Guild Wars 2

Crit chance doesn’t matter for a guardian IMO unless you are using a sigil that has “on crit” or the honor trait that grants might on crit.

Plenty of people run full Soldier’s on frontline guard.

If you’re commanding in big fights, you need to survive first and foremost. And I don’t think there is such a thing as too much HP on a Guardian if you’re going to be leading PuG groups instead of some specific team comp.

I think you are in the ball park; I’m loving the durability runes and commander weapons. Those virtues times are getting crazy long. I’m running cleric armor and soldier’s accessories; the jury is still out whether the healing power is worth anything.

I am currently running the DH trait line but from what I’ve read only the std guard virtues got buffed, so I’ll likely be switching DH back out for Honor for a std shout build.

Your setup sounds good. A good starting point for guardian builds is usually 20k health, 3k+ armour, 30% crit chance, though obviously you can tailor that how you prefer.

To answer your questions:

A. No. The first rule of frontline guardian is to stay alive. Take as much toughness and vitality as you need to stay alive, then work from there. Certainly if you command, you’ll often be the first person into the enemy bomb, and some people enjoy sniping commanders too.

B. Not really, though any crit chance you can fit in is never lost. Once you feel comfortable staying alive you can spec a bit more offensively if you like.

troi.2638:

Hello guys thank you all for visiting my topic!

I am trying to make my guardian suitable for wvw frontline playing.

My weapons are commanders and armors are wanderers with durability runes.

I also want to tag up later once i get familiar with playing wvw.

What i want to know is for a relatively more defensive guardian (pure tanker) as i want to be commanding as well

A. Is having too much toughness and vitality somehow ineffective even for a pure tanker?

B. If i am to play a pure tanker do i rly need to care about having lower crit. chance? talking like 10% without any boost.

What I found most effective for me for frontline commanding is a mix of stuff as follows:

1 piece of magi – usually the helm – i use this to give myself just a little boost in case of an “on crit” proc as some of my weapons are equipped with them.

2-3 pieces of nomads – usually boots/gloves/shoulders

Chest and Legs – Sentinels – these are important as these give biggest HP boosts out of armor pieces

Everything else such as weapons, rings, trinkets, etc. is a mix of PVT and Sentinels. Some slots are not available or hard to get Sentinels stats so I went with PVT for those, rest all Sentinels wherever I could.

Overall you want as much health as possible, around 22-25k, around 3100-3500 armor, and a little bit of healing around 400-500 so that your AH and other heal effects actually do half decent and noticable amounts.

For sigils I tend to use Generosity and Purity in this set-up.

If you want to go for pure tanker, then there’s no such thing as too much vitality and toughness because you’re not aiming for a balance— you’re aiming to be a tanker though you probably only need to do that if you’re leading. People bring up overstacking toughness/vit because they’re sacrificing damage, but that’s a very low priority for you. In essence, it’s about what other stats you could have taken, and since offensive ones are irrelevant, your only alternatives are boon duration and healing power. The first is nice to have but not essential, and the later doesn’t scale too well with a lot of things. It’s nice to squeeze these things in without sacrificing your durability. Basically, luxury stats.

You only care for crit chance on empowering might and that’s only to power AH since it heals you every time you give might to someone or yourself. Honestly, if your party has good enough buffs, you could probably settle for very low or not even bother at all.

So anyhow, you should be fine. Your focus is on providing a place for your group to focus damage on, so CC and mobility are the most important things.

In a sense, commanders are the people dishing out COMMANDS and therefore DO the tanking to stay alive and are the spearhead of the Zerg. If your commander falls, chancs are unless you have a back up… The Zerg will scatter and crumble badly so it is ideal to be running TANKY stats such as Soldier, Sentinel or if you literally mean yolo tank mode – Nomad’s.

I run a set of full sentinel’s with the shouts traited + trooper runes, a tonne of condi reduction + removal uptime and invuls elite skill so nose diving into the enemy is very fun and survivable.

In essence, being situationally aware and have the right skills ready or placement of skills can mean life or death regardless of what stats you run.

Being in a decent guild comp set up makes a difference, too, with many boons + traits buffs playing a big role in what gets shared about.

If you plan on going full tank – make the most of it and have fun!

edit: spelling