Guild Wars 2

I’m still running a similar build. Just going Power, Tough, Vit on my gear. The might boons on crit coupled with last finishers from hammer #2 puts out enough boons still to heal. It’s not as stupid easy as it was but still effective in dungeons (CoE, Arah is what I ran since the patch)

0/10/30/30/0 are my traits. I swap between GS, Hammer, Staff, Sword+focus, and scepter+focus in that order. Mainly depends on dungeon and boss.

Right now it looks 0/15/30/20/5 Same weapons GS/Staff. It’s still early on this I’m going to take my time I got a hunch that this last patch won’t be the only change. The change to AH weakened too many builds. Something has to be given to replace the imbalance we have now.

I don’t want to make 20 builds while they figure it out so I’ll be patient for now and experiment. Because right now it looks like we are even less guardian and more warrior at the moment.

That video makes me want to play a Guardian. I have been wanting to but I have 5 alts already and not sure which race to use, except Charr, will not be Charr…ever.

Also, you’re Mos Def aren’t you? You can tell us, we’re like family here.

LOL nah my voice is just deep like that. And guardian is fun not faceroll and not weak. Takes a little while to find yourself as in what guardian you want to be. Everyone is different and has different likes.

After a day or so I come to the conclusion the original build still works as intended. You just lose the sustained healing. But that isn’t affecting the fact the build is meant to be a heal sharing build. So the original build can stay as is. What I will do is make a offensive version slightly altered but still heal sharing.

Which will probably be 0/15/30/20/5 I’m kinda hesitant because I still think the other shoe is going to drop on us. Good or bad I don’t know but somehow the recent changes seem incomplete.

Especially with that note on the end of the patch notes and their “philosophy” on balancing the classes.

Well we will see gotta think they will do better than this. We don’t have alot of choices left now as is.

Ok so I settled on this build 0/15/30/20/5. Keeping the core of what I wanted in the build but increasing it’s power. The gear is pretty much what ever you want it to be. Don’t feel you gotta have berserker’s gear.

You can do whatever gear you like or feel comfortable with or can afford. The build is all about flexibility and making it your own as always. It’s not my build it’s yours and how you want to use it.

Watch after I waited this long this weekend they blow up this build too lol……

Silentstorm you’re legendary mate. I’m new to GW2 and you are inspiring me to be the best Guardian I can and I think your Paladin builds and videos are awesome. I’m only lvl 14 atm but I’m trying to replicate your playstyle so I can be a good dpser + group healer (OP in your words when I’m 80. Keep it up

I’m still trying to get head around the whole combos thing and binding my keys and mouse buttons optimally.

I forgot to ask, should I strive for this build as I level? and what stats should I focus on for gear eg toughness + vitality + precision in that order? or link me to a guide of yours if I haven’t seen it.

As your lvling it’s totally up to you how you do it. I went all power stats in Zeal/Radiance before I realized at 80 that just isn’t practical. That’s when I made the very first Berserker video and got sand blasted lol for it. So I said ok that didn’t work lets try this a different way. Had I not been hit with the backlash of that build. I may not have strived to make one that worked really well.

@Oxide I use Q/E as hot key’s and the right side of my mouse has hot key buttons. But I also click as well if you watch me in vids I go back and forth depending on what I’m doing. It’s my preference some people dislike it but I really don’t care about that. You should always do and play how you see fit. Don’t worry about what people think as long as you win and are happy doing. Let haters hate best way to fight it is just win baby.

Glad to see you got an update on this build, been holding off on my guardian (leveled my first character to 80, a necro) for an update.

Also, free bump.

Thanks for the build and the perseverance you put towards keeping it updated and testing new aspects and combinations. I originally leveled and played with this build until a few weeks ago. I still reference these guides for anything I may miss combination or utility wise and i look forward to the continual updates as Anet…uh…“guides” us into the niche they want us in, for lack of a better word. Keep it up man.

I’ve been using the same build (as your 2.5) since September 2012. Same weapons, same traits. Just different skills. I have healing symbol + save yourself + condition to boon meditation + wolf/hounds/tome. They stack pretty well.

Thx @Rusty and Brosk sorry for the late response it’s holiday season
I try to adjust to whatever Anet does but I do see our choices diminishing. I’m not really sure the direction its all going. Looking back to when I first started doing these builds.

Kidel.2057:

I’ve been using the same build (as your 2.5) since September 2012. Same weapons, same traits. Just different skills. I have healing symbol + save yourself + condition to boon meditation + wolf/hounds/tome. They stack pretty well.

