Guild Wars 2

New guardian player…how do I keep up with other players?

My previous classes had abilities that cast swiftness or gave a base increase- do I need to use runes or is there another way?

That is the predicament the guardians are faced with. If you want to be fast you either need to use staff, ultilities like retreat and save yourselves or buy runes of the traveler. It sucks a lot and hopefully anet makes a change and gives guardians a bonus to their speed like all the other classes have.

Superior Rune of the Traveler x7 for 2 years.

:(

After finally getting bored of having to always run a staff or shouts for roaming content, I forked over the money for travelers runes.

Still holding out hope that they add a 25% movement speed buff to the longbow cooldown trait or something, like Necro’s dagger.

You could always roll any other class to get easy access to a 25% move speed passive. The Guardian doesn’t get one because our developer is terrible at balance.

PvE: Traveler’s Runes + “Retreat!” + “Save Yourselves!” + Judge’s Intervention + Flashing Blades (Sword #2) + Leap of Faith (GS #3) for overland travel.

sPvP / WvW Roaming: I don’t even bother chasing things down anymore, just fight on/near points.

Treveller runes. best thing i ever bought on my Guard.
or you have to go shout build with save yourselves and retreat.

The guardian profession is one of the slower class. It’s not hard though to keep up speed boost most of the time w/ utility skills & staff. If you want a truly slow class, try necromancer. It was a nightmare doing map completion with it.

Can’t go faster for free BUTT Another way to deal with this is to have a lot of cc’s like if you go radiance for F1 immobilize in addition to like scepter/shield + hammer or GS + hammer.
Never try any sort of dps build without Judge Intervention

Reaper is actually pretty fast and able to easily cripple/chill other people, too.

Welcome to Guard. Where we are the only class without a move speed buff. You either have to swap to staff constantly (I used to do this via inventory swap, cast 3, then switch back to reasonable weps), use retreat (which is what I do now because the bonus aegis helps keep up Unscathed Contender), or use save yourselves (probably the worst option since 60 sec cd for 10 sec swift). As others have said you can also buy Runes of the Traveler or Runes of Speed, but both of these will be a serious detractor from your DPS vs standard Scholar’s or Flame Leigon.

Maybe some day the devs will pay attention to us.

Pure of Voice + Runes of the Pack + Retreat + Save Yourselves = 100% swiftness

Eponet.4829:

Pure of Voice + Runes of the Pack + Retreat + Save Yourselves = 100% swiftness

Or just have one trait, minor or otherwise, like other classes.

It’s like your goal is to kill Gary Busey, so you device a long string of traps and devices to take him down: A trip wire so he falls in kitten, a collection of mice to greet him in this hole, and a week beforehand of training said mice to like the taste of human.

Meanwhile, someone else could’ve just hit him on the back of the head with a baseball bat. There’s the difference.

edit: My analogy ruined by the word “a” before the word “hole”. There is no kitten.

Hahn.6874:

Eponet.4829:

Pure of Voice + Runes of the Pack + Retreat + Save Yourselves = 100% swiftness

Or just have one trait, minor or otherwise, like other classes.

It’s like your goal is to kill Gary Busey, so you device a long string of traps and devices to take him down: A trip wire so he falls in kitten, a collection of mice to greet him in this hole, and a week beforehand of training said mice to like the taste of human.

Meanwhile, someone else could’ve just hit him on the back of the head with a baseball bat. There’s the difference.

edit: My analogy ruined by the word “a” before the word “hole”. There is no kitten.

Saw this and laughed.

Then I almost cried because its so true.

Runes of the Pack are infinitely more useful in pve and wvw. Traits and utilities can be slotted for free, and even if you don’t want Pure of Voice/not taking Honor, you only need 76% swiftness uptime to equate a 25% movement speed. Untraited and without boon duration, Retreat is already 50%.

It is ridiculous beyond belief than some one can suggest that having 2 utilities on constant CD is actually a viable alternative.

Apolo.5942:

It is ridiculous beyond belief than some one can suggest that having 2 utilities on constant CD is actually a viable alternative.

Those two utilities, untraited, on CD give a ~22% speed increase over time. It’s less than 25%, sure, but not ridiculously beyond belief less.

Traited it’s an ~83% swiftness uptime for a ~27% movement increase over time, a little bit better than the utilities that give the flat bonus.

Apolo.5942:

It is ridiculous beyond belief than some one can suggest that having 2 utilities on constant CD is actually a viable alternative.

For all the times you actually need 25% or greater move speed that isn’t provided by a group, how often do you actually need your utilities?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Speed