Guild Wars 2

Hey guardian peeps. I am currently on a learning curve back into the guardian class as while it was my starting that was back when the game began. Have a question for all you guardian players out there which I hope you could have a good answer to.

With the current damage meta I know that everyone always talks of going zerker but I decided to switch my armor up a bit for a little more survivability. From your expertize is guardian with celestial armor/runes of the pack along with zerker trinkets and weapons a good match for survivability along with a bit more damage?

Appreciate any constructive feedback.

PS: Just wanted to add I am using sigil’s of force and accuracy on both my weapon sets. Thanks again.

Celestial armor really isn’t worth it if you are going for direct damage. Knights is a good learning set, or even soldiers until you feel more comfortable, with a full zerker set up. With your zerker trinkets these will still let you do a little damage while taking an extra hit or two.

Keep in mind a guardian is going to require a bit more active play. I run a full zerker guardian. A friend from my guild who I dungeon with now and then runs full soldiers on his guardian. In an average run he goes down more then I do, because he doesn’t avoid damage as well. Your armor will help you stay on your feet, but don’t rely entirely on it

Hey Talyn thanks for the quick reply. On a side note do you believe zerker or assassins armor is best suited to the guardian?

Aither.2859:

Hey Talyn thanks for the quick reply. On a side note do you believe zerker or assassins armor is best suited to the guardian?

I prefer zerker. We have better access to fury now with FMW. But you are also going to be getting that boon alot from others in your party, never seem to have to many issues with crits.

Aither.2859:

Hey Talyn thanks for the quick reply. On a side note do you believe zerker or assassins armor is best suited to the guardian?

Only Mesmer and Engineer have a interesting advantage of using assassin over zerker. For most other profession assassin and zerker are pretty close with some build being a little bit better in zerker, while other are better in assassin. But the difference is small and the balance will change depending on your party, food, infusion, etc. It’s so sensitive to so many viable that you can’t really have a definitive answer. It will change too much in each situation. So most people just play zerker. It easier that way.

Armor wise, Guardians tend to fall in to 3 major categories.

- Zerks
- Tanks
- Bunkers

Zerks forgoes all defense armor stats, decidedly relying more on high baseline strength of active defenses such as dodge, aegis triggers and blinds. This allows them to focus on damage stats, but they suffer heavily against places with high frequency attacks and AOE (which is why you tend to see them stick to COE and COF; as the mobs don’t complicated an already simple mission style).

Tanks tend to gear more toward balanced support, with enough Armor and Vit to take a few light hits and offset potential loss of personal defenses (which instead trait toward group support). Pre-trait revamp, the majority of these defense stats used to come from Trait line attributes. Now you have to actively mix in some defensive armor (soliders, knights or Valks). However, you still focus the majority of your stats toward power, with a reasonable amount of prec, to keep the overall DPS on the higher side.

Bunkers are almost exclusive to PvP. They trade all offensive power for unequaled durability. Made solely to contest points, while the rest of the team focuses on damage, they have almost no DPS, but may have some support utility that come naturally to consecrations.

From a build stand point, Celestials don’t have any strong benefits on a guard due to their highly effective base line from boons, high base but poor coefficients from healing, and ready access to number of condi clears, including a very powerful purge skill (contemplation).

I’ve been trying to revamp an old PoV build that was popular over a year ago, and update it to work under the new trait system. I’ve learned a couple things in the process, and still haven’t found the optimal solution yet. But…….

Not surprisingly, the rune choice is far more critical to the setup, as a balanced choice of armor is not hard to obtain for an adjustable tanky setup. Base power (without runes) can be brought up to 2300 with Zerks armor and Soliders trinkets, the Armor rating itself being in the range of 2800… but you have no natural proc or crit damage. This limits you to being a medi guard (for fury boons) if you want to be combat effective, but the build itself is capable of both putting out decent damage while letting you take a lot of punishment.

I looked at zealots for a bit, but it was painfully clear after some research that healing power was never majorly important…. not even when we got the stat for free.

A mixture of Zerks armor with Soliders and Zerks trinkets seems to be the way to go. The GM traits for Valor and Honor are actually very flexible in the current meta, letting you shift between group support, personal defense, and personal DPS with just a couple trait changes. The only problem is if you have runes that syngerize with skills, like Trooper runes. I’m expecting the group support/defensive meta shift to focus less on Guards carrying groups defensively (like PoV did before), and letting the traits boost all the passive group buffs, symbols and fields.

The main question I haven’t found a clear answer for is Runes and optimal armor rating. The temp meta of Medi guards is all offensive, so balancing defensive stats is not a big issue for them. But we won’t get a good answer for other builds until the Symbols trait is fixed, and any incoming burning nerfs are dealt out.