Guild Wars 2

Hello existing guardians and guardian community! i have just finished my first toon to 80 about a week ago a very tall and buff norn thief. so i lied to myself, thinking the thief is what i wanted to play. at any event DE low or high level i see this blue spinning sword flaring wall making projectile blocking condition removing bad azz looking toon with tusks coming from the helm thing. i quickly discovered what this was and /rolledaguardian and i LOVE it.

now the question is my level 20 guardian is very squishy, when i do my traits/gear/skills while leveling do i focus on the power/prec/tough,vital build or build another way as i spin my way to 80? what skills are more effective in survivability while leveling? as of right now i am enjoying all signets but is there a better way?

basically i want to know what is better power/prec/tough or tanky all the way for leveling

Thanks!

From reading the forums, seems like a cookie cutter guardian is whatever with 30/30 in vitality/toughness and 10 in whatever else you like.

I stacked Power most of my leveling career and was fine with it, but it was prior to the nerf.

On my lvl 80, I am power/precision/vitality traited with toughness/vitality gear.

In PvE i stuck with everything Pow/Toug/Prec throughout leveling and use a 10/15/10/20/15 build with the GS (it used to be different but changed due to the recent patch).

http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3a70009c9h9g8n9f00afakf6g6r797o81ip

In PvP i keep the same build and swap to Pow/Vit/Prec instead.
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With the traits i just went with what gave the best benefits 1st and worked my way up, i still haven’t found a reason to buy the 30 points book yet.

I would use the trait line, Zeal if they had more interesting traits. Zeal is only really good if you want to use lots of spirit weapons it seems. They are fun don’t get me wrong I just like other utility skills better. In solektrall’s case the player might want to give Zeal a go since he liked the idea of spirit weapons.

Since there are two walls in consecrations virtues might be a viable idea for him as well. But just to make yourself less squishy you may want to forgo virtues until you hit 80 then play around with it when trait stats don’t impact your character quite as much.

I recommend armor smith craft so you can always have a good suit of armor available to you this will help with squishyness reduction

around lvl 30 I retraited and started to use valor and radiance traits because with radiance you get criticals and valor gives crit damage and toughness. This worked well for a long time for me. Valor gives trait II for redistributive armor which boosts your crit chance based on tougness too. I think this gives you a bit of a balance until you figure out what style works best for your Guard. Ultimately as you reach higher lvls and cap you’ll want pay less attention to trait line stats and more to the actual traits themselves, let your equips make up the differences in stats.

My observations from leveling an 80 guardian myself.

First and foremost, get 15 points into Radiance. While leveling, having your VoJ AOE blind and reset on any kill is a huge perk. While it is a DPS tree, the perks are just too good to pass up. Once there you can go wherever you want in your build and even into a reset at 80.

That being said, at 80 I run a 0/15/5/30/20 build wearing a split between Soldier and Knight gear. I find that this spread allows me to facetank just about anything outside of dungeons and quite a bit in dungeons as well, while having the ability to switch up weapons and utilities to bring in the pain as well.

If your having trouble with durability, there’s a few things you can do to help immediately.

First, get a hammer, the third strike on the #1 chain gives you near 100% uptime protection. That roughly equates to a massive jump in toughness while inside the protection symbol. Not to mention it really gives some good hurting to boot.

Second, if your having trouble with conditions, smite condition is godsend, even without Major Traits to support it, and is an easy one point wonder to buy right out of the get go.

Third, learn to chain blinds as much as you can, with 15 points in Radiance, your VoJ will be your staple on demand blind, especially when taking on multiple enemies at once. You can supplement this with additional sword/GS weapon sets. Controlling your blinds is definitely huge.

Hope this helps

Honestly I leveled 10/10/10/10/10 and used whatever gear dropped. If you’re many levels behind on gear you will feel it, but it almost doesn’t matter what the stats are.

As your second character, it should be easy to afford a few silver got greens every few levels.

I run around in explorer gear but I suspect I’ll use knights when i do craft gold.

If you’re feeling squishy, the single most effective way to fix that is to keep your gear up to date and use full toughness/vitality armor.

Kazak.8549

From reading the forums, seems like a cookie cutter guardian is whatever with 30/30 in vitality/toughness and 10 in whatever else you like.

I’d beg to differ to say thats a Cookie Cutter Build. Too many different possible combinations to just start calling stuff Cookie Cutter.

Wreknar.5076

First and foremost, get 15 points into Radiance. While leveling, having your VoJ AOE blind and reset on any kill is a huge perk. While it is a DPS tree, the perks are just too good to pass up. Once there you can go wherever you want in your build and even into a reset at 80.

