Guild Wars 2

So i been lvl 80 for a while and been trying to find out what exotic armor set i should get as a guardian. As i dont want to waste my money and having to rebuy a whole other set i would like some help from you guys.

At the moment i play as a DPS guardian with full power and precision and critt. But i am doing more WvWvW evry day. So do i stay as a DPS guardian or switch to something else. Do i get say the Berserker Draconic exotic set or something else.

Hope you all can help.

This is really a question that only you can answer for yourself. You know what the stats are you want. You can choose to mix and match whatever sets or parts you want together to make a custom set if you wanted to. Armor choice should come down to your personal preferance. Not what everyone else thinks you should use.

Go naked, you’re just as effective as with armour i.e. not.

Personally, I like the Precision/Vitality/Healing god-set armors. Leaves room for other trait builds.

I soon have a full exotic set of berserkers stuff, mostly for PvE purposes. But I’m gonna be getting a full exotic set of ’’soldiers’’ stuff aswell (Power, Vit, Tough), for WvW. Why? Well, because I’ll be able to survive better. The higher the chances of escaping with my life from a big zerg or a failed small skirmish, the better, and offensive stats isn’t really ’’needed’’ that much, considering that in organized WvW, most of the damage against structures comes from siege weapons anyways.

If you are going for a dps build as a guardian, try to focus not only on raw damage (power), but also on condition damage. It’s true, the big numbers of the 3rd Greatsword skill are nice to see, but many attacks (actually, all attacks if you don’t use your f1) apply condition damage, so try to get that as high as possible aswell.
Personally I’m going for a balanced build, focused on condition removal, survivability and some dps also (I didn’t want to go full support/tank and do no damage). That said, the build I’m using is 0/30/10/10/20. I’m using Carrion gear (Power, Vit, Cond damage) and will be balancing that out with Cleric’s trinkets (Tough, Healing power, precision)

Where did you find this exotic ‘soldier’ armor at Androme? The only one I can find is the Vigil one, but it is just a yellow.

Afaik there is a power/toughness/vit set from karma vendor @ Melandru’s temple (or whatever its called) Think its an aurora set.

For those of you looking for the PvP knight set. It exists in armor form at the God Karma Venders. No one vender has each piece but between them all you can get a full set.

Blackfire, check out the exotic versions of the dungeon sets at Lion’s Arch. There’s three different stat sets for each exotic armor set, and I believe Sorrow’s Embrace has a Power/Vitality/toughness set.

i’m using the full knight exotic set myself. quite low hp at 15000 but 3200 defense with a GS is nice in WvW. it also gives power and precision so you get nice dps. i have something like 2850 attack and 39% critical.

works well so far, 900 WvW kills and died maybe 50 times in total. of course you have to be careful and use condition removers though, plus you’re utterly useless in ranged combat.

cleric all the way.

all cleric armor = power, toughness, healing.. healing being the high stat

this is a huge bonus to survivabilty and team play.. knight is absurdly beneficial if you are doing spvp and soloing stuff, but even cleric stands up just as well because the 1350 healing power can go a very, very long way to keeping you and friendlies up… dodge rolls alone do 1600 healing per roll

i havent found a single person in wvw that has taken me down 1v1 and i consisitently do 2v1 and come out on top. as long as you are built around support, cleric can give good solid consistent dps while still giving tons of survivability, armor, healing, and group support for WvW

I second cleric, though I use a defensive/support build which is buffed tremendously by it.

I definitely agree on the Cleric armor choice. I am also running a 0/0/30/30/10 high support, high durability build and this armor is just fantastic. I plan on picking up a few pieces of jewelry to buff up my vitality some (like a mix of Shaman’s and Soldiers?), but we’ll see how that goes after I finish crafting my armor set.

Right now, I feel like a total beast most of the time. Between my durability and all my healing, I can survive and support my team in dungeons through basically anything. My damage isn’t amazing, but I die probably less than 10% as much as most people I see in dungeons.

I run heavily focused on shouts and convictions in dungeons, swapping stuff out when I need to.

