Guild Wars 2

So I just recently started playing Gw2, and I decided to scrap my 40 Warrior for a Guardian (not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I wanted a Charr Warrior instead of a Human ). Now, as I’ve been leveling my guardian (19 atm), I’ve noticed a few things:

1) I feel a bit squishier. Could just be me, could be me needing to time dodges properly and better work with Aegis in lieu of the warrior’s GS#3

2) A lot more versatile, which is cool. I like having the option to apply boons via staff, and mace is a neat defensive weapon.

3) I don’t get hammer. I’ve heard/read it’s good, but is that roaming Tyria, or just in dungeons and etc? I really like the symbol at the end of the #1 chain; it helps to mitigate a bit of the squishiness, and MB blast finisher for Purging Flames is great, but for leveling, I just don’t see the use of it, except for maybe some vet control.

4) I feel…generally weaker? I felt like I was downing mobs a lot better as a warrior with GS/Rifle than as a Guard. I like Guard’s GS, but it’s weird not having the evade #3; while the blind on 3 is nice, I keep encountering kittening dredge. And the #2 just doesn’t feel like it compares to HB damage wise.

Now there are a few variable which I’ve been considering:

I was an armorsmith on my warrior, and I was constantly up to date with my armor. I decided to wait till about 50 or so on my guard to start crafting, so maybe this lack of armor is attributing to my weakness/frailty?

Also it could just be low level blues, where everything sucks at low levels with few trait points available, few armor options, etc.

My question is: how would you recommend leveling? As in, what weapon(s), and maybe an idea of how to build for leveling? (I’ve read a lot about builds on the forums, but those really apply to WvW, Fractals, etc; with warriors, it’s pretty standard, at least it seemed obvious enough to me, to go GS and signets while leveling.) I had begun to trait into Radiance, but reset and went into Valor to combat this squishiness that I was feeling. What did you do when you leveled?

It’s not squishier. You may think so because of lower health pool that Guardian has comapred to WArrior.

Hammer ir good pve lvling weapon due to combo you can do with Greatsword for AoE dmg and massive Aoe farm : GS #4/#2 skills then #3 for blind and venu and switch to hammer for #2 bash.

I leved with GS and staff ( for speed buff mostly and might stacks for aoe when there were events with many mobs ).

When IT comes to build Fill first :

Valor trait line – it gives Your surv + Crit DMg which helps You kill things faster
then fill 10 points into randiance for Blind Exposure ( very usefull with GS #3 skill best to apply first – you can get even 12 stacks of venu when there are 4+ mobs for AOE ).

And then fill back Valor ( And I personally gone honor ).

My trait likes looked kinda likfe this :

lvl 21 : 0/0/10/0/0
lvl 31: 0/10/10/0/0
lvl 41: 0/10/20/0/0
lvl 51: 0/10/20/5/5
untill I got 30 into Valor (lvl 61)

I went only Meditation Build, because I felt better with it – condi removal on 20s cd + judge intervention for more aoe with save yourself for huge boons when I was in trouble.

My leveling was about mostly doing chain events ( like in norn starter area – Grawl cave / maw / dome ) i’ve stayed there till 30 lvl, then I done my storyline and ended up at around ~40 after few missions in order – Also norn starting are drops massively small totems etc ( mats for low profs) which sell really well. In 1-2 hours You can farm good amount of silver/gold.

I had enoug gold for cooking + artificing to 400 and done 20 lvls that to that.

From ~60-80 I’ve done low lvl enets and then 75-80 cursed shore with specter/focus and staff off hand.

If You want crafting profs use them to lvl yp and pick cheapest – cooking/artificing/JC are fairly cheap and easy to do. I found Armorsmith/wS useless for me as weapons and armors are kinda cheap on Trading post.

Alright, that sounds good! Valor looks like a good line, and I’m sure the vulnerability from Blind Exposure will help. Thanks a lot!

blind exposure coupled with the GS (#3) in particular since it’s “bugged” in that for each foe you hit you apply the number of vulnerability. for e.g. if you hit 3 foes with leap of faith, you will put 9 stacks of vuln on each mob (3×3). ot sure if they fixed that yet though. so vuln in itself is not CRAZY awesome. but when you can get stacks that high it’s not too shabby.

while leveling, i worked towards putting 15 in radiance and then 5 in virtues. essentially in addition to ltitle more crit chance, 15 will net you F1 (Virtue of Justice) being refreshed each time you kill a mob. on the wiki it states you need the killing blow, but IME, you just need to contribute enough to get kill credit. if you run solo, this won’t be a problem though. and with 5 in virtues, you get might as well when you hit VoJ.

so in PvE, where mobs die considerably fast enough, you can pretty much spam F1, which blinds, gives vuln, gives might, burns.. and all those AoE blinds will help with you feeling “squishy” as well. since an attack that will miss, you’ll be taking that much less dmg.

then you can spec the rest into valor, wich gives you more toughness and crit dmg. argubly one of the Guard’s strongest lines. go into hono if you want more vitality. a decent “hybrid” build could be 0/15/30/20/5.

the hammer can be really fun. it’s a great PBAoE weapon as well. even with the #1 chain, you’re always hitting multiple foes. with a decent crit chance and dmg, you’ll always see numbers and crits pop, especialyl with #2 mighty blow!

dmg wise we won’t compare to the warrior on face value. what we are better at though is dealing relatively high sustained dmg over time. but if specced right, you can still hit like a truck. : ))