Guild Wars 2

Hi fellow guardians,

Here’s my problem – I find myself playing odd hours during the week when WVW is rather dead and it’s hard to get dungeon runs. I spend quite a bit of time leveling events and hearts in the world solo. Unfortunately, things are getting pretty stale. I’m in my 50s and can’t see spending another 20 or so hours spamming greatsword and judge’s intervention.

Does anyone have a good solo leveling build that will allow me to mix things up while still leveling as quickly as greatsword? I’ve thought about experimenting with sword/torch or spirit weapons, but I’ve heard both of those have been nerfed hard. Hammer and scepter/focus are somewhat fun, but just don’t seem to get the job done as quickly as GS. Also, any suggestions for good leveling traits?

I had a human guardian (hahaha zealous blade made me ragequit.. 30 hp per swing is so ridiculously bad) and deleted it, made ranger, got bored, made warrior, realized guardian can solo expert level content via tanking better and made an asura guardian. I did not feel like leveling a guardian again the slow way.

If you can find a server that has dedicated farmers and courteous people who will not intervene.. (unlikely..)

Harathi north-east has a chain that you can use to quickly level. Pop killstreak + halloween food (preferably the regen food, halloween foods give 15% extra kill exp),
then equip staff and spam 1 to tag every single thing. If you do it right you can get a ridiculous amount of exp at the part at the gate alone.. several bubbles worth.
People also use maw, kessex and bloodtide coast.

I leveled to 80 on my guardian in 4 days of casual playing this way and it could have been much, much faster. The problem is that people fail to fail. The modniir offensive strength has to stay above 50% in order for the event to fail and reset to 3 minutes. Otherwise you end up waiting like 45 minutes. There are other spots you can use as well but I would go do other things/go to the event chain in harathi when it pops using a timer (roughly 30 minutes after the final boss is defeated if they succeed event).

Alot of people farm it without realizing how it is supposed to be done. Alot of people just want to complete the event chain, can’t blame them. Its inefficient, but thats their choice. If you can find a server that is doing this chain correctly you could level an army of alts.. quite fast. The drops I got were plenty to buy celestial/abyss when sold and tp’ed, much better income than normal map completion style of leveling.

Anyway, because they will probably succeed the event(I got lucky), you can do other things during the event recharge.

Alternatively, if you have friends and know how to do cof 1 speed runs/any dungeon..

Use a level 80 main to do dungeons, switch at last boss (run your lower level to the dungeon, you can enter if you are in the zone, no level cap). Dungeons reward 70% of levels experience so you can get alot of gold and exp doing cof 1.

Keep in mind leveling that way has the drawback of being lousy for map completion…
However, I prefer to go back at level 80 and do map completion like I am doing now.. its just so slow on guardian compared to warrior. The better gear and level helps it go faster.

Stat full zerker gear (even if you plan to be a tank at 80) and do dynamic events with zergs many levels above you. The orr events are ripe for the picking since all you have to do is enough damage with staff 1 to tag the opponent. Staff guardian is the best way to tag mobs of opponents in the entire game. Period. There will be plenty of people around to take hits and deal the rest of the damage. You need to be around 10 levels within the chain you use.

When you hit level 75, just cof 1 a few times. Its ultra fast and you will practically be 80 immediately.

As far as making the experience fun if you don’t feel like doing it faster since we take forever to kill things and get from point a to point b…

You can use a sword/focus timing build to blind the opponent at strategic times to make them miss every attack. You use torch already but.. lighting stuff on fire takes a while to get boring. You can use a symbol + AH might stacking hammer build to remain tanky against champions which blindness is less useful against.

Wall of reflection is just hilarious against any glass cannon enemy such as karka when they use a ranged attack: You can let the enemy do all the hard work of killing themselves for you. When you get to 80, use it against karka for hilarity to ensue.

Its fun to play the prankster as guardian, really.

I levelled my guardian with GS/sword-torch. Yes I went condition build and I loved it. When I hit 80 I started to adjust my style to fit the higher level content. I abandoned the burning build but I loved levelling with it. Level with the build that feels best and you can change it easily when you hit 80. Only the gear at lvl 80 matters. I used condition gear to lvl 79 and then crafted knights draconic gear.

I have to agree, knights is awesome. Vitality is used once and then is dead weight.. It goes faster without toughness and really due to our healing nature survival is a game of in-out rather than just having a bigger health pool. Knights allow you to survive longer and in a more meaningful way. The given vitality in ptv effectively becomes nullified and useless mere seconds into the fight, mathematically. Thus, if you fight anything except glass cannon trash mobs, knights is the way to go.
Due to our passive and active healing + protection (if your build has access to this), toughness makes each hitpoint more meaningful and synergizes with healing. You gain longevity at the cost of vitality.. but in reality ptv doesn’t give as much toughness. The proc healing is also gone because precision is not in ptv. Precision is a splendid stat on guardians because we can use it offensively and defensively. If you stack every kind of proc critical healing and knights gear, you will do decent damage while being able to survive extended melee encounters (champions… bosses, any enemy that matters) and still do enough damage to trash mobs that you become very flexible.

Conditions hurt though, but you are a guardian so.. our health is going to be low either way and we have condition removal.

My suggestion, use zerker/power statted gear to level (just to make killing stuff faster.. you don’t need to invest in gear because its better to level out of your gear fast anyway), then at 80 try knights and healing traits such as AH, proc healing food, proc healing sigils, maintenance oil, hammer + symbol healing. Hammer chain is defensively
what hundred blades is to offense.

I have solo’ed alot of level 80 champions.. champion orrian giants, champion contender, champion icebrood kodan, etc. It becomes a very fun class to play because you can do amazing things… It just takes a while since our dps isn’t -stellar-.

I just did exploration and personal story, it went by fast.