Also, my name is in my signature, if you need any armor or weapons made, let me know. I just hit 400 WS and AS last night, and have bought all the karma recipes for gear.

Psy.6153:

It kinda sucks as Guardians have to run around with 15k hp if they wear Berserkers, where warrior can put the same set on and have 23k hp, and theres no gear ingame which reflects Knights amulet so we have to choose gear with toughness or healing from crafted and karma

really gay

1) Gay isnt bad.

2) Youre absolutely wrong. Yes, they get 8k more base hp. But we get as much health via throughput. We have heals, and we dont have to really spend much to get them. Your signet is better, you can go meditations and heal for 2k hp each cast (can cast like 7 over 45 sec) while going high condition damage.

I use of the undead in pvp, this gives me toughness and condition dmg. It works great.

Furtthermore, in wvw, i use Power + Toughness + Healing. So idk where youre getting we dont have the combo, we do. And not everything has to “stack perfectly” you could use amulet to offset a weakness in your build/other items.

We can certainly take more punishment than a warrior.

Knights amulet in sPvP is pow precision vita, thats the combo i said we dont get, sorry to disappoint you
And also what youre saying is that we must take meditations and a 30 point tree that i dont want to compensate for what warrior dps get? Because aside from that an 80 point virtue passive isnt going to convince me

Psy.6153:

Knights amulet in sPvP is pow precision vita, thats the combo i said we dont get, sorry to disappoint you
And also what youre saying is that we must take meditations and a 30 point tree that i dont want to compensate for what warrior dps get? Because aside from that an 80 point virtue passive isnt going to convince me

It is fairly apparent you don’t know what you are talking about. Vitality doesn’t really mean anything. So a Warrior has more HP to heal, good for them. I can out last basically any class I have played with as a Guardian, with half the HP. Toughness and Healing power make a huge difference. Our skills, passive regen, and heals make a huge difference. I can dodge roll 2 times and heal like 30% of my HP.

Warrior DPS gets owned in half a second. I was in a dungeon with a faceroll warrior last night, straight damage. I had to rez him at least 30 times in one fight. Was easily the worst build/player I have ever seen.

A glass cannon build is going to suck balls in difficult PvE and even PvP. You have to focus on survivability somewhat, just having a high Vitality is only one part of the puzzle. The moment you are focused, or run out of endurance … you are dead … one shotted. A dead player, is a worthless player, especially if it happens a lot.

it’ll depend on your playstyle, i went with a mix of valkyrie and knights for the exotics to balance out toughness / vitality and crit dmg/chance, running berserker primary and valkyrie secondary weapons.

i believe its important to get a good balance between vit + toughness – vit is mainly there to deal with conditions, whilst toughness from direct dmg, i like to be able to deal with all circumstances to a good degree.

i’m relying on honor line for +healing, whilst not as strong as full clerics bonus, it tends to do for my playstyle.

initially had carrion set running burning build but after testing few things out, settled on building gear traits around “Renewed Justice” (Virtue of Justice is renewed whenever you kill a foe) with Justice is Blind and Inspired Virtue.
Works really well in pve and group attacks in sPvP.

I call for General Consent on the Cleric set. you don’t get the offensive boost but you become really difficult to kill while being able to spam support skills to your allies and field boosted heals.

Anyone tried Altruistic Healing Grandmaster trait and how its effected by healing power?

Im planning on running valkyrie mixed with knigths

As a rule of thumb, avoid anything related to condition damage like the plague, it’s the worst attribute for Guardians. Burning stacks on duration and higher burning damage takes priority.Which means you gain very little dps/second from it,not to mention if other people have higher burning damage,it will take priority above yours and you may even never take damage credit for it,since your ticks will be at the bottom of the priority list to hit.

