE is bad. I am not gonna to waste time replaying again. I only hope that the information related here will keep others from making the same mistakes you are with spaming staff one auto through half a fight.

And I only hope that your wannabe elitsm, where you judge a weapon on some bad players instead on personal experience, is not used by other seeking guidance. The facts I presented speak for themself. But if you are unwilling to give the staff a try and go blind on some people who can’t handle it, you are the one giving wrong information. the numbers and evidence I gave speak for themself.

Staff is a arc based PBAoE. If you use it in a ranged single target situation it will forever underperform the scepter by definition. If in a melee cleave situation it will always underperform the sword. Know your attacks. Using a cleaver to shave doesn’t make the cleaver a fail blade, it only makes the person using it in such a way a fail shaver.

The best single-class PvE players usually possess multiple sets, with Asc stats on only the one they’ll use most often – generally melee cleave – and stacking sigils on AoE type weapons to build stacks on large groups of weak mobs. I’m a multiclass player instead so I bring specific optimised builds for specific situations.

There is no weapon set that is best for everything though there are some that can do passably well for everything. The existence of one violates the definition of balance.

Alejhondo asked if his build would do ok in aspects such as Fractals and WvW, not how to min-max, so why turns this into an optimal game-play discussion? There’re plenty of threads supported with the math and the experience behind it, such as Obal’s excellent thread posted a few replies above me, I recommend you take those discussions there and answer Alejhondo’s question here.

As for the question, yes your build will do fine in lower level Fractals and WvW. WvW you will want some survivability if zerging, which your build has. You likely want to add a Staff to your inventory for tagging. If roaming is more your cup of tea, I don’t think it will go great, but I never roamed with my Guardian. If you fall in love with WvW you’ll likely adjust your build, utilities and weapons once you’re comfortable doing so.

As for Fractals. In lower level Fractals you can get away with quite a lot, and if you want to get used to new area’s with a build you’re comfortable with, then do so. Dungeon builds often work quite well in lower level Fractals and the other way around. Do mind that some groups prefer to Range certain fights and it might be worth investing in a Scepter for that, it will most likely make your experience more pleasent aswell to just have the option available.

(In before Scepter hate, when referring to a fight range is a ‘must’ I think the 600 range vs the 1200 range is the most vital difference hence I recommended Scepter, Staff has plenty of uses, but more related towards running and LoS pulling (staff 5 is so OP))

The most important thing is that you’re enjoying the game and in the way you seem to enjoy the game, there’re plenty of groups who’d love to have you (and surely plenty that won’t, read the group finders and it will make everyone’s day a lot better.)

(If I offended anyone, that was not my intention)

The problem I see with this entire thread is he has a pair of crap builds, nobody is actually calling him on it, AND people are telling him how great the worst pve weapon short of mace/shield is and going after the few people that give good advice. Cmon, a meditation build with pure Tough vit is as greedy and useless as it gets for pve, might as well make it worse by adding a crap weapon right? Oh, he has a shout version too, for “helping”… yup also a greedy and useless trait setup. For god’s sake he traits for retaliation duration! Oh, there is a burning build trait in one with NO condition damage buffing… On the gear, Knights is ok for learning and wvw, but once you get better you need to move on to zerk/assassin for pve.

My advice to the OP, scrap entire build, have at least 2 different builds (wvw and PVE), make sure they are actually good builds instead of this pile of randomly choose “sounds good” stuff. Then block anybody who recommends staff for any pve content. Staff has its uses, but it is not in pve anywhere, not in open world, not in dungeons, not in fractals and not even in champ bag farming or world boss tagging.

Guard staff is the #1 weapon setup for TA run phase. More so for Fwd path since Up is so easy you don’t have to care. It is one of the stronger builds for CoE 1-4 defense when traited for offense. Condition damage should never be specced under any circumstances for a guardian, period. With high base and low scaling Burn is improved by duration, not damage; and damage speccing, using permaburn as a conduit for buffing direct and boonstrip is its main purpose. If desiring offensive stats, one should go into power instead. Toughness mainbuilds are usually used for holding aggro for the rest of your party, and is used in conjunction with AH because healing power scales badly with it, power and retaliation – and AH is paired with shout traits, shouts and staff’s Empower for max effect. In dealing the lowest damage, booning others and taking the most attacks it is the least selfish build possible – its users have the lowest chance of dealing enough damage to ensure drops. It is also so slow at killing its main purpose in PvE is to anchor teams of 4 completely fail players in dungeons; its second, the highest level fractals.

