Guild Wars 2

So after working out of town for the last two months, I’ve finally been able to get my first character to 80, my guardian. I’ve loved it every second.

I just don’t know what to do now. Are there any decent builds out there coupled with fresh gear advice? I have around 90k karma, and 19 gold.

When I played WoW I was mostly a BG hero, so WvW sounds entertaining.

Yet, (to sound new, and relatively dumb) I’m not sure how to get started. I’ve seen a range of builds around the forums, but before I sink my relatively low resource pool into gear I was hoping someone could give me some hints and tips. I leveled up an aggressive build (but I really don’t know what I’m doing) at 30/25/10/0/0 using GS/Scep & shield, it works decently against 2 or so enemies, but I know survivability is a much larger issue in PvP.

In all reality, I’m not sure on the synergy of all our abilities. I suppose I’m looking for something that allows me to put out some decent numbers, but also lets me take a few hits and keep going. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Right now the big think is basically a vit/tough build to stay alive since we have such a shallow HP pool. There are some DPS builds but seems to be mixed views on them. Guardian is still a work in progress imo. but saying that, it’s my favorite class to play

Hi there!

First off, when in PvP you have access to PvP gear, which is all max stats, free and easy to swap in and out. So you do not need to invest in PvP gear. (And I would suggest going to the mist to play around with the gear to see what you like and would want to purchase for PvE/WvW).

Secondly, I love my Guardian (also my main) but sadly they are sub-par for WvW. We severely lack in ranged damage. I still WvW a lot and typically take AoE shouts and boons and travel in a group.

Now we are down to PvE. Ultimately you should play whatever is fun to you! Take some time to get to know the skills and traits and make a complimentary build that suits you.

On either extreme Guardians have potential to be glass canons or extremely durable. You can also focus on group support, or a solo build. Guardians are usually sought after for there team support/defense/healing. Once you are ready for armor and weapons I would suggest farming some dungeons. You can farm a full set of exotic armor in about 21 runs (a run takes 30-60 mins). I’m in the process of finally doing this myself. Here are some great sites that have helped me:

www.wiki.guildwars2.com (search guardian skills/traits)

www.gw2db.com (search the guardian builds that are user created)

www.gw2lfg.com (find people to run a dungeon with quickly)

Congrats on getting to 80!

I’ve recently started getting into more WvW instead of just dungeon running all the time, maybe my experiences can help you a bit.

Here is the build I run:

http://bit.ly/TwrwBj

The must-have traits are:

Radiance II
Valor VI and XI
Honor VIII
5 points in Virtues

The rest you could tweak to your liking without affecting the build too much. Personally I really like to reduce the cooldowns on abilities so that I always have them ready for the next encounter in WvW.

With my build I get a 32 second cooldown heal that heals for a metric TON of health. My 3 utilities are all shouts and cool down very fast, and all of my critting keeps me healed and all my allies buffed.

For gear I used a full set of Knight’s armor (Toughness/Power/Precision). This synergizes well with Valor’s VI trait. I crafted my armor and transmuted it, though you could get it from SE explorable dungeon.

I use full Berserker’s (Power/Precision/Critical Damage %) accessories to help with my damage. These are all just crafted.

All my weapons are Soldier’s (Power/Toughness/Vitality). I got them all from running AC explorable over and over. Greatsword and Scepter/Shield like you.

My runes are Superior Rune of the Soldier to help remove conditions on command (since all my utility skills are shouts).

My sigils are all Superior Sigil of Blood, but you could swap this with something else if you like. My shield off-hand is Superior Sigil of Fire (I highly recommend this sigil).

It’s almost uncanny how much of a beating you can take with this build. I run with another guardian friend of mine who basically uses this exact same build and we both just run in, do as much damage as we can and get out. We can draw fire from a lot of people which gives the rest of our team a chance to push ahead with us. Using the scepter as an off set weapon allows you to help a bit with sieges (whether attacking or defending) using #2 Smite whereas some other classes might just have to sit there doing nothing.

Even smaller 2v2 type fights are quite easy most of the time. We once took out 4 human players and every NPC at the same time at a supply point with just the 2 of us. I feel that guardian is very strong in WvW.

I hope this information is at least a little bit helpful to someone just starting to experience end-game. Good luck!

If you want to WvW….

Join your community teamspeak or an active WvW guild and get into a group – preferably with a smart commander.

As for builds you could try the AH Crithammer build. It’s stickied on this forum. With full gear I’m at 3.4k armor and auto-attack crits for 1.7k. It also keeps about 6 stacks of might up on nearby allies when you’re in battle Running the build as a front-line pusher.