Power,Precision,Crit damage,Vitality and Toughness are all important depending on your setup.
Healing power is a little lackluster but still useful and condition damage is an absolute waste of an attribute.

so condition damage for guardians are really a waste? even with spectral weapons dealing burning damage? If that’s the case I’ve gone for a fail build and need to start from scratch

wtf
i got one guy saying guardian main dmg is from condition and suggested 25 radiance and 10 zeal
now i read this topic and another guy says condition dmg is trash
wtf??

yeah I’m confused as well. I’ve read that condition damage is really good.. but this says otherwise…

As a rule of thumb, avoid anything related to condition damage like the plague, it’s the worst attribute for Guardians. Burning stacks on duration and higher burning damage takes priority.Which means you gain very little dps/second from it,not to mention if other people have higher burning damage,it will take priority above yours and you may even never take damage credit for it,since your ticks will be at the bottom of the priority list to hit.
Power,Precision,Crit damage,Vitality and Toughness are all important depending on your setup.
Healing power is a little lackluster but still useful and condition damage is an absolute waste of an attribute.

Ok, i’ll clarify this a bit since it raised some confusion (SO NOBODY USE SKILLS YET! haha)

For Burning:

• Burning stacks DURATION not damage
• Burning takes the character’s condition damage as a queue ticket, the highest damage goes first at the duration the character used it
  - example of above is using VoJ on yourself and a fully-speced condition damage necro… you attack a mob, burn it for 10 sec… first 5 sec the necro’s burn, the 2nd 5 sec your burn… means your condition damage isn’t worth anything until that time it ticks.
• Burning is the most reliable condition for guardians, so there is no “efficient” way to make use of condition damage other than burning
• To make your condition damage really worth it, you have to really pour it in so that you know for sure you’re the one burning the mob (think of it as the line you cross between magikarp and gyarados)

For healing:

• its scales terribad, with good reason, since if it scaled too well then we’d be effectively healers
• [ healing power : toughness ] as [ power : precision ] thus cleric stuff is as self-supporting as berserker stuff (p.s. crit damage is pretty difficult to make worth it so it is much less valuable to precision)
• high vitality will just kitten your healing power since you are not getting enough percentage health back with numeric heals (which they all are)
• aoe heals are always taken for their “multiplicative effect” when used in groups, thus its the only (and you can quote me on this) really effective use of healing power… also self-heals are good initially without healing power for the reason that no multiplier means you are actually losing on benefits by stacking healing power (good guy Anet made self heals viable without any healing power at all)

More on topic:
i already have a MF set, you should always consider getting one early when you hit 80… planning on pow/tou/vit stuff like vigil armor since the stuff from dungeon vendor morro has insane token costs and aurora stuff isn’t a complete set. As i farm for the gold… i’d also consider FULL KNIGHT armor (tou/pow/prec) and try to pump vit using accessories. i’ll be really weak to conditions with little vit (from not mixing in valkyrie) but i’ll let retaliation and removals deal with that.

@ErzaScarlet

wtf
i got one guy saying guardian main dmg is from condition and suggested 25 radiance and 10 zeal
now i read this topic and another guy says condition dmg is trash
wtf??

If you’re talking about me, then you’re mistaken. My build is strictly “spike” damage with crit + c.dmg. I’ve never really taken a liking to burning (or condition in general). As Gabo pointed it out, you need to have high enough condition damage for it to be worth anything. Even if you have all your gears build for condition, there’s no guarantee because of sigil of corruption. The other guy could have a higher stack than you or you could be downed and lose all your stacks when you have 25.

Soldier’s Amulet (Power, Toughness, Vitality) is the best imho. It doesn’t exist as accessories from crafting so I fill those slots with cleric. You can get this spread all but helmet from Karma Orr vendors, Sorrow’s Embrace or Honor of the Waves.

