Guild Wars 2

Been gone a long time and some recent posts have inspired me to come back and test things again to do that whole meta break that would be so revolutionary but never happens.

That said I was contemplating why the pve meta build is so good. The answer is active defense/utility. Blinds and blocks cover the need for survival, allowing full zerker.

Taking that a step further I wanted to test more focused active defense in spvp.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR8dElCRBGBlpxbDmBYA3A

This is what I would consider to be the skeleton of active defense. Maximized blind and aegis block cooldown reduction so that it happens more often in combat.

The next logical step would be to captialize on the blinds and apply vulnerability on them, thus putting you at:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR8dElCRBARlpJ0qAAzYYGuB

You now have 3 points to spend, could put 1 more into radiance to hasten refresh on voj blind and might, then 2 into zeal for fiery wrath and more power/dmg, or just go all 3 into radiance for powerful blades and radiant power for the 10% dmg buff there.

Another option may be 1 into radiance and the remaining 2 maybe into honor picking up pure of heart for some survival or empowering might for more dmg? Possibly even pure of voice since shouts are on short cooldown.

Since we are focusing on active defense it should be zerker amulet and maybe strength runes.

Energy sigil for sure, for constant swapping and more active survival with blinds/dodges on both weapons, secondary sigil could be dps or survival oriented.

I just ran this and it did really well against 1v1/2 but was easily focused down. I even ran with intelligence sigils for auto crits on swaps, but it is missing something overall.

How would you as the community try to build towards active defense dps?

What you’re looking for is any meditation build. There are tons posted on the forums. This is a really good one tho

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Empowering-Wrath-Ascended-Stella-Alamarr

been there, done that since launch, looking to try new things and theory craft. New ideas not old ones, or we go stale.

….no idea what youre tryin to do then. Thats what medi guard does, survive through blinds/blocks/evades, since you have a 10k base health pool

Edit: after looking at your build it just looks like youre trying to do a DPS guard, but without the things that make them decent, meditations.

I think “active defense” on the guardian is greatly over rated. All our blinds have a rather lengthy casting time/animation, specially so the GS one.

Aegis is miserably scarce, you can pull about 4 per minute, and if you actually do, it goes down the hill from there decreasing the aegis pm.

it is also not helped by the fact anything and everything triggers both Aegis and Blinds, like aoe for instance or a regular auto attack, so while an interrupt directly disrupts the skill aimed at you, aegis/blinds must in most cases be preemptively cast is poped by circumstantial/environmental damage.

It also does not get into account how unreliable it is when facing summons, which all the classes other than warriors use, or how it also does not work against channeled skills like Thiefs pistol 3 (Repeater) or Engis Flamethrower (just to name a type of skill not that this one in particular is any good).

Active defense is part of the guard mechanic and you’ll use it in all game modes. That said, you can’t rely only on active defenses in pvp because you can’t avoid all incoming damages. Best guards does rely heavily on blinds, blocks, etc, but they still need to trait either for meditation heal as a dps spec or ah as a bunker spec.

As far as your build goes, you’re really squishy for any sort of pvp, It can work as a roaming spec in www, but that’s about all. I would swap two handed mastery for empowering wrath if you’re using strenght runes. The minor in valor isn’t incredibly useful either, my call would be either 0/5/0/4/4 or 0/3/0/4/6 if you really want to play like that.

CMF.5461:

been there, done that since launch, looking to try new things and theory craft. New ideas not old ones, or we go stale.

I’ve actually fought a guy who played a very similar spec to that. He also had absolute resolution To help him combat condis.

I liked his build. Of course, it would do nothing against tanky characters but, it definitely would fry the brains out of any condi class.

oxtred.7658:

Active defense is part of the guard mechanic and you’ll use it in all game modes. That said, you can’t rely only on active defenses in pvp because you can’t avoid all incoming damages. Best guards does rely heavily on blinds, blocks, etc, but they still need to trait either for meditation heal as a dps spec or ah as a bunker spec.

As far as your build goes, you’re really squishy for any sort of pvp, It can work as a roaming spec in www, but that’s about all. I would swap two handed mastery for empowering wrath if you’re using strenght runes. The minor in valor isn’t incredibly useful either, my call would be either 0/5/0/4/4 or 0/3/0/4/6 if you really want to play like that.

I was actually surprised how long I was able to survive with overlapping ae blinds and timed aegis triggers while having no real regenerative ability. Paper for sure, but was going for a proof of concept so tried to run without monk’s focus or altruistic healing.

