Guardian Sword/Mace or Staff?
I say play what feels good to you, but I’ve seen enough snide comments about “staff guardians” to know you’ll get lambasted for relying on it as a main weapon. My dungeon guardian is mostly scepter/focus (the guardian focus has a lot more ‘shield’ properties than the shield does) with sword/shield for when I get bored or need a knockback. Now, she does no dps, but she’s stellar at condition removal and damage absorption for the group, as well as the occasional timely healing of everyone back to full.
Of course, I run with guildies, not PuGs. I bet I’d get raked over the coals for PuGging with her in today’s zerk or gtfo climate.
Note — no one is meant to be a tank. It can’t be done. Support comes from giving your team boons and damage mitigation, not from saying “Hey you! I’m here, hit me inna face!”
Main-hand
Mace — Supportive melee weapon that provides AoE regeneration and blocking.
Scepter — Offensive, mid-ranged, spell casting weapon used to immobilize and smite enemies.
Sword — Balanced melee weapon with offense, defense and mobility.
Off-hand
Focus — Balanced weapon that provides supportive spells for both offense and self-defense, including condition removal.
Shield — Supportive weapon that provides local AoE projectile defense and protection.
Torch — Offensive weapon that burns enemies while cleansing allies of conditions.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian
If you’re looking for a dual wield set just go with (Sword+Focus). It has the best balance of offensive/defensive abilities and are useful in all modes. The Mace/Shield are designed purely for defense/support which is more for PvP/WvW bunker builds. I haven’t really played around with Shield enough to know if its that good, but the general consensus is that Focus is better. Of course everything has its uses so just try things out and see what works best for your needs.
Main-hand
Mace — Supportive melee weapon that provides AoE regeneration and blocking.
Scepter — Offensive, mid-ranged, spell casting weapon used to immobilize and smite enemies.
Sword — Balanced melee weapon with offense, defense and mobility.Off-hand
Focus — Balanced weapon that provides supportive spells for both offense and self-defense, including condition removal.
Shield — Supportive weapon that provides local AoE projectile defense and protection.
Torch — Offensive weapon that burns enemies while cleansing allies of conditions.http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian
If you’re looking for a dual wield set just go with (Sword+Focus). It has the best balance of offensive/defensive abilities and are useful in all modes. The Mace/Shield are designed purely for defense/support which is more for PvP/WvW bunker builds. I haven’t really played around with Shield enough to know if its that good, but the general consensus is that Focus is better. Of course everything has its uses so just try things out and see what works best for your needs.
What is Focus?
It’s an off hand weapon used by various casters. Usually a large clunky object of some sort. You can search for a focus on the TP.
Remember that you have two weapon sets. You don’t have to choose between staff and other weapons. As a guardian you definitely should have staff on one of your sets because it’s a fantastic support weapon that’s great for might, swiftness, healing and tagging enemies. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; staff on guardian is fantastic.
As Donari said, there are no tanks in this game. You cannot draw aggro – there’s literally no way to do it – so your focus should be on providing group support and utility instead. In this sense, I find shield to be a poor choice; the cooldowns are too long and the skills aren’t useful enough.
Sword or mace are both good main hand choices. Sword will give you more damage and a blind, while mace is slower with less damage but more healing and blocking. For offhand, torch or focus are both good. Focus is balanced and torch is lots of damage and burning. Both will offer condition cleansing (very important!)
Essentially, sword/torch is your best DPS set. It’s what I run and it’s great. Mace/focus is your best balanced/support set. Mix and match to suit your style, needs, and trait setup. Again, whatever you choose, you should pair it with staff.
HAMMER! or go home.
Remember that you have two weapon sets. You don’t have to choose between staff and other weapons. As a guardian you definitely should have staff on one of your sets because it’s a fantastic support weapon that’s great for might, swiftness, healing and tagging enemies. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; staff on guardian is fantastic.
As Donari said, there are no tanks in this game. You cannot draw aggro – there’s literally no way to do it – so your focus should be on providing group support and utility instead. In this sense, I find shield to be a poor choice; the cooldowns are too long and the skills aren’t useful enough.
Sword or mace are both good main hand choices. Sword will give you more damage and a blind, while mace is slower with less damage but more healing and blocking. For offhand, torch or focus are both good. Focus is balanced and torch is lots of damage and burning. Both will offer condition cleansing (very important!)
