Guild Wars 2

Okay. I’m newer to GW2 and MMOs in general and I really need some help getting some direction with my build in regards to traits.

I hit level 80 with my first character. I have a guild that I run dungeons with and WvW, but mostly I’m PvE (usually solo). I love the hammer, and also use great sword.

I really need some help getting my build in the right direction so I can throw big numbers when I hit things. My current build is focused on hammer symbols but I dont think that’s really ideal for dealing out the most pain.

I currently have a full set of Rare Knights Gladiator Armor and have not applied anything to them.

I think I want to do a high critical build to where I’m getting criticals often and having them do significant damage, but I really dont know if that’s the best route.

I want to run in with my hammer (or great sword) and really have it do some damage when I land things. I’m not as worried about the support or tank aspect of things than I am about doing larger damage.

Help me identify what I should focus on with traits and what I should add to my gear to hurt things more. Mainly I need to figure out how to trait properly to do most damage. From there I can figure out my equipment and armor. Like if it’s high criticals, then I need equipment that focuses on ‘precision’ and what else?

I need help with getting the traits and then knowing what stats to focus on with gear. Thanks everyone!!

You play guardian.. you will never do “Big Damage”.
If you want dmg and heavy armor.. go warrior.

Only thing you can do, if you still want to play guardian and dmg.
Go full berzerk gear and GS.

you will not hit “BIG”, even with the gear tho.

I do know that, but there are other benefits than pure damage that warriors dont bring.

I want to know how to trait to give me the best damage. Is it a high critical chance build or what? I just want to get the best damage I can for my profession.

My whole post is asking for help with traits and (no offence) you responded ‘play a different class’. I need some help from people who are guardian experienced and can give me some guidance with the traits.

Since you are mainly a world PvE player, I recommend the renewed justice build. If you begin to do mainly other things like fractals and WvW, you might want to change your build.

0/15/0/25/30

Radiance: Blind Exposure
Honor: Superior Aria, Two-Handed Mastery
Virtue: Unscathed Contender, Absolute Resolution, Indomitable Courage (or Shielded Mind)

This build is mainly to kill groups of trash mobs while maximizing DPS with shouts. Basically, you keep spamming virtue of justice —> AOE blind/vuln with x3 stacks of might --> reapply.

EDIT: Note that absolute resolution is quite necessary unless you have other means of removing conditions (ie. Soldier runes etc.). This is because if you farm groups of trash mobs (like 10 mobs at once) and get rooted, it is game over; you need to strafe as you attack in a mini circle.

I’d assume that to gain the highest DPS as a Guardian a build like:

25 II, VII
25 VI, VIII
0
20 III, IX
0

Full Berserker gear. 6x Runes of the Scholar (If you can keep your health above 90% otherwise 5x Runes of the Scholar + 1 Ruby Orb)
Utilities: Sword of Justice, Hammer of Wisdom, Whatever you want for the last slot.

Allowing for:
10% damage vs Burning targets
5% damage with Greatsword
10% damage with Symbols
10% damage vs targets with conditions
3 stacks of Vulnerability (1% increased damage per stack) on Blind
1 stack of Vulnerability per pulse of a Symbol

For a total of 39% additional damage (49% if getting the Scholar rune bonus)

That said, I’ve not tested out the DPS. It’s possible a Might stacking build would do better.

In any case, this is an outline for a very glassy build that would need to be played very well in order to live since it’s trading all possible defence for offence.

For WvW, I would recommend reading Brutaly’s AH Hammer guide which has a sticky.

Good survivability, good damage, good support, and all around usefulness in a WvW situation. As a roamer, you may have some issues since AH shines with more people around you. Your shouts assist others while healing yourself, your symbols give out protection to others and yourself and those heal yourself. You have a great blast finisher + light combo field for aoe retaliation which helps others as well as yourself and heals.

I think you get the point.

Actually, http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.2|b.1g.h4.d.1g.h2|6.1g.h2|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|2s.d19.2s.d19.3s.d19.2s.d19.3s.d19.2s.d19|k29.u62b.a6.0.a1|69.j|v.1a.7.18.0|e might be something you’d like.

