Guild Wars 2

Could anyone please offer some advice, tips, thoughts, and themes on effectively playing my lvl 72 Guardian? I feel lost.

1. I’ve played up to ~ lvl 50 (w/ greatsword), and crafted the additional 12 levels
2. I don’t have a solid understanding of how to use any of my skills
3. Majority of my skills indicate that I’m supposed to be playing with others
4. I prefer to play solo

Note: My main is an engineer and I love that profession; however, I’m trying expand. I thought by now that my guardian play style would’ve “emerged naturally”, but instead, I’m just piling on arcane spirits everywhere I go.

Utilities are generally situational, so slot the ones that you think may help in those situations.

In combat, it’s best to be evasive like you might be on your Engineer. Keep your enemy chasing you and slowly take them down. The Guardian has the tools to last a long time due to all our forms of healing, so take your time in a fight and try to control your enemy.

With the greatsword for example, you might Leap of Faith at an enemy blinding them, do an auto-attack, dodge behind them and use Whirling Wrath, then dodge out and hit them here and there until your cooldowns are back up.

You might try something like placing Symbol of Wrath and then Binding Blade into Whirling Wrath, then dodging out and letting enemies chase you, then Leap of Faith for an AoE blind and dodge out again.

Every time you burst and then get out of the fire, you keep regaining health while your enemies drop health in chunks and can’t regain that.

I mostly solo guardian myself. Greatsword is awesome for this. I also use Scepter/Sheild as a flexible alternative when kiting is the healthier strategy. I wear cleric armour as I prefer defense over dps.

I rarely have issues with multiple enemies. Binding Blade is great for getting ranged attackers in striking distance and for the knockdown, but not all enemies can be knocked down. If mobs are all spread out this is a good skill to use first.

Leap of Faith to blind, Whirling Wrath, and Wrathful Strike is my general rotation.

Symbol of Wrath when traited can hit more mobs and heal allies and combo’s for removing conditions.

Purging Flames is great to use before Leap of Faith, Whirling Wrath for some extra dps plus two combo’s. “Save Yourselves” is even better at taking down weak enemies so you can concentrate on the bigger ones, but the cooldown is a lot longer.

I usually only use dodge to backoff and heal. The more time spent whacking at the enemy the faster they die.

Note: Champions, Dungeons, WvW, and PvP require different strategies than just wading in.

For the majority of my Guardian’s play time I’ve used a Shout build. It looks geared for parties and dungeons, but it works great solo too. This build allows me to venture into Orr without fear thanks to the multitude of Condition Removals (2 each shout, 3 with Virtue of Resolve) and defensive Boons (easy access to Protection, Regeneration and Vigor).

I’ve now switched to a more selfish build for WvW roaming.

Fixed bad links.

I have played a Guardian since launch and I can tell you it gets easier with higher levels. The reasoning? We have some pretty good synergy with our utility skills.

Here is what I have been running as of late. Keep in mind that recent changes have made some question the viability of Altruistic Healing. I am still using the AH setup you see below in group fights around Orr and I am satisfied. I use the Monks Focus version when I am soloing. I find this setup very flexible without needing to spend coin on retraining traits or several gear sets. Works great for farming too. Keep in mind that you don’t to land the killing blow or tag the mob first. Just so long as you contribute damage you can get a drop. All the aoe attacks with this setup help increase the number of mhps (mobs hit per second).