I’m still not sure about conditions with guardian they seem really lacking compaired to other professions. I could be wrong though I haven’t tested it in depth. I’m doing weapon master this week because I got a lot of messages to redo it. Although I don’t know what more I can do with it maybe I’ll get creative hope it works.

Very nice build, very versatile. I like it. Good Work!

I like the idea of the build. I traited 0/10/30/30/0 independently without looking through the forums and it seems like overall the concept is the same. My question is, why no empowering might? I’d like the 5 in virtues but cant see myself giving up 20% cd reduction on 2h or EM, so 30 in honor is pretty mandatory for me. Seems like with AH, the might stacks on crit for you and allies from EM would add up for nice heals.

The original 2.0 has 30 honor so I’m leaving that untouched. You can change it basically to anything you want. It’s a very flexible base build so if you wanted EM you could simply change it to EM. I wouldn’t now because of the nerf to VP. You will already have plenty setting off VP.

I don’t see the healing or damage being that big of a deal when I could use symbol heal. And heal everyone around me including myself which is the point of the Paladin like build in the first place

0/15/30/20/5 is a classic…about a month already
If u playing in “melee-train” at WvWvW – knight gear is very usefull.
U get a lot of crit, and toughness for survivability. What about vit? U dont need it, cause u have a lot of “block” and “blind”, with GS+Sword/focus, for example.

Well your talking about it being used in a more selfish light.Paladin builds aren’t like they heal around them and provide damage. In this case alot more damage than the 2.0 version.

I’ll be going back to the 2.0 for the weekend. And posting fractals using it sorry I haven’t been updating much. Been involved in alot of you tube going on’s the past two weeks.

Thanks for this. I’m just starting a new Guardian, and gonna follow your 2.5 build using GS/Scepter+Focus (or 1h Sword + Focus for the blind). Looks promising.

Would you suggest going Valor 10, then Honor or Radiance 10? Or something else completely?

Cheers!

Sorry for the super late response I was on vacation. What I normally say when being faced with a 10 point swing. Is try both don’t just listen to me because my way may not be optimal for you.

Looks like I will get to go 3.0 soon Guardian changes thats not (Tweaks) coming soon. Should be fun because I think we were just about out of ideas atm.

Silentstorm.7531:

Looks like I will get to go 3.0 soon Guardian changes thats not (Tweaks) coming soon. Should be fun because I think we were just about out of ideas atm.

Source?

I think he is refering to the Jan 28th update.

This is just armchair theorycrafting here, but…

What about 4x pack/2x Altruism? Both of them proc boons to “nearby allies” for a free heal, and the swiftness buff synergizes well with your newfound love for staff.

Since i get pm bombed I’ll say it here. I tried a month ago to get this and the heal way perma stuck. However the team decided because we used personal names and opinions for the builds….It was not fair to do. I know I won’t go into the failure of logic on that. But I don’t make the rules.

Seems things are still too stale on the forums. We haven’t seen many changes and won’t get any this week either. So that leaves me with what to do with 2.0 and 2.5. In my opinion 2.0 makes the game too easy hardly ever come close to dying. But in WVW people lived too long with it. However boom 2.5 wrecking crew with the healz and gtfo if its more then 4 people on me. Which is fine because I don’t want this to get nerfed.

My question to all you fine people is what now? What would you like to see can anyone make up something we haven’t done to death yet. I tried soldier alpha and it got nerfed in less than a week. I don’t know if that was on purpose or just so happen. So hit me here in the post pm. Or actually I rather in game meeting up with people and chatting WVW roaming or if you just need help in a dungeon. It’s all good just figure we need more chatting going build wise.

Hello Silent,

I read as many threads as possible but sorry if my question is a repeat.

If we assume trash mob will go down fast anyway and champs take a while to kill, 15 in Radiance is not perfect in longer fights. Have you tried 0 10 30 25 5 with your Paladin in mind? Is the trade-off interesting in terms of overall damage?

Most builds I see are either 0 10 30 30 0 or 0 5 30 30 5, but the middle ground is rarely discussed. What is your take on this?

Thanks!

Well the middle ground you speak of is what I did with the 2.0 build. It almost made the game too easy in everything. So I went more towards doing damage and seeing how far I could go. Before I started to lose the hybrid feeling. But I am always open to exploring other options. I will check it out in a few.

