Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone, before I get into it I’ll give a little info of where I’m at. I currently have 5 characters rolled ranging from 60-80 working on getting them all to 80. My main is an engi I have it setup for condition/toughness, I like it I get some kills don’t feel squishy. Now I’m back onto my guardian (first gw2 character) and Im near 80. I have dabbled in PvP with it and seems fun running mainly defense/support. However I think I want to make a cannon instead. My favorite weapons are the GS > Hammer > Stafkittenhield > everything else. I’m mainly a WvW player I’m looking for the right build before I drain my resources.

Questions

1. How viable is a burst guardian? What DMG numbers are we talking. I think if I can 2-3 shot someone I’ll ignore that I die easy.

2. Going full damage leaves me, weak? Or do I have a decent amount of base defense or through skill can I survive.

3. Should I just be support ? Is this my best bet? Will the support potential outweigh the damage potential by a lot? I understand guards have the best support capabilities but does offense lack with them ?

4. What’s the best offensive and best defensive build out there? I don’t think I want an in between build. I feel my engi is got that spot covered. I have searched for builds but, idk what’s still up to date with patches etc.

Thank you guys very much.

I’m no burst specialist, but Guardians do have a set of very, very lethal burst combos that are actually harder to avoid than burst from many other professions. Things you’ll probably want to look into:

Grandmaster Radiance trait: Right-Handed Strength (gives +15% crit chance to all one-handed weapons, one of the best single stat-granting traits in the game)
Meditations, especially Judge’s Intervention and Smite Condition
Focus offhand
GS/Sword burst
Mace 3 (while mace isn’t a DPS weapon, it puts out a surprising amount of pain)

Consider also Monk’s Focus (30-point in Valor), giving you some self-healing when using meditations, along with the toughness from the Valor line. Between the two, as well as Guardians’ natural survivability, you should be able to stay alive pretty well so long as you’re approaching unaware targets (which you should be, as with any burst build).

Burst combinations that I know of (somewhat limited, as this isn’t my normal playstyle):

• Pre-cast focus 5, wait a couple of seconds, hit mace 3, Judge’s Intervention, block an attack to trigger mace 3’s counterattack, Smite Condition (hopefully you have at least one condi by now).
• Pre-cast focus 5, walk up to a projectile-using enemy, hit sword 3, as he runs or dodges away (the natural counter to sword 3) use Judge’s Intervention to continue landing the burst damage. Focus 5 should detonate at some point during this fight for additional burst. Follow up with the sword’s lethal autoattacks.
• CC/damage chain: start out with greatsword. Hit an enemy (or several!) with Binding Blade, immediately use the pull, swap to hammer, use Ring of Warding. Mighty Blow, land a couple of autoattacks (a full chain if you can!). Banish into the side of the Ring of Warding just before it ends. Mighty Blow again (if possible), use hammer 3 for the immobilize. Land more autoattacks/another Mighty Blow and/or swap back to Greatsword for the leap and/or Whirling Wrath to finish. Add in Judge’s Intervention, Smite Condition, and Bane Signet as desired (Bane Signet is particularly nasty). Note that most or all of this chain can be avoided if your opponent has stability: check for the presence of this boon and/or make sure your opponent doesn’t have any more of it available to use before initiating this burst combo! It’s not quite as fast of a kill as more aggressive sets, but it has the advantage of only having one good counter (stability).

1. Very, you can pull of 10-20k instant damage from 1200 range if you are traited for it. Zerkerr eles, Zerker guardians, long bow rangers and thiefs in general are more or less oneshotted.

2. Full damage is relative. If you aim for 12-14k bursts you will definitely not be defenseless. If you aim higher its a gimmick build in wvw.

3. Only you can answer that one. Its very valid to go damage and its also valid to go full support.

4. there are no best builds. Its all depending on situation and how you want to play. Zergs and small group roaming requires diffferent setups to work well. Imo this is true for both defense and offense.

Most instant controllable burst is hammer+focus.

Most aoe burst focus+gs

Highest potential burst is focus+mace but it requires you to be hit upon.

They all use Judges intervention and can also incorporate smite conditions.

For wvw there are two valid burst builds, non gimmick, and those are 10/30/30/0/0 and 0/30/30/5/5 and the latter one is also the meta in Tpvp for bursting. I use both but find the second one to be more competitive.

“1. Very, you can pull of 10-20k instant damage from 1200 range if you are traited for it. Zerkerr eles, Zerker guardians, long bow rangers and thiefs in general are more or less oneshotted.”

How do you do this? What kind of traits, etc? Scepter/torch?

I’m very interested in that and specifics of the 0/30/30/5/5 spec.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|2.1g.h2|b.1g.h2.d.1g.h1j|1g.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1g.71j.1p.71j|2s.d14.2t.d14.3t.0.2s.d14.3s.d16.2s.d14|0.u6ab.u1ac.5.5|2e.1|w.13.15.1a.1i|e

Its focus, mighty blow, smite conditions and judges intervention the creates the burst.

Its just a matter of timing focus skill 5 and MB while pulling judges intervention.

Same can be done with skill 4 on torch and skill 5 on focus, ofc using judges intervention and both weapons will benefit from right hand strength whihc increases the likelihood of crit with both skills.

@Uurik – here is one variation of the RHS burst build in the form of 0/30/30/5/5.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrjY5pLkCGE

the one that Brutaly mentions up top is very nice as well and easier to pull off with Mighty Blow imo.

if you plan to go the mace route, since it does depend on your Protector’s Strike (mace 3) getting hit, i like to target those who are already engaged in a fight (ideally a group!) since they’ll be attacking already. and you’re more sure to set off the AoE blast.

as you can see, main “burst” skills that the Guardian has is Shield of Wrath when it goes off, Protector’s Strike from the mace, Zealot’s Flame/Fire (double tap Torch 4), Zealot’s Defense (sword 3) – though i feel this is easiest to dodge, after WW on GS, and we have Whirling Wrath (GS2) and Mighty Blow (Hammer 2). so depending on what you want to run, you can always mix and match. and because of CDs and being in different situations, know that there isn’t just ONE way to burst.

if you want, Silven takes Valor X as well for Focused Mind which really only makes Smite Condition instant cast as well, so you can cast it anytime during your burst to add more AoE damage.