Guild Wars 2

Hello cuddly guardian friends!

I have a problem, i have been using the Altruistic Healing build since the launch of the game and have only recently switched to Sword/Focus Zerker build.

I love Sword/Focus, i love the higher dps, but i have died so many times now my brain has gone on a holiday to Southsun Cove and i dont think its coming back.

What i really miss the most about the AH build is using shouts to spam cleanse debuffs from myself and friends. I have been trying to find a build that will let me keep high dps yet also give me access to shout condition removal.

This is where i need your lovely help, is it better to go 30 into Honor for Pure of Voice, then use Scholar runes and zerker gear. OR. do the standard dps build and use Soldier runes?

I have been messing with build editor and what i think it comes down to is how good is ‘Elusive Power’ and ‘Power of the Virtuous’. Also i need to consider if i am capable of keeping my health above 90% to get the benefit of Scholar runes.

I dont think i will ever be capable of going FULL zerker spec and gear, im just not skilled enough. So any help would be great thanks

25 Virtues for Master of Consecrations and Absolute Resution will massively outcleanse PoV, as well as giving you a useful damage bonus from the 25 minor. Shouts don’t offer a lot of utility aside from SYG. Move toward Consecrations for you and your parties sakes.

Tried that but its just not good enough.

Absolute Resolution and Purging Flames just dont compete when it comes to rapid condition removal that shouts provide.

Yeah what foofad and said. Purging flames and absolute resolution do a better job of condi removal than shouts and give you the flexibility to run alternate utilities depending on the situation.

Elusive power works against the vigorous precision minor as you will rarely be low endurance thanks to the vigor.

Try swapping in some valk, knight or pvt armor or weapons while you learn to survive as a zerker.

The only way shouts do a better job of cleansing is if you load up your bar with them which ends up causing you to take things like stability shouts on a fight which might not need stability. When instead you could have taken something more useful like reflect or shield. It also encourages poor thinking of retreats aegis.

Arnath.2319:

Tried that but its just not good enough.

Absolute Resolution and Purging Flames just dont compete when it comes to rapid condition removal that shouts provide.

1. Don’t waste them.

2. Condi cleanse priorities.

Weakest cleanses first.

Your team is at 95% health with some bleeds and vauln?
a.) Whirl finisher in a light field. (weak)

Your team now has more condis that are looking threatening, you’ve run through your light field/whirl?
b.) Purging flames. (Good but cast time, may require you to move to people)

kitten’s getting serious.
c.) Absolute resolution. (strongest)

kitten is getting real serious.
d.) Renewed focus, Absolute resolution again.

3.) Many attacks that cause conditions can be blocked with Aegis

You should not have an issue cleansing condis in any dungeon unless of course you are running in a team with no dps and fights take 10 times as long. In which case you will run out of kitten regardless.

I hope this is legible i have a huge migraine right now -_-

swiftpaw.6397:

1. Don’t waste them.

2. Condi cleanse priorities.

Weakest cleanses first.

Your team is at 95% health with some bleeds and vauln?
a.) Whirl finisher in a light field. (weak)

Your team now has more condis that are looking threatening, you’ve run through your light field/whirl?
b.) Purging flames. (Good but cast time, may require you to move to people)

kitten’s getting serious.
c.) Absolute resolution. (strongest)

kitten is getting real serious.
d.) Renewed focus, Absolute resolution again.

3.) Many attacks that cause conditions can be blocked with Aegis

You should not have an issue cleansing condis in any dungeon unless of course you are running in a team with no dps and fights take 10 times as long. In which case you will run out of kitten regardless.

Perfect answer. #1 is insanely important. Know your encounters, and know which encounters can put what number of conditions. This will allow you to judge if you should clear the condi or wait a bit for the bigger slam of conditions.

Also PoV removes 1 condition per shout, and 2 if you add soldier runes. That equals to 6 conditions removed. Where as 25 in virtues with purging flames is 9 conditions removed. So… Free yourself from the sub par build and read Swifpaw’s post a few times to instil this knowledge deep in your brain.

Arnath.2319:

Tried that but its just not good enough.

Absolute Resolution and Purging Flames just dont compete when it comes to rapid condition removal that shouts provide.

