Guild Wars 2

Help!

I am a solo PvEer and I just cannot understand why people like this class! I’m looking for info on how I can improve and actually start enjoying playing Guardian.

Right, I have 2 armour builds. One is all Soldiers (PVT) with Divinity runes. The other is an equal mix of Valkyrie (PVF) and Knights (PPreT) with Strength runes.

I have GS, Hammer, Staff, Sword, Shield, Torch, Scepter and Mace all in Zerk, and all zerk trinkets. The weapons I am currrently using mainly are Greatsword and Sword/Torch or Sceptre/Torch.

I run a 6,6,0,2,0 build of:

Shattered Aegis, Zealous Blade, Kindled Zeal in line 1
Searing Flames, Radiant Fire, Right Hand Strength in line 2
Pure of Heart in line 4

Utilities are healing Breeze, Retreat, Save Yourselves, Hold The Line and Hounds of Balthazar which are important since during my constant downs, they often help rally me!

My problem is… I just don’t seem to be able to deal enough damage, take enough damage, manoeuvre efficiently… anything. Right now, I just can’t get this class to do anything at all.

It is a grandfathered character so I have all traits available. Please help!

Swap Shattered Aegis for Fiery Wrath. 10% damage is nothing to scoff at. Kindled zeal isn’t all that great, I think you could find better use in those 2 points.

Drop Searing flames for Blind Exposure.

Drop Pure of Heart of Superior Aria, at least while soloing especially with that setup, 20% less on cooldowns is NICE.

With those last 2 points I’d consider Master of Consecrations if you want to use them, or if not, then maybe Retributive Armor (so 46022 or 46220 respectively).

For weapons I’d go GS + something, that something, for faster movement and you also have the added benefit of prestacking might before jumping in staff is not bad. Ideally you’d swap it in and out with the GS laying your swiftness or might as needed but that’s a lot of extra work so I can see being lazy. The other option would likely go with Sword/Focus. Sword is great for teleporting to things for quick movement and blinds.

Blinds are the HUGE thing about Guards, rotate your blinds so you can land one before they hit you and you can go unscathed through most content. It gets tougher with multiple enemies, especially if their attacks are staggered, but you can prevent a LOT of damage that way.

Other than that, you’ll generally want to do something like : Leap of Faith (gs3) into the group, Whirling Wrath, perhaps drop VoJ on them for a second blind, hit gs4 (symbol) then depending on your secondary weapon you may swap and do that weapons rotation, or you may stick to GS, if you stick to GS using GS5 is nice as it’s a damage over time effect if you don’t pull them.

Skill wise, retreat is great when solo in open world. Save yourself is not bad, I generally like Stand your ground over hold the line. I often will go with something like Retreat Wall of Reflection and Purging flames, you have your condi removal, your swiftness/aegis, and a projectil defense to make all the pesky range attacks bounce right back.

Do NOT use healing breeze, perhaps in a group environment… maybe… but really, Shelter is where it’s at, maybe signet if you want the condi removal/bigger heal and don’t think the block will help much (it almost always helps). Focused renewal is not bad as an elite, but I guess I can see your purpose on Hounds.

It’s kind of a broad topic so sorry if I wrote too much, and if I didn’t hit everything you wanted, happy to answer any more specific questions. In general I always suggest people look at Obal’s stuff, he’s made videos and guides for just about anything a PVE guard needs.

dmg is reeeeealy bad as a guardian even a full berseker guard with greatsword still hits like a noodle compared to allot of other classes.

guardians are realy only good for bunker builds. thats how i feel and see after allot of testing.

Zoltreez.6435:

dmg is reeeeealy bad as a guardian even a full berseker guard with greatsword still hits like a noodle compared to allot of other classes.

guardians are realy only good for bunker builds. thats how i feel and see after allot of testing.

All depends on the build, guard can be anywhere from top to bottom tier dps, and still be valuable in every situation

IIRC, 45005 is on the low end,46202 is on the high end with UC and mid with MoC.

