Guild Wars 2

So, let me start by saying that I am a total noob to the game, and know little-to-nothing about what a good build is and such.

Since I’m a bit OCD, I can’t stand playing a character that isn’t perfect, but I’ve found that whilst I enjoy Warrior DPS, I love the Guardian s/t playstyle. So, I attempted to make a build focused on burns and sustained DPS.

I’d like your opinions to tell me if this is or is not a valid build, and if it isn’t, perhaps some tips on what would be good?

Also, as an afterthought, I should mention that the character I have in mind is a max sized Norn, but I’ve also considered a min sized Asura. For this build, what would be better tactically?

Thanks!

MFW: http://i.imgur.com/BxVePVt.jpg

Fitzil.1680:

So, let me start by saying that I am a total noob to the game, and know little-to-nothing about what a good build is and such.

Since I’m a bit OCD, I can’t stand playing a character that isn’t perfect, but I’ve found that whilst I enjoy Warrior DPS, I love the Guardian s/t playstyle. So, I attempted to make a build focused on burns and sustained DPS.

I’d like your opinions to tell me if this is or is not a valid build, and if it isn’t, perhaps some tips on what would be good?

Also, as an afterthought, I should mention that the character I have in mind is a max sized Norn, but I’ve also considered a min sized Asura. For this build, what would be better tactically?

Thanks!

MFW: http://i.imgur.com/BxVePVt.jpg

If you’re looking for a PVE build:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m pretty set on the s/t combo. The main thing I’d like is an opinion on my build, and ways to improve it.

Bump for more opinions?

I asume that with S/T you mean sword torch

The problem is burning imo. The torch depends a lot on fire condition. But investing in condition damage and duration will take stats to do so. On top of that, the issue with conditions is that there is a max amount of stacks a foe can have. If you prefer solloing this isnt a big issue. but with world bosses it is cause he will reach the maximum amount of burning pretty quick. In dungeons it gets ugly too, cause there are professions that burn a lot better then you, by burning too much you actually limit them and bring your party down.

So the good thing to do is to leave the torch if you want a good dps build.
This means the sword has to go as well. The other off-hands are not focused on damage at all but protective. so thats no use for a dps orientated build.

So lets look at the one handed weapons. For your secondary weapon, you really should go with staff and use empower to build up might on you and allies. Then the main the weapon would be either GS or hammer. Both are very dps orientated. where the GS scores higher on the DPS and the hammer scores higher on the crowd control (so lesser misses). This setup would go great with a bezerker build (though see my note) so using power, critical damage and precission in both traits and gear.

(note: some change to critical damage has been anounced, this can make some changes but by the looks of it not much, cause it is the most expensive gear in the game I wanted to warn you bout this)

So bottom line, with G/S no valid dps build is possible and it is considered an oddball.

mercury ranique.2170:

I asume that with S/T you mean sword torch

The problem is burning imo. The torch depends a lot on fire condition. But investing in condition damage and duration will take stats to do so. On top of that, the issue with conditions is that there is a max amount of stacks a foe can have. If you prefer solloing this isnt a big issue. but with world bosses it is cause he will reach the maximum amount of burning pretty quick. In dungeons it gets ugly too, cause there are professions that burn a lot better then you, by burning too much you actually limit them and bring your party down.

So the good thing to do is to leave the torch if you want a good dps build.
This means the sword has to go as well. The other off-hands are not focused on damage at all but protective. so thats no use for a dps orientated build.

So lets look at the one handed weapons. For your secondary weapon, you really should go with staff and use empower to build up might on you and allies. Then the main the weapon would be either GS or hammer. Both are very dps orientated. where the GS scores higher on the DPS and the hammer scores higher on the crowd control (so lesser misses). This setup would go great with a bezerker build (though see my note) so using power, critical damage and precission in both traits and gear.

(note: some change to critical damage has been anounced, this can make some changes but by the looks of it not much, cause it is the most expensive gear in the game I wanted to warn you bout this)

So bottom line, with G/S no valid dps build is possible and it is considered an oddball.

No. Please don’t do this. Your sword does not have to go. Sword auto chain is the highest sustain the Guard has. Sword/Focus is the meta and for a good reason. GS is your secondary for burst.

Do not waste a slot in combat on the staff. It brings nothing to the fight unless your party is miserably bad and you need might. Then, only use it before combat for might and swap out.