In more seriousness, Hammers can easily do plenty of damage, though people prefer GS. In either case, you’ll want to grab the +10% damage traits, found in Zeal II, Radiance 25, and Honor 25. That’ll net you +30% damage, which is excellent between those two-handers.

For damage and decent survivability:http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|1.1g.h1|b.1g.h1.d.1g.h1j|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|a2.0.u46b.k29.a1|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

I use that in dungeons and roaming. When soloing, you should swap AH to monks focus.
Scepter is for more difficult mobs giving you space to breath and possibly recover while dealing heavy damage. Since all your high damage skills hit multiple times, precision is very important. Also remember that focus #5 is actually a very high hitting burst if it’s not broken and it’s 3 additional blocks.

Personally I’d recommend knights gear once you get your exotics. It offers damage and toughness. Can’t go wrong with knights.

Also don’t listen to these scrubs who say guardians can’t deal heavy damage without zerker gear. Even with this build I can crit 6-7k’s.

My guard has about 3k+ attack with hammer, 66% cdmg, 45% crit chance, 3001 armor and about 16.5k health with the AH build. I do really well in group situations. If I go roamer/solo I switch to 10/30/30/0/0 and just pop on some zerker trinkets and rock meditations. More damage, gap closer, and still have condition removal.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82449-guide-to-hammers-in-pve/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/79899-the-ultimate-guardian-build/

Two of my builds, focused around balancing high survivability and DPS. The hammer is one is a bit more “supporty”, the 1H one is straight DPS.

eldain stenlund.4306:

You play guardian.. you will never do “Big Damage”.
If you want dmg and heavy armor.. go warrior.

Only thing you can do, if you still want to play guardian and dmg.
Go full berzerk gear and GS.

you will not hit “BIG”, even with the gear tho.

I beg to differ.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/How-much-dmg-your-Guardian-can-do

Guanglai Kangyi.4318 – You win for best knowledge drop from those two links.

My take away is gear, runes, sigals, etc is really what starts to influnce things and the traits arent quite as critical but really do make an impact if you build it right (or wrong).

I think I’m going to try a 10,30,30,0,0 build (maybe put 5 into virtues?). I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around stuff like ‘maybe I should focus on burning things’ or ‘maybe I should focus on critical bonuses’ maybe shouts, maybe signets… Ahhhh.. Too much information… :/

I guess I’ll just keep doing CoF runs with my guild and fine tune things there. Work on the armor set (and I really want the ghost hammer from AC).

Amins.3710:

eldain stenlund.4306:

You play guardian.. you will never do “Big Damage”.
If you want dmg and heavy armor.. go warrior.

Only thing you can do, if you still want to play guardian and dmg.
Go full berzerk gear and GS.

you will not hit “BIG”, even with the gear tho.

I beg to differ.

Nailed it.

@Hicci, Amins, and Alent:

I think the point eldain stenlund was trying to make was that a Warrior will outdo a Guardian when it comes to dps, not necessarily that a Guardian can’t do dps at all. He probably choose wrong wording for the point though, so I could see why the response.

@YoYoPete, check out the threads by Amins and Bash as well as Jax’s Silven guides, they have some great info on dps builds.

@Kai

Outdo in terms of what?

In PvE it’s been clearly proven that our DPS is pretty much on par w/ a Warrior so long as we can apply symbols. The difference is the ‘big numbers’.

For WvW, our burst is slighty less unless you’re building specifically for that big burst move and I’ve put more then enough video’s out there showing our burst is viable…. being just as squishy as a GC Warrior.

The difference is our burst we have to set up for it, where a warrior can pull it off, more or less, on demand.

My posts are getting screwed up after a token error ate my first reply.

So what I’m realizing is that DPS vs Big Numbers should be about the same if you build correctly.

My current build is very hammer symbol specific. I was going to try this critical build http://goo.gl/c9B4U and see what I think.

Note I really only have been focused on traits. I just hit level 80 am am starting to plan for gear and what not.

Is Power+Symbol damage better than a high critical build? Should it be about the same in the end?