Normally I wouldn’t be this direct, but as you have disqualified yourself from politeness by being rude yourself: do not give advice when you clearly have no idea how the game, or specific dungeon, drop, stat, trait or aggro mechanics, work.

It is nice how Talyn bought some friends. I was and will be rude to him. He is the one who said that I was being kicked out of pugs alot. And yes I took that as anoffense and a personal attack.

All that happened after is that people are telling how bad a staff is. I took the timeto build an argument with facts and he (and some others) keep being rude without taking the time or effort to explain WHY the staff is bad or WHY my facts presented earlier are wrong.

A good argument is not build around statements like ‘you will be kicked out of dungeons a lot’ but bout facts. I presented some clear facts and all you do is flame me without giving proper facts.

Tell me why my numbers are wrong??

The point is that I know there is asome staff hate among some ‘self-appointed’ dungeon runners. There are very good speedrunners. But just copy-pasting what these people do without understanding it wont make you a good dungeon players. And it even gets worse. The call-out that anyone who does it different is bad forms the current elitsm.

I try to mix my dungeons a lot and do bout 4-5 paths per day, but the last few months I have been doing AC p3 on a daily basis.
I join any kind of group (and never got any complaints). This is my experience:

lfg: P3, experienced only, speedrun, be 80 – average time of 20 minutes, many wipes. The group mostly stinks.
lfg: P3 level 80 only – Average time of 15 minutes. it goes okayish
lfg: p3 all welcome – Average time of 12 minutes, even with lowbe’s the speed and skill level of the people there is awesome.

I don’t judge the people demanding this and that build. But too many are so blind and so trusting that ‘their way’ is the only way, you are blinded to alternatives AND being outdated left and right cause you don’t see improvements.

So if you want to argument based on facts as I presented. go ahead. If not, please stop flaming me without any sensefull argument.

I hope you’re not replying my post, if it was please read it again. The last one was meant for Mr. Scrap-everything-zerkalltheway-kickallthestaves Notabot. I worry, because you mention the word ‘rude’, and nobody else brought the word up.

The current elitism is especially annoying because it is done by players who do not understand the game at all – shooting others is bad enough when their solution is better, shooting others when their recommendation is worse is simply ridiculous. I’ve run into them over and over again at the Guardian (people speccing full stats into burn and speccing full healing power into Altruistic Healing), Mesmer (thinking that the PU build has no counters when it gets murdered badly by phantasm builds; early on, nonsense about using the Greatsword as a berserker build), Ranger (thinking that the class with the lowest autoattack power multipliers of all can ever be good at direct damage), Warrior (thinking throwing 150 condi dmg points which they never use can ever be a max direct build, while giving up all stunbreaks and condition cleansers), Elementalist (sacrificing booning – the ele’s strongest point, and AoE – the second strongest, in favour of a cleave-melee option), Thief (speccing Toughness into a class with no damage mitigation mechanics other than stealth and evade and the worst heal) and Necro subforums (speccing direct damage into a class without Cleave). So far, they only haven’t appeared in the Engineer subforums, joy of all joys. It’s disappointing to see that even people who claim to specialise in one class are inferior in their understanding of that one than someone who plays every single class.

Staff for ranged combat – Inferior to scepter due to range (AA Staff 600 units versus AA Scepter 1200 units)

Staff as a might stacking stick – Inferior to blasting fire fields because the duration is half of blasted stacks (10 seconds staff versus 20 seconds fire field). This means if someone blasts stack before you, you may end up overwriting their long lasting might with shorter moght stacks. If you do og before them, yours will be overwritten by theirs (thankfully). As well as the skill taking 2.5 seconds to channel means the initial stacks last only 7.5 seconds; how much engagement can you have with a foe in 7 seconds? Not much (in a pug).

