Guild Wars 2

Hi all,
After getting a few characters into the 50’s I have fallen in love with the Guardian (well, for now). I’m mostly a PVE player running with Sep/torch and Hammer. I love both setups but really enjoy the sceptre and torch. I love the whole holy blue fire thing, it somehow just suits me. Also, I have gotten used to striffing circles around my opponent. Largely, due to the fact that my highest and first character is a necro. I have gotten comfortable in that approach of combat. However, since reading the forums I’m starting to think there is something wrong with me. People generally hate the animations—I love them. That and the whole role-play idea to it is right up my alley and found it to be a great part of the game.

That was mostly a comment. I do have a question for you all.

I’m only in my 30’s and it has become clear that the points and traits are not going to line up for both 2 hand hammer and 1 hand sceptre builds. If i pursue the sceptre I found a “burning” build that looks like it may be good dps but may be lacking in survivability and support? I love dungeon grps and plan on running them a lot.

Question; finally,
What I would love is some suggestions on how best to make use of a Sceptre/Tourch build and is it viable at 80. Specifically, will it be a viable dungeon build?
If anyone has any experience with this setup I would love to hear their experience so far, and any build advice would be greatly, greatly, appreciated.
Hope that made some kind of sense.

Thanks for the help, first post ever!

Welcome to the community and I’m happy you are enjoying your Guardian so far. Your build will most certainly be viable, but you have to gear and trait for it, as you would with any build. That is where it gets a little tricky. You have to decide what you want your main focus to be.

Scepter/Torch + Hammer is essentially all out offense, unless you are relying more on the Hammer with the Altruistic Healing trait. One benefit you will see with your build is that you do not have to stay up close to do your damage. That will inherently give you the ability to take a more offensive approach to your build.

I would put at least 15 points into radiance, or more if you like the trait options in that line. You should take 30 in Valor to grab Altruistic Healing or Monk’s Focus (those really are our best traits, regardless of your setup), depending on what utilities you are running. If you use meditations, go with Monk’s Focus, otherwise pick up Altruistic Healing. You definitely want to pick up some points in Zeal, but how many is definitely up to you. I would also snag 5 points in Virtues if you can spare them (it has amazing synergy with Altruistic Healing if you chose that route).

As far as gear goes, if you are focusing on heavy condition damage from your burning, go for condition damage. If you are focusing more on direct damage, go for a combination of power and precision. Supplement either choice with adequate amounts of vitality and toughness (priority on those two would be toughness). You will get a feeling for what values you need to hit as you run dungeons more and more.

With a build like that you will be set for almost any PvE encounter as long as you play smart. As far as PvP or WvW goes, you would need to change some things up and take a bit more survivability. The Torch doesn’t tend to bring too much to the table in a scenario like that, but for PvE you will do fine with it.

At the end of the day, play what you enjoy and try to make the weapons you love work for you, and not the other way around. Hope this helped. If you need any specifics answered, send me a PM or reply here.

I use Sceptre/Torch for my ranged attacks, though I will admit it feels a bit odd to have a fully armoured character “waving a wand” for ranged attiacks like that.

I would have prefered a more martial weapon such as a crossbow or something to shoot.

I don’t know how it fits into the lore (I never played GW1) maybe it makes sense to old timers in the game, but I dont know why they decided that the guardians should fight ranged like a armoured version of Harry Potter.

I trait radiance to 30 to boost crits of one handed weapon. You can also use honor to get your 2handed cool downs shortened by 20% on the hammer for 20 trait points.

I use the sword or mace as my 1 handed and pair them with hammer or GS all the time. I don’t see why you couldn’t substitute the scepter as your 1h weapon. Because you’re using radiance you’ll be able to spam justice once you trait in 15 points so you can get plenty of burn just from that. BTW torch skill 5 unfortunately does not cause burning from what I can tell but I love using the torch anyway.

If you trait 30 into Radiance which also helps with conditions and 20 into honor for two handed – hammers that leaves you 20 points to play with to fill out a build that might better suit burning or complement your utility skills.

