Guild Wars 2

Just to get this out of the way, I’ll try not to be offensive but there really is no way to do it nicely….

I am not interested in hearing why I should use some other weapon set besides the ones I mention. I’m really not. Nor do I need to hear you lament my weapon choices.

So I continue to tinker and experiment with my Guardian. I use sword/mace and play around with different offhand weapons but I generally mix that up by switching weapon sets to use the off hand skills of both weapons.

I’m trying to find a balance that let’s me do decent damage while having fairly good survival ability in dungeon situations. I’m currently leaning on a 20 Radiance/30 Valor set up but I’m pondering the other 20 points.

On one hand I can do the ‘obvious’ thing and load up Honor for the Vit/Healing Power but I question how much that 200 vit is really doing and the traits don’t seem that good. On the other hand if I want to sacrifice the vit/healing I can try Virtues, which has some decent traits and can be mixed up a bit for situations.

Thoughts?

I would put 15 in Honor for the Selfless Daring dodge roll healing, and then 5 into Virtues for Inspired virtues. Selfless Daring is one of our best heals, and protection & block on demand is nice with Virtue of Courage. Your crit rate probably decent since you put 20 into Radiance, so you’ll activate Vigorous Precision more often for more dodges and heals.

Not really seeing the purpose of the 5 Virtue. I mean its nice and all but you don’t seem to get that much out of it. That’s the problem I find myself with if I use 1H swords, Honor is just hurting for decent traits.

Just by investing 5 pts into Virtues turns your three virtues essentially into free shouts. Justice > Might x3, Resolve > Regen, Courge > Protection. These boons apply both to you and your allies.

I’d argue that Valor, Honors and Virtues pack all the best traits Guardians have so I don’t know why you’re hesitant in investing points there. If anything, I wish I could pick more of the Honors line, all the attractive options (my opinion) are there.

I guess a lot has to do with what sort of utilities you’re trying to pack as well.

5 in Virtues is perhaps the best utilization of any 5 points in any guardian build in the entire tree. Seriously. You get more out of that than you will anything else. If you’re not, you’re probably not using your F skills like you should be, in which case, your not playing the Guardian to it’s fullest potential.

And people aren’t helping you because you came across as an kitten straight away in your post.

Just to start off don’t start a thread where you are rude from the get go, you will probably get more responses. I hesitate to post here simply because of the way you started this.

Why do you want the 20 points in Radiance? What traits are you picking up in Radiance? If you are dead set on 20 points in Radiance and don’t know what traits to pick up I would say pick up Signet Mastery and Blind Exposure.

30 points in Valor is a good choice because it will certainly increase your surviability, so stick with that. I would choose – Purity, Retributive Armor, and Altruistic Healing

If we are only working with 20 points then like some of the others posters – 5 points in Virtues is the best 5 points you can spend, period. I would put the other 15 into Honor, picking up Superior Aria.

For the weapon combos I would recommend sword and torch, mace and focus. I put them in this arrangement so you can have a blind from your weapon set no matter which set you are using. I didn’t choose shield because you are saying you want to dps.

Heal – Signet of Resolve

Utilities – Save Yourselves, Hold the Line, and Retreat

Elite – Renewed Focus

Personal opinion, that you don’t want to hear, you should have a ranged main hand weapon in one of your weapon sets. I would recommend dropping the mace and using the specter in its place. Most of the fights in dungeons that I have encountered are not melee friendly and you are constantly having to move around so being able to swap to the ranged weapon allows you to keep up your damage when you need to get out of melee range.

Good luck.

Lumines.3916:

Just by investing 5 pts into Virtues turns your three virtues essentially into free shouts. Justice > Might x3, Resolve > Regen, Courge > Protection. These boons apply both to you and your allies.

I’d argue that Valor, Honors and Virtues pack all the best traits Guardians have so I don’t know why you’re hesitant in investing points there. If anything, I wish I could pick more of the Honors line, all the attractive options (my opinion) are there.

I guess a lot has to do with what sort of utilities you’re trying to pack as well.

See that was my thing. I like Valor, Honor, and Virtue but any build with just those traits would seem to lack for damage ability so something had to give. I’m not trying to be a dps machine but I would like to do decent amounts of damage while also keeping a fairly good survivability rate.

I did consider some combo of those three skills and then loading up the equipment with pure dps stats but that requires a massive time investment (dungeon tokens) for something that might not even work. Getting all of your power/precis/cond damage/ect from gear might be a stretch.