Am I just struggling because this is my first MMO? Or I’m I just slow. lol

Unfortunately there’s no such thing as “more crits is always better than more power”, or vice versa. As a general rule, yes, power does scale your damage better. There are a couple things you can keep in mind, though, that’ll make it easier:

1) For armor and trinkets, there are actually only a couple of options for maxing out DPS. Berserker is best for direct damage builds; Rabid is best for condition damage builds, and Rampager is best for builds that split between the two. Guardian condition damage is nearly non-existent (burn scales very poorly) so you should always be running Berserker.

2) If you only care about maxing out DPS, Ruby Orbs are your best option for runes. There are other options that give more utility but Ruby Orbs wins for DPS, hands-down.

3) If you have a high crit rate, Strength is your best sigil for damage. Otherwise, take Force.

4) When it comes to distributing traits, don’t worry too much about the stats you actually get from them. You are better off looking at the traits themselves and what they offer; the % damage ones are particularly important. For Guardian, the most important ones are Fiery Wrath (10% on burning foes), Radiant Power (+10% on foes with conditions), and any of the +5% damage traits for specific weapons. These will stack up damage much better than any bonus damage from traits. Certain other traits are also important to maximizing DPS for certain weapons (Right Hand Strength for swords and scepters, Writ of Persistence for hammers) but you can worry about that later.

As to your specific build, if you want to run hammers, you need to commit to certain trait lines. If you go Radiance, you always want at least 25 in the line for Radiant Power, which like I’ve said before is a very big damage boost. And if you want to use Hammer, you need at least 20 in Honor for Writ of Persistence. If you want to preserve your basic trait spread, I would go 10/0/30/20/10. It’s not what I would run personally but it seems like a pretty good to make it more effective without totally butchering it.

The above is my hypothisied biuld for when I see a trainer next. But maybe I dont really want to go there. Maybe I want to revisit my current hammer build instead. I really love the hammer. From reads, it seems like I could get a little more out of greatswords, but man I just love the hammer.

Here’s my current build (traits only). http://goo.gl/gPJyC I’m gonna swap out ‘Writ of the merciful’ with ‘battle presence’ as I think that will be better. But the whole point of this is I dont think the build is good. Now I think maybe it’s not bad, but needs some adjustments.

25/5/5/30/5

And again your #3, if you have a high crit rate… I dont know if I should try and get one or focus on DPS instead. I mean it’s cool throwing a big number, but killing stuff fastest is more ideal.

I do know I can go through and figure out how to stack things up to get the bonuses better which is point #4 from above. So I think I will try to get that hammer build more effective with symbols and what… power? instead of focusing on criticals. DPS over Big Numbers?

That will work well for damage as well as offering a tad bit of support to groups. At least to the melee folks who will be next to the target with me.

I think you’ve generally got the right idea, but there are a couple things:

1) Again, don’t get too hung up about stats. Obviously getting 300 power from Zeal will give you more damage (about 10-15% more) than 300 healing power from Honor, but that’s meaningless if you’re giving up good traits to do it. With a high crit damage, each marginal point of precision vs power is roughly equal in terms of overall damage gain, so you are better off going 25 in Radiance (10% to all attacks) rather than 25 in Zeal (10% to symbols only). Most generally only go up to 20 in Zeal, and only if you’re planning to use Scepter or Greatsword due to the +5% traits there. Otherwise, 10 in Zeal is enough for Fiery Wrath.

2) You’ve got 5 points in Radiance, Virtues and Valor thrown in there randomly. You’re probably thinking you want a better stat spread, but again it’s better to invest in traits, not stats. You should only be allocating points for stats if you’ve already gotten all the traits you want and have leftover points. In this case, you’ve basically got 15 leftover points you’re not really using (all those 5-point minor traits are pretty bad), so you could pool them together and take two more major traits. You could either go 10/30/0/30/0, or if you want to stick with Zeal you can go 30/0/10/30/0.

3) Empowering Might is really good. It’s worth about 3-4 stacks of might, which isn’t that much solo, but it’ll really contribute to group DPS, being a 5% boost across the board. Everyone having it is pretty essential for getting your party to 25 stacks of might. By comparison Writ of the Merciful is okay healing but it’s nothing worth writing home about. It’s, like, 100 health per tick, so you’re actually only healing 400 total per hammer symbol.