It is missing something, which is why I opened up the idea to the community for theory crafting. It survived about as long as a medi guard would, but didn’t recover for chain fights quickly enough, thus lack of sustain for long fights (limit of many/most dps builds).

In the end I keep building back to meditations, which is why I was so quick to shut down the earlier link. I already know about meditations and standardized meta builds, trying to see what we can do outside of the box.

Maybe creative use of sigil/runes or something, not competitive for sure, but just experimenting for fun.

Thanks for input all and I hope people stay encouraged to push the boundaries instead of limiting themselves to what is already known.

This is exactly what u asked for in ur post.

CMF.5461:

oxtred.7658:

Active defense is part of the guard mechanic and you’ll use it in all game modes. That said, you can’t rely only on active defenses in pvp because you can’t avoid all incoming damages. Best guards does rely heavily on blinds, blocks, etc, but they still need to trait either for meditation heal as a dps spec or ah as a bunker spec.

As far as your build goes, you’re really squishy for any sort of pvp, It can work as a roaming spec in www, but that’s about all. I would swap two handed mastery for empowering wrath if you’re using strenght runes. The minor in valor isn’t incredibly useful either, my call would be either 0/5/0/4/4 or 0/3/0/4/6 if you really want to play like that.

I was actually surprised how long I was able to survive with overlapping ae blinds and timed aegis triggers while having no real regenerative ability. Paper for sure, but was going for a proof of concept so tried to run without monk’s focus or altruistic healing.

It is missing something, which is why I opened up the idea to the community for theory crafting. It survived about as long as a medi guard would, but didn’t recover for chain fights quickly enough, thus lack of sustain for long fights (limit of many/most dps builds).

In the end I keep building back to meditations, which is why I was so quick to shut down the earlier link. I already know about meditations and standardized meta builds, trying to see what we can do outside of the box.

Maybe creative use of sigil/runes or something, not competitive for sure, but just experimenting for fun.

Thanks for input all and I hope people stay encouraged to push the boundaries instead of limiting themselves to what is already known.

How was that the meta? That’s nothing close to meta.

Topic change a bit:

Point clearing in sPvP, it has become increasingly more deadly for bunkers to stay on point because of the excessive amount of target AoE from engineers, necros, elementalists, rangers, mesmers.

I think warrior and thieves can contribute, but to a lesser degree than the above listed.

Considering our weapon selection, we typically are PBAoE (putting us in the thick of the damage and dying). Our ranged dps item, the scepter will distribute damage between all the targets inside only doing one or two hits per a target and even possibly wiffing and missing some of the bolts.

In comes the staff. Staff in WvW and PvE open world is an amazing “tag” weapon, but most people ignore it because the dps is bad and mostly is a support weapon.

I feel it can satisfy the requirement for point clearing ae spam though. In optimal sPvP conditions you can have it hit for about 800-1500 per attack every +/- 1 second. It puts us outside of the ae zone and it has a very wide cone to maximize target potential (up to 5).

In experimenting, I put a sigil of rage on it, and it is quite entertaining and procs frequently on weapon switch to staff. Auto attack under haste gives about 7 attacks in 3 seconds (versus about 3 attacks in 3 seconds doing 4500 dmg). This provides a potential 10k burst every 30 seconds of sigil cooldown to 5 targets on ae of a point. Very doable in real gameplay situations.

Maybe not build for damage in the long run with staff, but one of the best ways to get effectiveness out of staff is to give it a sigil of rage and auto attack.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAS7dlsApcoVDxZI8DNR8QZVHUdAkAP61zwTmDA-TZBHwAW2fAwDAo8BBIwVAAZZAA

this is what i have been playing since the april patch. (not playing it anymore because i got bored and went leroy zerg)

its very tanky and does a constant 700-800 burn dmg. the combo of hammer + intell will get you 3-6k crits. i had loads of fun with this build, problaby the strongest 1v1 build for a guardian.

me too dont like to play the usual medi zerk build, hipster builds ftw;D

I’ve been tossing around the idea to swap monk’s focus for unscathed contender, for more burst.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQBoi4hKrU02PoFqKAw5yfIIA

An extra 20% damage on joining a team fight with a SoW>WW>JI could help put 1 or 2 down depending on timing and positioning.

I don’t know how I feel about dropping ~10k healing per minute though just to get that extra burst in. Feels like high risk high reward, but super cheesy too. Relies completely on blinds and blocks for any sort of sustain.

Aka, a slow thief

Carpboy.7145:

Aka, a slow thief

lol said the same thing