Guild Wars 2

I only have an interest in dealing damage, rather than healing or supporting? I’m focusing on power with my guardian (vitality and toughness behind it), and use a greatsword, but as I always do in MMOs, I’m wondering how “viable” my play style with the class I’ve chosen is one that I can stick with even after I hit 80, or if a dps guardian just works when pve leveling. Kind of worried that only support/tank guardians are valuable in late game and WvW, and that if I wanted a beefy melee class that focuses on dps, I’d be better off with a warrior instead.

Am I worried over nothing? I’m sure warriors can probably dish out more damage, but is there still a place for dps guardians late game and in WvW?

Just wondering if I should stick with my guardian (level 54 right now), or if I should switch to warrior if I’m just interested in dealing damage.

Watch this guy’s vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrcAzf3aIBU

DPS build on a guardian for WvW is great fun.

A word of caution though – your survivability compared to other classes comes via all of your active defences and the ability to dodge.

You can’t go into a fight and expect to be able to disengage from it like most other damage dealing classes can ( turn tail and run ) – so you commit to fighting to the end, either their death or yours ( unless you have a good team to back you up ). This kind of reckless abandon often works in your favour though and your opponents end up running from you.

It’s incredibally rewarding, but any mistakes can be fatal.

Struggler.4526:

I only have an interest in dealing damage, rather than healing or supporting? I’m focusing on power with my guardian (vitality and toughness behind it)

I stopped reading right here. P/V/T gear is tank gear, you’re building your Guardian as a tank and you don’t realize it. Power/Precision/Crit damage is the damage dealing gear.

wish.3102:

Struggler.4526:

I only have an interest in dealing damage, rather than healing or supporting? I’m focusing on power with my guardian (vitality and toughness behind it)

I stopped reading right here. P/V/T gear is tank gear, you’re building your Guardian as a tank and you don’t realize it. Power/Precision/Crit damage is the damage dealing gear.

Actually if he gets full p/v/t gear, and gets more standard ’dps’y accessories (personal preference is valks / knights) he’ll be fairly tanky while dishing out crazy damage. Another thing to think about is the 5% of toughness to precision trait under the toughness tree which is super handy (also master maintenance oils that give 4% vit —> precision and 6% toughness —> precision bonuses as well)

wish.3102:

Struggler.4526:

I only have an interest in dealing damage, rather than healing or supporting? I’m focusing on power with my guardian (vitality and toughness behind it)

I stopped reading right here. P/V/T gear is tank gear, you’re building your Guardian as a tank and you don’t realize it. Power/Precision/Crit damage is the damage dealing gear.

If my goal is damage, should I change? Or should I stick with what I’m doing? I’ve been using shouts, so I wanted the 20% cd vitality trait, as well as the greatsword skill cd. Toughness is something I could probably part with, as the trait skills aren’t really things I want/need, and I haven’t really noticed putting points into toughness affecting things much. Would precision be better?

Struggler.4526:

wish.3102:

Struggler.4526:

I only have an interest in dealing damage, rather than healing or supporting? I’m focusing on power with my guardian (vitality and toughness behind it)

I stopped reading right here. P/V/T gear is tank gear, you’re building your Guardian as a tank and you don’t realize it. Power/Precision/Crit damage is the damage dealing gear.

If my goal is damage, should I change? Or should I stick with what I’m doing? I’ve been using shouts, so I wanted the 20% cd vitality trait, as well as the greatsword skill cd. Toughness is something I could probably part with, as the trait skills aren’t really things I want/need, and I haven’t really noticed putting points into toughness affecting things much. Would precision be better?

Ignore the stat bonus in trait lines. Your damage comes from your gear and it should be power,precision and critical damage.

If you want to do a lot of damage but still have the ability to heal and support, symbol bomb builds are a lot of fun to play.

Search for Jax and his pvp thread. It has three tpvp versions but they translate well into www with some changes.

Tarsius sums it up quite nicely.
“it’s incredibly rewarding, but any mistake can be fatal”

The any mistake could be fatal part is half of the fun part about a glass cannon guardian.

Ji teleporting into a group of 15 with only 11k hp and no stealth is a very thrilling experience.

lcc.9374:

Ji teleporting into a group of 15 with only 11k hp and no stealth is a very thrilling experience.

JI into said group with a quick WW/Binding Blade and then MI back to a teammate is even more thrilling (that is if MI ports to the right guy!).

wish.3102:

Struggler.4526:

I only have an interest in dealing damage, rather than healing or supporting? I’m focusing on power with my guardian (vitality and toughness behind it)

I stopped reading right here. P/V/T gear is tank gear, you’re building your Guardian as a tank and you don’t realize it. Power/Precision/Crit damage is the damage dealing gear.

The dps of a dead guardian is zero

Maladon.5760:

The dps of a dead guardian is zero

While this is true Wish’s statement is also true. I run mostly zerker with a couple pcs of PVT mixed in. Find a balance that fits you.

Might try a 10/30/30/0/0 Sword/Torch build. I use it for PvE but a buddy has been doing very well with it in WvW. He loves the damage it brings.