This is essentially what i am taking about on paper, with 50 trait points spent.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/guardian#0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|2172|1369|1366|0|0|0|0|20|866|1400|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Scepter is about the best option you have to deal decent ranged damage as a guardian. I also enjoy using scepter when fighting champions solo. One time in a group I had greatsword and hammer equipped and there was a boss that would knock you down in melee range…..I was completely useless in that fight. I was crying because I couldn’t change to scepter mid combat…

Thank you all for the help and support. This helps tremendously!
Sorry for spelling mistakes, I know it’s annoying (tourch/torch/armour/armor/sceptre/scepter……..

Try mace focus as your 2nd weapon , its great in pve.

I used sword torch and mace focus almost exclusively, which is very similar to what you are doing. Synergy between the weapon sets was awesome.

It’s too bad we can’t take Right Handed Strength (+15% crit change for 1h weaps), Altruistic Healing (heals you for applying boons to allies), and Empowering Might (grants might to yourself(?) and allies when you crit all at the same time…

If I were building for Scepter myself, I’d go at least 15 in Radiance (so VoJ will renew on a kill), Grab Altruistic Healing, Empowering Might, and put my last 5 points in Virtues.
That way, each crit and after each kill, you can add stacks of might party wide, and give each person 5secs burning to toss on their target. Perfect for trash mobs that die quickly. I’ll just drop a build down as an example of what I’m thinking.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNArfCoQyFYfggwUQgw31DHiiYIA;T8Ag0yoEOJhS9lyLqkMJJSymkLJZSLGGEMzA

The Runes and such are up for debate, but the idea is high attack, high crit chance + damage, and effects when you crit/hit. Any time you apply a boon, you’ll be healed ~70 per boon, per person. Rune of the pack 4 gives 3 boons on a 10sec recharge (though you could easily switch to more toughness oriented runes, that would also be ideal). I’d put the hammer as a defensive option if enemies stay too close, and the Hammer also provides boons via the auto attack symbol and mighty blow combo.

Does condition boost the torch damage more or power? I was never sure on that.

Now this is a very cool exercise! Scepter+Torch! That’s a combo I honestly had not given much thought to. So, as far as build advice goes…

Scepter Torch is honestly a pretty neat combo. It doesn’t seem like it has much obvious synergy at first blush, but it does. See, I always think of Scepter as a mid-range or point blank weapon that also works okay at 1200 range on stable targets. So Torch actually has tools that let you spike at 1200 range, but it also magnifies Scepter’s ability to play at close range.

You can use Torch #4 to your advantage at any range, and in fact it is a relatively versatile ability in that you can burn an enemy at melee, then move out of melee and spike, or keep the burn going if you choose to stay in melee. Torch #5 also provides pretty solid “mid line” support in the form of readily available condition removal. And Scepter works great at any range. It’s a solid single target weapon and its DPS is actually pretty kitten high, especially if you nail an enemy with Smite and Auto at melee to ~600 range or so. The reason is that the slow projectile speed doesn’t penalize you at short ranges, only long ones.

So let’s talk builds. One of the seeming downsides to Scepter/Torch is that you don’t have very many traits that directly improve upon your weapon. You have Scepter Power, but 5% more damage is pretty paltry and Zeal doesn’t do much for you if you don’t use symbols. There’s Right-Hand Strength, which is fantastic, but remember that it won’t help you with Hammer.

If you really want to capitalize on Scepter, I’d go Right-Hand Strength and Empowering Might, giving you constant vigor and might, and allowing you to deal solid damage from range while also allowing you to support nearby allies. 30 Radiance and 20 Honor is reasonably versatile and lets you expand as you please.

The other option, and one I recommend, is to consider going for a more weapon-agnostic build. You could play a consecration heavy build with Consecrated Ground and Master of Consecrations, which effectively lets you cast Consecrations from 900 range, well suited to Scepter’s mobile playstyle.