As for “big numbers versus DPS”, it’s a pretty obvious choice. Big numbers are, in the general sense, not a good thing to be going for. I use the phrase when referring to people who think warriors are god tier DPS because they see 30k appear onscreen for Hundred Blades and don’t consider any of the other factors, like the fact that Hundred Blades channels for four seconds (which is four seconds you’re not attacking normally) and has a 10-second effective recharge, even traited. A Guardian that uses Smite for 1.5k per hit with 15 total hits, plus auto-attacks 5 times for 2.5k per hit, actually hits for MORE total damage in the same amount of time as a warrior doing HB (and Smite recharges faster), but if you point this out you just get LOL NO MY HB DOES 30K SMITE ONLY DOES LIKE 1.5K.

Focus on having actual effective damage output, not making numbers that look impressive on screen. A good DPS build has all of the factors you mentioned: high power, high precision, high crit damage bonus, and plenty of traits supporting damage output. Don’t feel like you need to focus on one to the detriment of the others, that’ll just cost you DPS.

I thought that maybe these were worth having:

Inspired Virtue
Valorous Defense
Justice is Blind

As you get those with 5 point spends. But I get it. I’m going to ponder this and come up with a build and see what the thread has to say.

Major kudos Guanglai Kangyi.4318… You are really helping it click for me. Let me digest and see if I’m stuck still. Focus on DPS and try to get those traits to stack better.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

@Hicci, Amins, and Alent:
I think the point eldain stenlund was trying to make was that a Warrior will outdo a Guardian when it comes to dps, not necessarily that a Guardian can’t do dps at all.

I don’t disagree that a guardian speccing for pure damage and expecting to do better than, say, a warrior specced for damage is crazy; I was just poking a little fun at Amins one sentence reply to eldain.

Alent.4780:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

@Hicci, Amins, and Alent:
I think the point eldain stenlund was trying to make was that a Warrior will outdo a Guardian when it comes to dps, not necessarily that a Guardian can’t do dps at all.

I don’t disagree that a guardian speccing for pure damage and expecting to do better than, say, a warrior specced for damage is crazy; I was just poking a little fun at Amins one sentence reply to eldain.

It was only worth a line. =] lol

Easy, use Greatsword all Berserker equips.

A decent setup is 30 Zeal 30 Radience 10 honor. Fiery Wrath, Greatsword Power, Zealous Blade. Inner Fire, Searing Flames, Blind Exposure. And protective reviver. Since you won’t have AH, use Zealous Blade in its place as it is more offensive oriented anyway. Promotes Greatsword all the way.

step 1, roll warrior

Oh, come on Raptured it’s no fun that way.

i would realy go recommend checking out Amins’ youtube channel if you haven’t yet. : ))) it’s so fun to watch. not as easy to replciate though am sure with practice, it’ll come to me lol

and a lot of great points by Guang. especially the point about more damage over time for Guardians. one thing i love is the high, sustained damage. we might not get the higest crit numbers. but we do have the capability to get close-enough-high numbers frequent enough that you could easily drop any given mob / player as fast as anything else out there.

10/25/0/30/5 is what I like to run for hammer. WoP and 2x Sup Rune of Earth give full time protection which is great. Make use of your Virtue of Justice spam for might and vulnerability. You can adjust your Honor traits to work GSword and Staff with Shouts and Pure of Voice. A weapon preference is great but don’t stick yourself to it, adjust weapons and skills to the anticipated challenge. Guards can do quite good damage, maybe not the very top but we’re not too far behind. Hammer gives a ton of staying power.

Blood~

Amins.3710:

Alent.4780:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

@Hicci, Amins, and Alent:
I think the point eldain stenlund was trying to make was that a Warrior will outdo a Guardian when it comes to dps, not necessarily that a Guardian can’t do dps at all.

I don’t disagree that a guardian speccing for pure damage and expecting to do better than, say, a warrior specced for damage is crazy; I was just poking a little fun at Amins one sentence reply to eldain.

It was only worth a line. =] lol

I don’t disagree with this either. = p