Guild Wars 2

Currently I’m only level 15, but even then I sometimes feel too squishy or that I don’t help out my group enough. I don’t run Altruistic Healing or any Symbol Healing so that might be a problem, but I support through Pure of Voice – Basically 0/10/10/30/20 with shouts. I understand it’s important to switch traits around based on the situation in the fractal, but still. Any build advice? Standard AH with some 2h+staff?

I run full Soldiers Gear (vit/tough/power) and it feels okay to me; I don’t mind changing. I just, overall, don’t feel like an invincible god like some players make guardians out to be. Agony still destroys me (no resist), but for the most part I don’t really get downed (not killed) unless it’s during that stupid dredge fractal.

Also, I find melee (at least most against bosses), almost worthless as they hit incredibly hard or have anti melee abilities. I run scepter/shield now and switch my other weapon based on the situation. What do you higher level fractal guardians run?

Any advice is greatly appreciated as I’ve taken a break for a while and just want to come back helping my group (and.. myself) as much as possible in these dungeons. Thanks in advance! I’ll check back soon.

First of all, your gear is probably causing more problems for you than it is helping you since as you said your agony resistance is 0 and your taking the full 15% damage from agony from your maximum hitpoints at tier 2.
Second your weapon of choice is scepter and shield and that is ok for boss fights but is totally useless for all but 3 fractals (swamp, uncategorized, underwater), if you rolled a ascalon, dredge, volcano for example, your pretty much dead holding a scepter no matter how strong you are. With the solider gear and no means to heal other than the healing skill, melee would also be suicide so i would suggest changing your gear and build entirely or your style of support.
Converting conditions are great but the conditions are not as severe as the normal dungeons. Reflection Wall and Shield of the Avenger are great for FotM in a lot of situations as most boss agony attacks are projectiles.

Guardians are made for Fractals. Our strongest contribution to the team is reflection/absorption due to the amount of range damage in these dungeons. Beside Jademaw (and Jellyfish?), all the other bosses’ agony can be avoided:

Archdiviner (Cliffside):
Agony comes from the obvious circles on the ground and the light AoE during phase two of the last fight. Circles can be out run with swiftness. The light AoE can be dodged easily once you figure out his pattern (circles > AoE pull > light AoE agony). I had to solo this boss during phase two because the other 4 pug members couldn’t dodge for kitten. We also have plenty of “back up” options such as aegis and focus 5 if you have to use endurance to dodge circles. Watch out on the reflect cause they can eat up your aegis.

Legendary Shaman (Snowblind):
Agony drops from the ice shard. There’s a safe spot in which you can just stand there and spam scepter for an entire fight. Check the picture below.

Mossman (Swampland):
His dagger throw give agony, can bounce, and stack up to 3x agony. Shield of Avengers and Wall of Reflect is the best for this. I usually equip into my PVT armor and engage him in melee, and hopefully that he will stay on me (be the first to engage, he won’t switch until like 80%). Use SoA and WoR to resurrect teammates.

Bloomhunger (Swampland):
SoA and WoR can be used against his attacks but no guarantee since his projectile pattern is upward and down like a parabola. I like to stay in melee range and use SoA on the boss and make sure he’s inside it.

Mobs and Dredge mini boss (Underground Facility):
SoA outshines WoR on this. SoA can absorb the cone attacks of the dredges (including the boss) trivializing the whole run.

Legendary Dredge Suit (Underground Facility):
WoR can reflect the bombs if you time it well. You can also double dodge his slamming agony attack. Just watch for the animation. Having Shield of Absorption on rez trait is nice for this fight.

Captain Amysh (Urban Battlegrounds):
His agony attack is 900 so just stay at max range and whack away with your scepter.

Legendary Grawl Shaman (Volcanic Shaman):
Guardians make this fight so much easier with SoA and WoR. His agony fireballs can be nullified by both of our skills. If there’s two guardians in the group, it’s range immunity if you guys rotate your skill. Adds are not an issue since SoA/WoR also work on their attacks. If you’re the only guardian of the group, use WoR liberally and save SoA for add phase.