Essentially, sword/torch is your best DPS set. It’s what I run and it’s great. Mace/focus is your best balanced/support set. Mix and match to suit your style, needs, and trait setup. Again, whatever you choose, you should pair it with staff.
Sometimes I run sword and focus. More or less invulnerable and deadly as well.
And yes. Always pair anything with staff. That part is a no-brainer.
I only use staff when I am zerging about, and its support abilities can be done by other classes far better without sacrificing dps. So depending on party comp, you might want to play greatsword or hammer + sword and focus IMO. Those blinds can be very useful.
Hammer / Greatsword with shouts specialty. I’ll switch one to Staff when I need to tag mobs in events or Zerg.
We go out in the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances
If you came from another game, forget about the tank/dps/healer trinity. It is not present in GW2, and the lack of that trinity is an explicit design goal. The trinity in this game is DPS/support/control.
A Guardian can do all three, but is primarily a DPS and support profession. Guardian support works not by healing or tanking damage, but by preventing damage to the group. You have a large variety of blinds, personal and group blocks (aegis), condition removal, projectile reflection, and by giving boons to your allies. You can also provide fire and light fields, and you have a few blast finishers on your weapons.
Nearly all weapons have a use, and eventually you will want to carry one of everything. Swap things around depending on need.
Greatsword is one of your primary offensive weapons. 2 is excellent AoE damage, 3 is a blind, and 5 will pull the mobs together so you can more efficiently kill them. This is a mainstay in dungeons, one of the best for the open world, and effective in some PvP and WvW setups.
Hammer is a defensive weapon. While slow, it still puts out a reasonable amount of damage. It supports your group by granting the Protection boon as you attack with it. It has a blast combo finisher on skill 2, an immobilize on 3, a knockback on 4, and a ward (prevent mobs from crossing, unless they have stability) on 5. It’s best used when your group is fighting something difficult and the group is having difficulty keeping alive. The drawback to hammer is that it extensively uses Light combo fields, which are often detrimental to an organized group. It’s used in all game modes, but only when you need the added defense or need some control.
Staff is a weak damage weapon, but it has some support. Your autoattack will hit 5 targets, while most autoattacks hit 3. 2 is a fairly weak and difficult to use heal, 3 grants swiftness, 4 is a heal and provides Might to the group, and 5 is a ward. Staff is best used when you’re “tagging” a large number of mobs in massive group fights; for mobility in the open world as a swap weapon (do damage with your other weapon set); for PvP; or used in very specialized world vs. world support setups.
Sword, as said above, is a high damage and support mainhand. Your autoattack is very strong (but be warned that the third strike is a set of projectiles, using it on some enemies will reflect back to you, and hurt). 2 is a teleport and a blind, due to the weakness of the damage, it should only by used when you need the teleport or blind effect. 3 provides some situational and touchy projectile protection. Sword is used in all game modes.
Mace is another defensive weapon. It has a reputation for being low damage, but recent theorycrafting shows that it actually has fairly good damage. It heals on the third strike of the autoattack. It’s mainly used in PvP support/“bunker” builds due to the healing and pressure. The 2 skill provides a regeneration field to the group. It can be used elsewhere if you need the extra block with the 3 skill. This is another weapon that makes heavy use of light combo fields, so it can be a problem in some groups.
Scepter is your only long range weapon. It has the highest damage skill a guardian has, as long as all of the parts hit, on the 2 skill. You will see good results on very large enemies and objects. It also has an immobilize on the 3 skill (though note the shorter range). You will always want to have one of these in your inventory, but only swap to it when you need range or you are fighting very large enemies.
Focus is your primary offhand. It provides group condition removal and a blind on 4. 5 will block three hits, do damage, and is a blast combo finisher. With the vulnerability on blind trait, the 4 skill is a large boost in damage to the entire party since it bounces and hits the enemy multiple times.
Shield has some situational uses, but is not the best general purpose offhand. The 4 skill provides short duration Protection in an arc in front of you; and 5 provides a knockback, projectile block, and a small heal. Both shield skills are on very long cooldowns. If you need an extra one of the above functions, use it, but otherwise Focus will be of better use.
Torch is odd, it’s supposed to be a damage offhand, but it doesn’t provide much of a damage boost. 4 burns enemies and can do a fairly high damage attack, but on a long cooldown. 5 actually results in a DPS loss. Torch can be used when you don’t need any defensive skills, but it’s not used that often.