Sounds like someone doesn’t know anything about guardians, and I’m not talking about Guzzi

My guardian is my main character, played over 5k hours of which 4700 hours on my guardian.

in PvE I run with Soldiers armor / berserker trinkets and berserker weapons.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_GS_Sword/Focus

When in dungeons I go into full zerker armor

I run that build, but change the skills to whatever I want at that time.
Mostly I run with:
Healing Breeze
Retreat
Smite Condition
Save Yourselves
Renewed Focus

I’ve got no problems staying alive

p.s.
Guardian on zerker is most likely on of the squishiest classes out there, as we’ve got very little health pool :’(

base HP of classes:
Elementalist – 10905
Warrior – 18472
Ranger – 15182
Necromancer – 18472
Guardian – 10905
Thief – 10905
Engineer – 15182
Mesmer – 15182

so compared to elementalists and thieves – eles can survive because they use 4 elements, they have great mobility to escape combat and dmg, thieves have great mobility, stealth, blindness, and best 1v1 dps with spamming 1 and 2, while guardians are mediocre even zerkers dont have that much dmg and die like a fly because they cant go out of combat – its all or nothing situation (zerkers end on nothing saddly).
Guardian is the worst in 10k hp group.
We need something like warriors: convert 7% of attack power into vitality or something like that trait. Why? because if you go deep into honor and choose 300 vitality you lose so much dps. It needs to be reworked so i hope that new expansion bring little balance to that.

lack of mobility and continual sustain may be is issue in pvp, but the OP was asking about solo pve if I’m not mistaken?

If you are just solo PvE and want to see higher numbers on kills, look towards high stacks of vulnerability along with damage modifiers. Vulnerability on immobilize and blinds utilizing focus, scepter, and signet can net you 25% extra damage.

Combined with 10% from burning and 10% from targets with conditions on them.

You lose a lot of survival utilities doing so, but can provide impressive solo numbers. May as well build berserker then as well to maximize your killing speed since you lose other means of survival anyway.

For survival, utilize blocks/blinds/dodges in spaced out gaps. Not as amazing as other classes but you can go full glass and do large damage in between those windows of blocking/blinding/dodging. The idea is to kill it before your cooldowns are up and hopfully you have cycled them out far enough to be able to begin a second rotation of blocking/blinding/dodging if need be.

I put together a couple builds that will give you success while solo roaming in PvE. I’ll go over some of the main points of them.

Greatsword & Sword/Focus or Greatsword & Scepter/Focus

First, your weapons. Greatsword offers great cleave for multiple enemies. You can pull 5 together to you with Binding Blades (skill #5) and then use Whirling Wrath (skill #2) to burst them down. The symbol works well for AoE damage too. Sword build does a lot of damage while the scepter build will allow you to kite enemies and survive longer. Focus by default for offhand with blinds and blocks.

Shelter is a must for the heal. Healing Breeze is only useful if you have party members to heal. The blocks on Shelter will help you avoid a lot of damage. Likewise, the invulnerability of Renewed Focus (elite) can save your life and should always be on your skill bar. It also renews your virtues so make sure you use them all if you can. Triple shouts for utilities. Save Yourselves gives you a ton of boons, Retreat gives you swiftness which will help you kite and Stand Your Ground will help you when you get hit with CC.

Traits are really a tossup in open world PvE content. The sword build focuses purely on damage to put your target down quickly. It’s pretty self-explanatory. The scepter build will help you survive while doing damage. Traits like Force of Will boost your vitality, and Absolute Resolution will give you 100 hp/s passive heal and an active condition cleanse.

Do not expect to bunker open world PvE content though. It becomes a major pain in the kitten . You have to kill things yourself, so you might as well kill them quickly. Rely on dodges, blinds and blocks to avoid damage. Guardian is built on active defenses, and open world content is the perfect way to get use to it.

Good luck man and avoid bad advice~!

Okay, thanks all! I have some ideas to go at

I appreciate all the advice!

Okay, with a few trait changes and more thought about how I use my Virtues, I am having a lot more success. I only use Scepter when I really need the range and have gone back to the Soldier/Divinity Runes armour.

Working through the early episodes of LS2 now and having no problems so far. Gonna have to lay down the gold for a better scepter though (mine has awful stats).

Where you spent you trait pts is not bad at all, but which major trait you took is really not ideal.

Every pve guardian build should at least be 2/5/0/0/0 with Fiery Wrath and Blind Exposure. That’s like the baseline of the PvE Guardian.

