Guild Wars 2

I am trying to build balanced, non glass (well, maybe only a bit) guardian, capable of doing some reasonable dps using mainly greatsword.

With posts like “guardian dps makes me smile” pls go away. Arenanet claimed that all classes should be able to use different playstiles, so dps must be an option.

This thread purpose are: find relatively high damage and enough tough build for guardian, to complete PvE content without having much trouble (like Arah p1-4 and high lvl fractals); in case there is no such build and opportunity – get this info to anet, so they could possibly buff our gs dps.

So far what I am using is

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mMcz0mMzMmoGhomoGhmxxa9MMkbMobo

with all knights gear and berserk weapons, Emerald orbs in all slots and Emerald jewels for accessory. So far it feels not bad, but a bit glassy if you kitten dodging.

Edit:
My stats with this traits, gear and utility skills, but w/o any food are:

Attack – 3,244 green with signet / 3,154 white
Crit Chance – 64% (84% when I use Save yourselves)
Armor – 3,067
Health – 10,965

Atm thinking about changing weapon signet from 5% dmg to 5% crit (will do good with omnomberry pies)

Guardian DPS is impossible. Stacking toughness to a certain degree helps, but guess what, with only <14k life you are still 1 shottable by full glass cannon warrior, and a full glass cannon thief could 2-3 shot you. Doesn’t even matter how good you are. Toughness scales horribly vs burst dps. How do I know this? I have 3125 armor and I still get kill shotted by non glass cannon warriors for 8k easy. In additon, your build doesn’t even accommodate our best trait line Valor. Im not trying to discourage you, but if you want DPS (or burst) + survivability then you’ll wanna go Warrior.

As for PvE, you could slap on anything and survive you’re a guardian. Arah isn’t a dungeon you’ll need to gear a certain way for as its more of learning when to dodge the bosses moves (most will 1 shot you regardless of build). As for high lvl fractals (30+), you’ll want to run a heal build and spam tome of courage.

I see your point, but I want to accent it again: I’m trying to find PvE spec, not WvW.
I heard a lot of things like that, and I do have warrior myself, so I know situation with warrs.

I wouldn’t spend more than 25 points in Zeal. The Grandmaster traits are very lackluster. I would instead put those last 5 points in Virtues. Inspired Virtue is very powerful.

Other than that you might be able to make your build work. Though, if you are going for a balanced build I have to suggest you take Altruistic Healing or Monk’s Focus in the Valor tree.

My current WvW/SoloPvE build is 25-10-30-0-5 and I’m in the process of getting a full Berserker armor set and Trinkets. It does very nice damage so far and the survivability is actually higher than you might expect.

Also, I would suggest you ignore anyone who says guards can’t do damage. Guards don’t have the burst potential that other classes have (as in we can’t down anyone in 4-5 seconds), but for those classes, once they use their burst they’re done for a long while. With Guards we can do very nice sustained damage and don’t really have a downtime on our DPS like other high-burst classes do. If you can learn to survive an enemies burst, which is actually rather easy in most cases, then for the remainder of the fight you will be pretty much in control.

Just my 2copper on the subject

Thanks for your 2 copper ^^ I’m aware of t3 Valor talent, but it requres 30 traits there, and it’s huge dps loss. Inspired Virtues sound good, but need to calculate than what’s better – 50 precision and cond dmg or that trait + recharge and duration.

LITF.2576:

…..Inspired Virtues sound good, but need to calculate than what’s better – 50 precision and cond dmg or that trait + recharge and duration.

I’d drop the last 5 points in Zeal.

The heal on Greatsword attacks is very underwhelming – around 25-30 health per hit. The only ability that really makes it worthwhile (though that’s an overstatement) is Whirling Wrath and only if you are hitting many many targets at once.

The added boons on virtues easily compensates for that in my opinion.

