Guild Wars 2

I’ve just returned to playing Guardian (and by that I mean GW2 in general. Played at launch, stopped several months back), and in the last couple of days have mostly been working on Twilight Assault, the Aetherblades path. After like.. 6 runs or so, I’m thinking about a couple of things.

My first order of business upon returning was figuring out what gear to run with for dungeons. Most of what I saw said ‘zerker or bust’, basically saying more damage is always good because you’re trash if you get hit anyway. Well, I’m trash. After a few runs in full zerker trying to DPS, I wasn’t happy. Switched up my traits to a boon duration setup and hammer/staff. 30 virtues/30 honor/10 valor (10% damage boost). Liking it a lot better, but still have no self sustainability. Only support.

I’m missing the survivability of a more defensive type build. There were many situations in these dungeon runs where more staying power would have helped the group stay alive, and more damage really didn’t do much. I do really like the damage I am getting from running full zerker and traiting for support, but I just go down so quickly.

Any advice?

If you desperately need sustain and lack a lot of practice, try to run full zerker with an AH build (0/0/30/30/10). Though these builds unfortunately promote bad playstyle (since they can make you really lazy), they are quite good for people who aren’t (yet) proficient in damage avoidance and run mostly with PUGs.

Well, I want to keep my support. I do play with mostly PUGs, and so a lot of the time it isn’t even my own damage avoidance I’m concerned about. I like playing this way, and have no desire to play with players who seldom miss dodges and steamroll dungeons. I like the challenge, and there would be no point in running them to me if I always won. That being said, I think in my own experience, a Guardian with some staying power, healing, and support capability is pretty invaluable.

Basically, I want a “if-kitten-hits-the-fan” Guardian, not an “according to plan” Guardian. I didn’t address this much in the OP, but the suggestion to go AH got me thinking.

You still have more than enough support in an AHEM build compared to that virtues stuff. The big difference is that you’ll still deal somehow acceptable damage and have great survivability.

And I suppose I should clarify, I’m not horrendous. I can dodge decently well, but Berserker’s offers no room for error. I am never going to strive for zero error, and I need some padding. What’re my options, keeping in mind a general preference for group support? I realize anything but Berserker’s effectively kills my damage but I don’t see much choice for difficult dungeon runs and varying skill levels.

If you roll 0/30/0/30/10 sword/focus + GS you’ll have blind spam from sword 2, focus 4, gs 3 and f1 virtue which is what you’ll use as your main sources of damage mitigation. Then you’ll have three blocks on focus 5, projectile reflection/absorption on sword 3, wall of reflection and shield of the avenger and egis from f3 virtue and retreat. Also you’ll have a HP buffer from 30 in honour and can trait things like PoV, superor aria and … something else (empowering might works for pug groups).

The key to staying alive is using all of your resources at the right time and paying attention, you can’t just lazily autoattack or spam cooldowns.

Cpt, I suppose I didn’t consider going AH gets me even more damage in the first place (compared to not going into Valor at all). I’m sure the extra 30% crit damage brings out the strength of Berserker’s. In the case that my damage and survivability go up, it’s a no brainer. As far as runes go, would still going for boon duration have any desirable effect? 10% from virtues and another 40-45% from runes is still pretty sizable, though I don’t know if that benefits me. I go for Two Handed Mastery in Honor and use Staff/Hammer?