Guild Wars 2

In GW1 I mained Imbagon, Warrior, and Ranger for SY spamming. But I especially loved my Imbagon!

I’ve already experienced Warrior to its fullest. So as a former Paragon main, now I’m wondering if Guardian is for me?

I like being able to protect, and I like being able to heal. Perhaps I’ll like hammer Guardian? What about its other options? And does anything recreate the feeling of spearchucking in GW1?

I’m mostly a dungeon player btw, and I like to spec for glassy offense.

So is guardian for me?

Nothing is going to bring back spear chucking. Sadly. There are lots of glassy offensive builds out there, though you would never guess looking at the official forums. A lot of people do tanky Hammer builds. Guardians, even with 100% Berserker gear are naturally tanky due to Virtues and their selection of utilities. So as long as you are good at dodging, you can usually stay alive in dungeons even with no extra armor.

Guardians aren’t really a “healer” class. Guardians do get some party heals in the form of heal-on-dodge, but most of our heals are secondary effects from other skills. For example, there is a built in heal on Shield 5’s dome, another on Staff’s Empower, a side-effect of Staff 2, Regeneration off of Mace’s symbol, and so on. Guardian healing is an accumulation of small to medium sizes heals gained from using other skills which are ostensibly used primarily for other things. Altruistic Healing is a prime example – you get a small drip of HP every time you apply a boon. I think that’s a pretty fair assessment.

Ultimately you’ll just have to play it yourself though and see. Don’t let anyone tell you Guardians can’t DPS though.

What about healing circles? And what gear to use?

As guardian you are protecting the party trough boons and light fields to a less extent than imbagon in gw1 tough and you should have a thick skin in pugs guardian is always the one to blame when party die but i do enjoy it a lot especially in dungeons.

Well I main a Guardian since a while ago (Not an expert, but still here are my 2 cents)

I run the AH build because it not only makes me extremely tanky, but the utilities from traits in those 2 trees are awesome.

Like:

2H Weapon 20%CDR
Altruistic Healing so u can hit most mobs in the face without even having to dodge.
Remove Conditions from Allies (Including you) when you shout.
Shouts have 20%CDR
5% of toughness given to Precision
Lose a Condition Every 10 seconds

And well going Valor Tree will give you the 30% Extra Critical Damage you need to get more DPS anyway. (And getting the Toughness will give you more Critical Chance with one of the traits)

I currently run FULL Berserker’s armor and one of my trinkets has become Ascended Already (Working on the rest)

So far (I don’t remember my current Power but) I have about 50% Critical Chance and 100% Extra Critical Damage so sometimes I hit like 7K with Hammer2, Hammer1’s last AA and Hammer 4. (Without Empowering Might)

For damage I like Hammer and Sword but always side a Staff for the Utility, Heal, and Might.

EDIT: This is more or less how I have my Guardian, although it doesn’t reflect the actual stats coming from Berserker’s Armor
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mmcz0V9cmNvGMmNvGM9MxxaVoqMsqM8khT707kii7070M7kGL70V