Staff as a running weapon – It’s okay I guess

Staff for pulling – Meh just use focus 4 unless it is mandatory, or at least preferable, that you only pull 1 enemy (eg. Tazza SE P1).

OldSomalia.
For ranged combat it depends highly on the specific combat. For single target fights where you need to have a lot of mobility you are right, but for multiple targets in a more confined space staff is better.

Fire field only grants 3 stacks of might. So thats 11.5% more damage during 20 seconds. Empower offers 15 stacks, so that 57% more damage for 10 seconds. Max amount of stacks is 25, so overriding becomes only an issue when too many people are stacking might. Thats why, if you use mepowerment you should always be carefull your not overriding, ubt thats just good player skills. Your argument bout the casting time is nonsense. the stack is build up, but each part of the stack last 10 second, just not at the same time. (so during the casting time, 2,5 second, you gain the stacks one by one. 10 seconds after casting the first one is going out. but the last applied stack last till 12,5 seconds after the first applied one.

For pulling you are right, but in many situations it does the job. Only when I have to pull a certain boss (e.g. Tazza or Fyonna) you are right. It’s when I will switch to scepter.

Thanks for discussing based on arguments though. Really appreciate that. you serve as an example against some others here.

Healing builds heal AoE from 3, 4 always heals if completed. 3 isn’t really good for speed as you need to remain in the field for Swift to be useful. 5 is one of the only two area-denial skills, the other being shield 5 – which is critical in WvW but almost useless in PvE except for stopping mobs at the end of dung run phases without resulting in a combat mode activation. 3 damages aoe like all symbols do. 2 has limited utility; other than drawing mobs, otherwise autoattacking is better. Autos are the guard’s only spammable AoE; all others max at cleave.

Against very large numbers of crap mobs my usual rotation is 3, F1, 4, Purging Flames, weaponswap-hammer2 then autoing on the hammer to alternate 2 cleaves with one AoE, spamming F1 off cd. Autoattack spamming is for CoEp1, TA, WvW stealthed opponents/zerg fights only, generally; otherwise it will be highly ineffective.

Hayashi.3416:

Guard staff is the #1 weapon setup for TA run phase. More so for Fwd path since Up is so easy you don’t have to care. It is one of the stronger builds for CoE 1-4 defense when traited for offense. Condition damage should never be specced under any circumstances for a guardian, period. With high base and low scaling Burn is improved by duration, not damage; and damage speccing, using permaburn as a conduit for buffing direct and boonstrip is its main purpose. If desiring offensive stats, one should go into power instead. Toughness mainbuilds are usually used for holding aggro for the rest of your party, and is used in conjunction with AH because healing power scales badly with it, power and retaliation – and AH is paired with shout traits, shouts and staff’s Empower for max effect. In dealing the lowest damage, booning others and taking the most attacks it is the least selfish build possible – its users have the lowest chance of dealing enough damage to ensure drops. It is also so slow at killing its main purpose in PvE is to anchor teams of 4 completely fail players in dungeons; its second, the highest level fractals.

Normally I wouldn’t be this direct, but as you have disqualified yourself from politeness by being rude yourself: do not give advice when you clearly have no idea how the game, or specific dungeon, drop, stat, trait or aggro mechanics, work.

AH builds are selfish because it sacrifices damage and useful things like blinds giving vuln for individual survival. Toughness doesn’t hold aggro. It can grab aggro, but since you are doing nearly 0 damage you won’t hold it for more than 3 seconds. This is from experience running the terrible AH build till i ditched it for a good build. As for carrying 4 fail players… Don’t run with fail players. Yeah pugs and the like… I mostly pug and while I have been in some pretty bad groups it is a rare day where I can’t get them through with my meta build. In practice the shout build is additionally selfish because the player spams their shouts on cooldown to keep their health topped off instead of timing their shouts for when they matter. On the issue of TA, I’ve been very annoyed by players who remove the poison in the fight that lets you kill the spider faster if you are poisoned. Stop using shouts+soldier runes. The might stacks from staff are fine in a bad group that has nobody else who can stack might (either an odd party composition or incompetent players), but in any reasonable group they will hedge out good duration might stacks given by blasting on fire fields.