I find Healing pointless to stack above 1k, 500-700 is more than enough(reachable with traits + accessories) as the difference becomes minimal. With full Cleric’s you have really really low HP, meaning you’re very easy bait for condition damage. Guardians do have a lot of ways to drop conditions, but when all those are on CD, the only thing that can save you is more HP. Plus, Tome of Courage full heals you no matter what, sacrificing that much just for a fatter regen or resolve isn’t worth it in my eyes

Also, most other classes that run condition builds have Bleeding AND Burning or Poison, in the case of Engineer and Rangers, all three. Guardians only really have access to Burning and no bleeding outside of Sigil of Earth, makes for akitten poor candidate for condition builds.

ok everyone is saying that with full cleric’s armor condinion dammage kills you. Well i run a full cleric’s set, but with my signit and purity that 2 removals every 10 sec as well as sup runes of the soldier. So i also have 3 shouts that removes a condition each and also my virtue removes 3 conditions. with my build my passive healing from my virtue is insane and even 2 v 1 condiitions just cant stay on me.

For WvW – Cleric’s, no doubt about it.

If you’re soloing in WvW you’re doing it wrong. You don’t have to zerg, but you should be rolling in a group of 3-5 at least.

That makes your toughness and survivability, on top of healing power (giving others survivability), KEY to fights.

I can heal over 20k health to those around me every 40 seconds, that’s without popping my elite and using the good book.

Hi guys, new to 80 here coming from an 80 Ele and also leaning towards Cleric as my preference but wanted to ask about testing stats in the Mists.

How closely do the armour set stats match the sPVP amulets you get to test, would I need a full exotic set and jewels to come close or do the rares add up? The maths looks off when I compare what I’m getting from Cleric Gladiators compared to the Cleric’s Amulet.

But would general consensus be that Cleric is the way to go since I’m running a boon heal build with GS/Mace + Focus (0,15,30,20,5). I’ll only be using my Guard for dungeons and wvw and not really that interested in an offensive guardian.

So if the condition damage build is pretty bad.. Then I guess the spectral weapon build is bad as well? as they do inflict burning damage.

So do anyone have a good build to recommend, mainly using Greatsword. I mostly play WvW.

So if the condition damage build is pretty bad.. Then I guess the spectral weapon build is bad as well? as they do inflict burning damage.
So do anyone have a good build to recommend, mainly using Greatsword. I mostly play WvW.

My exact build. currently using MF stuff for farming so it might seem a bit off, but this is the best in terms of a good offensive build i can think of for GS.

For WvW, this works,but remember that GS doesn’t give much CC and you’d only really be able to shine in smaller clashes.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVcz0mzMmRGaomnLvMpp0G0Mkoszs

As for spirit weapon burning, its not so much you burning the life out of targets, its applying the conditions and making use of your traits that deal effects on top of it (like +10% damage on burning foes). I seriously hope you didn’t think that the spirit weapons are a summon > forget > free kill build, because its so not.

gabo.6721:

So if the condition damage build is pretty bad.. Then I guess the spectral weapon build is bad as well? as they do inflict burning damage.
So do anyone have a good build to recommend, mainly using Greatsword. I mostly play WvW.

My exact build. currently using MF stuff for farming so it might seem a bit off, but this is the best in terms of a good offensive build i can think of for GS.

For WvW, this works,but remember that GS doesn’t give much CC and you’d only really be able to shine in smaller clashes.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVcz0mzMmRGaomnLvMpp0G0Mkoszs

As for spirit weapon burning, its not so much you burning the life out of targets, its applying the conditions and making use of your traits that deal effects on top of it (like +10% damage on burning foes). I seriously hope you didn’t think that the spirit weapons are a summon > forget > free kill build, because its so not.

Thanks for your answer and your build post.

And no, of course I didn’t think the spirit weapons were a free kill build. I know you have to micro them, and I thought the burning damage they inflicted together with mine was going to deal a lot of damage.

Thank you for all this info really, I think I’ll go with cleric too for WvW.
I have some question though.
First, what kind of runes do you apply to you cleric set/weapons(more vit, healing power and toughness ?)
Also I’m not sure what kind of build to use, I ll play mainly with 2 -7 friends every day. All of em but 1 ranged ones.
I’m between this one(0/0/30/20/20) which I saw here in the forums or this one(0/0/30/30/10)
Not sure about the signet of mercy in the last build or another shout.

About the weapon, I was thinking to swap to Sceptre/torch for the ranged damage.

Thank you in advance!