Not good enough? Traited with PoV you have a 24, 28, 48 cd shout each curing one condition. That translates to 2.5, 2.1, and 1.25 conditions per minute or 5.65 total if you spam them on cooldown (which is a terrible idea). With Purging Flames alone you get 6.42 per minute. Let’s say you do Soldiers runes too. Now you’ve got 11.3 a minute. Absolute Resolution affords you an extra 2.75 plus healing plus regeneration, only you don’t have to sacrifice your runes for a bad set to get it. Purging + Absolute are way better than PoV, and you can use real runes, and master of Consecrations allows you better access to Wall of Reflection in dungeons which is virtually required anyway.

I agree, and that all sounds great in theory, but im not that great of a player and i never run in organised groups.

For example when i first went full zerker i went and tried it out inside the Nightmare Ends story dungeon. When i was AH i could kill everything and never die, but as a zerker i had to take on one elite enemy at a time or i would die, even then that one elite enemy would take half my health.

Then one time i got a debuff, i could not dodge, could not heal, i already used Purging Flames and Absolute Resolution but because debuffs are applied so rapidly there was nothing i could do but watch that debuff tick away and kill me, that would have never happened in AH build.

I know this all comes down to me just being a bad player, but i just dont understand how people survive in full Zerker. Even auto attacks kill you.

Arnath.2319:

I agree, and that all sounds great in theory, but im not that great of a player and i never run in organised groups.

For example when i first went full zerker i went and tried it out inside the Nightmare Ends story dungeon. When i was AH i could kill everything and never die, but as a zerker i had to take on one elite enemy at a time or i would die, even then that one elite enemy would take half my health.

Then one time i got a debuff, i could not dodge, could not heal, i already used Purging Flames and Absolute Resolution but because debuffs are applied so rapidly there was nothing i could do but watch that debuff tick away and kill me, that would have never happened in AH build.

I know this all comes down to me just being a bad player, but i just dont understand how people survive in full Zerker. Even auto attacks kill you.

If curing was the problem, you would have only had one more chance using PoV shouts. 3x shouts vs 2x from PF AR. I don’t think one more chance would have saved you from the sound of it.

It’s okay to be bad, but it sounds to me like you’ve been playing AH so long you just don’t know what it’s like to do anything else. Keep trying and learning. It’s like playing a completely different class. Very few people are so bad that they can’t figure it out.

Arnath.2319:

I agree, and that all sounds great in theory, but im not that great of a player and i never run in organised groups.

For example when i first went full zerker i went and tried it out inside the Nightmare Ends story dungeon. When i was AH i could kill everything and never die, but as a zerker i had to take on one elite enemy at a time or i would die, even then that one elite enemy would take half my health.

Then one time i got a debuff, i could not dodge, could not heal, i already used Purging Flames and Absolute Resolution but because debuffs are applied so rapidly there was nothing i could do but watch that debuff tick away and kill me, that would have never happened in AH build.

I know this all comes down to me just being a bad player, but i just dont understand how people survive in full Zerker. Even auto attacks kill you.

For solo play, open world, or LS. Run whatever you like. The arguments being made here are for dungeon running, where things generally go from engagement to engagement. The team dps should be getting things killed relatively quickly, giving you a slight breather with cool downs between engagements.

The reason you were doing better in that nightmare event thing, was you also had the shout benefits, with protection, regen and what not. It wasn’t just the condi clear. This becomes less important with a team providing damage to end things quicker in normal dungeons.

I too have trouble with certain condi heavy bosses solo with this build. Took me a while to legit kill belka with a consecration build. Dealing with that burning was a pain, until I learned to mitigate(needed energy sigils to dodge more :/) the source of the fire, rather than deal with it.

It was incredibly hard to solo cleanse all the conditions in that nightmare place. With a large party the amount of conditions stayed the same but the amount of group cleansing in theory increased. If I remember correctly though, reflects were very useful in there for completely avoiding the conditions.. More shouts means less reflects.

Don’t worry about being ‘bad’ you’re not being bad, you’re learning right now. For the nightmare end, your main damage mitigation will be the blinds. Don’t spam, use them whenever the mobs is going to attack you. Focus #4, F1, Sword #2, GS #3, make sure you pull them together to blind them all at the same time. You can also use wall against some of the mobs, which you wouldn’t be using with PoV, Shield of the avenger is there is alot of projectile and wall isn’t enough.

About what swiftpaw said, it’s really important to not waste your condi removal, same goes for aegis.

We have all been there, but believe me in the end I feel like this has more survability than a AH build with zerker gear.

