Guild Wars 2

Fabsm.5897:

exphryl.3857:

What are you using for your third major trait in honor?

Don’t know about Akamon but i run these traits:

First: WoE (solo)/Superior Aria (all others)
Second: Empowering Might (PvE)/Resolute Healer(WvW)/WoE(sPvP, tPvP)/WoP(solo)
Third: Two Handed Mastery(PvE and solo)/Pure of Voice(sPvP and tPvP)/Battle Presence(WvW)

sorry about the late reply, here’s what i default run with and then other choices after that.

first: WoE
second: 2HM
third: WotM

as you can see, lot more basic as compared to Fabsm’s setup, which is great so you might want to take a look at his instead. for a bit of background though, i usually run PvE, in a group of at least 2 – 3 (mostly melee), and / or dungeons and some WvW. have never tried PvP yet. i like the playstyle of chains and dodging so i like having two-handed mastery as this allows me to go 1 MB for each chain, though i’ll occasionally mix it up with the other skills or even weapon sets.

for WvW though, i lean towards taking out WotM or even WoE and throw in Superior Aria, Empowering Might or Battle Presence.

depending on which dungeon and boss or bit, i use Empowering might, if not as much healing is requied, if not, i stick with WotM. might try switching out either Writs for Superior Aria as well and see hwo that works since i am quite shout heavy.

akamon.2769

depending on which dungeon and boss or bit, i use Empowering might, if not as much healing is requied, if not, i stick with WotM. might try switching out either Writs for Superior Aria as well and see hwo that works since i am quite shout heavy.

WoP is probably overkill in any case except when soloing, because it is rare that a mob/player stays still enough to make a difference. You can safely switch it with Superior Aria, if you need better shout power.

@Brutaly’s original post:

Max dps in pve is done by performing chain+step 1 in chain+ mb and requires 2h mastery.

This is no longer the case. The best use of MB in PvE right now is to trigger desirable combo fields such as fire for mights or poison for weakness. If there’s no such combo fields available at a decent rate, it’s best to do a chain x2 into MB.

Fabsm.5897:

WoP is probably overkill in any case except when soloing, because it is rare that a mob/player stays still enough to make a difference. You can safely switch it with Superior Aria, if you need better shout power.

This is quite not true in PvE/Dungeons. Monsters will literally sit on the symbols til it’s dead unless being kited by the group.

@Trungalung
Thx will update the guide when i get back home tonight.

I’ve been trying to get the dodge hit thing, on my guardian, but it seems to have no effect at all when I dodge after the second hit in the auto-attack chain. Wether I dodge, forward, left, right, back, it still does the entire animation. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. >_<

Sammael Darksbane.4572:

I’ve been trying to get the dodge hit thing, on my guardian, but it seems to have no effect at all when I dodge after the second hit in the auto-attack chain. Wether I dodge, forward, left, right, back, it still does the entire animation. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. >_<

After 2nd hit lands on the target, you hit your dodge key then quickly hit #1 right after.
Try smashing #1 may help a little bit.

I’ve tried that, it makes no noticable difference for me, I’m probably just too slow on the button-presses. Ah well, s’ok, it’s not like it really matters.

As an aside, when I dodge and spam 1 for the 3rd chain, it doesn’t abort the dodge until the dodge is done, and then goes through the animation, so, yeah, not seeing any difference at all.

Try to turn on auto-attack to see if it’s any difference.

Yup, no difference, is it because I’m a Charr? With or Without Auto-Attack, it makes no difference as far as how long it takes.

I’ll do some tests on various races after I’m done writing my paper.

@Fabsm / Trungalung: i’ve actually never used WoP. i mainly sport WoE and WotM. Although i feel that WoP would work in PvE or dungeons specifically. don’t think it’s necessary in PvE but in dungeons, a lot of times most mobs don’t have the AI to move out of AoE so the extra ticks would be able to do extra DPS and or heal / support your allies.

@Sammael – it took me quite a few tries to get it, but once you do, it’ll come rather naturally and sometimes, when i don’t mean to do it, it happens now. :/// i actually wasn’t able to pull it off while using auto-attack, and had to do it manually. i spam #1 and by the time i see the second hit swinging (ideally before it hits), dodge, and right after you hit dodge, spam #1 again and you should see the skip. i’ve noticed the difference was made for me when i dodged early enough (before second hit lands, or the dmg numbers pop up at least). when are you hitting dodge exactly? but again, like you aid, no big deal. i don’t use it that much, but i wanted to try it out as well. : ))) hope this helps. i don’t think it should be race specific. we’ll see what Trung comes back with.

