Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I have a level 54 guardian who I will probably finish leveling through dungeons since my last alt was leveld through zone completion, I’m wondering what some good builds are to best support my team and improve their survival and my own.

If there’s any good guides out there let me know, if not feel free to post your build and how you use it + weapons, utilities and elites you use. Though I have a dungeon master title I really don’t have much experience with guardian.

Thank you kindly sirs and madams

There’s lots of stuff you can do. It’s really up to personal preference. I’ll just give you my current fractals build though.

Full zerker everything, Superior Monk rune x2, Superior Water Rune x2, Major Sanctuary x2 (+40% boon duration all together)

Traits: 0/0/30/30/10
Valor: Retributive Armor, Strength in Numbers/Purity, Altruistic Healing
Honor: Superior Aria/Writ of Exaltation, Empowering Might, Pure of Voice/Two-Handed Mastery/Writ of Persistence
Virtues: Master of Consecrations/Improved Spirit Weapon Duration/Unscathed Contender

Possible utility setups:
1) Sword of Justice/Save Yourselves/Stand Your Ground: Full DPS utility spread
2) Same as #1 with Retreat instead of SoJ: Running spread
3) Same as #2 with Hold the Line instead of SY: Defensive spread
4) Wall of Reflection/Hallowed Ground/Stand Your Ground: Defensive consecrations spread. Also good for DPS bursts using Tome of Wrath elite.
5) Purging Flames/Hallowed Ground/Stand Your Ground: Hammer-specific spread. Using MoC and 2HM, you can get 2 MBs into Purging Flames and 3 into Hallowed Ground, and each fire blast gives you 3 stacks of might for 30 seconds.

I typically use either greatsword or scepter/focus in main hand with mace/shield as alternate, depending on the situation. Occasionally I use hammer if I’m bored and just want to move into range and afk. Strength runes on everything, add Accuracy if 1h weapons.

It’s free damage, and it’s not like there’s anything else worth taking in that slot.

Hammer warrior here :p also packing 2 armour sets and all weapons. Guardians are quite equipment reliant for multirole action. Never leave home without your gear dont be a 1 trick pony.

For breezing through dungeons with guild or pugs the must have set up for me are AH, EM, WotM, larger symbols.

SY and SYG on utility. Slot 10 is adjustable to situation. Maybe using retreat or WoRef.

Full melandru+lemongrass poultry soup (total -65% condition damage duration)

0/5/30/30/5

With this set up you csn pretty much face tank just about every dungeon.

^^agreed^^ with the last comment

khefka.2804:

Writing off the Honor traitline too I see? :P

WoE and WoP also add damage as well as provide support. Two hammer guardians in a group would probably be overkill, but otherwise it feels too good to pass up.

Depending on the dungeon and situation the second guardian should switch between a mace/shield, GS, Staff.

1 Hammer guasrdian to face tank and proc Protection 100% is enough. The other guardian can use the other weapons to balance the situation i.e more healing or ore damage or control.

Guardians are the most versatile class in the game. 2 front line guardians is enough to take even weak low lvl pugs through dungeons easily.

khefka.2804:

Writing off the Honor traitline too I see? :P

WoE and WoP also add damage as well as provide support. Two hammer guardians in a group would probably be overkill, but otherwise it feels too good to pass up.

WoP does not boost damage nearly as much as 2HM does. 2HM gives roughly a 5% boost in overall GS damage, WoP is something like 3% last time I checked. I do run Persistence/Exaltation sometimes if I anticipate using Mace a lot but for DPS optimization Superior Aria (for better Fury uptime) and 2HM is the best.

Obviously if I could use both I would, but you have to pick and choose. And usually you pick the better option.

It’s very hard to ignore the team-supportive nature of the Guardian class when considering dungeon running builds. I think having a guardian build that is about DPS optimization while ignoring this nature is actually a deterence to any team that takes you. If you aren’t building with that support in mind, you aren’t bringing everything you can to the table and probably aren’t meeting the team expectations for what you can do for them. While the game is pretty open for character development, I think it’s very safe to say that if people are inviting you to a team, they expect you to outlast and really bring alot of boon/condition support. I never had any indication that they were concerned about my damage.

