Maybe I am too used to professions that can kite. I find myself dying quite a bit with Guardian in small 1vX or small clashes in WvW. In zergs. I want to L2P, please show the way.
My problems with Guardian:
1. Low mobility. I must win a fight or scare people away (in that case, I wouldn’t be able to chase after them). Escape is not an option because:
2. Long cool down. I can survive the initial onslaught from my enemies with protection and aegis. However, once those wear off (and they do wear off quickly), I am pretty much a sitting duck. Physical attacks I can deal with, but condition damage are troublesome; especially with my low health pool (even with armors and traits I cap out at ~20K HP).
3. The window of opportunity to burst my opponents is quite small. I feel like I lose a lot of damage and boon because my opponent can just dodge out of symbols.
How do you sustain as a Guardian? Are they better healers in groups than they are by themselves? AH heals for like 70. Symbol heals ~150/pulse. Virtue ticks for 100/s. Dodge roll heals for ~150. I feel all these healing abilities are easily negated by both burst and condition damage, given that the Guardian is always in the thick of a battle.
TL;DR: Guardians are claimed to be nearly immortal (even if they don’t skill people), but I can’t seem to achieve that.
For roaming, it all comes down to playing to your builds strengths. It sounds to me you are going for an AH, tanky build, reliant on boons for sustain and POV for condi removal?
Lord Chuck I – Guardian
Chuck The Stampede – Engineer
[Lg] Agatha – Dragonbrand
For roaming, it all comes down to playing to your builds strengths. It sounds to me you are going for an AH, tanky build, reliant on boons for sustain and POV for condi removal?
I have tried many builds. For PvE I can get away with something like 20/30/x/x/x. I can dish out damage while maintain a healthy rotation of protection skills. For WvW, anything works to be to be honest. Almost anything I do is beneficial to the team.
I’m having trouble finding the right traits and weapons sets for roaming. I’ve tried a build where I grabbed as many retaliations as I could. Let’s just say it sounded better on paper lol.
When I roam with 1-3 people I bring a 10/25/30/5/0 hammer/Scepter+focus meditation burst build. I run with a condi warrior who brings the DOT’s, then a hammer warrior who brings massive CC. So my job, is to snipe the squishy person in another group, and get them out of the battle quick. I have enough sustain through meditations and 3k armor to last, but enough burst to pull of 12k damage in 1-2 seconds.
I hate the retaliation builds personally, unless I am in a group of 5-10, in which case I am supper support/rezer. I can post some videos of me from my buddies perspective in his stream if that helps.
Lord Chuck I – Guardian
Chuck The Stampede – Engineer
[Lg] Agatha – Dragonbrand
For duels I like a 20/0/30/20 meditation build with GS/H. You can precast RoW, pop JI, Banish, Mighty Blow, GS4, then WW. Typically wrecks most classes or at least makes them pop their heal which also means you pretty much win. I use a mix of soldiers and beserker’s when I roam for a good mix of stats.
Iconoklast – Guardian / Icono Clone – Mesmer
Tiny Icono – Engineer / The Icono – Elementalist
SoS – Empyrean Knights [EK] YB – The Coasters [TC]
One of the first things to do is to forget that Shelter is a heal skill, think of it as a 2s block and use it to prevent burst. Same thing with Renewed Focus, if you have to use it as an “oh kitten” button, you’re probably going to die anyways.
For solo roaming, high damage builds are usually the best. You could try running Triple Meditation with a x/x/30/15/x spec and a mix of Valk/Zerk/Knight. You’ll have decent sustain through Monk’s Focus and lots of dodges/heals with Vigorous Precision.
I run Valk’s and Speed runes with Zerker/Knight trinkets and 10/5/30/20/5 which nets me 16-18k HP, ~32% crit chance, ~100% crit damage, and ~3.1k power.
Guardians tanking abilities comes from mostly AH and mitigation through protection, blind and aegis. AH seems like it’s only doing a little bit but pair it with Empowering Might for a more aggressive build or with staff for a more defensive and you’ll see it add up. In group fights focus more on the use of your blinds, since theyre AoE rather than aegis which is a single block.
Also even in solo situations with zero healing power shouts should out heal meditation healing. (I haven’t calculated it since the scaling patch so I can’t be 100% but even if meditations do heal for more shouts more than make up for it with protection)
Mercenary for now.
Guardian – Vanessa Guardwell
Warrior – Cnaeus Dane
Running 0/5/30/30/5 with lots of shouts at the moment. My party and I can survive quite well.
Still struggling on the offensive side. I feel like all of my control skills (aside from scepter 3) are too predictable. Both the cool down and cast time are so high. Even when I do manage to land them, my opponents have easy access to escape skills.
0/5/30/30/5 were my Raid-Off-Guard-Traits (depends on gear, if there is enough DMG, I had 3.3k attack)
atm im running 0/20/30/20 with medis, quite good Basic-DMG and arround 16k HP. 1v1 quite ok, 1vX against average-good enemies a bit difficult (but maybe lack of personal skill)
Edit:
I´m on tour with GS and Sword/Focus, to get mobility by the port on sword 2, the gapcloser on GS 3 and JI. Controll lacks a bit, but mobility resolves this
Scepter is a must for roaming/dueling, as anything that can kite you is going to eat you alive without it. Use it like it is a melee weapon, just with an extra long range, that way the shots don’t get easily avoided. Food/utilities can be switched out depending on what you are fighting. I tend to keep decent condition removal up as a base since those are the specs that can do the most damage to us. If your going to be fighting something more physical than switch in Signet of judgement for Hold the line for the passive 10% damage reduction, and a nice stunbreak/weakness. Also switch your food off condition duration, I either use Power/perc food, or Omnomberry pie for the leach/perc.
The only things I have had issues with with this build are those stupid 5 condition/kite thieves, and a pretty good mesmer. The thieves you actually need to try to kite some, as their rotation depends on getting close to apply torment stacks/cloak and dagger. But honestly they are very tough to deal with IMO. With Mesmers you will want to switch out the scepter for a GS so you can AoE clones before you get shattered, also the clones have the annoying tendency to block your scepter shots.
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