Thank you for this guide. It really helped me fine tuning my build. I had an altruistic healing build in mind but not with the hammer at all as I was playing with the greatsword. This guide made me give the hammer a try and I don’t regret it at all even if I miss GS 5 sometimes (amazing skill really). Anyway thank you, it’s good to see people helping other rather than keep their build for themselves.

@Sabyne – on behalf of all other hammer Guards. welcome! lol and glad that you found this guide useful ; ))) i can never say this enough, but many folk in here are extremely knowledgeable regarding the hammer and the Guardian. : ))

and yes, the main reason for me going back to the GS occasionally is for #5. haha

Can someone please explain what is pov/vit/tough gear? What does POV stand for? I am confused? There is Power Vit Toughness gear or Toughness, Vit, HP, Precision gear…so what is POV??

EDIT: Read page 4 with an explantion, pov=power.
Man, that had me confused, I was like where is this magical gear haha

Thanks Brutaly this is fantastic stuff. Running a crit-hammer Guardian myself now due to this and loving it.

The pov==pow thing is really confusing! I guess because v<=>w in some Germanic type languages …? Cue ’Ello ’ Ello quotes :p

Thanks alot for this. My Mesmer is my main, and I have a lvl 60 Guardian that was just kind of collecting dust because I couldn’t really settle on what kind of role/playstyle I wanted to accomplish with him. Read this guide, and I can say that this is right up my alley. I tried for years to make a 2H Hammer Warrior Priest work well in WAR, and it was an uphill battle…not so in GW2. Even at lvl 60 with level appropriate rares the ‘Crithammer’ is proving formidable, can only imagine what it’s gonna look like at 80 and geared.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the thread, it’s been very informative and currently rocking the hammer I once hated.

A question regarding runes:

I’ve just crafted my 5th accessory, and have 4/6 Lyssa karma armour, with an exotic hammer. Everything crafted is of the Knight (Tough, Pre, Pow? (I think)) and I’m sitting on 53% crit. I noticed you said 40-60% crit, and i’m a bit worried that by the time I get two more bits of gear (I was thinking of getting the Dwayna chest because the Lyssa has Cond. Damage) and the boots, with the 5th rune on top I’m going to be getting quite high, and that’s even without food.

Would you reccommend that I keep my food plan (certainly in instances, elsewhere who cares) and try a different rune combo? And if so, does anyone have a set that stands out over others?

I only have 16g and when the monthly eventually comes in, i’ll have enough jugs in combination with the booster to get a fair bit of karma.

Is there a reason why “Superior Rune of the Pack” was not included? The +20% swiftness duration, 165 Power, and 100 Precision is nice. The +might, fury , swiftness % chance on hit will be fixed in an upcoming patch making it even better with AH.

Trungalung.7850:

@Brutaly’s original post:

Max dps in pve is done by performing chain+step 1 in chain+ mb and requires 2h mastery.

This is no longer the case. The best use of MB in PvE right now is to trigger desirable combo fields such as fire for mights or poison for weakness. If there’s no such combo fields available at a decent rate, it’s best to do a chain x2 into MB.

Updated the skills section based on this feedback

Vornado.4697:

Is there a reason why “Superior Rune of the Pack” was not included? The +20% swiftness duration, 165 Power, and 100 Precision is nice. The +might, fury , swiftness % chance on hit will be fixed in an upcoming patch making it even better with AH.

Yes there are multiple reasons:

1. I tried to only include stuff i actually had ingame experience of in all aspects of the game. Rune of the pack has only been tested in spvp.

2. The main reason for not testing them in pve and wvw is that there are other ways, cheaper btw, to get the stats you mention in the post. 2*rune of the water and 4*orbs being one of them which gives you marginal less precision but in combination with 15% boon duration on all boons.

Swiftness duration boon in wvw and pve is imo the “worst” boon duration you can invest in.

3. The runes are to random, you can get three different boons, two of them, fury and swiftness are desirable but they serve different purposes and since they are situational they will most often procc when i dont need them.

If you can argue for them and make a case of their usefulness im more then willing to add them.

animation skipping in dungeons is great, because it allows you to use evade for heal, without rolling all over the place

This is infact one of the biggest upsides when doing the ninja skip with a heal build. Added to the guide.

@Storm

You can never have to much critchance! Crits are equal to damage and survivability.

The question is if you want more of some other stat and are willing to lower your crit to get more of that particular stat?