High level fractals meta build uses hammer, not staff.

As for boon stripping, who cares, the fight shouldn’t last very long if you are building for the proper things in pve. Getting rid of boons matters very little, getting rid of defiant rarely even matters tbh.

Since you pulled out the do not give advice if blah blah blah… I’ll turn that back around on you. Your ideas how this game work are outdated and wrong.

Those builds are bad… and wth with everyone giving wall of texts in responses.

PvE and WvW can not have the same build for Guardian, it wont work.

PvE: 20/25/0/0/25 or 10/25/0/25/10
WvW (group): 0/15/0/30/25 or 0/0/10/30/30
WvW (solo): 10/25/30/05

for PvE i prefer : 20/30/0/0/20 or 10/30/0/10/20

for WvW (group) i prefer : 0/0/30/30/10

mercury ranique.2170:

OldSomalia.
For ranged combat it depends highly on the specific combat. For single target fights where you need to have a lot of mobility you are right, but for multiple targets in a more confined space staff is better.

Blasphemy! As if I would ever range combat, but assuming I would, I would still use Scepter rather than a staff for the following reasons:

1. The symbol is low-cooldown burst which (somewhat of a secondary/point on it’s own) also benefits from traiting RHS which is a fairly staple trait for many DPS trait allocations (10/30/0/x/x); exemption from this is a more highly DPS-oriented build (10/25/0/x/x), but these people wouldn’t range either, so I digress.

2. Let’s use your example, of being stuck in a confined space. Multiple elite mobs? You can chain blinds all day and there really is no issue or threat; scratch elite mobs. For a boss? Consider that Immobilize is a soft-CC meaning that it’s function is not hindered by Defiant, unlike Line Of Warding. Why does this matter? Well if it’s a confined space and I’m using my imaginary ranged weapon, to ensure maximum boss-get-away-from-me-pls time, you can use Immob to find some breathing room whereas with Line Of Warding you cannot, because LoW is a hard-CC.

3. It benefits from the utility of being able to wield off-hand focus for addition blind (and vulnerability) and blocks (which translates into a blast field). Champion or elite, I feel like this is a much more valuable defensive cushion than anything staff can offer. Added relevancy to this is the fact that versus a boss (which are mostly singular, very few duo-boss fights in the game), staff auto-attack’s only advantage of striking up-to 5 foes is nullified. So as it is for me, I have no reason to use a staff versus Elite-level trash, and versus singular Champions or Legendary foes, scepter has more practical and adaptable application simply due to being a one-handed weapon.

mercury ranique.2170:

Fire field only grants 3 stacks of might. So thats 11.5% more damage during 20 seconds. Empower offers 15 stacks, so that 57% more damage for 10 seconds.

No, no, no.
Do you begin channeling Empower, but stop after the first tick of Might? Absolutely not. So why only blast a fire field one time? As a guardian, your two immediate blasts are Focus 5 and Hammer 2 (start rotating your weapons, don’t be lazy). Have a warrior in your party? Fantastic, because they can contribute with Longbow 3, Warhorn 5, Banner, Banner 5, and even “For Great Justice!” (not a blast, but relevant due to long-lasting Might stacks; somewhat in place of Stomp because it’s not practical to slot this utility). Just between those two, which should be somewhat staple for many coordinated efforts, you are stacking 21 stacks of might.

Now, as I see it, you’re perhaps arguing on the behalf of what might work in pugs or for the uncoordinated; even if I don’t play in coordinated groups (I pug all day, myself), I still debate on the behalf of what is optimum within the setting. To me, it is okay to stack might with Staff but only within a very specific context.

People aren’t blasting any fire fields? Okay, you can do it yourself. Blast your 6 might stacks first (because they last longer), THEN begin channeling Empower, THEN while channeling, (rather than just doing a regular weapon-swap) hard-swap Staff out for a more useful combat weapon (weapon swap breaks the channel, hard-swap maintains the channel even though you’re at that point wielding GS, Hammer, whatever).

