Guild Wars 2

First off, the great healing that everyone speaks of, where is it?

Guardian healing skills are fairly standard stuff. Altruistic healing is amazing in PVE, but in PVP, not so much. The third strike of the hammer is easy to dodge in pvp, so protection isn’t exactly easy to keep up.

…and guardians are easily the slowest class. Taking up two weapon slots just for a speed boost is annoying to say the least. Plus, the staff is kinda lousy.

Using Retreat pigeon-toes us as well…. I wish we had an elite for speed like warriors do.

I know a lot of people hate the scepter, I kinda like it, but the builds available are pretty lousy. You basically give up all of your tanky-survivability for not-so-great damage.

Longsword is kinda weird. Mace does ok damage. I dunno I must be missing something here, ’cause all I can get to work is the greatsword.

I know I’ve really gotta get the most out of bunkering, because once ya commit to a fight, it’s not like a guardian can escape.

Ezeriel.9574:

First off, the great healing that everyone speaks of, where is it?

Gear for Healing Power and abuse of Selfless Daring, it increases it’s healing by 1 per 1 Healing Power, meaning you can easily get 1~2k roll AoE heals, paired with some Sigils and Vigor…

They’re also in Virtue of Resolve, Writ of the Merciful and Empower.

Ezeriel.9574:

Altruistic healing is amazing in PVE, but in PVP, not so much.

Try it in a group of at least 5 (pet or not) and Empower yourself with it. It’s essentially another Signet of Resolve level healing skill every 16~20 seconds!

The third strike of the hammer is easy to dodge in pvp, so protection isn’t exactly easy to keep up.

You’re not supposed to use the Hammer and spam auto-attack with it, and if you manage to hit the first 2 chains, the third one will be cast regardless if you hit your target or not, allowing you to give protection to others or use it in choke points better.
Don’t expect the enemy to stand still while you drop your Symbol and take all the hits.

Ezeriel.9574:

…and guardians are easily the slowest class. Taking up two weapon slots just for a speed boost is annoying to say the least. Plus, the staff is kinda lousy.

Only 1 weapon is needed for the speed boost (Staff), which coincidentally is also one of the best for WvW in any non-solo gameplay.

Ezeriel.9574:

Using Retreat pigeon-toes us as well…. I wish we had an elite for speed like warriors do.

Don’t use Retreat then, it’s not required.
Also, try out all your Elites, from experience I know most Guardians just use Renewed Focus as their main Elite and they forget that the Tomes are freaking powerful!

Ezeriel.9574:

I know a lot of people hate the scepter, I kinda like it, but the builds available are pretty lousy. You basically give up all of your tanky-survivability for not-so-great damage.

Again from experience, I’d say most Guardians trait for 30/30 +10 in Valor/Honor, and if you want to get a build for the Scepter you only have a Trait in 20 Zeal and 30 in Radiance that greatly benefits it.

That build is the so called bunker build, meaning whatever weapon build you attempt to pull will give up your “tanky-survivability” for damage.
Don’t classify this build as if it’s any damage oriented for any weapon (not even the Mace).

Ezeriel.9574:

Longsword is kinda weird. Mace does ok damage. I dunno I must be missing something here, ’cause all I can get to work is the greatsword.

Just like the profession designer intended.
His ultimate goal is to have every Guardian in the game equipped with a Greatsword in one of their weapon slots, but there’s still some nut-heads who keep using Sword/Scepter and Hammer. (this is sarcasm)
This is unfortunate though, because if every Guardian used a Greatsword, maybe that’d give him a clue that other weapons could use a slightly buff or redesign to make them a little more interesting. Because it seems that 90%~ using Greatswords isn’t still enough to give him the hint. (I love Sword & Shield and I wish I could retire my Greatsword for them if I could)

If you still don’t get Guardians in WvW, try the following:
- Trait for 10 in Zeal, pick Spirit Weapon Mastery and maybe Eternal Spirit, and use Bow of Truth and Shield of the Avenger in WvW. Even better if you pick 10 in Virtue for Spirit Weapon Duration.

- Trait for 10 in Virtue and pick Master of Consecrations, and enjoy spamming Wall of Reflection with only a 20 sec downtime (use the Shield during this time).
Enjoy watching your team virtually immune to projectiles for a long duration.