@All,
Will try to update so its pow instead. Its just something thats been klingin on since BWE where the amulets in spvp initially was named in such a fashion

@Questions regarding power
In general crits is what you are looking for, power are more suited in retaliation builds and i dont find the combination of low critvalues and AH to be favorable.

Added Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew to the consumeables chapter.

I cant get any of the links to your builds to work. I imagine it is GW2’s inane website inability to allow links to work

They work for me in Chrome, if not, you can copy and paste them into the browser.

The links to the different chapters are broken though and will try to fix them during the week.

I’m “fixed” at 0/0/30/30/5 right now (EM and 2HM).
But I can’t decide where to put the last 5 points
Radiance for more crit% and a blind or Virtues for longer lasting boons and a even longer lasting retaliation?

Hi Brutaly,

The build links aren’t working for me. Can you update them please?

Thanks so much!

Paximus.6437:

Hi Brutaly,

The build links aren’t working for me. Can you update them please?

Thanks so much!

They work on Safari (mac and iphone) and chrome and explorer on pc. Just checked them.

There are no traits chosen in them, its on purpose!

The links to the chapters are broken though but the links to the builds are working as intended.

Hey guys, thanks a lot for this great guide. I’m using ur former crithammer build (which is quite similar to this one i think) and have some questions. I have a full exotic knights armor with soldier runes but “only” 46% critchance. How the kitten do u can reach an amount of 60%? Is there any part of my armor, i might switch for another one (non – knight armor)?

my stats are

attack: 2783
critchance :46% critdmg: 45%
armor: 3147
HP: 15455. Healpower: 300

As far as i saw it, all those stats are around the minimal amount u got with ur build. I dont get even near to one of your maximal amounts of whatever (critchance, vitality, armor etc.) What am I doing wrong? Please help me getting those kitten 5 k crits.

With a knights gear/accessories and knights hammer/GS/staff and 5*ranger and 1 lyssa you should end up with 60% critchance with a 015/30/20/5 build.
The recommendations are intervals, you can accomplish the upper end of the interval in maybe just one or two stats.

In your build armor is top tier and HP is in the middle of the road imo, you dont need more as long as you build around that.

In the example above you reach high stats in toughness and crit chance. Perfect for a leechbuild but weak on conditions and healing power.

And if you go to the consumables chapter you have a bunch of suggestions on how to add stuff to your build.

As i said in the start of the guide, dont worry about precision, even though its what AH lives and breaths by, you can get that in a multiple of ways and should be considered last even though its probabaly the most important stat.

Hi Brutaly,

Sorry I wasn’t very helpful there with what I was trying to type, I realised afterwards you needed more info. With the two bits of gear i’m looking to get, i’ll be sitting on a little over 15k hp. My power will be just above your ‘minimum cap’ and the toughness around or just above your maximum. Precision i’m not too sure on, add about 70 precision to 51%. Crit dmg % will be lower. (all these stats are unbuffed with food/weaponsmithing stone)

So my next question is a 2-parter:

a) what you say is the lowest amount of health you personally would feel happy running with (is it the 14k?)
b) would you reccommend changing a couple of bits of jewellery to lower my toughness and/or precision and increase my crit dmg %

70 precision is about 3.3% crit chance.

I have a 14k as my personal limit. Sure i could play with less but then i would need to change my playstyle and be more of a flanker then a frontline pusher.

Personally i wouldnt. 51%+3.3% is nice and also opens up for a variety of sigils and food.. I have 43% crit damage on the build i use mostly in wvw and i find toughness, in combination with conditionremovers and crits, to be a great setup for me.

But its personal preference and playstyle and on my pre/vit/heal setup i have like 30% critdamage and on my pow/vit/tough i have 70% crit damage but i do very different things with those setups, in both wvw and dungeons.

Seems like I’m on the minimum or lower side of the requirements. Do the runes and sigils really make up that much of a difference? Or better yet, do my “rare” runes and accessories make that much of a difference? I’m guessing they do.

I’m in exotic’s across the board for armor and weapons. However, runes and accessories are rare. 5 eagle runes and 1 lysse. Accessories are ruby mithril if I recall correctly. Anyway, was just re-visiting this thread when I saw that I was on the lower side of the requirements.

Still fun, but just made me wonder.