@The Show
Well honestly I gave it a go it was cool. But you will notice most bosses have infinite adds. And what you don’t see in my fractals is I leach blind constantly on add deaths. What I mean by that is I pay attention to the mobs while attacking the mobs. The reason I do this is because the nature of the build dps/healing. Is almost equal to taunting the bosses.

They come for me the minute I start to lay in on them. Now taking away crit lessens that chance but they still come. Plus no need and lowering crit on a crit damage build. However if you weren’t looking for a crit damage build this is a nice alternative. But not a whole lot different than 2.0.

Wow, thanks for the speedy response, Silent!

As you could have guessed, I don’t have dungeon experience yet (trying to acquire a few more exotic before) so I was wondering if there were enough spawns around champs to make 15 in radiance worth it.

Very cool as I love playing a crit build. I am better at it but not the most skillful player yet, but there is only one way to learn.

Thanks again!

Hi Silent,
Thanks for the amazing effort!

I hope you dont mind me asking you a few questions:
I’m struggeling with choosing between your 2.0, 2.5 and Berserker 3.0 build.

I usually play with a small groups of friends and we are more the exploring-lets-have-fun kind of bunch and do not spend most our time in dungeons etc.

What build would you suggest – can you point me in the right direction?

Also on a sidenote: what armor do you have? It looks really cool

Thanks.

@The Show no problem if you need anything else I’ll see it faster in game.
@Meneh If you have a solid group who can maintain themselves. You can go with the 2.5 because you will have great power and still be able to help. If they can’t quite defend themselves or have people who like to sun bathe in fire lol. You can use the 2.0 and just passively keep them alive without saying anything.

You can use the berserker if you have someone else good at healing. I gave it good survival but if pressured too much that won’t end well. I have a Berserker 3.5 but I keep waiting for these so called class changes we never get. I rather not keep making build sequels. But that happens in new games with balancing so oh well.

Question. Is there anywhere where you have laid out the suggested skill ordering for someone that wants to level using this route?

Sure being that your limited to how much you can do at the start. I would go with filling the two least longest traits. First virtue because that would be over in 5 points. And next up radiance. You won’t be able to go beyond 10 points in early. So you can move onto Valor or honor. In my opinion save honor for last it’s the icing on the cake trait line in this build.

When leveling you don’t really need it as much as you do at the end of the road.

Silentstorm.7531:

Ok so I settled on this build 0/15/30/20/5. Keeping the core of what I wanted in the build but increasing it’s power. The gear is pretty much what ever you want it to be. Don’t feel you gotta have berserker’s gear.

You can do whatever gear you like or feel comfortable with or can afford. The build is all about flexibility and making it your own as always. It’s not my build it’s yours and how you want to use it.

i tried some extremely similar. actually the same trait spread

but i found it was only useful in select situations to try and get might stacking going.

a LOT of mobs dont proc the virtue of justice reset at all…. anything that is even remotely “trash” won’t reset it, which means there are not very many fights where it becomes useful to spam your VoJ to stack up might, i have an easier time swapping to staff, using empower with 80% boon duration. throwing a couple of blasts out, then swapping to a dps weapon for burst, then back to staff to bring the group back up to 12 stacks before it wears off. having to sacrifice other traits just to get the might stacking doesn’t seem extra beneficial to me unless you are going for specific encounters.

have you had trouble with getting the VoJ to proc on large groups of mobs in dungeons?

It may not have been the mob as much as you actually doing valid damage on the mob. The game has a bug or it maybe meant to be this way. That if you don’t do valid damage to a mob you don’t get credit for helping kill it. So say things that run through purging flames a single tick. A vast majority of the time you don’t even get loot credit for those mobs. To counter that bug or just the way it works is I AOE combo.

Which allows me to get credit I deserved might stack or just hold VOJ for when I need it. Like a well timed blind on a boss instant KO attack.

Silentstorm.7531:

It may not have been the mob as much as you actually doing valid damage on the mob. The game has a bug or it maybe meant to be this way. That if you don’t do valid damage to a mob you don’t get credit for helping kill it. So say things that run through purging flames a single tick. A vast majority of the time you don’t even get loot credit for those mobs. To counter that bug or just the way it works is I AOE combo.