This. Add in 5 points in Virtue so that VoJ also gives you and everyone around you Might and let the fun begin. If there is a cookie cutter way to spec a Guardian, this 20 point investment is probably it.

The rest is most likely more dependent on your playstyle and the weapons and skills you use right now. In my experience, everyone hits a slump around level 20-30. Enemies ramp up a bit faster than your own stats and abilities, but by 40 at the latest you’ll be in the lead and never lose it again. This is coming from someone who played his way to 80 in level 50 gear.

As for playstyle. Well, that utterly depends on you. It’s easier to tailor your character to your wants and needs within certain boundaries than make you play in a way you don’t enjoy to meet imaginary standards. Personally, I’ve really only used three weapon loadouts levelling up: Greatsword, Hammer and Sword/Torch; Staff for Dungeons, but that’s Dungeons.

I’ve stuck with Greatsword because well, while I don’t care for the spinning, it allows me to group up several spawns and AOE them down quickly and efficiently. If you’re going after single opponents, Sword/Torch is IMO more efficient, and Hammer is good in both situations but more importantly an easy to use defensive option.

Same thing goes for Skills. In the end it’s up to you what works and what doesn’t. For Greatsword and Hammer play I found Purging Flames indispensable. It purges a Condition, ticks 5s of Burn and enables Fire Combos. That’s Bolts and a Shield for GS, AOE Might for Hammer. Other people prefer to use Shouts or Signets. If you already invest in Radiance, getting Signet Mastery and going that way for levelling is certainly not wrong. But it’s not an ideal teaming build.

while leveling, i didn’t pay TOO much attention to be honest. i probably could have done a better job. i second having 15 in radiance while leveling (even end-game!) for PvE. it works wonders and you take a LOT less dmg against foes, as long as they are vulnerable to blind. you can pretty much spam it, and with 5 in virtues, you get might as well from activating VoJ (iirc?).

in terms of armor, i jsut went with whatever drops i got as long as they were upgrades. i didn’t stay planning for which stats i wanted until i was level 80. though i did try to balance out my stats as best as i could. for example, if i got an armor piece with extra 5 defense, but i lose out on a chunk of HP, i didn’t do it. am sure there are more scientific ways of maxing your effective HP though. :ppp

skills i always used were purging flames, hold the line, stand your ground (when you’re faced against foes with CC, but early on, it’s not needed as much) are good.

i used to deal a lot of fire dmg when i fisrt started out and that was FUN!D i never went the signet and / or spirit weapon route but that’s just me. hammer is really fun, as well as greatsword. to note, for the hammer, the end of every autoattack chain drops symbol of protection, which grants protection, and then you can immediately combo with #2, which gives AoE might. hammer #3, 4, 5 can all be used to CC mobs as well, which in some form can offer “dmg mitigation” as well.

in terms of squishyness though, like some have pointed out, it’s a mixture of toughness and vitality.. which i’m sure you’re familiar with.

30/20/20/0/0 build for greatsword
pull enemies press f1 and 4 2 3 1 ,keep enemies burned and blinded (u can kill 5~6)
you dont have to be tanky while leveling

I am confused on one aspect of this 15 points in radiance 5 points in virtues first 20 point build. I have seen it discussed before so i know it must be pretty decent until you have some idea what you want from your guardian. but my understanding is, that the first manual allows you to place only 10 points per trait until you reach level 40, and can then buy the next manual, which allows up to 20 points per trait.

How do i get the first 15 points in radiance by level 25? Or am i misunderstanding something?

@Nerelith. You can’t put 15 points at level 25, until you get to 40 to buy the second manual which allows you to put traits up to 20.

From levels 11-39 I went into Honor first, then Radiance, then Valor. When I hit 40 I went into 15 Radiance, 5 Virtues, 10 Honor. I kept going into Honor until level 50, then went into Valor until 59.

Now I’m at level 60, and with a fresh grandmaster’s manual. I went 15 Radiance, 5 Virtues, and then 30 into Honor. In the Honor trait line I grabbed Superior Aria, 2h Master, and Writ of the Merciful. In Radiance I grabbed Blind Exposure.

From 60-80, I plan on going 10 into Zeal for the 10% damage on burning foes, then 10 in Valor. Or I might end up going 20 into Valor o.O

Also, I’m a Greatsword/Staff user.

Thank you Adrenaline, for a Moment I felt I was missing something. :-)

No problem
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I run a 0/15/30/20/5 build. Here is a video someone made that caught me in action. I’m the enemy Guardian at around 9 minutes in (not the sylvari) and from 12 minutes to the end of the video pretty much. If it would interest many people, let me know via PM, and I will consider making a guide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f6RtnSyz62A