Guild Wars 2

Hello all! I haven’t been posting much and if I have, someone was wrong and I popped in to feel better. I have played almost all my matches on my guardian and I have gotten a pretty good picture of our current place in the meta. In tournaments, we are simply point holders and that is what we do best but THAT is not why I’m here.
I am here so you could have a good time with your guardians and still not DIE all the time. You get kills and also support your team.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS8dlUg67WFSKEf4ESmiVCBxUgRZ01jEyhYIA-TsAgzCtIQShkDJDSSksINAZVw+DA

Some of you might say “Hey! That is a generic tanking build!” and I must say that you are not totally incorrect my little disbeliever hiding in the bushes.
This build focuses on sustain and before you leave this thread out of total disappointment , let me explain to you why it works so well in…anywhere: Guardians are a mediocore 1v1 class. That is a fact and why not abuse this fact? Fair duels in pvp are not that common because you get either interrupted or your opponent simply flees.

Let’s break it down, starting from the top. I chose AH instead of MF because I just find it more reliable. MF heals are effective little spikes but AH can keep you alive with sustained heal PLUS shouts give you all the things that make guardians so wonderful: boons.
In Honor we have obvious choices for shouts and 2h mastery. Why 2h mastery? Because of hammer. Hammer is our bread and butter in this build. Not only does it work beautifully with AH, it also is our only effective CC tools for those pesky condition classes and kiters. Its damage is also more reliable than greatswords because WW is such a kitten to land. We get to the weapons later.
Below we have 20 in virtues because there we have an awesome trait called “absolute resolution”. Combined with renewed focus, it can cleanse 6 conditions party-wide in a flash plus it improves our passive health regen. I chose it instead of “pure of voice” because it’s simply faster and easier to use. No one likes popping shouts when they are not needed just because you have 20 stacks of confusion and bleeding. You also get more retaliation from virtues minor trait.

Now to weapons. My usual combo is to blink in with the sword, blind them with focus, switch to hammer (chilling on swap), and trap them inside ring of warding. You deal your damage there and when the ring expires, shoot zealots embrace, switch to sword and burst zealots defense. Inexperienced players take the whole treatment but it also allows more flexibility to deal with more experienced players. If they get out of the ring, it means they burned their stability and thus are free to be bounced around with banish.
The reason for hammer I explained above. Sword-focus on the other-hand is for the pressure. It has a low CD blink and a skill that basically forces opponents to burn endurance. The auto-attack is also quite strong.

Sigils,runes and trinkets: As you can see, I am using ogre runes for damage and that lovely little puppy. Not only does it deal damage, distract foes and work as a meat-shield, it also procs AH and thus gives you more healing. It also gains your retaliation from blast and shouts so enemy AOE is gonna retaliate twice as hard back to them.
For sigils I chose Hydromancy for hammer because no one likes when your target tries to escape your wrath. For sword I chose very safe “force” and for focus “energy” because we ARE using clerics trinket and with it, our dodges heal quite a decent amount. I also found clerics trinket to be a more solid choice than soldier because vitality is for puss……ycats. With our blinds and aegis, getting bursted down shouldn’t happen unless you decide to go “leeroy jenkins” on the whole enemy team. That is why sustained healing is more valuable than vitality.
For utilities, I chose SyS for obvious reason, SYG for much needed stability and “retreat” for escaping and chasing.

I admire what you’re trying to do but unfortunately you can still be easily 1 shot bursted and conditions will completely crush you. At the moment the meta revolves around condition play and you won’t be able to deal with a bunker Guardian either.
The only useful support actions you want to be able to do for your team are clear their conditions and secure stomps/reses, neither of which you can do effectively, unfortunately.

You can improve all aspects of the build by running this: http://tinyurl.com/kjhnvt5.

I actually explained why neither of those will happen. I know the text is long but try to read it trough. x)

“No one likes popping shouts when they are not needed just because you have 20 stacks of confusion and bleeding.”

That seems like a good reason TO pop a shout to be honest. Why can’t you have both? You pick up conditions quicker than the lightning fields one-shot you to death once you’re downed on Golem now.

I have to agree with Jax, even though my PVP time is fairly limited by experienced players standards, I don’t see what this build really brings that a 10/30/30 doesn’t do better. I concede 30 in Valor gives you more toughness and crit dmg, but I doubt your crit is huge anyway. I find AH to be a bit underwhelming in PVP too, but maybe that’s just me.

If you’re going to go at least 20 in boon duration and you have 2h mastery, I’d prefer to just use a staff instead of a sword and free up the utility spot.

Just my two cents anyway.