Guild Wars 2

Hi,

WvW focused my current setup is:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7g-Fc;0RFV40K3cG-90;9;6TJJ;454A17-18-N;05I;1F-03F-035BN

0/0/30/20/20 GS / S+F
SoR / “Save Your Seves!” / “Retreat!” / SoJ / Renewed Focus

Valor: VI (5% Toughness as Precision) / V (Lose a condition every 10sec) / XI AH
Honor: II (Shouts CD) / VIII (Might boon to all on crit)
Virtues: II (25% Retaliation) / XI (Virtue of Resolve removes 3 condi)

Gear:

Full Knights (Toughness+Power+Precision) & Same stats Jewels
Food: Lemongrass + Stones

In-game stats:

Health 15,089 (/w 6% bonus from WvW)
Critical Hit 49%
Critical Damage 30%
Toughness 2,149
Power 1,906
Damage Reduction 10%

The build is insanely durable in zergs, I can easily get focused and make it out alive if I blow all CD’s (virtues) and Elite. Outstanding Condition management and fantastic mobility I have chased down rangers who have 25% boost and many ways to keep Swiftness up and I can run away when needed.

Looking for any insight from those with experience with Guardian on Mediation Vs Shouts, Sigils and Runes.

Shouts for teamplay and then you use AH, meditations for soloplay or just with one friend and then you trait Monks Focus and get heals on the meditations.

Both are valid.

Even if you use meditations you can use shouts and vice versa. For instance lets say you use Monks Focus you will still have great use of SyG, that shout is just great for you and the team. Or if you use AH then the teleport from meditations would be a great addition to your mobility.

Regarding runes you have tons that suits the guardian and my only advice is that you should pick what you lack.

For instance i like to stay clean from conditions and run a shoutbuild which means rune of the soldier is great for me. Others find Dolyak to be great and some that has large healthpools find reduced condition duration, in combination with reduced condition duration food, to be nice.

The only clear advice any one can give you is that you dont pick the runes based on the stats, should look for the secondary effect they have. If its stats you need then just by gems and upgrade to a fraction of the cost.

The same goes for sigils, pick them based on what you need. My playstyle demands that i dodge a lot so for me energy are great. Some people want to stack might and some wants an extra cc. Once again, you need to figure out what you lack.

Before you have figured that out you will get 20 different suggestion with different effects.

So what do you lack or where do you fall short?

As a group orientated/zerg class it doesnt really matter too much, since you contribute almost nothing overall in the large picture anyway outside of support.

I love the 30/20/20 guards because they are free kills on my thief, when i realised that I learned to do as Oozo does on guard and used the blind on justice trait from radiance. I find that active survivability suits me much better over the braindead passive style.

Within the small scale team roll though its fine, since its guards main supporting masterpiece role. You cant retain the durability and crank up the power all that easily. When I was packing maximum defence I could get which was somewhere around 3.4 armor the damage was naturally terrible. So I dropped a lot of it and converted to more offence. In the end statwise it was clocked out at hybrid stats with armor more around the 2.6k mark.

but kitten did I feel the difference, no more walking away from the impossible lol.

I think the traits are very limited on guard in that you really are 100% built towards your choice with gear and everything – which ofcourse is normal. Difference for me being my other classes can step out of their bounderies and still have a use, while my guard cant. Not without gear, trait overhaul 99.9% of the time.

If im running my bunkery AH spec, running that alone is just a free kill. Whilst my roam dps/small squad thing cant run out in front of everyone for that wall of reflect without disspearing under a wall of ele firepower.

In short you cant really do alot to improve the guardian in area’s hes supposed to be limited at. Simple things like AH for team, Monks for solo is obvious. The stat synergy most used for wvw and elsewhere is always the same. Bunker, Bunker, Bunker and nowadays the odd healway.

We all know the meta game in gw2 is stale. People are role pigeon holed in spvp and its pouring out from there over time.

The classes need a role shift. Especially if things like ‘other classes having portals’ etc etc comes to pass.

Bottom line being theres only so many tuning options for bunker. You cant have the survivability and be much more useful than its structured role, which is point denial and support.

Since DPS guard has next to no application away from small scale, spvp or those with a real deathwish, you’re nearly as far as you can go with that spec.

@OP, if you weapon swap constantly, then your trait setup is good. If you find yourself relying on the GS a lot more, I’d suggest moving 10pts from Virtue to Honor to get 20% 2h weapon cd reduction.

Also, the only major weakness with your setup is stun break. Having 1 stun break is usually not enough, given that our cds are really terribad. I use the same utilities as you cept switch out SoJ for JI, but if you don’t think meditations is a good investment, maybe use SYG since you are shout focused.

I run sigil of strength fo GS for obvious dps reasons and then rune of lyssa to make renewed focus more worth it to use. I find myself using renewed most of the times when I’m in an unsaveable situation, but lyssa removes all conditions and gives all boons at the use of renewed focus, which helps a lot in burst or retreating, given aegis, and stability, regen, vigor, etc. Add that to SY and you’ve got a long lasting set of all boons.

Anyways, I use all zerk set because I’m mostly a PvEer and currently, everything becomes a dps check event so I want to make sure I output as much damage as I can.

Hope that helps. Not sure about the two handed 2nd weapon set. I use scepter/sheild, but still working on what sigils to use for them.