I know the purpose of the 5 points in Virtue but I never saw the bonuses as that great. I mean they’re nice but I don’t think they’re quite THAT nice. I will say that you probably get more out of them than the additional 5 Honor but that just circles back to the other problem of Honor being sorta ‘Ehhh’ when you have all that nice stuff in Virtues.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAsd5elYgCCXEyLEgIFSuA7DEEmCCE+ue4QUEDB;TwAg0Cno2xsjYH7Oudk7s+YQwOiZGA

It’s almost what you’re asking. In my opinion, a “generic” Altruistic Healing build. You can buy Exotic zerker’s armor for about 2-3g a piece and that’ll provide most of the dps figures for you.

15 into Radiance to grab VoJ renewal on kill, plus 5 in Virtues for 3 stacks of Might on popping VoJ. AoE blind, 5sec party burning, and 3 stacks party might on every kill.

20 into Honor to get 1 stack of party Might on each crit (1sec cd, but its mostly negligible) plus vigor for you each crit. 50% crit rate means high vigor uptime (and might stacks), which translates to frequent party heals at the end of dodge rolls, which does scale nicely with Healing Power.

30 Valor for Altruistic Healing. Any boon to an ally = heals for you. Those come from VoJ each kill, might each crit (every other attack), Focus #4, Focus #5 depending on combo field, Mace #2, Mace #3 if no block, Shield #4 etc…

Sigils, Runes, Utilities, and even armor can all be changed around on preference, but a Strength sigil is ideal for might stacking (which ups your already high power). You’ve also got around 50% crit damage, which makes your crits hit 2x normal damage. Depending on jewelry you’ve got more damage or more defense, but all in all this would make for a pretty good build. I actually used the sword portion quite a bit while waiting for a decent hammer to make the switch to a more proper “crithammer” type build, so this should be up your ally. Make sure to test things in the Mists to find what exactly works best for you.

irinawds.9627:

See that was my thing. I like Valor, Honor, and Virtue but any build with just those traits would seem to lack for damage ability so something had to give. I’m not trying to be a dps machine but I would like to do decent amounts of damage while also keeping a fairly good survivability rate.

I did consider some combo of those three skills and then loading up the equipment with pure dps stats but that requires a massive time investment (dungeon tokens) for something that might not even work. Getting all of your power/precis/cond damage/ect from gear might be a stretch.

I know the purpose of the 5 points in Virtue but I never saw the bonuses as that great. I mean they’re nice but I don’t think they’re quite THAT nice. I will say that you probably get more out of them than the additional 5 Honor but that just circles back to the other problem of Honor being sorta ‘Ehhh’ when you have all that nice stuff in Virtues.

See, the maximum attribute bonus you’d get from investing in a trait line is 300, that’s if you go 30 pts in. That’s not a lot compared to what you’d get from itemization. Take a look at the sPvP amulets, that’s all the stats from all slots consolidated to one slot for ease of deck building.

If anything, think of the attribute bonus you’d get from traits as a bonus, your gearing choices affects how offensive/defensive your Guardian way more on a statistical level more than traits ever will. The popular altruistic healing and crit build uses Knight’s gear even though all its trait investment are on the defensive side of things, it still pumps out really hard numbers.

Ghotistyx.6942:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAsd5elYgCCXEyLEgIFSuA7DEEmCCE+ue4QUEDB;TwAg0Cno2xsjYH7Oudk7s+YQwOiZGA

Extremely straight forward and I had considered most of those points. It’s worth seeing what other people think however.

Lumines.3916:

See, the maximum attribute bonus you’d get from investing in a trait line is 300, that’s if you go 30 pts in. That’s not a lot compared to what you’d get from itemization. Take a look at the sPvP amulets, that’s all the stats from all slots consolidated to one slot for ease of deck building.

If anything, think of the attribute bonus you’d get from traits as a bonus, your gearing choices affects how offensive/defensive your Guardian way more on a statistical level more than traits ever will. The popular altruistic healing and crit build uses Knight’s gear even though all its trait investment are on the defensive side of things, it still pumps out really hard numbers.

Yeah I know but you have to start somewhere. In the final grand scheme of things you are right but getting there is the thing. I was already thinking of compensating for whatever stat I lacked with equipment. If anything that makes Virtue even more appealing as it has the only baseline stats I can’t gear up for.

I’m actually thinking now of going with something similar to above and trying to even out my stats through gear or maybe trying that Valor/Honor/Virtrue set up with precis/power/cond armor combined with ‘tank’ like trinkets/weapons.