Don’t ever drop light fields in the middle of fire fields and ruin might stacks. Hammer is a decent weapon for certain situations as well. It is not really DPS oriented as the fella is saying. It’s defense oriented. It provides prot and can be very clutch in the right situation.

Check out Obal’s Guardian guides for PvE.

You want Guardian DPS?

This Guardian build by legion has insanely high DPS. be sure to watch to the end because the correct ‘rotation’ is vital.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work in WvW because the sceptre attack is too easily countered. Mobs are too stupid to get out of the way however.

It’s probably (almost certainly?) the highest DPS by any class in the game.

Chris RJ.1843:

mercury ranique.2170:

I asume that with S/T you mean sword torch

The problem is burning imo. The torch depends a lot on fire condition. But investing in condition damage and duration will take stats to do so. On top of that, the issue with conditions is that there is a max amount of stacks a foe can have. If you prefer solloing this isnt a big issue. but with world bosses it is cause he will reach the maximum amount of burning pretty quick. In dungeons it gets ugly too, cause there are professions that burn a lot better then you, by burning too much you actually limit them and bring your party down.

So the good thing to do is to leave the torch if you want a good dps build.
This means the sword has to go as well. The other off-hands are not focused on damage at all but protective. so thats no use for a dps orientated build.

So lets look at the one handed weapons. For your secondary weapon, you really should go with staff and use empower to build up might on you and allies. Then the main the weapon would be either GS or hammer. Both are very dps orientated. where the GS scores higher on the DPS and the hammer scores higher on the crowd control (so lesser misses). This setup would go great with a bezerker build (though see my note) so using power, critical damage and precission in both traits and gear.

(note: some change to critical damage has been anounced, this can make some changes but by the looks of it not much, cause it is the most expensive gear in the game I wanted to warn you bout this)

So bottom line, with G/S no valid dps build is possible and it is considered an oddball.

No. Please don’t do this. Your sword does not have to go. Sword auto chain is the highest sustain the Guard has. Sword/Focus is the meta and for a good reason. GS is your secondary for burst.

Do not waste a slot in combat on the staff. It brings nothing to the fight unless your party is miserably bad and you need might. Then, only use it before combat for might and swap out.

Don’t ever drop light fields in the middle of fire fields and ruin might stacks. Hammer is a decent weapon for certain situations as well. It is not really DPS oriented as the fella is saying. It’s defense oriented. It provides prot and can be very clutch in the right situation.

Check out Obal’s Guardian guides for PvE.

I am sorry to dissapoint you, but the numbers tell differently.
If you compare the sword attacks with the first 3 skills of the greatsword. and take in mind that in a cycle you have skillcooldown and casting times, You get an average of
2192.3 dps on the sword and 2375.9 dps on the greatsword skill 1-3 (damage multipliers like power neglected).

On top of that, as stated, before the offhand weapons a guardian has are mediocre compared to the skil 4 and 5 on GS and hammer.
I am the first one saying you have to play the way you want and if you like using a sword, please do so. They are very viable, but when it comes to raw DPS it is not the best.

As for the staff. For a long time I have been very ctirical bout the staff just like you. On raw dps it scores low indeed. But the 1 skill is a projectile so hitting multiple targets, where for gs and sword only the third effect is a projectile. The might also increases the damage output a lot if you party is dealing allready good damage, so it is ALWAYS welcome in a DPS build (specially if you stack just before the fight so you can switch to your other set without cooldown) Besides that, in many dungeons skips are used for ‘trashmobs’. You signet and line of warding skill on the staff helps a lot with skipping more quickly and efficiently.

Off course, the staff is not always viable, so you have to know when to use it and when to switch to another weaponset. I will never do e.g. the fire ele in metrica with a staff.

Again, it is great that you defend your favourite setup and if you enjoy that, pls do so, but don’t say other setups are not as good just cause you like your sword more

It often also comes to playstyle and how experienced you are. As said I tried the staff several times and even ditched the one I had several times just cause it felt as rubbish. But seeing others using it very succefull I gave it another try, it took me several weeks to get the hang of it, but now I would never want to trade it out ever again.

Since you specifically requested to keep the Sword/Torch build, I will not be telling you to change it.

Just to let you know, Burning has a VERY BAD CONDITION MULTIPLIER. Most of the damage is dealt by Burning’s base damage.

Your purpose of applying burn will be to use the traits Fiery Wrath and Searing Flames – these are compulsory. Radiant Fire is not compulsory, but helpful.