My dungeon running build is very vanilla with PVT stats, some emerald jewelry and at a minimum, X/X/30/20/5 build. I will take a number of weapons but I will start with hammer, mace/focus or sceptre/focus, depending on what I see happening in the team. Teams I go with don’t really care what my damage is when I’m slapping boons and heals on them.

As you can see, I have to optimize around pure damage because people are running stuff like PVT and running “team support” builds. It isn’t unusual for me to join a pug and find out that I am literally dealing somewhere in the range of 75% of the entire party’s damage.

And given that guardian is incredibly high DPS there is no reason for anyone to expect you to be support, especially since guardian support isn’t even that good. My DPS tests have proven the superiority of guardian for raw damage output and I have no reason to doubt that I am pretty much the most skilled, smartest, and most handsome GW2 player ever, and I’ve never been wrong in the past so it’s unlikely that I’d be wrong now.

In all seriousness, though, no one’s ever proven my DPS tests wrong. I don’t see where you’re getting “inaccurate” from, unless by “inaccurate” you mean “proves you wrong”.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

khefka.2804:

Writing off the Honor traitline too I see? :P

WoE and WoP also add damage as well as provide support. Two hammer guardians in a group would probably be overkill, but otherwise it feels too good to pass up.

WoP does not boost damage nearly as much as 2HM does. 2HM gives roughly a 5% boost in overall GS damage, WoP is something like 3% last time I checked. I do run Persistence/Exaltation sometimes if I anticipate using Mace a lot but for DPS optimization Superior Aria (for better Fury uptime) and 2HM is the best.

Obviously if I could use both I would, but you have to pick and choose. And usually you pick the better option.

Its only a better option if your focusing on more damage… it is however not the better option if your looking to support your group better. Just pointing out the obvious.

khefka.2804:

This is getting off-topic, but just because you posted some numbers doesn’t mean they are right until proven wrong. I don’t remember seeing any screenshots, math, formulas, etc. that backed up your numbers. In fact, the build differences that you claimed were to optimize for specific weapons seemed a little outrageous to me. I think one build had 20 points different for crit damage… you really think there are traits that will in effect give that much extra damage 100% of the time? As for gearing for DPS, that doesn’t preclude using weapons aside from GS. I’ve got ~2950 attack, 40-45% crit with 75 crit damage (before buffs) and I feel no loss of DPS from using hammer.

20% crit damage isn’t as much damage as you think it is. With full berserker gear and 70% crit rate it’s only about a 7% boost in damage. At 40% crit rate, which is more realistic given the way the Guardian traits are spread out, it’s only about 5%.

And yeah, you can gear for DPS without actually doing DPS. Hammer DPS is low and given that the guardian is basically a hard-hitting DPS machine it’s kind of a waste to not DPS. It’s like rolling a thief then gearing him in full cleric’s gear and running around claiming to be a healer cause you’re using Shadow Refuge. Plus, most of the time the best support is making things die quickly. And guardians are good at that.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As you can see, I have to optimize around pure damage because people are running stuff like PVT and running “team support” builds. It isn’t unusual for me to join a pug and find out that I am literally dealing somewhere in the range of 75% of the entire party’s damage.

In all seriousness, though, no one’s ever proven my DPS tests wrong. I don’t see where you’re getting “inaccurate” from, unless by “inaccurate” you mean “proves you wrong”.

Just wanted to respond to these two particular items:

I don’t dispute you do a lot of damage. My point was pretty simple. Guardians are conceptually a team support class. While you CAN make a DPS build, it’s not the unique awesomeness that a Guardian brings to the team. If someone is inclined to build a team and needs melee DPS, they probably aren’t gambling on Guardians. The only reason it works here is because Guardian is an easy class to carry.

