Guild Wars 2

Returning to Guardian, haven’t seriously played around with it since Meditation Hammer meta. Which do you prefer for a DH build in PvP/WvW and why?

SW/F is my preferred choice.
More movement + blind with Blinding Flash.
The Focus’ shield is a great panic-button.
The Focus’ shield can be popped and it will remain even when you swap weapons.
Sword 3, forgot the name for a bit, is useful to destroy projectiles.

SW/F, less damage but I still like it more.

I’d only go greatsword if it’d be in a big fight and I’d want to pull people without stability into my traps.

Sadly sPvP doesn’t often see fights big enough to justify Greatsword to me.
And WvW…
Let’s allow the dead to rest in peace.
(until the great Necromancers arrive to resummon it.)

Personally, for me currently in PvP I prefer using Sword/Shield. There are some trade offs, but I feel for the most part it is better atm in most games compared to focus. Focus will give you a blind and a few blocks while shield gives you protection, another way to apply aegis to your team and a great way to block projectiles/contest nodes. The protection and heal from detonating shield #5 is just a nice bonus.

A few great uses I have for it are: Longbow druids, other DHs, Reaper Shroud #4 combos for chilling/poison bolts, Rev Sword #2. And on very few occasions knocking back mesmer clones just before they explode (although this is mostly due to luck. It also works well if you need to knock eles out of water overload and have spear of justice on cd.

I usually use it against general team comps with less stability such as 2 necro/1 ele/ 1 DH/ 1 rev, or something similar.

Although I would use focus in many other situations especially when a team is heavy in melee dmg like having 2 scrappers or if the enemy team has a thief and you want to be a little safer on the roads in between points.

In the end I feel like it is more of a play style, but both are very beneficial in certain situations and you should learn to use each of them respectively.

EDIT: I also completely forgot to mention the amazing combo you can pull off with shield and test of faith. Test of Faith>Spear of Justice (pulled through test of faith)>Shield #5 to knock your enemy back through Test of Faith. The combo is easy enough to land you just have to watch for stability. Also keep in mind when executing this combo that passing the threshold for Test of Faith has an icd so you will have to wait about .5s before knocking your opponent back through the ring.

I feel like with longbow, my secondary weapon set is exactly that … secondary. I’ve been using hammer for the CC, but I think sw/f or sw/s work great as well. It really depends on what little edge you are looking for … more CC, defense, or burst.

GS is the only one I haven’t enjoyed much. It just doesn’t seem to have the necessary damage to burst any more.

I’m still working things out for guard myself since I fast levelled mine to 80 but so far I prefer Sword/ Focus, Sword/torch (more for style) or sword/shield when needed to Greatsword. Greatsword is a little boring and doesn’t seem to do enough extra damage to make up for being (seemingly, I’m a guard newb remember) less versatile.

Edit: whoops old post.

sword focus, focus 5 is still one of the best stomp secure skills in the game and the nice thing is in the current meta it also will give your team area frost aura from blasting on necros’ ice fields.