Asura Golems (Uncategorized):
Same as the grawl shaman on above with SoA/WoR. Here’s another trick. Position the golem between WoR and the asura (ideally, WoR has to be on top of your character, golems a bit back in front that you can melee them, and asura is directly behind them), this will reflect the agony bolt onto the golems instantly killing them on higher fractal. When all 4 golems spawn, GS 5 and pull them in, then put up WoR and reflect back agony. 10 seconds later, loot your chest.

Trungalung is a man of wisdom. Guardians are beasts, in and out of fractals. You just have to 1. Stop taking other people advice for armor, and find your own sweet spot. 2. Find a trait build that works for YOU, not 100 other people. And 3. Learn how to tie it all together through hours of playing.

Both Trungalung and Vanguardian have some incredible points. First, I don’t fractal. I’m currently level 4 and probably won’t go much higher. While I like them graphically and overall concept, I’m digging in over the whole ascended gear and gear progression. I have to say I love the feel (Indiana Jones’ish) and puzzle but I just can’t get past that. Having said that, and why I posted, is simply:

1. Trungalung – if “I” was to ever run through them again I’d have to say the tips you put out are amazing. It almost makes me want to enter again just because of the time you put in the cliff notes

2. Vanguardian – the key you mentioned and I’d like to second regardless of “what” you do in the game is this: “Learn how to tie it all together through hours of playing”. That, right there, is worth gold. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you are running build wise or even armor. It really is connecting how the various skills work, or in some cases don’t work, together. Once you learn that you will actually live longer no matter what you do.

I mostly WvWvW inbetween world exploration of map completion. I have to say the more I actually play and understand what skill on what button does what, it seems to make more sense and I live longer. Each hour I go from “the worst guardian on our server” to maybe the second worst

i am @ fotm 22 and i run full clerics with 14k health. this means i have to use the superior sigil of energy on my shield well.

Lvl 23 for the moment. I run an AH build with hammer/staff and switch to scepter/shield for some fractal/bosses. I generally have shouts for utility skills but switch a lot to wall or spirit shield or even the bubble of absorption when reviving an ally on some occasion.
I have two sets of gear : one with power/toughness/precision with monk/water/sanctuary runes and a pow/vit/tough with ranger/lyssa for the crit chance. I have 10 agony resist at the moment.
When I’m doing a lvl20+ fractal, I equip the knight gear as vitality is more punished by agony if you have the same healing power as you have more hp to heal back. If you know you have a hard time dodging some boss attacks that inflicts agony, equipping a knight set that doesn’t boost your hp too much could help as you will heal back better. Your best bet is to dodge these attacks though or get agony resist but I know you can’t do much versus rng.

An example of how vitality can be a “bad” thing is lvl20 jade maw. I manage to survive the agony with 10 resist with the knight gear (meaning not even going down at all) if I time my heal/virtues/utilities well but I just can’t with soldier gear (I go down 100% of the time but generally don’t die except if I’m focused by his attack just after).
When I have 15 or 20 agony resist, I guess I’ll switch back to soldier gear though.

Just to add something to the great advice of Trungalung, for the grawl Shaman, you can use GS #5 on the elementals to pack them nicely and have an easier time to kill them with aoe.

Also, a tip on Jademaw if you don’t have enough agony resistance: go Monk’s Focus with triple meds and pre-cast Tome of Courage’s full heal before agony hit in.

Thanks for the tips so far. I recently went AH with around 400 healing (could be more, but I was just testing the waters) with symbol healing. Overall I could live a lot longer despite the lower HP, but then.. I did the Titan fractal. Everything was smooth sailing until the very top when all of the adds spawn along with the boss. I, for the life of me, couldn’t stay alive. They basically spam poison and I couldn’t cure fast enough or heal through it, and the bosses agony was never a problem. It’s just… all those adds.

Agony wasn’t the problem here.. I’d just exhaust all available heals/dodges and still be screwed; not by the boss but by everything else. The boss was easy to not get downed by, but those kitten adds… ARGH! Am I… am I.. just bad? For the record I ran mace/focus + staff.

-edit- We eventually just pulled the boss off to the right room to avoid the adds, and that worked fine, but if you have tons of aggro in that room I just don’t see how it’s possible to live even with wall of reflection or shield of protection.