The blind on F1 will increase drastically your survivability, especially against group of small mobs and the vulnerability that it give will increase your dmg by a couple of percentage.

Fiery Wrath will increase you dmg quit a bit even in solo since your F1 will put a good amount of burning to keep it up. In group, its should always be up depending with which profession you are playing.

When you use Sword on your secondary you should swap Radiant Fire to Powerful blades.

Focus will give you more survivability and overall dps because its skills are quick. The torch have better dps than focus by itself, but the skill 5 is a long channelling that make you lose time you could use with Sword or GS attacks. Torch is still really good in solo because of the burning procing Fiery Warth.

Hold the Line and Save yourselves are situational skills. Save youselves is good when you need the vigor and fury mostly, while stability is not that often needed in PvE. Retreat is YOUR main skill that should always be in your bar as one of the best survival skill you have. The other two skills should always be swap to the one you need. Wall of Reflection and Purging flames are usually the basic load out for a PvE Guardian, but take the utilities that will fit the situation. Renewed Focus will help you more than hounds if you know how to use it. Look at it this way. It give you another heal (F2), a blind (F1), a block (F3) and an invulnerability with the skill itself. That skill alone can save you thousands of incoming dmg.

The guardian have a low amount of hp so how can you survive? You need to time well enough your blind, aegis, block and invulnerability. That’s the bread and butter of the guardian in PvE. With renewed focus you have 1 invulnerability, 2 blind (F1) and 2 Aegis (F3), you have a 3rd Aegis with retreat, you have another block if you use Shelter, you have another blind with GS #3, another blind with focus #4, then 3 block with focus #5 and another blind with sword #2. That mean that you can receive ZERO dmg from 12 attacks from a mob. If you time them well enough, that can keep you and your team at 100% even for hard fight.

As for the situation on the Guardian DPS. Well its not that good. If you take all the best dps of all profession, the guardian rank at about 6th place. But its dmg isn’t that far from the Ranger, Warrior, Mesmer and Necromancer.

If you are dying a lot on a guardian, its because you are doing it wrong. It take a lot to down a guardian in PvE and your problem is probably that you are not using the huge active defense capability of the guardian. Which is the best in the game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you are bad, it took me a WHILE to use the guardian at its best even if it my main, it took me about 6months to start to use my active virtues and about 12 months before being able to go full zerker with it.

As hinted above, Guardian is a reactive profession. To play well, you need to watch what you’re fighting and know when to use defensive skills in order to prevent damage to you and your group (when with a group).

There is a lot of good advice above, so I just have a few things to add.

Shelter is both a heal and a block. Often times, it’s best to save it for times when you really need the block, and get the heal as a side effect.

Guardian (along with Mesmer) really benefits from changing weapons, skills and/or traits for each major thing you do.

• Be fully prepared to swap in a stability, or two, when you’re in heavy pull and knockdown areas. The same with reflects, additional aegis, or any other necessary utility. Use Bane Signet for a little more damage if you have absolutely no need for any defensive utility.
• For areas where you’ll take a lot of unavoidable damage, especially large numbers of hits from multiple mobs, swap in a hammer to get near-permanent protection to reduce the incoming damage.
• If you will need a lot of dodges, put 1 point into the Honor line to get Vigorous Precision. It’s no longer “permanent” vigor, but it’ll still help give you more dodges.
• When facing Veteran Karka or Dredge, you can strip their boons with the trait Radiance V, Searing Flames. Each time you give the mob burning (ie every kittens with the default Virtue of Justice passive, or on demand with the Virtue of Justice active and Purging Flames), you’ll remove a boon.

GuzziHero.2467:

Okay, with a few trait changes and more thought about how I use my Virtues, I am having a lot more success. I only use Scepter when I really need the range and have gone back to the Soldier/Divinity Runes armour.

Working through the early episodes of LS2 now and having no problems so far. Gonna have to lay down the gold for a better scepter though (mine has awful stats).

Glad to hear it.

I would suggest trying out zerk… I know I know, but honestly just try it. There’s a beauty when you can use GS3 (leap) into a group of enemies, hit GS2 hit VoJ, and have them all be dead and you untouched. To me I feel like a supreme kitten doing that.

The extra tankiness certainly has benefits, and some enjoy that playstyle more, so not trying to push you, just saying that precision play with high damage is quite entertaining to me and something I suggest people try.