43% — Recommended: 40-60% crit
2,842 – Recommended: 2800-3400 Attack
14,085 Recommended: 14k-18k health
2,820 – Recommended: 2400-3300 armour
106 — Recommended: 200-1200 heal power
32 -- Recommended: 51-105% critdamage

I dont understand how you can have those stats!

how can you have 106 in healing power? You have 200 by just traiting 2h mastery.

here is what i have in full berserkers gear with 6*rune of the soldier and a 0/15/30/20/5.

Attack 3025
47% crit chance
91% critdamage
2477 armor
14455 basestat and 15467 in healtpool
200 healing power

And if i want i could add in a 5% from sigil of accuracy.

The only gear type that cant be fit into the min/max recommendations is a pre/vit/heal gear in toughness and power but it has healing and with boonduration runes 10 stacks of might is up all the time and it has 2500 in attack when played the proper way you can add in 300 from might.

I must be bugged because i can max one of my stats and still be in range on all the others and well above on at least one more.

No idea, that is what I was wondering. Let me check because something has to be bugged. I also use Sigil of Accuracy. Has to be me. Will log back in here and see.

Ok, logged back in. Not sure but my client downloaded something or patch for this weekend I guess. Anyway, it showed a correct healing power now. I really have no idea what happened. I apologize as crit damage and heal power are reporting correctly now.

43 – crit
2,842 – attack
14,085 – health
2,820 – armour
200 – heal power
61 – critdamage

Looking at the exotic Rune’s of the Eagle I’m guessing my crit damage would go up by that alone as would crit. I guess I should save up for those since they are pusing 3 gold each give or take.

Hmm ok some food for thought What I might do is just change a couple of the jewels around to give pow/pre/crit dmg , which will give a tiny nerf to my crit, remove a bit of toughness (it’s pretty high atm) and give maybe another 6 crit damage.

I also got my story back so that’s another 4% crit damage, all helps!

p.s. Using Sigil of Blood so a decent crit % is always good!

@Crapgame
If its stats you want, and no secondary effect from runes, i would use orbs instead, they are actually better, or just as good statwise since they add almost as much and in three stats.

@storm
omnomberry pie and sigil of blood is extremely strong, they seem to stack and you will notice that you can tank everything and his broodmother. In combination with AH its over 2k health per chain as long as you have two teammates within the symbol.

Brutaly i like your take on things with the Guardian, and its something i want to try out as im dead bored of mace/shield & GS. It just isnt doing anything for me anymore, i got no dps and my healing/boons are only as good as the players around me.

Anyway i cant for the sake me get your links to work (gw2skills), no matter what browser i use the site just wont load any icons. So i cant tell what build you recommend.

Im currently using 0/0/30/30/10.
Which is nice, i dont die much but it also take an eon to kill a simple Vet etc.

Should i change anything there, or just grab a hammer & start smashing things?.

if you read the guide again the lack of traits in the builds a on purpose. Just fill your 0/0/30/30/10 with the traits you need and start swinging.

I have full knight gear expect two pieces. Those are my two accessory and they are beryl orichalcum earring of the berseker with exquisite rudy jewels on both.

My stats are
40% crit
2700-2800 Attack (2700 if ac hammer)
15-16k health (16k if ac hammer)
3000 armour
300-479 heal power (479 if ac hammer)
52% critdamage

I’m also running 0/0/30/30/10.

http://i45.tinypic.com/10fndqo.jpg

On my armor I have 4 beryl orbs, 1 rudy orb and 1 exotic
lyssa
I have about 479 healing power. I want 1,200 or at least 1,000.

Can I have that without losing my current stats? I don’t mind losing 1k in health but I really like the stats like you suggested.

I have enough gold to switch sigils, runes, rings, accessorys, gear, etc around just to fix it. I don’t have enough to run test that’s why I’m asking.

A lot of work you’ve put in here, quite interesting. I’m curious:

How does Vigorous Precision (VP) trigger Altruistic Healing (AH)? VP only applies to yourself doesn’t it, whilst AH only proc’s when you apply a boon to others? What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance.

Tarn.1374:

A lot of work you’ve put in here, quite interesting. I’m curious:

How does Vigorous Precision (VP) trigger Altruistic Healing (AH)? VP only applies to yourself doesn’t it, whilst AH only proc’s when you apply a boon to others? What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance.

If you read the wiki , it says that Altruistic Healing triggers even if the boon is applied to yourself.

Brutaly, do you think the change to dodgehealing will have an impact to the build?

@Sinanju
No when going healgear somethings got to give, the recommended stats where jolted down ebfore i had experience of pre/vit/heal. I will update tthe stats chapter later this week to clarify it.