You’ll realize that using a shout to remove a condition and not for its boons is wasting the shout potential (I.E. using retreat to remove condi instead of using it to block an important attack) Your main concern right now is the way you used to survive in a combat have all been changed, instead of healing you have blinds, instead of boons you have reflects, your conditions are now removed in a bunch instead of 1 at a time.

Arnath.2319:

Hello cuddly guardian friends!

I have a problem, i have been using the Altruistic Healing build since the launch of the game and have only recently switched to Sword/Focus Zerker build.

I love Sword/Focus, i love the higher dps, but i have died so many times now my brain has gone on a holiday to Southsun Cove and i dont think its coming back.

Use a greatsword and do dps rotations with that and sword. You have an extra blind and do more damage.

Arnath.2319:

What i really miss the most about the AH build is using shouts to spam cleanse debuffs from myself and friends. I have been trying to find a build that will let me keep high dps yet also give me access to shout condition removal.

Shout cleanse isn’t good. You have to bring shouts instead of better utilities and waste them to remove conditions. Purging flames and Absolute Resolution are more than enough usually. You can whirl in light fields with gs if you need more.

Arnath.2319:

This is where i need your lovely help, is it better to go 30 into Honor for Pure of Voice, then use Scholar runes and zerker gear. OR. do the standard dps build and use Soldier runes?

I have been messing with build editor and what i think it comes down to is how good is ‘Elusive Power’ and ‘Power of the Virtuous’. Also i need to consider if i am capable of keeping my health above 90% to get the benefit of Scholar runes.

Anything more than 10 points in honor is a waste for gs + sword builds. The same goes for hammer at 20. If you can’t keep the scholar buff Ranger runes are the next best thing (bugged so you don’t need companion to get 5% buff). Power of the virtuous will be around 5% always. For Elusive Power, you don’t have to dodge against most trash and when you do have to dodge you have perma vigor and won’t proc the buff much so it isn’t very good for most content.

Arnath.2319:

I dont think i will ever be capable of going FULL zerker spec and gear, im just not skilled enough. So any help would be great thanks

It’s an adjustment. Your pretty much forced to relearn the content. I struggled at first like most but got the hang of it and can see how much more useful it is than AH. You have a lot to keep yourself alive it’s just a matter of managing what you have and it takes time to get it down. Hang in there and you will get it and be that much better at the game and much more use to your group. If you want more info on builds, rotations, etc you can look at the guide that’s here.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

I am also a recent convert to Zerk builds on guardian. I spent most of my play time using tanky/healy builds (Hammer and Mace/Shield) which allowed me to roll through open world PvE content pretty much AFK.

When I first tried a zerker build, I died too fast and gave up quickly. I also like WvW (zerk build to glassy for that) but I kept going back to it for PVE because the damage they do is insane.

The main thing I had to get used to is having much better situational awareness. As a “healy/tank” I can just stand there and take it, and eventually stuff dies. That won’t really work in dungeons anyway, and definitely not as a zerk build.

I improved a lot by just fighting stuff in open world and working toward harder mobs and groups of mobs. Keep them blinded, and they don’t hit you. Greatsword and Sword/Focus gives you a blind on each weapon set, plus the one from VoJ and the (Radiance 5 trait), which is renewed every time something dies (Radiance 15 trait). With multiple mobs, you can use the GS pull to get stuff all together, and then blind it all at once.

Obal’s guide is great. Just follow the advice there and practice, practice, practice :-)

I’m still learning myself, but as a fellow guardian I’d encourage you to stick with it. In the end I think you’ll be quite happy.

I have been using and loving the full zerker guard for a few months now. Prior to that, I had been using healway instead of AH. I don’t like AH for one simple reason. You MUST be around people for the heals to be useful. When running a build based on virtues instead of AH, you have flexibility. My zerker set up that works for Pretty much all game modes is 10/0/30/5/25. It gives you the 2k heal on meditation, All the condi cleanse of meditations, and the fury to give you more deeps. Once I got used to this build, its pretty much all I use now for DPS guard. Its extremely hard to take down in wvw as well.

I would honestly use a 10,30,0,5,25 build with full zerker and just learn how to play better instead of admitting you can’t play that way now. Some people can’t play full zerker and thats ok but practise on veteran giants queensdae champs ect to improve your dodging. Also try out dungeons and fractals to become a better player

Arnath.2319:

I agree, and that all sounds great in theory, but im not that great of a player and i never run in organised groups.

