Guild Wars 2

Great guide, thanks so much for taking the time to make it! You may want to update the description of Renewed Focus at some point since the added mobility it has now is a pretty big buff. I really liked how positive the guide was, seeking to emphasis what works as opposed to complaining about things that don’t but it may be worth adding a section for things to avoid, combinations that lack synergy, useless stat bonuses and so on, just to help people know absolutely what to stay away from and to avoid giving the impression the class is OP.

Also, by the way,

-I can’t switch traits without summoning up vast quantities of gold.

Free rechoice of traits out of combat for any slots that you have unlocked and a grand total of just over 3 silver to completely respec. Oh yeah, that must really hurt your bank balance.

I tried to write a guide to the necromancer, but with so many people being dissatisfied with the bugs and how unbalanced the class is, people didn’t see it as a positive thing and chose to criticize.

Excellent guide. I always wanted to make one but didnt know where to start, thanks for the time and effort you took to make this.

Hey OP
Renewed Focus now usable whilst moving, slight update should be made to add this as its a great change.

“You want to be just like Logan Thackeray—good, because we have an ability for that. It’s called “RETREAT!”. Seriously, it’s a Shout.”

That’s actually why I made a guardian. I’m serious.

Thanks for the comments, guys. <3 I’m updating the guide at the moment to make a few minor changes to reflect recent patches. I’m actually running close to the character limit on most of these posts, so I’m a bit nervous that any major future update to the Guardian which will require a great deal of editing might not be possible.

I’ll have to talk to a moderator about a way to address that issue.

Awesome guide. I’ve only just started playing GW2 and this will help no end. Thank you.
Also Eveningstar, I love the Flight of Dragons quote at the start… nice touch

Garvaleon.

Carthalion.8569:

Also Eveningstar, I love the Flight of Dragons quote at the start… nice touch

Garvaleon.

Hurray! Someone got it!

Glad to see I’m not the only one yelling “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” when using the staff.

Getting ready to reroll (current is Sylvari Ranger 80 and Human Warrior 25). Like my ranger alot, but the warrior—just not liking it. My question is about race and if one of them is better suited to being a guardian? I was thinking of Charr or Norn—but that was mainly to get a different starting and personal story line.
I read
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardians-Race-Decisions-and-why/first
Reading threads about the Charr’s ugly armour, clipping issues and large toons making jumping puzzles more difficult, are starting to have sway me towards Norn.

Freaking Awesome! Great Review, got me thinking about different ways to play my Guardian, and it is a little more complex than this class seems at first.

Thank you for this excellent piece of work. This is not only very insightful and informative but is very well written. I just started a guardian and this post has been a great help.

Thank you very much for this guide, I found it very useful.

I would like to respond to the comment “I doubt anyone would rather spend 30 minutes reading tiresome jokes about their class instead of just playing it”.

I most certainly DID prefer reading this instead of ‘just playing it’ – sure, it took a while – but you’ve saved me HOURS of ingame experimenting.

And I enjoyed the jokes, which lightened the tone of the guide and (in my opinion) made it more accessible. I guess some folks don’t like humour.

Thanks for sharing you Guardian knowledge with us.

Very good guide, ignore the negative troll posts.

Guys, just to be sure, because I haven’t really noticed until now, when the virtues are on cooldown, the passive skill is not working right? it only returns when the cooldown runs off

excellent guide mate you should be proud, its actually what got me to create a new guardian character now that ive returned to a game after a long break, the sword section is very interesting i must say, mainly where you said its for the more dmg route, if someone wants to take a guardian into the more application of dps route in pve/pvp at 80 can a guardian with sword/torch match the dmg of a warrior? say a warr with GS or A/A, both with traits atleast taking advantag of there wepons, ty.

Thank you so much! My main is an Condition- specced Engineer and the traits and weapons I wanted just came naturally to me in that profession. Things like 5% conversion of other stats into condition damage +toughness for shields and such were no-brain choices with my P/S setup. I started a Guardian and like the playstyles available, but couldn’t get into the profession because I couldn’t figure out the Traits or weapon synergies that would suit me. I know I love the Hammer because of the contol it offers, but it’s slow so I use a Sword to compensate for damage. Now, thanks to you I’m going to look into Sword/Torch and speccing Critical hits! I think the Sword/Torch crit procs will hit often and hard and the Hammer crit trait will be useful when it lands. Do you think that would be decent for synergy? I didn’t want to spec Conditions on two characters and I think a Crit/Control Guardian sounds fun to play! Thanks for the guide, you ROCK!

