Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, it’s me again. So, my guardian is almost lvl 80 now and I’m approaching enough gold to buy the Braham’s heavy armour skin. Also having a hard time figuring some stuff out, despite the help of the almighty internet.

The questions I have now would be:

-What’s a good build for a mace/shield and scepter/torch guardian? Aiming for high/decent DPS while maintaining survivability and the support for allies.

-What are good armours for such a guardian? Now, as far as I understand, you can buy exotics from black lion for about 20-25 gold a set besides the karma buying. I’d prefer to buy the karma ones because that’s what karma is for and I have enough of it but again, I read somewhere karma ones are too versatile. A thorough explanation would be appreciated because I know nothing about building armours/linking them with runes. Also, the appearance doesn’t matter at all, like mentioned above, getting the skin, so focused stats are the main concern. This all applies to accessories, back pieces, weapons and anything with stats.

-Is gold actually useful for anything other than crafting and aestethics? Are the level 80 dungeons profitable? I heard a few people talking about gaining hundreds of gold from one item from such dungeons.

-The backpack pieces, for example holographic dragon wings. You can apply those to any back piece; now as far as I understand, that back piece would be a ‘’Strong back brace’’ for example?

Again, apologies for the noobish questions but in my defence, I AM a noob Thank you very much for the answers in advance.

The absolute best option is to start with balanced/tanky gear and gradually replace each piece with offensive gear until you find the right balance of defense or offense for you. However, if you want a general template, this is a good setup for balance:

Weapons: Soldier (power/vitality/toughness) or Valkyrie (power/vitality/critical damage)
Armor: Knight (power/precision/toughness)
Trinkets: Berserker (power/precision/critical damage)

I would not recommend trying full zerker until you’ve had a lot of practice with your guardian in all sorts of content and feel very confident in your ability to avoid damage. As for runes and sigils, Energy sigils and boon duration runes (2 Superior Water, 2 Superior Monk, 2 Minor Sanctuary/Water) help massively with keeping your endurance up- no matter how tanky your build or armor is, you’re going to have to dodge a lot.

For traits, I’d recommend at least 5 points in Honor for vigor-on-crit, which is very useful for dodging. I can’t say anything further than that for your particular weapon setup, though I’d recommend carrying with you one of each weapon if you want to be especially flexible.

If you’re curious, this is my personal build. I can’t explain it in full due to space issues, but essentially it’s an evasive build that supports through lots of boons.

As for your other questions:

Karma exotics offer certain sets of stats for each piece, but they’re of the same quality as other exotics and you can mix and match them with exotics from crafting/dungeoning/etc. You can see which stats are available here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats#Karma

Each armor piece has an upgrade slot. Armor upgrade slots can accept runes. Each rune has a set of stats linked to it. The more runes of that type you have in your armor, the more stats you get from its set.

For example, let’s say I have a rune that has the following stat set:
>1: +10 Vitality
>2: +15% Boon Duration
>3: +25 Vitality
>4: etc

If I slot one rune of that type in my armor, I get +10 Vitality. If I slot another, I get +15% Boon Duration along with the +10 Vitality. If I slot a third, I get +25 Vitality on top of +15% Boon Duration and the original +10 Vitality.

Note that each piece of gear can only hold one upgrade. If you want to put in another upgrade, the new upgrade will overwrite the old one. You can salvage the gear with a Black Lion Salvage Kit (can use others, but you risk losing the upgrade) to get the original upgrade back or transfer it by transmuting one piece of armor onto another, but both cases will result in the destruction of the original gear.

Gold can be traded for guild influence, for gems for various gemstore items, for some Ascended items in conjunction with other materials, for WvW blueprints, and so on, but overall you don’t need massive amounts of gold to improve your stats like in other games. It’s mainly to gear up, and after that, cosmetic purposes. Regarding dungeons, they are very profitable, but you’d best run with people you know- some PUGs will make you want to gouge your eyes out. (Also, the hundreds of gold from one item thing is very rare- my guess is that they got a precursor weapon to drop, which almost never happens.)

Regarding backpieces, you can apply them to any backpiece- I don’t understand the rest of your question, though. Are you asking where to get backpieces?

Yeah, unsure about backpieces but I presume you can buy them off BL? (which one would be best for the build?)

So, as far as I understand, for a balanced DPS/tank build:

Soldier or Valkyrie for weapons, Knight armour, Berserker accessories, Superior water, Superior monk, Minor sanctuary/water sigils in every piece. Endurance increases energy regeneration, correct? Would Corrupted Bulwark work as a shield for it?

I’m not really planning on full zerker, pure damage isn’t my style because being a glass cannon is never cool :P The reason I’m looking for a balanced build is because I have no plans of switching or transmuting too much once I apply the skin and I like both dealing damage and being able to take it.

Thank you for the wonderful answers you’ve provided so far, really helpful

I’ve had ok results using soldier’s armor (karma armor from temples in orr; didn’t want to spend the gold to get a more specific statline). Melandru for everything it has (which is actually Magi [HealingPower/Precision/Vitality] for helmet, but that was fine) and Narthex/Whispering for feet. That ended up being just a little too tanky for me so I ended up swerving a bit towards berserker for trinkets and weapons. It just happened that this was an easy set of armor for me to get because I had the karma to spare.

I think the biggest downside to this is that the runes waste a bit by upping condition duration, and yeah guardian burns a lot but I don’t feel like I’m getting much use out of that. Haven’t bothered to change it yet but it would be an easy fix.

You can buy masterwork/rare backpieces from the TP- search “Spineguard.” I believe they have a berserker’s spineguard available.

Correct. I use that armor setup on both my guardian and my elementalist (which has about the same health pool and even less armor) and do just fine- I have a lot of flexibility in that I can change my build around and not have to worry about changing my armor to go with it.

Endurance is basically your dodge meter- dodging consumes endurance. Superior Sigils of Energy refill 50% of your endurance on weapon swap, which means you get a free dodge back when it triggers. Vigor doubles your endurance regeneration, which means you can dodge twice as much as before. Some people may debate me on how necessary lots of dodging is for a guardian, but in harder content where the mobs hit like freight trains, it’s always better to dodge an attack completely than to take it and try to recover. The reason I suggested boon duration runes is that if you don’t have lots of precision, it’s hard to keep vigor up permanently. Boon duration runes help by increasing the amount of time vigor stays on you, making it easier to stack it up. (It’s also a good all-around choice for guardian, since the class specializes in putting out lots and lots of boons for everyone.)

Another thing- I’m not sure how often you swap weapons. I personally swap all the time. If you don’t swap that much, you might want to consider looking into a different sigil.

Corrupted Bulwark is a Valkyrie shield, so yes. If you’re after the stats rather than the look, I’d recommend buying a cheaper Valkyrie shield. All exotics of the same level, gear type, and stat set are the same.

No problem. All of that is just my personal taste. Don’t be afraid to tweak depending on your level of experience or preference. If you’re having issues with keeping alive, you can swap out some pieces for more defensive stats to begin with- if you’re doing fine and want more damage, you can swap out some pieces for more offense.

So which sigils would you guys recommend? I don’t swap all the time, mainly when I need to get or close some distance, so the on-swap sigil might not work too good.

I’m after the Bulwark because I feel it fits Braham’s skin perfectly, no other reason.

@cpg; I have no problems spending gold because in my opinion, once you have a set that fits you, you only need the gold for looks and some gem items

I’m starting to get the picture, still a little blurry but again, thanks for all the info to both of you

Here’s a list of sigils: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil I can’t recommend any since I’ve always used Energy, and I’m not sure whether your final build will stack a lot of precision.