For example when i first went full zerker i went and tried it out inside the Nightmare Ends story dungeon. When i was AH i could kill everything and never die, but as a zerker i had to take on one elite enemy at a time or i would die, even then that one elite enemy would take half my health.

Then one time i got a debuff, i could not dodge, could not heal, i already used Purging Flames and Absolute Resolution but because debuffs are applied so rapidly there was nothing i could do but watch that debuff tick away and kill me, that would have never happened in AH build.

I know this all comes down to me just being a bad player, but i just dont understand how people survive in full Zerker. Even auto attacks kill you.

Honestly, I was the exact same way. I relied on AH build for so long, I didn’t have to learn the mechanics of the fights. When I first went full zerker dps I was dying a lot, this was before I joined a dungeon guild, I was still pugging a lot. Slowly, I learned the encounters and became better. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad player, just used to a different style.

I’m by no means an exceptional player. This is my first PC game, I’m older than most players and have a little slower twitch reaction (I don’t learn as fast anymore either). But after playing with the build long enough, and lots of practice, I’ve now solo’d arah, including lupi and I duo it everyday. I’ve become quite good at all dungeons. Considering that last January I was a keyboard turner, I’ve come a long way. If I can do it I think many can.

If the build isn’t for you, then it just isn’t. But I think if you continue at it, you’ll find find dungeons more engaging and eventually have more fun.

• Try some knight pieces until you get the hang of it.

Thankyou for the advice everyone!

I’m going to keep practising and see if i improve, i have three questions however…

1. I have never heard of “Whirl finisher in Light Field” to cure a condition before can someone please explain how this works?

2. It is suggested that i use Knights gear to help until i get better, what about Soldier or Sentinel? Since we get so much precision and ‘Right Hand Strength’ in 30 Radiance, can you ever have two much crit chance?

3. I have always been hesitant to go deep into Virtues trait line because i thought pure stat increase is better than boon duration? Is a few seconds shaved off our Virtue recharge and a slight increase in boon duration worth the 300-600 stat loss?

Arnath.2319:

Thankyou for the advice everyone!

I’m going to keep practising and see if i improve, i have three questions however…

1. I have never heard of “Whirl finisher in Light Field” to cure a condition before can someone please explain how this works?

2. It is suggested that i use Knights gear to help until i get better, what about Soldier or Sentinel? Since we get so much precision and ‘Right Hand Strength’ in 30 Radiance, can you ever have two much crit chance?

3. I have always been hesitant to go deep into Virtues trait line because i thought pure stat increase is better than boon duration? Is a few seconds shaved off our Virtue recharge and a slight increase in boon duration worth the 300-600 stat loss?

1. It’s a combo field, if you do certain things in combo fields you get a different bonus
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

2. Just go zerk and learn the mechanics better as you improve (dodge to win/aegis/reflect/invuln/blind)

3. When doing traits stats are not as significant as the traits themselves. Traits are where you pick up utility and damage multipliers. 10,30,0,5,25 is a perfect guardian trait line

Arnath.2319:

Thankyou for the advice everyone!

I’m going to keep practising and see if i improve, i have three questions however…

1. I have never heard of “Whirl finisher in Light Field” to cure a condition before can someone please explain how this works?

You can put down a light field from things you have like symbol of wrath and wall of reflection. When they are up you can use skills with whirl finishers such as whirlwind attack and binding blades which triggers cleansing bolt.

Arnath.2319:

2. It is suggested that i use Knights gear to help until i get better, what about Soldier or Sentinel? Since we get so much precision and ‘Right Hand Strength’ in 30 Radiance, can you ever have two much crit chance?

You do gs + sword dps rotations. RH strength only affects weapon skill 1-3 of 1h weapons and not your gs, reflections, offhand, etc so you will want the crit chance from knights.

Arnath.2319:

3. I have always been hesitant to go deep into Virtues trait line because i thought pure stat increase is better than boon duration? Is a few seconds shaved off our Virtue recharge and a slight increase in boon duration worth the 300-600 stat loss?

You will have at least 3-5 boons on average which will give you a dps boost to everything instead of 1 weapon if you have 25 in virtues. You lose dps in stats and the traits you would pick won’t really add too much. You get absolute resolution which is really nice. You can swap to unscathed if you don’t need it for what your doing at the time and probably do near or more dps than dumping points elsewhere since you have 2 aegis + renewed + reflects to maintain it for a decent amount of time. You give up a little dps for more support which is why you bring a guardian in a group in the first place.