Wow.. I came to this forum because while I liked the Guardian a lot I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the class. GW2 can have a bit of a learning curve for new players, but this guide really made things easy and answered every question I had. I have been playing for the past few days using tips from this guide and I have become far more effective then I previously was and find I’m getting more enjoyment out of the class and the game. Thanks for taking the time to put all this together, this is the best guide I have seen for this game.

Thank you kindly for taking the time and effort to write this well thought out and informative guide. Your dedication is appreciated and I offer you gracious thanks.

Grand Kudos to you,
Kaga

Excellent guide! Thanks very much for the info! New to the game and first char rolled was a guardian (and yes, because I thought it was something else … *whistles … ) … Gonna play around with it now and look for synergies

Thank you man. I can appreciate what you’ve done here. I was slowly learning the handle of the guardian by playing and implementing what i learned by reading the dev updates over ,the, what seemed like a decades, months. This guide how ever was clearly implemented for the purpose of springboarding one into faster growth as it has done for me.

Again, thank you.

Amazing guide. Definitely worth the read. I got a lot of the information from simply playing but this really solidified my standpoint on guardian.

Seems like you can’t switch utility skills until they’re off cooldown now.

Superb guide! Thank you so much for taking the time to write and update it. It’s definitely helping me get more out of my guardian. I found it because I was a little overwhelmed by how to spend my trait points (only level 15). It’s still a bit overwhelming, but now I can see the patterns of synergies among traits and weapons.

I’m kicking around 2 builds right now. One is a build that focuses on burn damage and Virtue of Justice, the other is one that focuses on sick powerful spirit weapons.

Kudos!

Very informative, thanks alot!

Thanks for an excellent PVE guide. It’s really helping me understand (bit by bit) the Guardian character, and I’m liking the play a lot.
Very, very good work. And don’t mind the haters… They’re like flies, drawn to good stuff.

great guide, im new to gw2 and only lvl 10.

great guide; if only all professions had a guide like this.
I’m still working my way through it (again), but there are a lot of great ideas here.
I would love to see it updated as well.
Kudos.

Fantastic guide! Thank you for making it. I just made a Guardian and found this very helpful. I particularly enjoyed the “Interesting Synergies” sections.

Hi Eveningstar.6940,

Very nice guide so far. I am still reading it now. I came across a minor typo incase you want to correct it:

“but I want this idea percolating in your minds for a whiel.”

It’s under the “Understanding Weapons” section. Alternatively you can CTRL+F it.

I have a question about: Pure of Voice (Honor XI)

Will the boon (I assume random) still be granted to allies that are not affected by a condition?

Or is the condition required in order to receive boon.

Typo fixed. Thanks. Pure of Voice actually uses the condition conversion mechanic, which is very specific.

The trait gives all your shouts an extra functionality as a condition remover. So if you use, say, “Hold the Line!”, your allies gain Protection and Regeneration, plus any conditions they might be suffering from turn into boons. Crippled allies gain Swiftness. Bleeding allies gain Vigor. And so on.

just read the guide cause need something new to do instead of hitting high crit as a thief. i might add that this is the best break down and easy to follow guide and it looks by feed back that it has helped a lot of people will try out some of the healing and attack comm os but overall really an wicked help and nice insight to the new class thank you very much for posting this even if it is old hehhehhe

I’m so glad to see you guys are getting some use out of this old thing. Have fun out there!

I just started playing a typical Norn Guardian the other day, never have played a Guardian or even a Norn before. This really shed some light (hehehe) on the Guardian’s capabilities that I didn’t even know I could do. I love playing support classes, especially when you charge into WvWvW and take a keep or whatever and you’re keeping all of your buddies alive.

Anyway, thank you a lot Eveningstar. This is by far one of the best GW2 guides out there.

Thanks for posting this, some nice bits that I overlooked while playing my Guardian (like letting Greatsword 5/Binding Blade sit a bit to let the DoT hit more). Well done!

Very well written guide, I really enjoy reading it and greatly helps too!
Thank you.

Eveningstar.6940:

It’s ANet’s Fault: A Compendium on Complaining On The Forums
Inviable: Why This Class Is Broken And Why You Should Reroll
Schadenfreude: Slaughtering Necromancers And Feeling Good About it
The Light And How to Swing It: By Uther Pendragon

I just wanted to say that I slaughter Guardians with my Necro even on a bad day. That is all.

Oh and yes I feel great about it, let the darkness consume you, I will corrupt your stability.

Great (and I mean GREAT) guide. Too long to stay on forums though so I edited and formatted this guide in MS Word to print from Google Drive. It’s 45 pages (1 blank page for notes) and is nice to have laying around as you try to get your first Guardian leveled up.

