Guild Wars 2

Just got my guardian to 30 and 35 over the weekend so I ran AC story and AC explorer once each. Both of my groups did quite well, in fact we only had one total-wipe (everyone dead at once) and that was on explorer.

While the runs felt pretty smooth, I’m not sure I was playing my guardian optimally so I wanted to get some feedback from you guys. Here’s what I was running:

Staff/Mace + Shield
-“Hold the Line”
-“Save yourselves”
-Signet of Mercy
-Renewed Focus (Will definitely be going Tome of Courage once I get the skill points)

Overall I just didn’t feel that useful. While channeling Empower I felt like I was really contributing to my team (the might + heal is AWESOME), but the rest of the staff skills felt pretty ‘meh’ and the shield abilities felt downright useless. The mace ability that creates the symbol on the ground was okay, but the AoE shield didn’t seem to do much.

So now I’m wondering if there is a better weapon combo for dungeon running because honestly the only things that made me feel useful were my Virtues, Empower, and “Hold the Line”.

Should I be focusing more on damage, like running a greatsword or something? I guess I’m not really clear on what my role is supposed to be since I don’t feel like the most useful support and I thought that’s what my role was supposed to be.

Everyone’s view on how to play Guardian is different, but there is some general consensus on some things. For dungeons, I think the key point is that you can really take one of two roles; one focused on supporting or one focused on damage. That isn’t to say you can’t do both, but you should prioritise one – whichever you prefer to play.

Builds that use lots of shouts, healing abilities and traits (like altruistic healing) and build for healing power/toughness/vitality are going to bolster allies and mitigate damage very effectively, allowing your party to focus on their damage output and less about staying alive.

Alternatively, going for power/crit damage gear, taking signets and personal damage increases (like +% attacking foes with conditions) will mean your damage is going to be strong, but your allies are going to be having to fend for themselves more.

There are builds (like the altruistic hammer build and other varients) that offer a good mix of the two. Personally, I have a more supporting role that operates at the front line, taking damage and healing it rapidly while pumping out boons and removing conditions. I don’t want to link it because I think much of the fun in this game is finding out builds yourself and testing them.

My advice to you is identify what you want as a guardian, then look to the traits that support that role. So long as your build is coherant and has some thought put into it, you’re going to be an asset to your dungeon group.

I found the shield to be pretty blah too, personally I prefer mace/focus for a defensive set. The focus #4 is damage/blind/regen/condition remover, and it’s #5 block work well with the mace. You can’t unlock Altruistic Healing until 60, and at 35 I don’t think you have enough trait points for healing symbols without severly kittening yourself in other areas. If you haven’t read Eveningstar’s guardian/pve guid stickied at the top of the page I recommend it. Lots of useful information about traits and synergies there.