Q:
Can anyone tell me whats different on guards?
Everything shot shuffled up. Traits combined, trait lines spread out, and the 3 trait limitation makes the old scattered builds hard to recreate. If you depended on mixing multiple trait lines, its harder now to make those work. But if you focused into a few GM traits, the consolations make things easier.
The only majorly glaring issue is that weapon cool down traits are pretty much a mess. Just hope the ones you want aren’t competing with the utility traits you need.
As for the meta…. still being figured out. Medi guards are current favorite until the symbols trait gets fixed, which could go either way depending on what the DPS of hammers can pull off when working as intended.
Shields still suck outside of specific world boss fights, and Consecrations have Ground targeting standard (which is messing up their ease of use in major way). GS is still viable for now… but again… Symbols.
But I wouldn’t bother gearing up until the meta settles. The missing stats we used to get from traits messes with the cadence of a quite a few builds. If you have full zerks, I’d recommend a Medi build in the interim, as it doesn’t require rune synergy and plays like a glass cannon any way.
Everything shot shuffled up. Traits combined, trait lines spread out, and the 3 trait limitation makes the old scattered builds hard to recreate. If you depended on mixing multiple trait lines, its harder now to make those work. But if you focused into a few GM traits, the consolations make things easier.
The only majorly glaring issue is that weapon cool down traits are pretty much a mess. Just hope the ones you want aren’t competing with the utility traits you need.
As for the meta…. still being figured out. Medi guards are current favorite until the symbols trait gets fixed, which could go either way depending on what the DPS of hammers can pull off when working as intended.
Shields still suck outside of specific world boss fights, and Consecrations have Ground targeting standard (which is messing up their ease of use in major way). GS is still viable for now… but again… Symbols.
But I wouldn’t bother gearing up until the meta settles. The missing stats we used to get from traits messes with the cadence of a quite a few builds. If you have full zerks, I’d recommend a Medi build in the interim, as it doesn’t require rune synergy and plays like a glass cannon any way.
What about the different weapons?
Mace/greatsword/hammer/focus etc
Where do all of the guardian weapons currently stand?
Theres no “where they stand”. The key trait that could determine the difference between optimal and sub-par is currently disabled. (Symbolic Avenger)
Until we can see how that works in practice, everything else is sitting on the face value of their weapon skills. Unless you’re seeking a pure condi build… in which case just use things that give burning.
Disclaimer: This post assumes all traits working as intended rather than some of their current bugged/disabled state.
In PvE, weapons with symbols are getting more attention due to the re-work of the traits, Zeal specifically.
Greatsword and Mace offer the highest DPS if you can keep up momentum on your rotations. Focus is used for its burst and blocks while Torch is kept on hand (on off-hand?) for sustained DPS. Otherwise Hammer and Mace offer a more relaxed playstyle while still providing competitive DPS.
Greatsword also gets access to CD reduction for more DPS orientated builds that never got to select Two-Handed Mastery.
Bulwark Trait for Mace gives you free heal stacks for block with a Mace…which it already does a good job at; the same trait also reduces cd on Mace skills which makes the symbol on it nearly permanent when combined with Writ.
Writ of Persistence is another highly favored trait if you’re playing with Symbols and are going with Honor. Honor is practically required if you’re going with Hammer though.
Scepter is still our best ranged weapon or to be used against big-boxed-bossed. They took away its flat damage modifier trait for a might stacking trait, but it competes with fiery wrath.
Sword has been shelved due to losing its Powerful Blades trait. Utility of this weapon is limited to minor “blinking” shenanigans and when extra blinds are needed. If going the Blind route Radiance is encouraged for VoJ blind synergy as well.
Staff is still considered the ‘Loot Stick’. They have a trait giving the weapon a +20% Boon duration, but we break about even now that Virtues doesn’t have extended Boon duration.
Torch got quite a damage increase due to Radiance giving you a free 4 burst on crit every 10 seconds.
Focus is more defensive than ever by being able to trait for Protection on Focus skill use.
Shield got its cd’s cut by quite a bit, and its respective trait cuts it down even more while offering toughness. Overall, still on the ‘meh’ side of the weapons selection.
PvE
- GS is pretty much at the same place it used to be.
- Mace replaced Sword as the main secondary weapon. Most build have one now.
- Sword lost it’s place, but like Mace before, it’s not useless. A GS Sw/T build is around 10% less dps than a GS M/T build.
- Hammer is still less good than GS + M/T, but you lose less dps from it than you used to. Now an Hammer + M/T build is around 5% less dps than a GS + M/T build.
- Scepter build are still the highest dps against large/slow bosses.
Most build use either Z/R/V or Z/R/H for traits. Z/H/V is decent on Hammer, but still a dps lost.
For PvP
GS replace Hammer as the most popular weapon on medi build mostly because you can’t have Glacial Hearts with Absolute Resolution and the GS trait now also reduce cooldown.
For now Medi build still are the most popular, but I saw some really nasty dps from burning guardian. We’ll see what will happen with that.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Disclaimer: This post assumes all traits working as intended rather than some of their current bugged/disabled state.
In PvE, weapons with symbols are getting more attention due to the re-work of the traits, Zeal specifically.
Greatsword and Mace offer the highest DPS if you can keep up momentum on your rotations. Focus is used for its burst and blocks while Torch is kept on hand (on off-hand?) for sustained DPS. Otherwise Hammer and Mace offer a more relaxed playstyle while still providing competitive DPS.
Greatsword also gets access to CD reduction for more DPS orientated builds that never got to select Two-Handed Mastery.
Bulwark Trait for Mace gives you free heal stacks for block with a Mace…which it already does a good job at; the same trait also reduces cd on Mace skills which makes the symbol on it nearly permanent when combined with Writ.
Writ of Persistence is another highly favored trait if you’re playing with Symbols and are going with Honor. Honor is practically required if you’re going with Hammer though.
Scepter is still our best ranged weapon or to be used against big-boxed-bossed. They took away its flat damage modifier trait for a might stacking trait, but it competes with fiery wrath.
Sword has been shelved due to losing its Powerful Blades trait. Utility of this weapon is limited to minor “blinking” shenanigans and when extra blinds are needed. If going the Blind route Radiance is encouraged for VoJ blind synergy as well.
Staff is still considered the ‘Loot Stick’. They have a trait giving the weapon a +20% Boon duration, but we break about even now that Virtues doesn’t have extended Boon duration.
Torch got quite a damage increase due to Radiance giving you a free 4 burst on crit every 10 seconds.
Focus is more defensive than ever by being able to trait for Protection on Focus skill use.
Shield got its cd’s cut by quite a bit, and its respective trait cuts it down even more while offering toughness. Overall, still on the ‘meh’ side of the weapons selection.
This is exactly the kind of post i was looking for.
So with hammer and mace doing so well does that mean that an Altruistic healing build is now favored with tanky healer gear over zerker? Or is Zerker still the go to for all gear for a guardian?
Nope, Berserker equipment still reigns supreme in the PvE realm, and Altruistic Healing is still considered to be a crutch trait. AH is also in Valor which is a non-optimal Spec to take in PvE in terms of DPS.
Burn builds have been proposed as an alternative now that conditions have been overhauled, but the last set of numbers I saw placed condi/burn builds at ~14% DPS loss over traditional Power-based builds (this likely has changed since).