Traits : 0/10/30/30/0
Radiance: Signet Mastery
Valor: Meditation Mastery, Retributive Armor, and Altruistic Healing
Honor: Writ of Exaltation, Empowering Might, and Writ of the Merciful
Gear: Full exotic berserker armor with 5 Superior runes of the grove. Exotic berserker great sword with major sigil of bloodlust. Cleric staff with sigil of air. Berserker rings, earrings, and amulet.
Skills: Signet of Reslove, Stand Your Ground, Hold the Line, Smite Condition, and Renewed Focus (elite).
Let me first say that this is a modified version of Silent’s Paladin build so credit where credit is due.
My set up is all about the boons while keeping respectable crit chance and damage. Right now I get 41% crit chance so I can keep around 2 to 3 stacks of might on folks and more in bigger fights. Altruistic Healing + Stand Your Ground + Hold the line in a 6 man group = 24 boons that all give me a healing benefit. Then I still have the staff skill Symbol of Swiftness which damages foes, heals (with the trait), and give me a heal because of the boon it provides. Then Empower which has its own built in heal and the stacks of might in big groups also gives me heals. The greatsword’s default attack ends with might boon so heal and the 4 skill symbol of wrath give me a boon, damages foes, and heals me. All this with our passive regen ability, the two evade rolls that end with a heal, and last but not least the nuke selfheal of signet of resolve.
A note on healing. This build will not outpace the damage you take. You still need to evade and not stand in mob made aoe fire etc. Think of heals as damage mitigation.

The 5 Superior Runes of the Grove give me a 25% chance on hit to give me protection boon for 4 seconds with a 30 second cool down. Trust me, you will be surprised how often this triggers. Oh and it’s a boon so heal from Altruistic Healing.
Something else to remember is that those symbols can generate critical hits just like weapons. So if you read the battle field right, you can place the symbol from the staff on one fight and join in at another part and drop the symbol from your greatsword. Then spin and watch the might boons start stacking up on your team and healing pour on to you.

The above works better in groups. If you’re soloing then change out AH for Monks Focus and Empowering might for either Two Handed Weapon Mastery or Symbols Last Longer trait. Change the utility skills to Judges Intervention, Purging Flames and Smite Condition. Keep Renewed Focus. If you like you can take 5 points from Radiance and put that into Virtues for extra boons from virtue activation. If you do this I would change your heal to shelter. If you find that you like this version you could try using Knights Armor instead of Berserker.

Haven’t tried this out in any of the PvP formats but in PvE it’s been a lot of fun.

Oh and welcome to our ranks.

I’ll try to keep it simple:

I presume you know that Guardians are melee-focused. If you’re going ranged all the time, stop and pick a melee-weapon.

Now…

1. Pick the two favorite types of skills you enjoy most
Spirit Weapons. Shouts. Signets. Meditation. Consecration.

2. Find a balance between your preferences and survival
-Play with your traits in Heart of the Mists
^Playing with your traits/build in sPvP is very important. Saves you time and money for telling if a profession is right for you. You can even try out different stats, runes, and sigils! Take the time to find what’s right for you.

-Make sure to incorporate some condition-removal
-Think about what would be most useful for your playing experience

3. Try it out and adjust your utilities and traits as needed
With a little time and imagination, you should find something you like.

If that didn’t help, I recommend defaulting to the most popular Guardian build.

The AH (Altruistic Healing) build – 0/15/30/20/5
- 15 down Radiance for ‘Renewed Justice’ and the precision
- 30 down Valor for ‘Altruistic Healing’
- 20 down Honor for ‘Vigorous Precision’ and ‘Empowering Might’
- 5 down Virtues for the extra boons when casting your virtues

This combination of traits causes you to give out boons almost incessantly, which will trigger AH equally incessantly, resulting in a lot of additional healing.

It’s good for any situation; solo-PvE, group-PvE, WvW. It works in all of them.

If the AH build doesn’t get you enjoying the Guardian, then the profession is probably wrong for you.

I just finished leveling my guardian to 80 (seriously, 2 days ago). I used a variety of builds during lower levels but around level 70 went solely for a tanky altruistic healing, shout build.

I found that with this build you can face tank groups of 3-4 and the veterans mobs that you’ll encounter while leveling rather easily. I believe this build is “effective” because leveling is easy (in fact amazingly easy compared to some other professions) and when you group for events you bring the ability to absorb damage, heal, and apply boons.