Also, Trungalung, are you just standard AH or are you also Symbol Healing? I myself (as I said earlier) have both forms of healing, 500+ healing, and around 16.4k hp with Clerics armor. Dps feels a bit on the low side sometimes, but I think it’s just getting used to mace again.

Do you guys think a SoA/WoR focused build, with traits focused on reduced spirit wep cd/duration and master of consecrations (reduce cd/duration) would be best for fractals 30+ ? I find that I am bringing those two skills a majority of the boss fights and they help players that don’t have high enough Agony Res for the higher levels(including myself).

I ran the AH/Shout build for fractals up to where i am at now (32), but I am finding myself less able to be in melee for a majority of the uptime if focused hence reducing my overall group contribution. Also there is less overall benefit due to the groups i find in the 30s being more range heavy (even wars/guards) so i feel like the symbol is being wasted =(

Dookies.2718:

Do you guys think a SoA/WoR focused build, with traits focused on reduced spirit wep cd/duration and master of consecrations (reduce cd/duration) would be best for fractals 30+ ? I find that I am bringing those two skills a majority of the boss fights and they help players that don’t have high enough Agony Res for the higher levels(including myself).

I ran the AH/Shout build for fractals up to where i am at now (32), but I am finding myself less able to be in melee for a majority of the uptime if focused hence reducing my overall group contribution. Also there is less overall benefit due to the groups i find in the 30s being more range heavy (even wars/guards) so i feel like the symbol is being wasted =(

Out of curiosity what kind of gear/weapons did you run?

@Magnus

Sorry i forgot to specify I run the hammer build, very similar to the stickied post on the Guardian page. My gear is mostly Knights with Rubies upgraded in my accessories and a mixture of divinity runes and 2 Water for 15% boon duration. But I am probably going to replace that boon duration since I am using less shouts and more reflects, and its hard to maintain full hammer rotation since im dodging constantly due to the high number of PBAoE from bosses in fractals.

That’s the problem I always run into with hammer. I just wish we had a better ranged weapon. Sometimes I tire of being stuck with scepter/staff.. sigh..

I use a 0/0/30/30/10 flexible build. I used to use hammer most of the time with the old dungeons, but now a day, I found that you have to switch them around even if it’s your “main weapon”. In my opinion, I think this build is the best for Fractal since it’s a combination of Altruistic Healing/Monk’s Focus from Valor, all the great traits to switch around in Honor (Empowering Might, Pure of Voice, Two-Handed Mastery, etc…), and Master of Consecration/Improved Spirit Weapon Duration from Virtue. To make up for the damage lost from trait, I usually run full Berserkers on trash and most boss fights.

To get the best out of the hammer, you have to make use of the two animation skips mentioned in Brutaly’s guide especially the Ninja Skip (don’t even need to cancel the dodge, just utilizing it to resume the 3rd swing).

Trungalung.7850:

I use a 0/0/30/30/10 flexible build. I used to use hammer most of the time with the old dungeons, but now a day, I found that you have to switch them around even if it’s your “main weapon”. In my opinion, I think this build is the best for Fractal since it’s a combination of Altruistic Healing/Monk’s Focus from Valor, all the great traits to switch around in Honor (Empowering Might, Pure of Voice, Two-Handed Mastery, etc…), and Master of Consecration/Improved Spirit Weapon Duration from Virtue. To make up for the damage lost from trait, I usually run full Berserkers on trash and most boss fights.

To get the best out of the hammer, you have to make use of the two animation skips mentioned in Brutaly’s guide especially the Ninja Skip (don’t even need to cancel the dodge, just utilizing it to resume the 3rd swing).

You run full Berserkers? What about runes? At what level fractal? I just feel like the end fight in fractals like Cliffside I’d just… die.

I’m currently at 31 at the moment (been at this level for almost a week since I think it’s pointless to hit 40, it’s hard to get a group for it because I only pug). I use two monks, two water, and two fire for the might duration. I also have my PVT armor set in the bags for face tanking stuffs like Mossman.