The first thing to know is that you can do damage with a guard while also supporting. You do not need to spec into any support to give the kind of support that other classes sorely lack, and speccing into some of them require only adept traits. Wall of Reflection, Stand Your Ground!, and Shield of the Avenger are all amazing and only require adepts to receive their CD/length traits. I personally love sanctuary as well (despite its size – if you view it as only blocking 3 directions instead of all 4 it’s pretty awesome). You do not need to “soak” hits; Shelter is amazing as well as timing your virtue of courage. Paired with dodges you can easily take down enemies with minimal downs. My perspective is mostly from end PvE – dunegons, fractals, etc.

P/V/T is tank armor, as said earlier. If you wish to deal damage, you need either Knight’s armor (somewhat more damage) or zerks armor (much more damage). Personally I like to use Knights for the helm/chest/legs because if those armor pieces were zerks they wold give bad crit damage ratios per point (wiki “item nomenclature” if you don’t know what stat armor ratios are). That way you can take a hit or two with ~2900 armor. Also crit damage has a funny stat plateau at around 50% (after which point it is [almost] always better to stat prec or pow), so knight’s is pretty great.

Also note boon duration runes can give you more effective power/damage (through might stacking) than power statted runes.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Maladon.5760:

The dps of a dead guardian is zero

While this is true Wish’s statement is also true. I run mostly zerker with a couple pcs of PVT mixed in. Find a balance that fits you.

Might try a 10/30/30/0/0 Sword/Torch build. I use it for PvE but a buddy has been doing very well with it in WvW. He loves the damage it brings.

Yeah that’s the old thief axiom

I run around in full glass cannon zerker gear on my thief in WvW and it’s very risky but also very rewarding. So going with zerker gear on a more resilient character such as a guardian is definitely possible. I would suggest not starting out like that because avoiding damage and proper positioning is key to glass cannon play, moreso than delivering damage to your target (refer to the axiom). Give yourself a bit of a cushion with some more sturdy gear and then peel away the defenses as you become more comfortable with the playstyle.

Once you start seeing the big numbers and piles of bodies that can be achieved as a glass cannon it’s sort of addicting so be careful…once you go zerker it’s really tough to go back!

Roxtar.6487:

That way you can take a hit or two with ~2900 armor. Also crit damage has a funny stat plateau at around 50% (after which point it is [almost] always better to stat prec or pow), so knight’s is pretty great.

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Don’t agree w/ this at all.

[edit] in terms of a plateau at 50% for crit dmg.

Please provide a chart.

Amins.3710:

Roxtar.6487:

That way you can take a hit or two with ~2900 armor. Also crit damage has a funny stat plateau at around 50% (after which point it is [almost] always better to stat prec or pow), so knight’s is pretty great.

.

Don’t agree w/ this at all.

And I agree w/ this. For a true DPS build you need to max your crit dmg and precision. Shortfalls in power can be supplemented with bloodlust and/or might stacking.

Survivability comes through active defenses, skill timing and your team mates
( and, well, killing things very quickly )

Kadin.2356:

Watch this guy’s vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrcAzf3aIBU

Now look at his health.
That’s embarrassing, 1 hard crit and he is dead.

Okay so now I’m level 60, still using a greatsword, have power/precision gear with major Balthazar runes.

Traits are focused on power, precision, and vitality (20/10/20 respectively). No plans to increase power any further, as I found that zealous blade is pointless. I’d like to increase vitality to 30 because I like its trait abilities, but only after further increasing precision for the crit chance.

I respecced out of the toughness line since I felt significantly more fragile without the vitality line and the abilities weren’t appealing to me. With the vit line I’ve got a larger health pool and a few small heals for sustain with the abilities, as well as greatsword cdr once I raise it to 30.

This something that could work well? Thoughts? Suggestions?

If you just wanna put a bunch of personal dps utilities on your bar, put your traits into nothing but increasing your own damage, and don’t want to even think about looking after your teammates. you are playing the wrong class. Trying to do that will just make you a poor version of a warrior. A warrior will do much more damage and people won’t get annoyed at you for not helping anybody out.

There are also quite a lot of things that a dps guardian can do which a dps warrior can’t. There’s no denying that warrior burst is higher. But it’s apples and oranges. Topics been done to death though so I’ll let it slide.

As someone mentioned earlier, 10/30/30/0/0 is a great damage build for guardians who like to use the 1h weapons. for 2h weapons just drop 5 points out of radiance and put it into either virtues for buffs on virtue use, or honor for vigor on crit and some extra health. For gear I personally use a mix of Knights, valk, and zerker. Your general health is going to be pretty low but the trade off is that if you use enough knights + the 300 from valor you can pretty easily get to 3k armor, which really helps with the damage intake.

Roxtar.6487:

Also note boon duration runes can give you more effective power/damage (through might stacking) than power statted runes.

yeah….. no. Pack runes are your best for an offensive build, as they offer 165 power, 100 perc, and a chance when hit to give you, and allies around you, might swiftness and fury (of which fury is extremely hard for us to get since it only comes on one situational trait, and a long CD utility) even if you ran might stacking sigil and empowering might you can only upkeep maybe 7 stacks, (thats being nice, as the sigil has a 40% chance on a 2 sec ICD) depending on how much you can actually stay on your enemy. Thats only 245 power, which yes, is 80 more, but the chance for fury and 100 perc are far more worth it in my book.