I am currently trying GS and Sceptre/Focus. The trait changes I made are…

Shattered Aegis to Fiery Wrath. With the Kindles Zeal and F1 that should help with conditions and the increased power helps.

Radiant Fire to Blind Exposure. With Aegis, GS3 and Focus 4 I have 3 blinds I can inflict and this helps damage foes.

Right Hand Strength to Perfect Inscriptions for when I know I will be taking a lot of condition damage. I change my heal to Signet of Resolve at the same time as the two work hand in hand. This was useful in the Aerin fight as a lot of poisons get lobbed about.

Kindled Zeal is terrible. Not even close to worth the 4 extra points you have to put into zeal to get it. Your burns are negligible anyways, boosting them a bit won’t help you. Fiery Wrath is a 10% damage boost to your raw power, the actual burn damage doesn’t influence it at all. Whether you have 0 condition damage or 700, your raw damage still gets that 10% boost.

Instead of using signet of resolve passive to cleanse your conditions, you’re better off with Absolute Resolution (master virtues trait) which cleanses three conditions on demand. That combined with Renewed Focus will give you two cleanses. You’re much better off putting the 4 extra trait points from zeal (kindled zeal) into virtues for Absolute Resolution.

edit: Also, Absolute Resolution bumps your VoR passive up to about 100 hp/s. You’ll gain more healing with that than Zealous Blade would give you.

Right, I’ll do those changes when I play it again. Thanks!

Blinds, Blinds, more blinds….Aegis, Shield of Wrath, blind, blind…..

Seriously though, Greatsword and Sword/Focus have a TON of damage mitigation skills, as long as you use them proactively instead of spamming them, and make use of your utilities, you should be taking very little damage. Also if you trait into Radiance and get Virtue is Blind and Renewed Justice you have AOE blinds that are spammable every time you kill an enemy.

Zoltreez.6435:

dmg is reeeeealy bad as a guardian even a full berseker guard with greatsword still hits like a noodle compared to allot of other classes.

guardians are realy only good for bunker builds. thats how i feel and see after allot of testing.

No.

Wolfheart.7483:

Zoltreez.6435:

dmg is reeeeealy bad as a guardian even a full berseker guard with greatsword still hits like a noodle compared to allot of other classes.

guardians are realy only good for bunker builds. thats how i feel and see after allot of testing.

No.

No +1

Go check some medi zerker plays on youtube…

Just thought i’d throw my build out there for you to try if you feel your guardian is lacking a little bit of damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQNAsdBlsApVIODhfIKiHosGjtfoF1FAMfy/B-TRCBABVq+zZKBl4IAglSMc2fAgHBQWKPyTfDDnAAiAYnA-e

This works great for me in PvE, both solo play and dungeons, It’s the build I’ve been running for a long time now.

There are three things i change often with this build:

The trait in Virtues: Master of consecrations to improved spirit weapon duration, depending on the encounter.

Mainhand sword to Scepter and back again, depending on the encounter, focus always stays.

and my second Utility slot, this is normally retreat unless it’s absolutely mandatory that i bring something else, normally it’s wall of reflection, if not, I’ll normally just stick with retreat for the swiftness and that sort of “mini-dodge” i get from the aegis.

Don’t take what Zoltreez said seriously either, guardians definitely do not hit like a wet noodle, they aren’t among the top tier damaging classes, but they’re certainly not far behind.

http://gw2dps.david-reess.de/

Take this website as a grain of salt, but it’s good to get a general idea of things, keep in mind that while their DPS may be lower than other classes, they also offer a lot more support than those that tend to be doing more damage, and a guardian will always be wanted in a group.

For solo play I swap sometimes my zerker + scholar to my zerker + Traveler if i’m running around open world and other stuff. Recently I started doing 2.5.0.1.6 for solo play and it’s freaking awesome. Why 6 in virtues? Well UC, Absolute Resolution and Supreme Justice.

With supreme justice my target perma burns and I have the Fiery Wrath 10% bonus 99% of the time. Add the vigor and you are pretty much untouchable. For some bosses I drop sword/focus and take scepter/torch for even more deeps.

SyS, Bane Sig + Retreat. Drop bane for WoR if you have to deal with a lot of projectiles.

It’s solid.