Guild Wars 2

I will be returning from a 1+ year long deployment and looking forward to starting a guardian in the morning after a huge patch.

I would greatly appreciate any help I could get in steering me toward a build I can use for strictly pve. I was never much into pvp.

I would prefer a 2H sword, hammer and/or staff if possible. I remember being 0/0/30/30/10 for Altruistic healing + hammer, not sure if that’s even a good build anymore. I wouldn’t be against using a MH/OH with a 2h weapon though.

About me and how I play. I solo mainly until higher levels and would really like to finally do some dungeons and maybe raid. I love the thought of being very useful and helpful to a group/raid, like being almost necessary. Mid to lower dps builds are ok as long as I bring utility, wont be kicked from group/raids, can have fairly good to good survivability and can still solo play.

Any other suggestions would be awesome. IE, what gear set I should be aiming for.

Sorry for being so demanding bit I literally just got home, 3:30am, and patching the game.

Hope to see you all tomorrow.

Since you are not into PvP, I would go on and say you don’t need a build or something. You can always “re-trait” now, so no worries. Just enjoy the game how you like to play it, that’s all.

Actually, the build 0/0/30/30/10 (now called 0/0/6/6/2) is the best (and only really viable) build for a guardian.
In that new patch nothing has changed for guardians. Your old build is still viable.
If you want to be a defensive guardian, a build 0/0/6/6/2 whit Hammer and Staff can be a very good build.
There’s a lot of new Grand Master traits, but no one is a really good alternative to the previous GM Traits.

Your old build is still the best build for a guardian.

Then, if you play in pve, you can change your build to try to obtain more dps, or to become a dps class. But the only viable build for guardian in dungeons/sPvP/WvsW if you want to play against hard situations is still the old build 0/0/6/6/2 whit Staff + Hammer (or mace+shield/focus) whit Soldier or Cleric equipment.

I know you said you wanted good survivability but there is 2 kinds of way to survive in this game, first is trough Passive Defense which is your [toughness, Vitality and healing power] (you will be tanking the hits) or you can use Active Defense Which is, [Reflection, Blinds, Aegis, Blocks, Protection, Weakness] While Passive Defense is gear dependant, Active defense isn’t, so you can gear offensively.

You said you like Greatsword and Hammer, if you are interested into running a High DPS build using Active Defense I highly suggest taking a look at this http://youtu.be/z5k5fO2NN9o?t=10m47s You can look at his channel, Obal is a very skilled PvE player, and you can see how effective Active Defense is, it’s hard to notice all the little things he does but he explain it in his guide.

However, at first it will be extremely hard, you need to make good use of your blinds, block, Reflection and it’s hard to move away from the 0/0/30/30/10 you used to have.
Obal suggest using Knight’s gears (Toughness, Precision, Power) to get used to it (or if you still have some old Soldier (Power, Vitality, Toughness) but what you should be aiming for eventually, is completely offensive gear, Berserker (Power, Precision, Ferocity)

Again, this is merely a suggestion, if this kind of gameplay doesn’t interest you can just ignore my post :P! But let me tell you, in PvE it is possible to mitigate everything through Active Defense.

Can anyone post a link for the 0/0/6/6/2 build and passive defense gear set for said build? I too have been away from the game for a long time and am trying to get back into the swing of things, and can’t remember what the build was for the life of me.

Trice’s advice is very sound, and if you’re thinking of actually doing PVE in a more serious manner, you should follow it. Passive defence is really lacklustre in PVE, especially with better groups, and in general you should be gearing for DPS. Dodges, blocks and blinds are all you should need for survivability.

If you die here and there while getting used to the glassiness of the DPS guardian, don’t be discouraged, as guardians are one of the harder glass cannon classes to get used to (you tend to get aggro a lot and have a relatively small HP pool, so once your blocks/blinds are exhausted you will have trouble surviving). Also, if a DPS char goes down once or twice in the fight you will likely still be doing more damage overall than a tank who survives the entire fight.