Guild Wars 2

I don’t WvW too often but I PvE often. I was looking at running Tap Dat Mouse’s Legendary Guardian Build for PvE/WvW which has 3 piece of Knights, 3 pieces of Zerker. It runs 4 out of 6 accessories as Zerker and the rest Knights. Thoughts on this?

Meta dungeon build uses Zerker across the board. Is Knights basically only good to help with WvW and pretty much useless in PvE?

Should I simply get full Zerker for PvE and then a few pieces of Knights for when I do WvW or should I run that 75/25 Zerker/Knight for both WvW and PvE?

Thanks for input in advance!

Ok, here is the thing;

That legendary guard build is outdated, so do NOT use it for PVE. Go for the meta instead, and slowly work on a set of ascended zerker armor/accessories. Start with the accessories as they are much easier to get, but you generally work on both at the same time.

Now here is where i tend to diverge from the rest of the flock. Since i don’t like to be rocking 11k health at all times, i tend to throw in 2-3 pieces of soldier gear into my ascended armor. Nothing too drastic, but it helps. I can also switch to a PTV weapon if the group aint doing so hot. Ofc, if your premade knows what they are doing, equip full zerg and just enjoy the pew pew.

For WVW:
If you wanna be frontline guard and roll with 0/0/6/6/2 AH build, you will need a DIFFERENT armor set. This one HAS TO BE, full PTV. The more zerk gear you have on, the more of a liability to your team you become. Downed guard = soon to be stomped guard = free rally for other team. So keep that in mind. In a zerg you are there to spread constant dmg and provide boom support and STABILITY. You wanna be part of the AoE/hammer ball. Because you have 20 people stacked at any time, you tend to want to spread the damage, to cleave as many people as possible, and thats where the staff shines.
You will need a different armor set, but exotic will work, so don’t fret. Buy it from the TP for like 1g a piece, its that easy. Ascended accessories drop like candy so you should have PTV ones about the same time as the zerk ones.

In Short, your gear and build will depend on what you want to do . Do NOT try to do everything with one set of gear/build unless you want to be mediocre and risk /kick from any serious groups out there.

Knights gear is crap because it provides LESS power than soldiers. So you end up doing similar damage BUT, you take a hit in survivability, and especially in the HP department, which you lack and need the most. NEVER EVER EVER use knights as a guard. You want to mix things up, use a SOLDIER/ZERKER mix, NOT knights.

TLDR: PVE: zerk ASCENDED armor with zerk accessories, using the PVE meta build
WvW: FULL SOLDIER armor and zerk accessories using the meta build.
Feel you are dying, or not liking the low HP in PVE? Sub some zerk accessories /w solder

Thanks Hunter! Appreciate it!

Valkyrie is generally a better choice than soldier’s if you want to maintain a decent amount of HP without taking too much of a hit to your DPS.

Black Box.9312:

Valkyrie is generally a better choice than soldier’s if you want to maintain a decent amount of HP without taking too much of a hit to your DPS.

Problem is that valk stands in no mans land when it comes to PVE and WvW.

The guy is starting out, he doesn’t need to worry about THREE armor sets. hence why i went with the optimal choice

I think people use 3 knights for tanking.

So unless your purpose is to tank, I dont’ think you should use 3 knight.

If you really have prblem surviving in pve. Try to adjust your build around force of will. It basically boost your hp by 75 while sacrificing some dps. The trade of is much better than sacrificing gear IMO.

Get full zerker! learn encounter mechanics along the way… as a guardian if you chain your aegis efficiently’, utilise blinds, reflects and dodges you’ll be fine. When I was learning guardian all those years ago (2 years trolol..) I found jumping straight into the deep end with zerker helped me in the long run. Yeah it was a bit tough at first but it’s all good practice.

Guardian has so much access to damage negation through skills and utility which is something I feel a lot of people take for granted. Why take a hit when you can dodge/blind/block/reflect it whilst dealing way more dps than you would in knights gear. Win/win

However, if you’re REALLY having a seriously problem then just run knight’s but don’t just sit and take all the hits, try and practice your aegis’, blinds, dodges etc as if you were in zerker and then gradually change your gear when you’re comfortable.

Thank you for all the suggestions. What would you suggest for sigils and runes? Scholar? Dolyak? Obviously force, but what other would be good to go with my weapons?

OJM.5103:

Get full zerker! learn encounter mechanics along the way… as a guardian if you chain your aegis efficiently’, utilise blinds, reflects and dodges you’ll be fine. When I was learning guardian all those years ago (2 years trolol..) I found jumping straight into the deep end with zerker helped me in the long run. Yeah it was a bit tough at first but it’s all good practice.

Guardian has so much access to damage negation through skills and utility which is something I feel a lot of people take for granted. Why take a hit when you can dodge/blind/block/reflect it whilst dealing way more dps than you would in knights gear. Win/win

However, if you’re REALLY having a seriously problem then just run knight’s but don’t just sit and take all the hits, try and practice your aegis’, blinds, dodges etc as if you were in zerker and then gradually change your gear when you’re comfortable.

I did exactly that, I am new with my Guardian but I have experience with warrior and engi using just DPS armor, yes when I saw my health being only 9k was quite scary, but overall I think that is better “take the bull by the horns”, my first dungeons’ run with the guardian I just got down one time , still embarrassing but could be worse lol

ZBoss.5610:

Thank you for all the suggestions. What would you suggest for sigils and runes? Scholar? Dolyak? Obviously force, but what other would be good to go with my weapons?

zerk scholar with force (as you said obviously), and then frailty/strength/night/accuracy/energy would be the main secondary ones. Frailty is great with groups that don’t cap vuln (most any pug), strenght for those that don’t cap might (again most any pug), night for night dungeons of course, and accuracy as a nice damage catch all option (the others are better but can be rendered useless), and energy is always a nice defensive fall back.

ZBoss.5610:

Thank you for all the suggestions. What would you suggest for sigils and runes? Scholar? Dolyak? Obviously force, but what other would be good to go with my weapons?

all the popular build is on meta battle. Usually people use that as a template.

for runes I usually go with scholar or traveler. Sometimes those run speed helps. I think some people run pack or something for wvw roaming, metabattle should also list the variations.

sigil i usually go with force/air or force/fire. It’s a good all round sigil to use for all situation.