Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,
First of all thanks for comming here check out my build !
So, I’m new on GW2 but a veteran of MMORPGs and a lover of build making.
Here I’m posting my first solid Guardian build based on some other builds that I found across the internet. The aim is to play a dps while supportive role (a true guardian) in dungeons/fractals with my buddies.
Please take a look at everything and shout out any comments, tips, questions or boons!
Cheers!
Here’s the build link —> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQJARWl0ApWotCxUI8DNBDBl18xODJfDXXgIEAA-ThCBABGp8jH1fkQJI0HCAAeAAtoLoq9Ho4CAkg5vNOCAAA-e

I’m decently new to the game as well. And my group actually would rather I play a support guard than a DPS guard. Personally I said “screw that I can do better” and I’ve found a nice option that has me giving them what they want while also pumping as much damage as I can. As you play more and master the content more you’ll quickly notice that everyone in the group can be full or near full damage and still breeze through content based on the active defense available. Active defense being blind/aegis/dodge/block/etc. Passive defense (hp/toughness/healing) isn’t really needed in dungeons.

So with that I’d throw a few questions at ya.

What are you getting from Altruistic healing, or really the entire valor line that is contributing to your damage or support?

If you’re stacking passive defense that implies that you’re preparing to take a lot of hits, how much uptime do you think you’ll have on Unscathed contender?

Have you looked into Consecrations, mainly Wall of Reflection and how it works in many dungeons?

I don’t want to just point you to the Meta builds as I’m sure you’ve seen them, and I think trying to figure things out for yourself is good. But, long story short, Metas are Metas for a reason There is one set of traits I’ve really fell in love with though, and that’s 3 points in radiance for VoJ blind spam, it’s fantastic, if you haven’t tried it yet I highly suggest giving it a whirl. It makes most clearing pretty easy, not much on bosses, but everything else it’s fantastic.

Thanks for the reply, Jerus!
Let’s beggin with the fact that I was having some -yet not much- trouble surviving/tanking the dungeons with a full zerk build. So, to gain sustain -while having DPS and Support- the valor line gives me toughness, aegis when 50% low, condition remover and heals me when I buff others, that will ally with Empowering Might and the shouts, giving a lot of booms to others and to me, not only healing me but also supporting the team.
Basically thats the soul of the build, Altruistic+ Empowering. Heal and sustain + group might.
About the Unscathed Contender, yeah my mistake, it should be Master of Consecrations there, for encounters with Wall of Reflection replacing Stand the ground or Retreat.
By Meta, which build are you talking about? One thing that I’m loving in this game is the variety of builds or even small changes in the basic ones. So, fell free to post any of them here!
p.s. I also love the Great Sword in this game, so I’m trying to build something around it, even if it’s not the best choice.
Thx buddy

Obal has a Stickied post at the top of the guardian forums. DPS guard or something like that. There is a good list of options with optimal options and slightly less optimal but more support/safer options. They are all DPS focused because once you learn how to play you don’t need passive defense just the active defense which those builds have available. Sword/Focus and Greatsword 45005 build is prety great, lots of blinds, the shield on focus, plus awesome damage.

Empowered generally isn’t something you see guards using but that’s because most people tend to try and get phalanx warrior or Elementalists to take on the role of stacking might. But, also as a Guardian we have Fire fields, namely Purging Flames, which when blasted give 3 stacks of might for 20s, when you have a whole team blasting it when it comes up you’re pretty set on might.

All that will come in time as you master dungeons though. For now keep trying to do that and you’ll quickly find you don’t need AH, or any of the Valor tree.

Another thing to look into though is Purging Flames as a consecrations, as I mentioned Might stacking, but also 3 condition removal. Right now with Trooper runes you’re relying on single condition removal at the expense of your skills that will have to be “wasted” on condition removal rather than their primary use, which can put you in situations where you want/need Stability or Aegis and it’s on cool down. Take the last boss of ACp1 for example. He does 3 conditions on you if you fail to dodge that attack. That means all 3 skills are expended on one fail dodge by anyone ont he team. ANd with that the most dangerous condition is the confusion which is the third condition. So you either can expend 3 shouts, or you can use 1 purging flames. Just something to think about as even more reason to opt for consecrations in some situations.

GW2 is a little different than most MMOs in that everyone is a DPS everyone is a Tank and everyone is a Healer, it’s just how you align yourself. In the end though you’re primarily DPS because have no agro system so everyone has to be ready to be attacked. And healing power doesn’t scale well so being the true healer just isn’t really something you want to strive to do as it takes far too much for far too little.

GL out there and I hope I’ve helped and not just come off as rude

Thank you a lot Jerus, you were very helpful.
Indeed when I see all the guardian metas I always think "How the hell am I suposed to survive with 10K health and 2.2K armor, specially when I’m the one in the front -most of the time-.
But in the end I think I’ll be able to better understand the game mechanics so I’ll be able to relly only on my active defenses.
The bad thing about it is that less and less I see the Guardian as a supportive character! – yeeees I know he has supportive spells, but now I see him as a selfish support that happens to also do something for the others. Maybe that’s the aim of the game… I’ve seem some people praising this system like “Thanks god I don’t need to relly on those stupid healers anymore”.. But I don’t know, I like to play support/healer in most games and here I feel like I’m just another DPS taking care of my own busines, trying not to die. Maybe my comcepts will change as I go deeper in the game… Just 2 weeks at lvl 80…
And yes, I played WoW for a fair time… (sick of it though)(gw2 is better, haha)

I’ve alwasy been a support guy myself, but I always had a bit of a different mentality than it seems most do.

