I just got my guardian to lvl 80 and now I need armor but I don’t really know what to get. Should I build tank or damage or healing. I want to be able to do dungeons and WvW. I am fine with supporting as well kinda enjoy it but don’t want to be useless when I solo something.
That way the only thing you ever have to change is your traits. The split between soldier/berserker is laid out in such a way as to give you the best Critical Damage for the investment; different slots have different Critical Damage amounts relative to the other stats, so it’s possible to accidentally be inefficient with how much you get.
Your traits will then be the largest determining factor for how much damage you do. If you need trait build advice there are dozens of threads here.
Eilir Eirasdottir, Guardian, Tarnished Coast
Painbow.6059: Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong.
Use Berserker in PvE. Ignore any recommendations telling you to go PVT, because Guardian NEEDS Precision to activate traits like Vigorous Precision, which give you more dodges.
Use Berserker in PvE. Ignore any recommendations telling you to go PVT, because Guardian NEEDS Precision to activate traits like Vigorous Precision, which give you more dodges.
Which you can get from food, traits, and so on. Rule of thumb is that strictly speaking you only “need” about 30% crit in order to reliably proc VP and EM just from autoattacking. Add in symbols and other AOEs, cleaving, and so forth, and 30% is way more than enough.
Eilir Eirasdottir, Guardian, Tarnished Coast
Painbow.6059: Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong.
Which you can get from food, traits, and so on. Rule of thumb is that strictly speaking you only “need” about 30% crit in order to reliably proc VP and EM just from autoattacking. Add in symbols and other AOEs, cleaving, and so forth, and 30% is way more than enough.
Soooo your saying going tanky is good? and that that extra toughness will allow me to tank that champion icebrood wolf?
Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong. Berserker armor with Scholar runes and zerker trinkets is the BEST armor for pve. Anyone using soldiers/AH for pve is just bad.
Knights will give you precision but you will have less damage. In dungeons damage is key. Once you have experience the only ‘tanking’ you will need is dodging, blocks, renewed focus ( although I srsly recommend you use this more for virtue spam for your party than saving for invuln) and applied blinds. This will enable you to run berserker to provide increased damage, which in dungeons can mean all the difference while still providing the team with damage mitigation and support through skill (utility and weapon) choice and traits. The most important part of dungeons on any class is knowing when to dodge. Once you have this down you are able to focus on maximizing your dps and deciding which utilities to bring for each fight. On Guardian you will find yourself swapping up your utility bar constantly depending on what your party requires for each fight.
Most popular utilities will involve:
Stability – (Stand Your Ground and more importantly Hallowed ground (fire field and a consecreation) ), Indomitable Courage (Trait to break stun and give stability in the virtues line)
Reflects – Wall of Reflection (Consecration)
Condition Removals – Purging flames and Absolute Resolution (Trait in the virtues line) Another condition removal tactic for after you have blown cooldowns is to lay down a combo field and whirl finish in it, eg. Wall of reflection + Whirling Wrath from greatsword will = Cleansing bolts
Absorbs – Shield Of The Avenger
Blocks – ‘Retreat!’ and Virtue of Courage.
Blinds- Virtue of justice Spam, Weapon skills.
Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|
Why is PVT a better choice than PTH on WvW? I mean, i see guardian as a great engine of heals. Or giving up the healing power for vitality a sort of defense against conditions?
It’s a better choice for damage because it’s a power-primary set. There are plenty of builds that use Clerics in various amounts that are fine though. Unless you’re in a guild zerg in which case it’s a moot point because you should run whatever composition they tell you to.
Eilir Eirasdottir, Guardian, Tarnished Coast
Painbow.6059: Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong.
Buying a full set of Knight’s is a bad idea. While it does have Precision, the lack of Power on the set is really noticeable. While it’s true that the spread I posted will have less critical chance, the increase in power will actually yield the same or slightly increased DPS on top of the Vitality from the Soldier gear giving you tons more effective health. Also, it’ll be cheaper in the long run, because as you improve if you decide you want full Berserker armor for dungeons you only have to replace a couple of pieces, instead of an entire set.
Buying a full set of Knight’s is a bad idea. While it does have Precision, the lack of Power on the set is really noticeable. While it’s true that the spread I posted will have less critical chance, the increase in power will actually yield the same or slightly increased DPS on top of the Vitality from the Soldier gear giving you tons more effective health. Also, it’ll be cheaper in the long run, because as you improve if you decide you want full Berserker armor for dungeons you only have to replace a couple of pieces, instead of an entire set.