Which allows me to get credit I deserved might stack or just hold VOJ for when I need it. Like a well timed blind on a boss instant KO attack.

these were done while in a group, and while in a group your group is contributed damage as a whole. ie, 5 man in the world all count as 1 damage coutner, as long as you tag something and yoru group does enough damage, you get the kill..

some things i would get kills, like the jellyfish boss underwater in fractals, and none of the adds would proc it at all. along with a few other select adds in fractals.

just seems certain monsters are meant to be purely trash

Yea in that fight against that boss it sends out infinite mobs. I’m pretty sure they don’t count as anything no loot table either. But say like the Mossman his adds count. But atleast 90% of the fractal bosses the adds count when killed.

Hey man, saw your videos the other day…pretty good stuff man. Also wanna thank you for providing us with all this intel and sharing man, definitely helps. Up and coming guardian over here, just hit 30 and unsure what path to take so was hoping to get some feedback from you since you’re experienced and definitely seem to know what you’re doing.

What I’m aiming for is to be an offensive guardian, really like using 1H/Shield combos (especially since I get a teleport move) though I usually prefer to main Greatsword and sometimes 2H Hammer. So I wanna stick to melee range and keep pressuring the enemy. The thing is not sure where to go as far as traits go, checked out a lot of builds, burn does some nice dmg but don’t really wanna be focusing on that. Spirit weapons look fun, Retaliation seems really cool and I really dig the concept of using barriers to reflect dmg back at my opponents but heard its not ideal to focus your build around that. So hoping you could kind of point me in the right direction, one thing I enjoy about Guardians is their flexibility for making builds. Would possibly focusing on stuns and knockdowns be a viable option?

In the previous GW, my main was a Warrior. Focused on CC by ingterrupting my opponents and hitting them hard w. my Hammer, while using blocks and conditions when using my Sword & Shield. I don’t know if this helps any lol…and sorry if this is off topic from your Paladin post

While a guardian can knock down and blind someone a good deal many times in a row. I’m a bit hesitant to want to build around that. If people start to know that they will shut you down rather fast. I learned that lesson with the way I combo. Now people know me well enough to know don’t let me combo. That makes a nice cat and mouse game. But it limits the game play I wanted to do.

But with knockdowns we don’t really have a lot for us to use as a build base. It’s more of a compliment to what we already have. Your right about fire it’s lame until someone shows us all otherwise lol. I really wanted to rock a holy fire build it wasn’t happening…And spirit weapons I made a soldier build for that took 2 days for a patch to come out and literally smash it. Which is why you haven’t seen many builds from me lately. I’m not really sure what they want us to do. Or at least no definite direction for us beyond yea you guardians we won’t let you be good at range.

What about staff and bows?

Also, glancing at the game updates for today as far as Guardian is concerned…they’ve increased the health of spirit weapons by 33% now! So maybe they can be a viable option now?

You do have a point though about people catching on and shutting you down, sucks to hear your combo approach has been taking hits like that and that it limits your gameplay. Still, when running with a team and having them back you up it shouldn’t be too big of an issue (if they back you up properly that is). For example, if I took up a build with knockbacks, stuns and knockdowns to keep interrupting my enemies from executing their moves…for every second they aren’t mobile, my teammates get a free second in to do dmg. Of course that would mean I wouldn’t be the top damager and I’d be more of an offensive support, letting my teammates do the dmg bombarding while I keep them pinned, struggling to stand on their own 2 firm feet haha. I don’t know just an idea I guess, and one can dream…lol. What would be your approach to this?

In an instance where you are with another player anything flies. The reason being most people don’t single in on you. Beware however you become too famous for your own good or kitten someone off. But if you are in a 5 man group doing offensive support it’s a high chance no one will pay attention in enough time. I found in WvW zergs I just run around like a buzz saw killing everything I focus on. And then go before someone notices me. It’s better to do that and heal while doing it.

This is why I said they made staff’s number 2 ridiculous because you can spam it easy. And combo it with a healing aoe rune for more splash healing. You have empowered going off faster and you can throw bow of truth out there. All of that goes a long way to very nice paladinish play and directed healing. This also gives more style and flair as well as control over fights

After a night of testing the Bow of Truth is still out. Even with increased health added to it. Doesn’t seem as good as it used to be. I don’t know if it got phantom nerfed or better luck using it months ago. Either way save yourself seems more practical still. Too bad so much for some new style to rock with. Staff on the other hand is spamtastic now yes its a word I’m going to copy write it.

hey man, how goes the good fight?

Silentstorm, thanks for your continued videos. I was about to give up on guardian before trying your paladin build and now I’m having a blast. Quick question – what do you suggest for an elite if you’re not human? I’m thinking that Renewed focus seems good, but was wondering if you’d tried either of the tomes.