Yeah, thing is that I use this build and feature for aoe charge in → symbol → whirl+spam Justice (resets on every kill). Works like a charm. Though will try to give it up for no healing from gs and Inspired and see what happens.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mMcocz0z0MrnomMrnomaxp0VMoaqoz

This is the build I’ve been playing with lately, and have found it very pleasing. Some things work really well, and it powers up Virtue of Justice incredibly, which is amazing in pve as it’s constantly resetting from Renewed Justice. The playstyle differs a bit from yours, as this build benefits from using 1h weapons, specifically sword, as opposed to GS. But I think sword/torch is easily as good as GS, if not better depending on the situation.

I’m using Zerk accessories and Knight armour, although I’m lacking in vitality, so I might be switching some of that soon, to balance a bit better. But anyway, this makes crits huge and very frequent with the Crit Damage increase from Valor/Zerks and Right-Hand Strength (Rad XI)

I’m using Strength runes, but something like Fire/Flame legion also works great if you want to keep up damage. Or you can switch to something more defensive. I take the strength runes to prolong Might and increase damage from Inspired Virtues, but ditching it for Monk’s Focus will increase your survivability a lot, as you can have a lot of heals, or Altruistic Healing if you’re in a group situation.

Anyway. The way it works is, hit VoJ which blinds, burns, grants 3 stacks of might. Then Flashing Blade (sword 2) to initiate.
Blinds inflicts 6 stacks of Vulnerability from Justice is Blind (Rad 5)
10% increase in damage from Fiery Wrath (Zeal II)
5% increase from gaining strength and activating runes (Virt 5)
10% increase from Radiant Power because of conditions (Rad 25)
And 5% damage increase from Powerful Blades for choosing sword. (Rad X)

So altogether that’s 36% damage increase from the get go. This sets you up for some pretty good burst, and as already stated, Guards have pretty good sustained damage. Especially because most of these things are always active. It’s pretty rare that you don’t have might and/or your target isn’t burning, right?

Still pretty tough by using Valor, but I do advise some Vitality if you’re attempting the harder dungeons and don’t have someone doing heaps of condition removal, because there isn’t as much as in this build. In Lion’s Arch using my sword/torch, my stats are:
Attack: 2961
Crit: 69% (reads 54, but Right Hand Mastery is not displayed in tool tip) and 61 Damage
Armour: 2,745
Health: 11,055

So as you can see my armor is fine, but I probably should switch some precision to vitality as I’m pretty glassy atm. Especially as I can get my crit % even high through a perception sigil.

As for utility skills, I just put what I use for sPvP/tPvP because it’s good for chasing people down. But you can really put whatever you prefer. Switch Meditation Mastery for Purity for cond. removal, or Mace of Justice when using a mace in tankier situations etc. And I use Shelter to activate Might of the Protector (Valor 25) which is great when a warrior opens up with Hundred Blades or you’re in a big group of trash mobs. Your might just jumps up. But I’m always changing utilities.

I haven’t been using it for long, and came up with it myself and I don’t know if it or something similar has been all over the forums or not. So let me know what you think?

Well, it looks good, but I don’t see point in last 5 in Valor (it should be either 5 more or less IMHO), and I’d put those 5 into Zeal or Honor. I understand that 5% crit damage looks sweet, but probably those 2 will give better result (requires testing though). Also I don’t think that crit damage is a way to go for guardian dps as conditions can’t crit, so our burning gains nothing from inc crit dmg. I’d rather go for full Knights as it will give even more Toughness and Precision which gives even more crit chance. Pair it with life leech on crit and it should work well. Cond damage is an option, but it needs testing. Too bad there is nothing like skada or recount (damage meter+analysis).

Also updated original post with some more info.

LITF.2576:

Thanks for your 2 copper ^^ I’m aware of t3 Valor talent, but it requres 30 traits there, and it’s huge dps loss. Inspired Virtues sound good, but need to calculate than what’s better – 50 precision and cond dmg or that trait + recharge and duration.

With the amount of crit you have gaining 20% crit damage should be a net buff. Plus you get your choice of 2 good self heals and added toughness. Also you get might on block which makes shelter insanely good for a heal. I personally run a 10/30/30/0/0 build and the damage is pretty good along with the insane amount of heals you can pull from traits/omnomberry pies.