@fabsm
Yes in spvp it ofc has some sort of impact but tbh i played 4 games this morning and as long as you dont invest in healpower in gear/armor i couldnt notice any difference in my berserker setup. This change was directed towards bunkerbuilds and seem to be successful in that aim, i think this type of gameplay, crithammer, is unaffected

The changes to selfless daring doent seem to apply at all to wvw and pve.

Fabsm.5897:

If you read the wiki , it says that Altruistic Healing triggers even if the boon is applied to yourself.

Thanks, quite different from what the skill description itself says.
Do we know if this is a bug or working as intended?

All skills that does something to allies also do the same thing to you. Its intended, you are considered an ally. AH, empowering might, pure of voice, retreat and hold the line, just to mention a few.

Yes, very true.

Sorry, I guess I wasn’t very clear. I was referring to the opposite though; when a boon is added to us but not allies, even when present, yet the AH still procs, that’s all.

Once again I think it’s probably a case of ambiguity in the skill description.

Tarn.1374:

when a boon is added to us but not allies,

which was what i tried to say, even though unclear maybe, we are considered an ally so when a boon is given, ie vigorous precision, to the guardian it proccs AH.

Is it me or is the dodge roll healing unchanged? I’ve lost some healing so i’m seeing a lower number, but it’s still about 550 to nearby allies for me, which adds up when you remove the 83 odd healing I had on my old chest.

From I read I understand this change only took place in sPvP ?

the change should only be in PvP. in PvE, dungeons included, the dodgeroll wasn’t as heavily affected, if any at all. was my understanding. perhaps someone can confirm? bottom-line though, it’s still working wonders for me, my group and with this build.

hey brutaly,
awesome guide, made me love the hammer. i need some help though, i ran around with the vigil armor (vit/tough/pow) green ‘zerker jewlels and the 0/0/30/30/20 build and well that was tanky as hell and lots of fun being the last man standing in 9/10 situations. the only thing lacking was crit (~30% with sigil), so i got the draconic knights armor and planned to get some vit with valk jewels. i’m at ~40% crit with the knights armor and the dmg/AH heals are fine but i got wrecked in seconds tonight in caudecus path 2 despite tons of toughness.
i wonder what to do next, it seems to be impossible to increase vit without kittening crit too much. maybe more points in radiance? i dunno i like the build how it is, with vit i loved the survivability but it felt like the dmg/AH heals/mightbuffs were too low with more crit it felt almost like a glasscannon (maybe this is just due to the nature of the path we did?).

hey zing, hope i can answer a few of your questions. i’ve yet to test, but i’ve seen another thread (videos) where people were running Pow/Vit/Tou gear, and then Knight’s jewelry, along with the prec to toughness trait, as well as sigil of accuracy and they had around 40%+ crit. though, sinc eyou’re already got knight’s gear, you can maybe get two valkyrie rings, while keeping the rest knight’s jewelry. and slowly upgrade to exotics ( i would skip rare jewelry).

or if you want, you can use full knight’s gear for everything, but use Pow/Vit/Tou chest and pants for some boost in Vitality.

at the same time, i used to run CM quite a bit in rare knight’s armour, and then just green masterwork jewels that were all over the place. i feel for this build, toughness is actually more beneficial. in your new gear, what is your HP pool sitting at? with full knight’s exotic, you shouldn’t feel like a glass cannon at all. CM i think is a bit overtuned and depends on chance a lot. for e.g. if a bunch of riflemen all decide to target you, you’re downed easily. with that dungeon, i always sacrifice a utility slot for Wall of Reflection. Also helps to use a shield sometimes if you feel the need to be more defensive. i feel it’s more the path itself and perhaps the group dynamics you were running with.

even in green working up to rare gear which i ran for a long time, i was able to outlast a lot of content using this build. : ))) hopefully this helps, and keep practicing! choose the traits that work best for your play style and know when to use what utilities that help you survive the most.

p.s. i assume you meant your build was 0/0/30/30/10? instead of 20 in virtues : ))

@ OP

great post mate. I fully enjoy playing my guardian now. Have to say that i didn’t belive the difference that knight’s set made to my survivability. I prefer this surv set over to zerkers…it suits guardian as class more

Do you have any toughts about Karaka’s shell (if that’s correct name, cant check i’m at work atm) and stats it gives, is it worth having. I had some sick toughts about going with shell and triforce pendant, but before i act i would like to hear your toughts on it.

Anyhow, gj and keep it up.

Hats off to you sir.