I recall the discussions about the testing. As you were told many times, you biased your testing because you changed the builds to favour each weapon. That doesn’t show the damage of the weapons by themselves, leading to false conclusions about how they perform, in general. If you changed the individual builds for each weapon, then you tested damage from a specific build, not the weapon itself. If you want to have the results from individual weapons, you have to test each one on as similar platform as possible, i.e. the same build.

Obtena.7952:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As you can see, I have to optimize around pure damage because people are running stuff like PVT and running “team support” builds. It isn’t unusual for me to join a pug and find out that I am literally dealing somewhere in the range of 75% of the entire party’s damage.

In all seriousness, though, no one’s ever proven my DPS tests wrong. I don’t see where you’re getting “inaccurate” from, unless by “inaccurate” you mean “proves you wrong”.

Just wanted to respond to these two particular items:

I don’t dispute you do a lot of damage. My point was pretty simple. Guardians are conceptually a team support class. While you CAN make a DPS build, it’s not the unique awesomeness that a Guardian brings to the team. If someone is inclined to build a team and needs melee DPS, they probably aren’t gambling on Guardians. The only reason it works here is because Guardian is an easy class to carry.

I recall the discussions about the testing. As you were told many times, you biased your testing because you changed the builds to favour each weapon. That doesn’t show the damage of the weapons by themselves, leading to false conclusions about how they perform, in general. If you changed the individual builds for each weapon, then you tested damage from a specific build, not the weapon itself. If you want to have the results from individual weapons, you have to test each one on as similar platform as possible, i.e. the same build.

Again, just because they’re conceptually a support class doesn’t mean they’re not also the best DPS. When I take a guardian in a group I usually ask if he is DPS, because that’s what I want him to be. All of the good guardian players in my guild run DPS. The fact that guardians can give respectable support while being the group’s main DPS is just an added bonus. If you’re building around the support, though, you’re just gimping yourself by giving up too much for too little. As you can see with my build, I’m optimizing DPS while giving +50% boon duration to everything. I can shout or consecrate and do all the stuff a “support” guardian does and hit 3x harder than he does.

As for the DPS tests, they are fine. If hypothetically there was a weapon that only did 1 damage per hit at level 80 and a weapon that did 10,000 per hit, but the former had a trait that multiplied the former weapon’s damage by 1,000,000 and cut the latter’s damage in half, it’s obvious that the former does more damage in practice. You wouldn’t compare damage between the same build for both weapons because that’d be ridiculous. You’d inherently be favoring one over the other by choosing to take or to not take that trait.

Obviously that’s a bit of an exaggeration but that’s just the case. You don’t fill your bar with symbol traits and no points in Radiance then compare sword or scepter damage with hammer damage. In particular, since this is a discussion about builds, it is more important to know what the guardian’s ACTUAL damage output is, not its base with no traits. In this context they indicate that it’s actually extremely high. Much higher than most other classes, in fact.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

You’d inherently be favoring one over the other by choosing to take or to not take that trait.

This statement demonstrates what I’m referring to. You are comparing builds, not weapon damage, because you have combined the effects of traits and weapons into one test. The problem people have with this approach is that you infer conclusions for base weapon damage based on optimized builds that have combine effects of traits, weapon and gear. Furthermore, those conclusions aren’t relevant if someone wants to know how a pair of weapons perform for a given set of gear and traits that may be different from your tests, though your adamant your inference does that correctly.

A simple example: How does a Mace compare to a Sword in a 10/30/30/0/0 build? I don’t see how your testing provides that information.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As for the DPS tests, they are fine. If hypothetically there was a weapon that only did 1 damage per hit at level 80 and a weapon that did 10,000 per hit, but the former had a trait that multiplied the former weapon’s damage by 1,000,000 and cut the latter’s damage in half, it’s obvious that the former does more damage in practice. You wouldn’t compare damage between the same build for both weapons because that’d be ridiculous. You’d inherently be favoring one over the other by choosing to take or to not take that trait.