I posted a couple video’s. take a look at them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/New-1-19-Videos-WvW-DPS-builds/first#post1246428

There’s a couple different builds in there, and as much as I Completely Disagree w/ Archer 99% of the time…. here’s the 1% I agree w/ him: 30 Valor… not just for AH but more importantly, Toughness and 30% Crit Damage.

Everything else is playstyle and supported by gear/food.

How do you survive in condition heavy dungeons?

Same way I survive condition heavy wvw. Light combo’s and utilities.

Well, so far it’s tricky, but possible. Most of time it’s about not rushing, using ranged weapon when needed, using heals and shouts. I don’t always go with same setup of utility skills. They are all situational.
Amins thanks for your link, that build looks pretty nice, but going full berserk armor sounds for me like PvE suicide It will not end well in high level fractals or in Arah. What is good for wvw is not always good for PvE.

LITF.2576:

Well, so far it’s tricky, but possible. Most of time it’s about not rushing, using ranged weapon when needed, using heals and shouts. I don’t always go with same setup of utility skills. They are all situational.
Amins thanks for your link, that build looks pretty nice, but going full berserk armor sounds for me like PvE suicide It will not end well in high level fractals or in Arah. What is good for wvw is not always good for PvE.

Why would full zerks be bad for fotm? Agony damage is %age based. Good reflexes with the plethora of mitigation tools we have make us one of the most solid candidates for glass gear.

I’m after a zerker build for Fotm 40+ if anyone’s got anything. Don’t want much vitality if it can be helped of course.

swiftpaw.6397:

I’m after a zerker build for Fotm 40+ if anyone’s got anything. Don’t want much vitality if it can be helped of course.

Just get the gear. 20 virtues can help a ton because it can make your f2 extremely strong — but really you just play the same cept have more dmg.

Amins.3710:

I posted a couple video’s. take a look at them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/New-1-19-Videos-WvW-DPS-builds/first#post1246428

There’s a couple different builds in there, and as much as I Completely Disagree w/ Archer 99% of the time…. here’s the 1% I agree w/ him: 30 Valor… not just for AH but more importantly, Toughness and 30% Crit Damage.

Everything else is playstyle and supported by gear/food.

Amins, you forget I not only match your DPS (if not only ~1000 less), but also survive much better.

Oh, looks like we are getting away from topic. First of all @Archer – we discuss guardian gs dps build. Not heal/suport/tank. If you’re here to state that guardians can’t dps – you can go make your own thread.

Second – pls keep discussion close to topic subj – guardian GS non-glass dps. Glass may be good, but I don’t see any use in glass cannon who charges boss, does 100k dps in one skill use (let’s make it absurd) and than waits for ress. Though as soon as we figure out HOW exactly aggro works, it may be brought up again.

Other thing – it’s possible to add recommended party setup.
– So far I see, that mesmer is always good for any party, due to TW, portal, copyes, etc.
– Also some warr/guard with tanked build and 3,3k+ armor will be nice (why? because aggro does have armor based component, and high armor tank will be most likely attacked all time; I run 3.4k armor warr, and I DO get attacked by most mobs in any dungeon since I got that number 3 weeks ago)
– Good support/healer. From what I heard engineers do well. Will add more if someone will give good feedback (as I didn’t meet a lot of these lately)
– Bunker necr sounds as good option for tank too. I saw some, and they were capable of some nice tanking as well (given they know what they are doing).
– Strong dps class like elem. Ranged pref.

I think Anet did very bold statement, that there will be no “trinity”. If you have “trinity” alike party composition – you will have way less trouble completing dungeons

Post a Vid. =]

I’d love to look at more styles while not reducing my Dmg and Increasing my Survivability.

Here’s another I just made from earlier this morning. Was going to post it in the WvW for all those kaineig’s to view about thier pug’s needing to step it up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RruMhg5SZlI&feature=youtu.be

Will post link to stream later, when’ll be heading off for some fractals.

Any other fresh ideas? Since last time I decided to reduce my Toughness value, cause it’s quite uncomfortable to get aggro everywhere due to it. Will change to fractal rings with Power, Precision, Crit, Vitality and make Precision and Vitality infusions. Also will use berserk fractal back.