You can run whatever you want, but do not buff condition damage under any circumstances. If you want a DPS oriented build, buff the direct damage the sword gives, and use the DPS skill (I think it’s sword 3) as often as you can.

This build is not a theoretical max DPS build, but runs as a debuffer type build which also does mid-high dps, heals on dodge, has perm vigor for more dodges, and will crit a lot of the time – which you need in order to stack AoE might from crit AND get vigor for both healing and dodging – the dodging and AoE blind from Justice allows you to not use up your Aegis, which allows you to buff damage by 20%. Full berserker in this case is inappropriate as it will reduce your crit to a point that Empowering Might is underutilised. The constant might from Empowering Might (extended by Runes of Strength) fuels an additional 5% damage bonus from the Runes of strength.

Your burning skills are used to upkeep burning so that the traits based on it can proc. The burning damage itself may be overwritten by Dhuumfire or support elementalists, but that is none of your concern as even if your burning is completely overwritten you still keep 90% of your DPS, and it guarantees your traits are constantly active.

Overall your maximum damage bonus is 60% – 20% from aegis, 5% from strength, 10% from burning, 10% from any condition (which includes burning, which you will apply permanently), 10% from dodging, 5% from sigil of force. Without support from others you can apply 5 might constantly from that trait alone – more if you proc Virtue of Justice more often. Doing calculations based on 5 constant might and 25 stacks of bloodlust, your dps from sword autoattack and torch 4 is (3.1 * 2735 power * (0.62*2.21+0.38) * 1000 * 1.6 / (2600*2.5) or 3652 dps on a 2600 armor target, while permaburn is 434 dps = 4086 dps overall per target. 12258 dps overall given you can hit 3 targets at once. Using other skills will raise this number.

As Litany of wrath will heal for 220 hp/s under these circumstances, Signet of Resolve is your go-to heal skill as it also removes conditions with a heal of 211 hp/s.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAsfWlYg672GyLEfIFSWhC0mhAhQVFiHcGVE8B-jQCBoiERjEEAUBLaMPtIasVOFRjVXDT5iIq2uDwImRrWKA9EWB-e

All told this is only a 75% ish efficient build as the guardian was not initially built with DPS in mind, but it should be more than viable enough for most applications, and it achieves it while keeping your S/T preference. Also note that both because objects generally cannot be conditioned and always cannot be critted, you will underperform on uncrittable objects.

Last of all, note that trait Radiant Fire (Radiance VII) is for solo use only. In a party context you will generally have the enemies on permanent burn, therefore switch to Blind Exposure (Radiance VI) when doing any form of group content so you can instead contribute Vulnerability – which will synergise both with Justice and Sword 2. Not all parties are capable of upkeeping 25 stacks of Vulnerability constantly, so this will add additional damage output to everyone.

But your choice is not as bad as people will make it seem.

Torch isn’t terribad, but it isn’t optimal either, and Virtue of Justice spam can easily keep burning up without a torch anyway. A focus is better because it gives you a bouncing blind that also clears a condition from allies it hits, and a shield that activates instantly and thus doesn’t interrupt your routines that blocks 3 hits. If the Shield of Wrath fails to block 3 hits it explodes for a huge burst, higher than what Zealot’s Flame can do.

Virtue of Justice spam has a limit – it doesn’t work if your target doesn’t die fast. This applies to veteran+ classes, spamming it is easy on trash mobs, but for those we don’t talk about additional multipliers that much anyway since they die too fast for anything to really matter. Torch 4 upkeeps burn permanently, on the other hand – having >100% uptime ensures 100% uptime on your desired target since not every tick will necessarily burn your intended target due to its 3 target PBAoE limit. Torch 5 is without a doubt the best condition removal skill for party support.

Focus is more used because having an oh-crap button (Focus 5) is important at times and Focus 4 provides heal via regeneration, but Torch 5 exceeds Focus 4 for the specific purpose of condition removal and Torch 4 is the guardian’s best boon remover when traited.

Personally I don’t use any of these at all because I’d rather do those roles using different classes entirely (warriors for instance can do 5400+ dps cleave solo before might effects), but that – or the unpopularity of certain weaponsets – doesn’t necessarily make them bad. S/T can be optimal in a few situations… of which Ascalonian Catacombs bosses, HoTWp1, CoE all paths come to mind where either debooning or condition removal is very important.