I think you’re missing a few points:
1. You can pick a build with no traits that affect the damage of a specific weapon so that you get the relative base DPS of each weapon
2. You can pick NO build (ie 0 trait points assigned) so that you get the true base DPS of each weapon at a given level
3. Your example isn’t true for anyone that didn’t have room for that trait in their build and only considers the impact on the guardian’s damage

Base DPS of a weapon is meaningless without a build to supplement it. Maybe at levels 1-10 when you don’t have access to traits yet. Otherwise the “base” DPS doesn’t tell you a thing. If my hypothetical 1 damage weapon was actually the best weapon in the game but you were only looking at base damage, then you’d pick the vastly inferior other weapon even though in practice you’d be able to get much better results with the other weapon. If you’re not taking that damage-optimizing trait, then obviously you’re not optimizing DPS and you shouldn’t be looking at the numbers in the first place. The most obvious example is for Engineers since they get traits that significantly boost one weapon only (Grenadier, Juggernaut). The base damage on grenades in particular is extremely low but with Grenadier you get an extra grenade, so everything is boosted by 50%. You wouldn’t even be using grenades without Grenadier anyway so there’s no reason to leave it out of the comparison.

Also, if you really care about base DPS that much, you should note that the guardian’s base DPS on greatsword is actually higher than the warrior’s. So even if we went by those numbers the conclusion would still be that the guardian is the best DPS class.

I’d have to agree with Guanglai with this one. just testing base damage is pointless as it will only show how high that weapon hits but doesn’t show how effective it actually is in combat or say true potential.

Builds have to be factored in to get a realistic number based on damage potential rather than flat base damage.

You can have a sword that hits for 500 per hit and a stick that hits for 300 per hit but when factoring in with a build it changes to sword 600 and stick 700. So the stick will have higher DPS numbers.

However, if you factored in a scenario like this then you would also have to factor in the enemy moving or being in range to be hit and many other variables which will contribute to the overall damage range.

In essence, you are both right. But when thinking about situational damage Guangli is right.

So when you look at it subjectively, in a dungeon. Will you really be contributing more by going DPS or by playing hybrid, or playing support?

Hybrid wins. Thank you.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Base DPS of a weapon is meaningless without a build to supplement it.

For the purpose of simply comparing base weapon damage, it’s completely meaningful because it’s a relative comparison. Of course, you will have a build to supplement your real damage output as you play but that build doesn’t change as you are actively swapping weapons in a dungeon or in PvE for instance. In otherwords, it remains constant as you play, so the relative comparison of base weapon damage is relevant. Again, how do I determine from your testing how a Mace compares to a Sword in a 10/30/30/0/0 build? The relative comparison is fundamental to understanding that.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Base DPS of a weapon is meaningless without a build to supplement it. Maybe at levels 1-10 when you don’t have access to traits yet. Otherwise the “base” DPS doesn’t tell you a thing. If my hypothetical 1 damage weapon was actually the best weapon in the game but you were only looking at base damage, then you’d pick the vastly inferior other weapon even though in practice you’d be able to get much better results with the other weapon. If you’re not taking that damage-optimizing trait, then obviously you’re not optimizing DPS and you shouldn’t be looking at the numbers in the first place. The most obvious example is for Engineers since they get traits that significantly boost one weapon only (Grenadier, Juggernaut). The base damage on grenades in particular is extremely low but with Grenadier you get an extra grenade, so everything is boosted by 50%. You wouldn’t even be using grenades without Grenadier anyway so there’s no reason to leave it out of the comparison.

Also, if you really care about base DPS that much, you should note that the guardian’s base DPS on greatsword is actually higher than the warrior’s. So even if we went by those numbers the conclusion would still be that the guardian is the best DPS class.

You need to know at least the relative DPS (not necessarily absolute base DPS) and DPS components (eg base 14% from symbols) before you can accurately determine how well a weapon will perform in pure damage compared to another within a specific build. Unless you have no traits that affect specific components of weapon damage (eg symbols). Then you’d only need the relative DPS.

More importantly, nowhere am I suggesting that you should base your choice on that. That’s your (mis)interpretation. It’s just another tool for analysis, but one that really is needed when you’re comparing different weapons within a real build, and like Obtena said, it’s even more important when you’re in a dungeon where you can change your weapon but not your build (unless you’re not the party leader and your party doesn’t mind the delay).