Guardian 101

• Original author credit embedded in file.
• This is a .docx file not .doc (It can be read in Google Docs but is not compatible with all versions of Word/Office [I use Office 2010])

Thanks for all the hard work Valerie!!!

This is a very handy guide. Just a couple of points regarding sword use:

Sword is a very handy weapon to use indeed. However, it should probably be noted that Zealot’s Defense (Sword skill #3) is horrendously bad at hitting any target that’s moving, be it NPC or player. Also, I might just add that it’s a little misleading to say it ‘hits hard’ as when you do the math, the difference in dps between it and the swords ‘auto-attack’ (skill #1) is nothing. It’s true worth lies with it’s 3 second ranged block effect and the fact that it’s a shot-range ranged attack in itself.

LamaFc.4269:

Great (and I mean GREAT) guide. Too long to stay on forums though so I edited and formatted this guide in MS Word to print from Google Drive. It’s 45 pages (1 blank page for notes) and is nice to have laying around as you try to get your first Guardian leveled up.

Guardian 101

• Original author credit embedded in file.
• This is a .docx file not .doc (It can be read in Google Docs but is not compatible with all versions of Word/Office [I use Office 2010])

Thanks for all the hard work Valerie!!!

This is great, and the sticky helps. I know nothing about wiki’s except that adding it to the GW2 wiki would allow for others to edit it as changes happen in the future. Not trying to take it away from the OP, but sometimes players move on and then their wonderful content is lost in a forum purge or becomes obsolete because no one can edit it.

I wonder how much trouble it would be to use the word file to create a GW2 wiki page?

I want to thank you for this great starter guide.

Though it might already be slightly outdated by now, there is still so much relevant info that I can really find useful when getting my guardian going.

That said, I’d like to suggest an improvement, should you still be editing this some time in the future:

Reading the guide and not being familiar with all the skills and traits of the guardian can be confusing. This is why I suggest adding either the complete in-game tooltip, or possibly just a GW2wiki link, when discussing skills.

Either way, great guide, thank you for the big effort you put into making it!

I would first like to say thank you for your efforts in bringing this information to the players.

I have had a Charr Guardian for quite some time now. I finally managed to reach that wonderful pinnacle of level 80 some time ago, and now I am sort of stuck in relation to my gear functionality.

I’ve been primarily focused on either making (Through Armorsmithing) or grinding up gear from events with Power, primarily, and Condition Damage second. However, since most of the higher-end gear includes a third + stat in its breakdown, i have been curious to know what route i should take next.

I focus primarily with the Greatsword equipped. The moves placed alongside my playstyle fit quite well. I enjoy the balance between stationary moves (while dodging of course) and the all-important “Leap of Faith” move to get me to my next enemy should i need a moment in between kills to recover and refocus my view and refresh a few moves.
But i digress slightly. The third stat I have been trying to figure out that would work best for me is troubling. I want to be able to deal out heavy damage while still being able to support teammates. However, unless i am in an event, doing say a Champion event with 10-30 people present, my points per hit sit around 600-800 average. That’s solo. When in groups of that scale, I’ve seen myself dish out nearly 1000-4000 points of damage per hit depending on what move I selected (primarily Whirl after applying a shout).

Yet i have see my fianceé who plays hit nearly 8000-12000 crits on her Ranger class. I’m not sure if I’m selecting the proper gear or if i am using the wrong amount of stats. I am unsure of what the range of damage a Guardian can ultimately do maxed out. But i am looking for a solution to perhaps better increase my overall output during party and solo situations rather than what I am only able to get through Events.
-My third stat i have been picking Precision-

I will be re-reading the section in regards to my tree points and where they should be going. Perhaps i have the points in the wrong spots or not having selected something properly. Either way, I welcome any and all help in bringing up my overall damage output.

Thank you all for your time!
-Victor Crimsonsky, Charr Guardian

Primary Stats Focused-
Power, Precision, Condition Damage
Secondary-
Crit, slight mix of Vitality

Will most likely build with-
Zeal and Honor

Just wanted to say thanks! I read all of it and can’t wait to try some of these things out this evening.

Thanks again!

Just wanted to say thank you for all the time you put in to this and helping other fellow guardians.

Thank you for such a great guide!
And I greatly appreciate the external link to the guide so I can read it at work

I started the game late and got a Ranger to 50 and really wanted something different and this class seems right for me.

This guide will make it easier to learn it!

Yes, there are still new players in GW2! I’m not the best at figuring out the mechanics of the game and have a hard time relating all the synergies to my play style, so your l-o-n-g (HAHA), interesting, and information-packed post was my Find of the Day!