The way I see it is you only need so much defense and so much support. You actually cap out on those. Even in other MMOs you only take so much damage so you only need so much healing. You only need XYZ buffs buff G doesn’t really do much of anything so it’s not needed. You only need so much defense to tank eventually you have more than you need.

So when that happens what do you do? continue to stack superfluous healing? Naw, that’s where you get to have fun, and really shine as someone amazing that’s gone above and beyond. That’s when you put in DPS!

DPS never caps, more is always good, if things aren’t dying before you can hit them, then you can contribute with more dps.

EQ I ran Bard mainly which was all about buffs, basically I stacked 25 stacks of Might constant fury and 25 stacks of vulnerability, I was the dps support. But I could do that while i walked away afk. So to make it fun I would push my DPS.

When I tanked in all games I’ve played, I always had DPS gear and setups that would take some defense away in favor of more DPS and I’d always try to have just enough defense and focus the rest towards damage.

Same mentality for my healers, in fact in DCUO I ran 100% DPS gear on my healer. I did it because I knew I could still heal even the hardest raid in the game with that setup.

Just sometimes you can bring far more than you need.

With that though, I still feel like I play very supportive. My team relies on me for condition removal, stability, aegis, protection, and projectile walls.

Protection is nice, makes a 90% health hit only take 60% of your health. Aegis blocks things completely, condition removal is huge, projectile walls turn some attacks that would kill you into things that are killing them. And Stability is just a wonderful thing.

SO I do my best to cover the things just I try to only cover the ones I need for the specific situation and drop the rest in favor of more DPS where it’s applicable faster killing means less attacks means less of a need for any kind of defensive support.

Akira.2650:

The bad thing about it is that less and less I see the Guardian as a supportive character! – yeeees I know he has supportive spells, but now I see him as a selfish support that happens to also do something for the others. Maybe that’s the aim of the game… I’ve seem some people praising this system like “Thanks god I don’t need to relly on those stupid healers anymore”.. But I don’t know, I like to play support/healer in most games and here I feel like I’m just another DPS taking care of my own busines, trying not to die. Maybe my comcepts will change as I go deeper in the game… Just 2 weeks at lvl 80…
And yes, I played WoW for a fair time… (sick of it though)(gw2 is better, haha)

But you’re actually healing in an indirect way, no big green numbers on screen, but by mitigating incoming damage to your party.
Imagine a boss about to 1-hit one of your friends who has, let’s say 15k health, but you apply an Aegis to him; bang, you just saved 15k health. Or a blind that makes that attack miss. Or a protection that reduces 33% of all incoming attack to him for a while. Or maybe you applied a wall of reflection that reflects all incoming projectiles from him, again saving a lot of HP. Or by removing conditions that might’ve sucked his HP out just before he was able to heal himself. Or by breaking his stun and giving him stability so he was able to stay/get up.

It’s a lot of invisible help you’re giving out, no shiny green numbers, but when you time everything right you’re saving so much HP by mitigating damage it that you could call yourself a healer.

This is the old anchor build. The build helps you keep yourself alive better at the cost of support for your group and dps. Running a full dps build provides more support to your group than this and much better dps. The reason for this is your missing blind spam, perma prot for fractals, vuln spam, and all the damage multipliers. The goal of a guardian is damage mitigation through blinds, blocks, hammer perma prot if needed, and projectile defense. All these benefit your group and not just you. I’d suggest trying 3/5/0/4/2 hammer gs build. It will give you perma prot, decent hp, vigor, shout cd, blind spam, vuln spam, master of consecrations, the 2 10% modifiers, and good dps.

Your gear choice is fine other than runes and sigils. Use the runes if you really feel the need though a good cheap dps oriented set would be flame legion and for sigils you will want night/force for night time and force/accuracy for day. Having the knights set and points in honor will save you from being one shotted by most things and anymore than that is really a waste.

You will also not want to run 3 shouts at a time. Run wall/shield of avenger when there are projectiles, purging flames when there are conditions to remove, retreat pretty much everywhere, stand your ground when stability is needed, and bane signet if you have a free slot. Wall/shield/retreat should be your bar for most of fractals and wall/retreat/purge should be your bar for most of dungeons. This will mitigate a lot more damage than spamming shouts to remove conditons and give a small heal to yourself rather than use them when actually needed. Shelter is a better heal as well since doing block rotations are better than trying to outheal damage. Signet is only better if you fight things that are unblockable like old tom, mai trin, and elemental source.

Thank you all for the replies !
It’s fantastic to have such a helpful community that in less than 24h has given me a lot of feedback with very constructive insights!! You guys are amazing!
Obal, it’s an honor to have a reply from you here in my topic, as I read a lot of your guides! Now I feel close from people that really understand this game and can give me a lot of help through my learning process!
I’ll try to use your GS/Hammer build and see how I deal with it. I hope I’ll survive long enough to give all the damage this build provides. Gimme a couple days and I’ll come back here to tell you guys how it’s rolling !
Thankyaa !

I once had the same respond as you Akira. How can you survive with such a lot amount of hp and armor. But then I tried the meta. Its hard at first, but i’m actually surviving SO MUCH MORE than before.

I had a similar build than your a while back. I could stay alive for sometime in melee, but always had to retreat and range a bit. Even with 2.7 armor and 15-16k hp. But with the meta now, the only time I use a range weapons is my staff in TA for the blossom or my sceptre at the cart in SE. With all the blind, aegis, reflect, protection, etc. I usually, not only stay up, but a lot of time i keep my team at 90%+ hp for long enough for us to kill most stuff. It need practice to time your active defense right, but I have more fun, I do better support and more damage with any of the variation of the meta (and there is a lot of variation there).