Lille of the Valley [WHIP]
My guardian is PvE and generally only used for world bosses and dungeons. Her weapons are GS and sword/focus just because that’s what I like best and gives me decent damage. If I need range, I do GS and scepter/focus. And if I’m running TA, I bring a staff to take out the deadly blossoms in there. Otherwise, I never touch staff, except for big world events where I’m tagging mobs. I haven’t touched mace since the tutorial instance because it’s just useless, to me (in PvE).
As others have already said, there are no “tanks” in this game, really.
I like mace/focus for the heals and scepter/torch for a ranged option.
But I also really like the greatsword skills on a guard, especially solo roaming.
If you came from another game, forget about the tank/dps/healer trinity. It is not present in GW2, and the lack of that trinity is an explicit design goal. The trinity in this game is DPS/support/control.
A Guardian can do all three, but is primarily a DPS and support profession. Guardian support works not by healing or tanking damage, but by preventing damage to the group. You have a large variety of blinds, personal and group blocks (aegis), condition removal, projectile reflection, and by giving boons to your allies. You can also provide fire and light fields, and you have a few blast finishers on your weapons.
Nearly all weapons have a use, and eventually you will want to carry one of everything. Swap things around depending on need.
Greatsword is one of your primary offensive weapons. 2 is excellent AoE damage, 3 is a blind, and 5 will pull the mobs together so you can more efficiently kill them. This is a mainstay in dungeons, one of the best for the open world, and effective in some PvP and WvW setups.
Hammer is a defensive weapon. While slow, it still puts out a reasonable amount of damage. It supports your group by granting the Protection boon as you attack with it. It has a blast combo finisher on skill 2, an immobilize on 3, a knockback on 4, and a ward (prevent mobs from crossing, unless they have stability) on 5. It’s best used when your group is fighting something difficult and the group is having difficulty keeping alive. The drawback to hammer is that it extensively uses Light combo fields, which are often detrimental to an organized group. It’s used in all game modes, but only when you need the added defense or need some control.
Staff is a weak damage weapon, but it has some support. Your autoattack will hit 5 targets, while most autoattacks hit 3. 2 is a fairly weak and difficult to use heal, 3 grants swiftness, 4 is a heal and provides Might to the group, and 5 is a ward. Staff is best used when you’re “tagging” a large number of mobs in massive group fights; for mobility in the open world as a swap weapon (do damage with your other weapon set); for PvP; or used in very specialized world vs. world support setups.
Sword, as said above, is a high damage and support mainhand. Your autoattack is very strong (but be warned that the third strike is a set of projectiles, using it on some enemies will reflect back to you, and hurt). 2 is a teleport and a blind, due to the weakness of the damage, it should only by used when you need the teleport or blind effect. 3 provides some situational and touchy projectile protection. Sword is used in all game modes.
Mace is another defensive weapon. It has a reputation for being low damage, but recent theorycrafting shows that it actually has fairly good damage. It heals on the third strike of the autoattack. It’s mainly used in PvP support/“bunker” builds due to the healing and pressure. The 2 skill provides a regeneration field to the group. It can be used elsewhere if you need the extra block with the 3 skill. This is another weapon that makes heavy use of light combo fields, so it can be a problem in some groups.
Scepter is your only long range weapon. It has the highest damage skill a guardian has, as long as all of the parts hit, on the 2 skill. You will see good results on very large enemies and objects. It also has an immobilize on the 3 skill (though note the shorter range). You will always want to have one of these in your inventory, but only swap to it when you need range or you are fighting very large enemies.
Focus is your primary offhand. It provides group condition removal and a blind on 4. 5 will block three hits, do damage, and is a blast combo finisher. With the vulnerability on blind trait, the 4 skill is a large boost in damage to the entire party since it bounces and hits the enemy multiple times.
Shield has some situational uses, but is not the best general purpose offhand. The 4 skill provides short duration Protection in an arc in front of you; and 5 provides a knockback, projectile block, and a small heal. Both shield skills are on very long cooldowns. If you need an extra one of the above functions, use it, but otherwise Focus will be of better use.
Torch is odd, it’s supposed to be a damage offhand, but it doesn’t provide much of a damage boost. 4 burns enemies and can do a fairly high damage attack, but on a long cooldown. 5 actually results in a DPS loss. Torch can be used when you don’t need any defensive skills, but it’s not used that often.
Yep, this pretty sums it up concisely. I am curious about your choices for armor and runes.