Or do whatever you do, I don’t actually care. This is just for the purpose of debate. I play how I want

Hey OldSomalia,

I am absolutly not saying you should play different. In well coordinated groups you are prolly absolutly right. I have always prefered the come as your are approach where coordination is limited to what is abokittenly needed (as is common in PUG’s).

The issue I have is that too many people are copying builds and tactics from well coordianted groups without knowing why and udnerstanding the idea behind. This leads to a false meta where people play a build without knowing anything what they are doing. Arguing from that point that it is better for OP to go scepter goes staff is rubbish is….well showing a lack of understanding. you are clearly showing you do understand the debate and why I make other decissions then you in my advise. But unfortunally some others do not.

For example the fact that they are fully ignoring the healing part of empowerment means they haven’t ever read the skill description properly.

A good example is what happened in a (level 80 only) pug yesterday in AC p3. during spider and all other fights the might was stacking good by others and so i kept my GS up and only switched to staff for the running and skips. But the pug was obvious not well protected. I was the only guardian and specially the warrior was going down too fast for my liking (not a clue what he was running and I’m not an expert in warriors, but normally if things they are one of the last standing and this one went down pretty quick). So I needed to support a lot. During Kholer the spikes of the adds caused near wipes several times and my regular support was always under pressure. The healing of empowerment helped there a lot to keep the party up and the damage high.

My point is that al lot of people just pick scepter cause ‘everybody uses scepter’ instead of understanding why and how. If the OP, reading this discussion decides to try both, I’m happy, even if he after tryingt decides that he prefers the scepter (or wants to stay with two melee sets. I personally feel more secure with having a ranged weapon as secondary weapon, but I fully agree that I hardly really have to swap, unless it is for healing by empowerment or for some skipping. But my trusted GS is nothing to complain bout anyways.

People ignore the healing aspect of empower because its not worth talking about… As is most healing.

Why would you use staff for skipping? You have a perfectly good shout in retreat. Should be all you need for anything in path 3. Staff also leaves marks on the ground, if a mob hits it you get the in combat penalty to speed.

If the pug wasn’t good enough for kholer they should have skipped him, he is a purely optional fight. You needed to support a lot because your group didn’t’ have the dps to melt him assuming you stacked. By using staff you lowered your dps even further making the fight take longer. Scepter is a more acceptable ranged weapon (decent enough dps, a powerful blind), but you don’t need to range much so keep it in the bag for 99 percent of the content. The warrior in your party was probably pure zerk and was used to a party that complemented his play-style. By having more than one player who did bad dps, including a staff guardian probably not traited/geared with the meta dps build he didn’t have the sustain to burn through the fight. Yeah, he should probably get better so he can compensate for the bad groups you often get in pugs (which are often full of bear bows, staff guards, and minion master necros….), but honestly it would be better for all involved that more people understood that defense doesn’t kill and dead mobs deal no damage.

Well, I mean, I experimented with staff and scepter as often as was necessary in my pugs, which was not much, but enough to determine my preference of scepter for all the above reasons.

But you are right that people do often just regurgitate information without understanding; prime examples being how many novice or holier-than-thou dungeoneers seems to think that pulling Spider Queen behind the pillar makes her attacks miss, thus it is exploiting. They simply have no idea what they’re talking about because they don’t understand what is happening mechanically (although I’m less than interested in this thread devolving into that discussion again).

If you were doing your job right as a guard maybe they wouldn’t have eaten the spikes so much. Greatsword pull cleave the adds? Blinds from greatsword leap, virtue, sword 2, focus 4. Well timed aegis, condi removal through virtue and purging etc.

You’re talking about the paltry heal empower does, which makes me guess you might be running a cleric guardian build, which in most case don’t even have blind on virtue of justice, so that means you only have one blind versus a much more spammable set on a dps guardian with sword focus + gs.

When you build around the thought of using a heal you already lost the battle because they are the most idiotic form of support. I’m sure your staff healing is going to carry a lot of people in arah. Lupicus is trembling in fear of Empower.