Conversely, you could always play Offensive Spirit Weapons. Go 20 Zeal, 20 Radiance and 10 Virtues for Spirit Weapon Mastery, Eternal Spirit, A Fire Inside, and Improved Spirit Weapon Duration. At that point, you have 20 points to put wherever. You can max out Virtues for better Boon, better VoJ and 900 range Purging Flames. You can go 30 Radiance for Right Hand Strength. You can go 20 Honor for perma-vigor and Empowering Might. You can even max out Zeal for better symbols on your hammer and Fiery Wrath or Scepter Power.

You have options. My advice is to figure out a build that doesn’t rely so much on weapons as it reflects your playstyle. And Hammer + Scepter/Torch is going to be a very mobile (I’m not even kidding) playstyle that emphasizes moving between front and midline (100-600 range) while having a strong if limited backline (900-1200) option. In that case, Spirit Weapons, Consecrations, deep Virtues, Right-Hand Strength and Empowering Might are all perfectly viable focal points for your build. Pick a focal point and then build up from there.

Good luck.

Works great in pvp too. I’m running a crit/burn build and I use scepter/torch and GS. It’s unreal.

This just sounds awesome! I used to love the torch at level 10, though mainly used it with a sword, and now that I bought the human cultural armor at lvl 30, which is a precision and condition, I think, I’m loving the idea of revisiting the torch. And with the scepters 2 and the torches 5 the chance of procing crit sigil abilities are insanely great

KnarleyMarley.6937:

Works great in pvp too. I’m running a crit/burn build and I use scepter/torch and GS. It’s unreal.

If you dont mind would you be able to share the build? Im running a similar weapon setup which I love but having a lot of trouble working out good traits and utilities to back it up.

i leveled mostly with scepter+torch / mace+focus. you might want to try that combo if you’re going for 30 radiance. in that case 0/30/0/20/0 is the core, with the last 20 (depending on utilities) probably going into virtues.

dunno why people want to throw so many points down the drain that is the valor tree for a mostly ranged build. all it offers is tankiness. yes, altruistic healing is our best trait if we are on the frontlines absorbing lots of damage, if not it doesn’t do anything.

another fun build that i use is 0/5/5/30/30, scepter+torch / staff, consecrations. fully ranged support/dps. this also works well with a hammer (i just ran a dungeon with hammer / staff and this build).

Made 3 runs last night in ac exp mode with the scepter torch and greatsword at level 35( lol gained 3 levels from it, do I’m at 38 now) and it’s amazinging the kind of aoe mayham you can actually pull of, at one point I was alone and had to defend a point from gravelings, just spamed 2 4 5 at the horde of little monsters and kited like a boss only died 2 twice for all 3 runs( and having that rune that procs a fire aoe helped alot too), can’t wait for work to finish so I can play again =D

Am I correct in understanding that Cleansing Flame does not inflict burning, and so does not do condition damage?

I fairly quickly settled on GS/Scepter + Torch as my favourite combination so far (lvl 13 atm). It’s a pretty flexible set – you can pull, kite, or stand toe-to-toe. So far, it’s great for levelling.

Tintaglia.4762:

Am I correct in understanding that Cleansing Flame does not inflict burning, and so does not do condition damage?

Cleansing Flame does direct damage, so it does not benefit from Condition Damage. It does, however, hit for 10 times (assuming stationary target) and hence trigger Virtue of Justice twice.

Sceptre+Torch is actually our highest DPS setup for long-ranged (1200 range) combat, and is comparable to melee weapons in close and medium range thanks to Cleansing Flame. You will, however, notice an absolutely horrid drop in damage when trying to hit a moving target at long range.

As far as dungeon groups go, I don’t see any issues. Even with zero traits or gear to back up, a Guardian packing a Staff (any quality), Stand Your Ground and Retreat becomes a much-loved addition to any dungeon group. Running Caudecus’ Manor, Sorrow’s Embrace, or even Arah? Slip in Wall of Reflection and people will laud your full Berserker-geared Guardian as pro support.