Guild Wars 2

So…I have looked all over the forums, but have been unable to find much about leveling a Guardian. I have tried various builds out, but end up dying significantly more than most of my other professions. I generally enjoy builds that have some survivability…I’m running a bomb-specced engineer, a hammer-specced warrior, and a minion master necromancer. I don’t care at all if the build is viable at level 80. My guardian is level 20. Any advice?
Just as a second point…what builds along the same line would be viable for level 80 general pve? I would like to point out that by this I mean not dungeons, not fractals…I can go find 20 builds on that in a couple minutes. I mean for general running around doing stuff like level 70-80 events.

0/15/0/0/5 is the base for leveling. It lets you spam F1 for might stacks and AoE blind as 15 in radiance resets F1 on kill. For leveling at the lower levels, I found that spirit weapons can be used for tanking (Sword of Justice usually).

Sword of Justice is great for low levels. On top of 0/15/0/0/5, I recommend getting 5 points in Honor immediately for Vigor on critical hits, which will let you dodge much more.

I leveled my second guardian primarily with Hammer/Staff plus Sword of Justice. Worked great.

Hi! Glad to see a new guardian around. Guardian’s main weakness while levelling is that our utilities have much higher CD than most other classes because they would be OP at 80 if they had a low CD. My advice would be to follow the Hammer PvE guide in obal’s recently stickied guide here (it’s in the second post):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE

I felt that 15/15/0/20/20 gave me the best balance of survivability and DPS, considering that I did most things alone. Here is my advice on point priority in your trait lines as you progress:

1) As foofad mentioned, 5 in Honor should be your first priority; then 15 in Radiance as ZoroDaOtter encouraged.
2) After that, another 15 in Honor to get Superior Aria for “Retreat!” and “Hold the Line!” spam as well as Writ of Persistence for perma-protection.
3) Continue with 20 in Virtues for Master of Consecrations for Wall of Reflection to better handle pesky ranged mobs; and Absolute Resolution for condition cleansing.
4) Finish with 15 in Zeal with Fiery Wrath for more DPS.

When exploring the world to level I run around with Shelter, “Hold the Line!”, Wall of Reflection, “Retreat!”, and Renewed Focus for a good spread of skills to handle almost any situation. For weapon swap I suggest Sceptre + Focus because some annoying storyline quests and more difficult world events favour ranged attacks for the lower-levelled, and focus is our best offhand weapon for PvE.

My advice: Use a Greatsword for your main weapon, and use sword/focus on swap.

For utilities use shouts. You will need stability and regeneration because you’re in the fray a lot with Greatsword.

Unless you are in a rush to get to 80 then pretty much all of the guardian weapons and many utilities are viable in different parts of the game, so levelling is good opportunity to experiment and get comfortable with using them.

The basic traits mentioned above are always a good idea, but be sure to mix things around every few levels to get an idea of how useful ( or useless ) some of the others are.

Tarsius.3170:

Unless you are in a rush to get to 80 then pretty much all of the guardian weapons and many utilities are viable in different parts of the game, so levelling is good opportunity to experiment and get comfortable with using them.

The basic traits mentioned above are always a good idea, but be sure to mix things around every few levels to get an idea of how useful ( or useless ) some of the others are.

QFT

The best part of leveling is having a lot of time and opportunity to learn the profession’s skills and utilities. I stayed away from guides until I was level 80 so I had plenty of time to learn all that I could from my own mistakes and accomplishments.

And honestly level 20 is a very low level to judge the Guardian’s potential and style. Your number one problem is not adapting to the zones you’re in. One ‘build’ will not suffice. You have to learn how to change your weapons and utilities.

Thanks for all the feedback! I’ve been trying out the Hammer build and I’m not sold on it yet. The permanent protections is amazing, but it just feels less overwhelming than other weapons like the greatsword and for some reason a little awkward. I am going to stick with it for now…who knows what I will think once I get the hang of it.

Thanks for the tips, guys. I am in the same boat as the OP; I’ve had a problem balancing damage dealing with staying alive with my newbie Guardian and these tips will really help.