For Cliffside, your group has to pull him into the corridor leading to a small room on the right side and fight him in there. This will separate him and the adds when phase two starts. After you smash the seal, your team can run back into the room and de-aggro the adds (remember to leave one member back in the room, and the guy that’s running hammer needs to have a stun breaker). The only downside to this is that the room is quite small for kiting.

If you’re not Altruistic Healing, you’re doing it wrong.

Zeppelin.6832:

If you’re not Altruistic Healing, you’re doing it wrong.

I must be doing it wrong all through 1-20, then.

You can avoid AH in favor of selfless daring, especially during grawl. Empower is a death sentence there.

CHOAM.7852:

Zeppelin.6832:

If you’re not Altruistic Healing, you’re doing it wrong.

I must be doing it wrong all through 1-20, then.

The subject is 20+ not 1-20.

In 20+ it really helps your survivability greatly.

kaffaljidhma.1496:

You can avoid AH in favor of selfless daring, especially during grawl. Empower is a death sentence there.

There’s no need to avoid AH in favor of Selfless Daring since you can have both.

Using a staff is already a death sentence on Grawl. You need to have a GS and scepter/focus out. AH is still good for grawl due to the fact that AH with VoJ can actually reach people across the map and provides steady enough healing for add phase. Meditations with Monk’s Focus are not so great since you will only have one med (the other two slots are WoR and SoA).

I mean you can, if you really want, veer away from AH and use Selfless Daring as your primary source of healing. You will have to stack toughness and/or Vitality, but you can stray into non-Valor traits for extra crits, boons, straight damage % increase, whatever.

I like using mace+focus instead of scepter focus on grawl just in case I get hit with agony arrow while doing a grub pull. Again, this is an alternative to getting heals from a high crit whirling wrath and damages the grubs about to rally range while allowing you to leave without giving up on attacking them due to the protector’s strike AoE spike and the guaranteed symbol DoT.

AH will help on survivability much more than Selfless Daring ever will unless you are stacking up +healing. It also allows one to stack up on more damage gear wise (for me, to a point of being pure glass). Valor also gives 30% critical damage along side with the toughness as well as Retributive Armor for an extra 3% crit chance (at base armor +300 toughness from Valor).

So you’re using both melee set up for Grawl (Mace/Focus and Greatsword)? That’s a big damage loss comparing going scepter full-time during normal phase. You should never get hit by agony during add phase because you should have SoA up (or at least WoR but recommend to have both rotating).

I usually can’t depend on my teammates to be as well equipped to deal with the add phase, and the AoE attacks are dodgeable enough to allow full utilization of greatsword DPS, much like a battle against Subject Alpha. The mace is just there to help my survivability when I binding blade all the adds, which is really the only reason I have a greatsword in the first place. Mace+Focus is what I take whenever I really don’t want people to stay downed for very long and I’m the only one who can afford to revive them, which is usually the case in that fractal.

Unlike Subject Alpha in which range or melee both have to keep dodging. For the Grawl fight, range only need to dodge his agony arrow while melee has to constantly dodging the AoE knock back and Lava Fonts plus the agony arrow on top of them.

I suppose I could do range; I’m just paranoid that doing so will give less control over where he actually goes, and the more he tries to do PBAoE, the less he’ll be shooting agony arrows (theoretically).

You can glitch the agony arrow by continuously strafing left and right in quick succession. Just remember to stay far away preferably 900 range at least (you’ll still get hit if you’re too close to him).

With the recent change, is the viability of AH compared to just selfless daring affected by level 20 fractals at all? I’m a boon guardian (who obviously can’t use AH because most of my boons are 100% and won’t trigger the heal) so the changes don’t affect me. Given that enemies just stand there and take hits, is there enough of a buffer from might healing?

Didn’t really affect me at all. Vigorous Precision is not the main source of AH healing.

@Trungalung.7850

Great info, I haven’t reached that far yet, but I’ll definitely look up the agony points you described.

Thanks.

Trungalung.7850:

Didn’t really affect me at all. Vigorous Precision is not the main source of AH healing.

This ^. People haven’t realized it was only 1 source of AH healing. The might on crits was just as much coupled with shouts, empower, symbols and blast finishers. I’m still running this build since patch with little difference. It is noticeable at times, but still doable.

Edit: dodge rolls for heals as well.