I have to agree with Guanglai. Playing support guardian, because he’s called guardian, is just gimping yourself. You can wear full zerker, get some defensive traits/utilites and do much more damage (worse than only warrior probably) than support/tanky guardian while doing similiar level of support.

Between this isn’t the type of game you can even properly test dps. Because almost no fight can you stay consistently engaged to even gauge it. So looking for highest dps is almost pointless. What should be looked for is consistent damage and you staying alive to do it. In this games instance that is the highest dps that you never haved to even test. Because a dead dps does no dps or a dps that must run for its life. When breathed on also is gimp dps.

^^ Good point. Without the traditional approach to holding aggro and having healers, maxing DPS in this game means you take alot of aggro if your class is really at the top of the DPS foodchain.

Obtena.7952:

^^ Good point. Without the traditional approach to holding aggro and having healers, maxing DPS in this game means you take alot of aggro if your class is really at the top of the DPS foodchain.

I’m not completely on top of this but from I’ve seen dps does not determine aggro most the time at least.

Most often mobs stick to people having lot of toughness, not dealing damage.

Silentstorm.7531:

Between this isn’t the type of game you can even properly test dps. Because almost no fight can you stay consistently engaged to even gauge it. So looking for highest dps is almost pointless. What should be looked for is consistent damage and you staying alive to do it. In this games instance that is the highest dps that you never haved to even test. Because a dead dps does no dps or a dps that must run for its life. When breathed on also is gimp dps.

Like I always say, I’d rather have a guy in zerker’s who does good damage some of the time than a guy in cleric’s who does no damage all of the time.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Silentstorm.7531:

Between this isn’t the type of game you can even properly test dps. Because almost no fight can you stay consistently engaged to even gauge it. So looking for highest dps is almost pointless. What should be looked for is consistent damage and you staying alive to do it. In this games instance that is the highest dps that you never haved to even test. Because a dead dps does no dps or a dps that must run for its life. When breathed on also is gimp dps.

Like I always say, I’d rather have a guy in zerker’s who does good damage some of the time than a guy in cleric’s who does no damage all of the time.

But he heals mate, heals.

haviz.1340:

I have to agree with Guanglai. Playing support guardian, because he’s called guardian, is just gimping yourself. You can wear full zerker, get some defensive traits/utilites and do much more damage (worse than only warrior probably) than support/tanky guardian while doing similiar level of support.

By “similar” support, you mean far less right?

Yaki.9563:

By “similar” support, you mean far less right?

No, I mean almost same level of support. Support doesn’t equal to healing. You don’t need healing when stuff dies in seconds and you have perma regen and protection.

Funnily enough we tested this out the other night in AC. We ran 3 hybrid Guardians 1 warrior and a mesmer on all 3 paths. We had absolutely no need for any major healing. Everything died so fast.

First run was done in 22 minutes path 1
Second run was done in 24 minutes path 2
Third run was done in 20 minutes path3

In PvE, it doesnt seem like you really need to go active support at all. Passive support was enough to blitz through relatively unscathed.

This includes destroying all gravling burrows before the timer had actually ran down for section completion.

Zogyark.4597:

I’m wondering what some good builds are to best support my team and improve their survival and my own.

I chose to play a more support focused, 0/5/30/30/5 build on my guardian personally. I use mostly knights armor with a few pieces of pre/vit/HP. My primary weapon is hammer, secondary is mace/shield. My individual reason was that I also have a warrior to fulfill the “top dps” role when my group needs that. I wanted to have a noticeable change of pace when playing my guard. Ironically, I tend to feel more effective on my support focused guardian, even though the numbers may not back that up.

I’m not arguing that focusing on dps is not a good form of team support and survival. I’m only addressing the OP with what I have personally found fun and effective.

I think that’s a good message to take from this thread. There really isn’t some ‘best’ way to play guardian. It’s one of those classes that add something regardless of the role you choose to fill in the team. I think the divergent views on what to do as a guardian make that more evident. It’s certainly not true of other classes.