It’s decent in 1v1, but really shines when you have team fights.

lucktacular.9704:

Here is the build I run:

http://bit.ly/TwrwBj

The must-have traits are:

Radiance II
Valor VI and XI
Honor VIII
5 points in Virtues

That is the basic build. Never have to respec again if you don’t want to. You can swap AH and Monk’s Focus to make slightly different builds and play around with different skills. You can use it with pretty much any weapon at our disposal. Good for both pve and pvp.

To resurrect my old thread (instead of creating my own). I’ve decided that Knights armor is the best choice for me, now being new to this game, and not starting my crafting yet. Is my only option to spend the gold on Draconic Armor?

I’ve decided that I would like to build a guardian that can take on 2-3 enemies, whether that’s while I’m farming, or running WvWvW. So it’s looking like Knights Armor (Draconic my only option?), as well as a mix of Berserkers, and Soldiers trinkets and Weapons. I was also thinking of using the standard AH build floating around here.

I guess I have a rough idea of what I want, but I’m not sure how to get there. Unfortunately I only have 25g, and 100k karma to start. Any good suggestions on a build, and where I can find armor at? If I bought the Knight Draconic Armor off the TP, I would be utterly broke before getting to the Trinkets and Weapons, is there anywhere that I can spend my Karma on stuff that looks as thought it might be useful to this build?

hey there Caligare! in regards to where you can procure exotic armour with the Knight’s stats, if crafting, then yes, draconic would be the go to. however, it’s not your ONLY choice of getting knight’s exotic armour.

you can get the same stat sets from the following dungeons:

• Sorrow’s Embrace; and
• Arah

when you do get tokens, make sure you purchase the correct stat set! as each dungeon has multiple stat sets, 3 iirc.

i’ve been running an all knight’s AH build as well. ranging from 0/15/30/20/5 to 0/5/30/30/5 to 0/0/30/30/10 and they all work well. i went with full knight’s gear and trinkets as well, weapons varied depending on what i wanted to achieve. and full soldier runes.

if you want a bit more survivability, you can also go with a soldier’s chest and pants (pow/vit/tough) for a boost in vitality. some also suggest changing the jewel upgrades in your knight’s trinkets to ruby’s for a bit of extra crit dmg without sacrificing too much toughness, etc. some prefer to have a mix of valkyrie trinkets for some added vit and crit dmg. you can mix and match here : ))

you can also look at the different weapons that the dungeons have to offer – choose the stats if that’s more important to you, and then pick out a nice skin that you’d enjoy wielding. ; ))

a useful link regarding exotic gear, stats and where you can get them:
Dulfy’s End-game Gearing Guide

Is Knight’s armor from PvE different than Knight’s Jewels in sPvP? In sPvP it gives you Vitality, not Toughness.

Yaki.9563:

Is Knight’s armor from PvE different than Knight’s Jewels in sPvP? In sPvP it gives you Vitality, not Toughness.

Correct, Knight’s in pvp gives vitality.

Survivability is the most important thing for a Guardian to have, so I would recommend Cleric armor along with the 0/15/30/20/5 build for a fantastic amount of healing power plus crit damage to bring the most hurt while taking on 4+ enemies. I’ve found this build to be amazing along with the shout skills given to the Guardian. Not only is it a viable solo build, but it’s also amazing in WvW when in a party. It gives huge boons to party members, and I’m able to keep up boons for about a minute straight while smashing my opponents in the face repeatedly with my Greatsword. I’ve tried a lot of builds, but this one is the build that really stood out to me. So, build on Cleric armor with 3 Superior Water Runes and 3 Superior Monk Runes to improve more upon healing power and boon duration. Hope this helps

Caligare.7946:

Is my only option to spend the gold on Draconic Armor?

As others have said, the easiest dungeon that has knight’s armor stats is Sorrow’s Embrace. However, this isn’t a very popular or quick dungeon (path 3 is easiest). If you want to try it, check out http://www.gw2lfg.com/ for quicker group forming.

My recommendation, however, would be just to focus on making money to craft or buy the armor you need, since it’d take a heckuva lot of SE runs to get enough tokens. You can run AC explorable, all 3 paths and CoF paths 1 and 2. Groups for these runs are readily available, and you can stock up on tokens you can use for weapons and such (AC has Soldier’s and CoF has Berserker’s). Buy some gold/magic find food and run these until you can afford buying the armor (it should be quicker than saving tokens).

lucktacular.9704:

Caligare.7946:

Is my only option to spend the gold on Draconic Armor?