- Trait for bunker, pick Stand Your Ground and use a Mace & Shield, charge inside the enemy zerg and start dropping your regen symbol, auto-attacking for healing, and try to keep Protection up as most as you can, and Stand Your Ground to avoid CC combos. Dodge often, and watch the enemy go in disarray with an unkillable Guardian among them. Works great with up to 20~25 or so enemies per Guardian/target.

- Use a Staff, pick Two Handed Mastery, Writ of the Merciful and Writ of Exaltation, and practice healing with Orb of Light, Symbol of Swiftness and Empower. With the good protection and these heals, you can turn the tide of a battle.

There’s still more you can do, most are support-oriented, but as you can see Guardians do have a great role in WvWs (mostly protections, which are awesome).

Just wanna point out that Mighty Blow (#2 Hammer skill) is a 4 sec CD (traited) blast finisher – combine with Healing Spring (or any other water field) for very high amount of healing….

I was writing a really detailed reply, but then the forum kittened up, logged me out, and deleted it… so I can’t be kittened…

Because you’re a terrible Guardian. Any specific questions?

All the great healing comes from all the healing abilities we have on top of all the ways they can be improved through stats and traits. The problem here is just a perception one. They don’t just fall in your lap uberbuffed. You have to make a build that exploits them to get the most from it. In fact, there are a few bouncing around the forums if you dug a bit deeper or simply looked at them yourself in a build.

Despite everything I hear and read, Guardian is not an easy class to build and play properly for W’s.

Lots to think about…. thanks for the tips Danicco, that’s a lot to take in, and has changed my thinking about the class quite a bit.

Everything is about how you play in WvW

Nothing to add for group play.
AH+EM combo works fine and keeps enough room for decent offense, while Healing Power + Selfless Daring is an awesome healing support. A mix of bothis also possible, which means A LOT of healing.

If you are looking for something like solo roaming, everything changes.
AH+EM loses a lot of potential. EM loses strength because it’s a party wide effect and AH loses because EM (and any other boon source) only procs on you and you also can’t rely on symbols at full potential (which also weakens a possible symbol healing).
Selfless Daring is still a good healing source (even if way more useful with allies), but heavy investment in healing power is going to handycap yourself offensively in such a big way that your fights are going to be attrition based and a lot of enemies are just going to escape from you.
In the end, your best options are probably going to be meditations (which handycaps yourself utility wise and is horrible for anything besides solo/duo), perhaps paired with a bit sefless daring and/or other healing sources like mango pies, or a full offensive approach, relying on blocks, blinds and RF for defense with no more healing than resolve.

It’s totally dependent upon what you are doing, ive ran both the AH/EM/shouts build with hammer → sword/shield and the SD large healing bonus/consecrations with staff → mace/shield. And a mix of traits based around these builds just looking for varying tweaks.

To tell the truth i dont believe the solo guardian deal, you have 0 escape, it ends up as just an exercise in frustration being constantly mowed down by groups/trio’s/duo’s etc, for that 1 fight every half an hr you get 1v1. If you are going to solo id go thief or mesmer just because of the amount of escape mechanisms they have(and both are high on the power curve anyway).

The AH/EM shout build is what im currently using, i only ever really small man(anywhere from duo to 4 or 5) and while the staff/high healing/consecration/SD build was cool i felt it would be better suited to having a group i roam with all the time as in a duo i lack the survivability and DPS of the AH/EM/shout build(save yourselves, stacks of healing power over precision,MB every 4 seconds).

You have to tailor you’re armour to your build as well, AH/EM needs precision for crits to trigger EM and massed boon duration is popular for ele/guards, this gives the guard speed up permanently with staff as the buff expires after the timer resets. And of course extends the duration of all shouts and buffs you are giving out.

But id recommend trying out everything and also matching your food buff to what you’re trying to achieve.

If you’re running in large groups staff is easily the best weapon. Auto attack tags every enemy nearly, you have a area denial attack which is great in wvw and empower is like a extra heal if you have AH

Your spirit weapons and summons get your buffs to allies. you can use them for solo running builds. They aren’t a group of PCs but they will give you AH.