I love my Norn Guardian, she’s around level 23 now and having way too much fun! Well, despite having no ranged and having to run up to a fight and accidentally moving into areas 3-5 levels above my current level and then getting a pack on me LOL! Now I’m heading back ingame to try some new ideas that your guide sparked for me.

Eveningstar, I’m so happy to have found your wonderful post – still relevant after all these months! I learned so much about what I was doing right and what I can change to have even more fun

PS someone mentioned turning your post into a wiki and I heartily agree, your hard work is so helpful for newbies learning a new MMO. I hope you consider creating a wiki if you ever decide to stop updating this guide.

Great compendium. I understand your reasoning for not giving people specific builds, but that is what many people want to see. When I was leveling my guardian, I tried lots of builds, but the most efficient one for me to level was the greatsword. When configured properly, it does a ton of AoE damage. So you quickly dispatch small groups. If there was a tough boss, then mace/focus would wear it down providing great active mitigation.

Understanding traits is extremely important. The difference between no Zeal or 30 points in Zeal is about 15% of your direct weapon damage, which is significant.
It is also important to know what traits effect which types of damage.

Power impacts direct damage, but has no impact on condition damage. Direct damage is mitigated by armor class and toughness.

Increased Condition Duration is what it says. What it does not say is that conditions tick periodically and if you do not meet the threshold for the next tick of damage, then that damage is not done, as the game rounds down to the last full tick. For instance, if you apply a 3 second bleed and you have a 30% increase in condition duration, you would actually gain no benefit from the 30% condition duration. 30% increase for 3 seconds is only .9 seconds and since bleeding ticks every second, you would not gain an additional tick. You would need an increase in duration of 34% to gain any additional damage.

Precision increases your chance for critical damage. Critical damage does a base additional 50%, plus whatever your increase in crit damage is. Critical hits can cause conditions to be applied, depending on your configuration. So you can gain additional benefits via conditions.

Increased Condition Damage increases the damage your conditions apply per tick. Condition damage bypasses armor and toughness. Some conditions stack up to 25 stacks of concurrent damage, other conditions stack duration of the conditions.

Toughness does the same thing as armor class. It mitigates direct damage, but not condition damage.

Increase Critical Damage does what it says. Your base increase in critical damage (without modifiers) is 50%. So if you increase your Critical Damage via equipment and traits to 100% on your character sheet, you would be doing 250% damage on crits (100% bonus for traits/equipment and 50% base increase). Conditions do not crit, critical damage only impacts the direct damage portion of your attacks.

Vitality increases your hit points by 10 per point of vitality. That is all. Each class has a different modifier for how many base hitpoints they have. Here is something interesting I found, but I have not validated all the numbers with my characters. The relevant thing here is that the base HP for classes are very different.

The 2 professions with high class Health are warrior and necromancer: 18,327 lvl 80 base hp

The 3 professions with medium class Health are engineer, ranger and mesmer: 15,082 lvl 80 base hp

The 3 professions with low class Health are guardian, thief and elementalist: 10,805 lvl 80 base hp

Increase Healing does what it says. It increases the amount of healing you do with weapons and skills. Each weapon and skill has a different modifier, so it does not work equally well with all.

Increase Boon Duration does what it says. Like condition damage, though, many boons apply benefits per tick and are rounded down to the last complete tick.

Increase Virtue Recharge Rate does what it says. The caveat is that it does not decrease the rate by that. So if you have 10% increase in the recharge rate, it is the recharge rate divided by 110% which is not as beneficial as decreasing by 10%, which would be 90% of the recharge rate.

And I will end on a pet peave of mine regarding the interface and damage numbers. A small white number is a normal hit. A ton of really small numbers streaming on your interface are your condition damage. Bold larger numbers are your crits. When you use a weapon skill that shows a number in parenthesis like Damage (10x):1,860, this means that your weapon will strike 10 times and the total base damage would do 1,860 damage or 186 average damage per hit. The interface will scroll 10 numbers showing you the escalation of the damage. The last number is your total damage from that series of strikes. It is not the damage of your last strike. People seem to think the last number was how much damage their last strike did and they say they hit for 10k damage. LOL!

This guide is epic. Guardian was my first serious class in this game. I read this around level 30 when I was flailing about and not really groking the class overall. In fact, a lot of the guide’s suggestions and tips (“Utilities are not the core of your X”, “Elites are panic buttons”) have carried over into other classes I fool with.

One minor thing: An amazing majority of the Elite skills don’t work under water. I know it isn’t a major deal, but it seems like Renewed Focus is the only Guardian Elite skill that works underwater. As a Charr Guardian, it is the only elite that works underwater.

I learned this through process of elimination. :-/

does Eveningstar still play ?

is this guide still up to date and relevant?