As others have said, the easiest dungeon that has knight’s armor stats is Sorrow’s Embrace. However, this isn’t a very popular or quick dungeon (path 3 is easiest). If you want to try it, check out http://www.gw2lfg.com/ for quicker group forming.

My recommendation, however, would be just to focus on making money to craft or buy the armor you need, since it’d take a heckuva lot of SE runs to get enough tokens. You can run AC explorable, all 3 paths and CoF paths 1 and 2. Groups for these runs are readily available, and you can stock up on tokens you can use for weapons and such (AC has Soldier’s and CoF has Berserker’s). Buy some gold/magic find food and run these until you can afford buying the armor (it should be quicker than saving tokens).

If you farm dungeon for armour you need about 20 runs (depending on bags drops). Those 20 runs will give you about 20 gold without any gold increasing food. Full armour bought or crafted costs about 15 gold. So if you want to min/max your time spent you should grind some dungeon and buy/craft jewelry for money you earnt.

Depending on your playstyle you have a bunch of different options.

Do you want to be super tanky, or be able to hit hard with above average survival?

If it’s the tankiness go with Soldier’s gear (Pow/Vit/Tuf). If it’s damage/survival balance go for Knight’s gear (Pow/Pre/Tuf). You can get Soldier’s gear from Karma Vendors in Orr, the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon, or WvW gear. You can easily get Knight’s from the Trading Post or Sorrow’s Embrace.

As for build, you’ll need to experiment and find what works for you. If you wanted to be super tanky, then 30 Valor with Altruistic Healing trait is a match.

HOWEVER: Don’t limit yourself. I know far too many Guardians that have never even touched a build outside of 30 Valor. If you want to find a build that works for you, you need to experiment and not just take what the rest of us say is the best.

I’ll link you a few builds below to look at the synergy between some traits you might have missed. My builds are generally trying to be damage heavy while not sacrificing survival or support. You can get some interesting combinations while trying to do so.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRApd7elYgKCnEyKEf4Eh1DCCQ/VfAf4M0I8B

The above is an a WvW/PvE/PvP build I made a while ago, that makes use of a few tricks to make the Mace and Scepter hit like trucks while keeping defensive abilities.

It’s a vulnerability build that let’s you deal 10% more damage when enemies have a condition, and 10% more damage when you don’t have full endurance. When you also take into account the 10-25 stacks of vulnerability that will be on your enemies, the build offers 30-45% increased damage. In addition, you get the +15% critical chance with the Mace and Scepter, and 300 precision. Empowering might gives 1 might per crit, so you’ll always have the maximum amount of stacks possible from it.

The vulnerability comes from Immobilizes which give 5 stacks which there are two of, the blinds which come from Virtue of Justice spam when killing enemies and the Focus skill, and Symbol of Faith which is a symbol that also inflicts vulnerability in this build.

There are plenty of cool combinations like this.

Even for AH builds you have options. The first one I’ll link is almost standard, and the second one is a few tweaks for damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASWlYgiDXFSLEf4ESmiVKBxUgRw31DICDZIA

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYg6CXFSLEfIFRuA7DEETBGz41DHSRGC

The second one is almost the same as the first, except you switch the Hammer for the GS and put 15 points in Radiance. This means when you’re running through a zerg of enemies or a bunch of mobs in PvE, you can spam Virtue of Justice which gives 3 stacks of Might to all nearby allies, which also heals you due to Altrustic Healing, in addition to spamming AoE burning.

Basically, try everything.

Edit: For WvW, the Guardian can be awesome, you’ve just got to build correctly.

I recommend the Scepter in almost every build for WvW. In a siege it allows you to deal a bunch of damage to enemies and weapons on walls with Smite (since it actually hits siege every time), and it gives you another option when being kited other than to die. It’s a great weapon to use when your melee skills are on cooldown, and its a good weapon to set up your melee.

If you’re going to roll with large groups of people, use a few shouts, 5 points in Virtues to spam them for buffs, and probably a Staff. The Staff gives you good utility, buffing, and you can spam the ‘1’ skill through gates and wreck face!.

If you’re going to be with small groups, you ought to use the Hammer/GS/Sword in one set. The GS is a great skill to deal massive damage to other small groups, the 1h Sword is great for attacking a single enemy, and the Hammer is heavy on control. The Hammer is the hard counter to 1v1 hit-and-run Thieves you’ll see becoming more common. Mix any of the above with a Scepter and you’re in good shape.

For movement speed just swap out for a staff and cast 3 out of combat. It’s not 100% swiftness, but it’s around 75% which is better than 0%.