Guild Wars 2

Hi, I am looking to tweak my guardian build so that it has a bit more dps, while maintaining most of my survivability and support.

I’m running the “beginner” AH based guard dungeon build of 0/10/30/30/0 with all knight’s. And I have no complaints it works fine, but I was wondering if it was time for me to try something a little more DPS oriented.

I can survive pretty much anything (3300 armor, 15.6k vit running pure of voice so condi’s dont bother me either) but my attack is at 2700, 50% crit and 42% crit damage. I was wondering what would you guys recommend I should do for increasing my dps output a bit while keeping my AH.

I already have a zerk warrior and I don’t want to play my guard like another warrior, go balls to the wall with dps or whatnot. The unique class ability of guards seem to be (among other things) their ability to heal themselves and buff allies, I really like that. If possible I want to keep Altruistic healing while upping my dps output, but if you guys highly recommend I move away from AH I’m willing to listen to your reasoning. I don’t know I’m not an expert hence I made this thread, I’m pretty flexible and am just gathering info at this pt. Like I said my guard build works, but I feel like I have enough experience with her to have a little less survivability in favor of more dps.

Specific gear that I’m running:
All knight’s with beryl orbs
2 celestial trinkets, working on getting all celestial (but I’ve been thinking about getting the rest zerker, not sure if that’s a good idea).
All knights GS with signet of fire and Knight’s staff with signet of energy.

I have about 20 gold to burn so lets be reasonable when recommending radical gear changes lol. Thanks to all in advance for any advice!

Before I provide an excessive recitation of my personal guardian history, I will first respond to your request for an intermediate build. If you want to keep a similar play style to your AH guardian, Hamartia has just the build for you: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84424-the-new-guardian-anchor-build/

His stated goal is the same as your request: an intermediate build that has increased damage over the typical 0/x/30/30/x AH guardian while maintaining that familiar AH playstyle. In short, your heals come from greatsword, especially whirling wrath on multiple foes, instead of altruistic healing.

If you get comfortable with that build and feel yourself still wanting more DPS, I highly recommend looking at both of these builds by BrazilTheHue and GuanglaiKangyi:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83701-the-perfect-dps-guardian-build/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83822-guardian-greatsword-dps-build-guide/

Brazil’s build is focused on having high damage while maximizing party utility (it is the build that I run today for most content). GK’s build puts a greater focus on maximizing personal and party damage output. Both are excellent.

I followed a similar progression as you did as I got more comfortable with my guardian. I started out with an AH-EM 0/0/30/30/10 build with full soldiers armor with emerald trinkets. Eventually, I moved to full berserker armor, and replaced the emerald trinkets with berserker ascended trinkets as I acquired them. The gear change was a decent boost to damage but not what I was hoping to ultimately attain.

As I got better, I found that in PvE content the heals from AH were unnecessary. It is far better to work on your skill at timing blocks, blinds, and dodges to avoid the damage in the first place.

Eventually I moved to a 0/30/0/30/10 hammer build with full berserker gear. The hammer symbol continuously granting protection (33% damage decrease) and slotting signet of judgment (further 10% damage reduction) made it still feel incredibly tanky despite losing the 300 toughness from the honor trait line.

Nowadays, I still run the 0/30/0/30/10 trait spread but with sword/focus and either greatsword or staff as my swap (depending upon situation and group). It is nearly identical to Brazil’s build that I linked above. The damage is very good for guardian but not the maximum that you can reach with the class.

However, I still provide excellent party support through shouts applying boons, shouts converting conditions to boons (pure of voice), as well as providing tons of blinds and blocks to help the party mitigate damage. Also, the 10 points in virtues allows me to trait for extended duration and reduced cooldown on consecrations for more uptime on reflects and/or fire fields, or greater uptime on shield of the avenger with extended spirit weapon duration. These are invaluable and the main reason to bring a guardian in harder dungeon paths and fractals of the mists. The final thing I like is that I can switch back to my hammer build at any time since it just requires changing the traits and weapons, not the trait allocation itself.

Hopefully my rambling, incoherent response provides you a starting point for transforming your current build.

Copying this from a similar thread:

The basic skeleton for a damage build for guardians is something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFAxERh77YFORYzIgAsqQ8wUgR4D-jAyAYLAqAQyTZN7JIWZLiGraBTdSEV7OKiWNA-e

You can pretty much make that work with any weapon choices you want by picking the last 15 points. Obviously you can swap in more damage gear as you’re more comfortable with the class, but that’s a decent place to start.

With that setup, you’ll have access to Aegis, numerous AoE blinds and pretty high damage while being sturdy enough to survive most situations.

Some of the traits that are really powerful and easy to pick up are:
Zealous Blade for the Greatsword
2H mastery for the Greatsword
Right Handed Strength for the 1h Weapons
Writ of Persistence for the Hammer
Pure of Voice for extra condition removal
Master of Consecrations for extra long Wall of Reflection (which is one of your most powerful skills in many situations)