Personally I find ‘tons of extra health’ to be detrimental. It creates a reliance on a health cushion. The power lack with knight’s is annoying, however this is a training wheels set that once you’ve gone through will also be useful later on if you so choose to do high lvl fractals and run as the sole guardian with the hammer build. When I started out I just ran 6 pieces of knights armor and full zerker trinkets, didn’t really cost that much and you can still get use out of this set if required. I suppose I was not entirely well explained when I said knights, just the armor should be enough.
Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|
Buying a full set of Knight’s is a bad idea. While it does have Precision, the lack of Power on the set is really noticeable. While it’s true that the spread I posted will have less critical chance, the increase in power will actually yield the same or slightly increased DPS on top of the Vitality from the Soldier gear giving you tons more effective health. Also, it’ll be cheaper in the long run, because as you improve if you decide you want full Berserker armor for dungeons you only have to replace a couple of pieces, instead of an entire set.
Personally I find ‘tons of extra health’ to be detrimental. It creates a reliance on a health cushion. The power lack with knight’s is annoying, however this is a training wheels set that once you’ve gone through will also be useful later on if you so choose to do high lvl fractals and run as the sole guardian with the hammer build. When I started out I just ran 6 pieces of knights armor and full zerker trinkets, didn’t really cost that much and you can still get use out of this set if required. I suppose I was not entirely well explained when I said knights, just the armor should be enough.
I don’t particularly see the need to deliberately handicap yourself to make the game more challenging unless you find the game boring from the outset. If you can get the same damage, and better health to boot, there’s no reason not to do so. Ultimately it won’t make much of a difference. He can probably learn to adapt to losing 2-3k health when he switches gear.
Eilir Eirasdottir, Guardian, Tarnished Coast
Painbow.6059: Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong.
Buying a full set of Knight’s is a bad idea. While it does have Precision, the lack of Power on the set is really noticeable. While it’s true that the spread I posted will have less critical chance, the increase in power will actually yield the same or slightly increased DPS on top of the Vitality from the Soldier gear giving you tons more effective health. Also, it’ll be cheaper in the long run, because as you improve if you decide you want full Berserker armor for dungeons you only have to replace a couple of pieces, instead of an entire set.
Personally I find ‘tons of extra health’ to be detrimental. It creates a reliance on a health cushion. The power lack with knight’s is annoying, however this is a training wheels set that once you’ve gone through will also be useful later on if you so choose to do high lvl fractals and run as the sole guardian with the hammer build. When I started out I just ran 6 pieces of knights armor and full zerker trinkets, didn’t really cost that much and you can still get use out of this set if required. I suppose I was not entirely well explained when I said knights, just the armor should be enough.
I don’t particularly see the need to deliberately handicap yourself to make the game more challenging unless you find the game boring from the outset. If you can get the same damage, and better health to boot, there’s no reason not to do so. Ultimately it won’t make much of a difference. He can probably learn to adapt to losing 2-3k health when he switches gear.
I guess my point is that you are deliberately handicapping yourself by running Hitpoints because it garners a reliance. The Knight’s armor will also be of way more use in fractals vs a set with hitpoints so I seriously doubt that owning a set is handicapping at all.
I am curious however, how you know that your soldier’s mix will match the dps of knights with zerker trinkets. Seems like you only have a Critical Chance of 22.86% ( less critical damage hits) for the sacrifice of having more power. It should be noted that you don’t have 0 power with knights armor + zerk trinkets.
Have you run tests for 6 pieces knights (ruby orbs armor I suppose) + full zerk trinkets?
Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|
Without going too heavily into the math (I’m technically working right now…), you’ll find that over time the increased power/low critical chance set will have a more “reliable” damage application versus the more spiky low power/high critical chance set. But both will work out to about even in the end in terms of DPS, it’s just that one will operate more predictably and the other will tend to spike higher. The contrast to this is that if you can reliably open with a crit, high crit (which is to say, high spike damage) stat allocations always have improved DPS over shorter fights. If you can’t reliably open with crits, then you may end up with short fights where your low power and lack of luck with spike damage actually hampered you compared to the reliable set. The longer the duration, the more it evens out. Find a DPS spreadsheet or build one yourself and you can test this with autoattacking.
In the above example though, I actually was comparing knight trinkets with Berserker gems, not Berserker trinkets. I thought you were talking about a complete set of Knight gear. Knights with Berserker trinkets will definitely edge out the spread that I listed. So the above paragraph applies less to that, although the bit about being unlucky with crits in short fights still applies somewhat.
Eilir Eirasdottir, Guardian, Tarnished Coast
Painbow.6059: Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong.
