Guild Wars 2

My Guardian is getting closer to 80 and I wanted to reexamine the gear I planned to get him. Originally, I was going to get him 2 sets of armor (Soldier’s with Crest of the Soldier and Magi with Rune of Dwayna) and 2 sets of jewelry/trinkets (Sapphire and Emerald). However, now I am a bit more uncertain and wanted to double check. Unfortunatly, it isn’t being easy.

The original plan was to have the armor give Vitality and the trinkets give Toughness. The Soldiers and Emerald was meant to be an offensive set while the Magi and Sapphire was meant to be a healing set; both focused on tanking and produced a lot of combinations when mixed.
I am not sure if I still want to do it exactly the same. However, I do want to focus on Tanking with all sets with an offensive and healing sets and I do want at least one to offer a good vitality boost.

My planned trait build was 0/0/20/30/20. It was focused around team healing with alternatives for solo. I considered making a more aggressive alternative build with more precision and offensive, but I have yet to do that. Either way, I want my gear to work well in either build (although the healing power gear would be more useful in the first of course).
As for weapons, I will probably get Soldiers or Knights for the offensive ones (greatsword/staff/scepter/shield) and Clerics or Magi for the healing ones (mace/shield).

Well, here are the stat combinations of Knights/Emerald, Soldiers, Clerics/Sapphire, and Magi. It lists all possible combinations of the 4, with the first name being the armor. I did not figure in Runes or such for the armor and I did figure in back slots; even though some didn’t have it.

Knights+Emerald- 763 Toughness, 630 Precision (30%), 570 Power
Knights+Soldiers- 732 Power, 661 Toughness, 346 Vitality, 224 Precision (10%)
Knights+Sapphire- 661 Toughness, 570 Power, 508 Healing Power, 224 Precision (10%)
Knights+Magi- 570 Precision (27%), 508 Healing Power, 346 Vitality, 315 Toughness, 224 Power
Soldiers+Emerald- 672 Toughness, 661 Power, 406 Precision (19%), 224 Vitality
Soldiers+Soldiers- 823 Power, 570 Toughness, 570 Vitality
Soldiers+Sapphire- 661 Power, 570 Toughness, 508 Healing Power, 224 Vitality
Soldiers+Magi- 570 Vitality, 508 Healing Power, 346 Precision (16%), 315 Power, 224 Toughness
Clerics+Emerald- 672 Toughness, 570 Power, 406 Precision (19%), 315 Healing Power
Clerics+Soldiers- 732 Power, 570 Toughness, 346 Vitality, 315 Healing Power
Clerics+Sapphire- 823 Healing Power, 570 Toughness, 570 Power
Clerics+Magi- 823 Healing Power, 346 Precision (16%), 346 Vitality, 224 Toughness, 224 Power
Magi+Emerald- 630 Precision (30%), 448 Toughness, 346 Power, 315 Healing Power, 224 Vitality
Magi+Soldiers- 570 Vitality, 508 Power, 346 Toughness, 315 Healing Power, 224 Precision (10%)
Magi+Sapphire- 823 Healing Power, 346 Toughness, 346 Power, 224 Precision (10%), 224 Vitality
Magi+Magi- 823 Healing Power, 570 Precision (27%), 570 Vitality

I considered other sets, but I haven’t found any that look as nice as these are. Also, I do want to have decent precision, at least in the offensive build. This is because my Valor line will give me 20% Critical Damage, which is rather useless without a decent critical chance. I don’t care as much about this for the healing sets.
I am looking for 3 sets of armor or trinkets for now with a 4th to go after later. By that, I mean 1 armor and 2 trinkets (with another armor later) or 2 armor and 1 trinket (with another trinket later).

So which would you suggest?

For Offense

Soldier head, chest, legs
Zerk shoulder, gloves, boots
Knights accessories with ruby jewels
Zerker ascended rings and amulet (Until you get the ascended, just get the exo zerk/knights)

3k+ power
~75-80 crit dmg
~33% crit chance
~15.5k hp
~2.7k armor

Edit: I would spec 0/0/30/30/10. AH is too good to not have.
Edit2: Don’t spec into healing power with armor. The +300 in honor is enough. You’re better off going more toughness.

I think you should take a look at this post as well. His gear setup is very well thought out. It is a little more forgiving than mine. As you progress farther into the game and begin to get better and understand more of the mechanics, you’ll want to start adding more damage. The reason for this is the fact that most of the stuff that will end up killing you in higher lvl areas will kill you regardless of the armor/hp you have.

Just want to reiterate this one point though, AH is easily the best trait the guardian has available. Over the coarse of longer fights (like Magg path in CoF and many fights in CoE) you’ll end up healing for 5-10k effectively increasing your health pool dramatically. The best party support you bring to the team is staying alive. By staying alive, you will most likely have mob aggro. If you have mob aggro, that means your team can’t die because they aren’t getting hit.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Paragon/first#post1371525

Thanks for the reply. It wasn’t quite the reply I was looking for, but helpful none the less. I prefer keep my armor or trinkets to a single stat theme rather than mix them up. Might not be the most effective, but it works for my needs. I don’t want to go for Berserkers on my Guardian though. It is good, but I have many other characters that are going with the offensive berserker style and I would rather my guardian be more of a tank. I personally feel Knights and Soldiers is good enough for offensive.
As for AH, I will certainly make a note to consider it further. I really don’t want to drop my Virtues line by 10 to get it though; the buff to my passive heal is great. I think I’d rather cut Honor instead. Either way, those are the three lines I will focus on; I can always work out the details later.
I am currently thinking that Divinity may be a good choice over Crest of the Soldier for the Soldier/Knight armor. I may later go for a Cleric/Magi set just for the Runes of Dwayna/Boon Duration runes though. I think I’ll just skip the Healing Jewelry for now; maybe I’ll get it later if I feel like it.

I am currently leaning towards Knight’s Armor with Soldier’s Trinkets. That way I can easily get Ascended when the time comes while having high power and good toughness and vitality. The Critical Chance is lacking, but if I do go with Runes of Divinity, that would be fixed. Magi pairs weird with Soldier’s JEwerly, so I think I’d rather Clerics if I did get a set of Healing Armor. It loses Precision, but that build would only be for all out healing anyway (still boasting the highest powerful and respectable toughness too).

Since my post, I’ve been crunching some numbers and here is what I found. The build you linked has the following stats (excluding weapons and traits):
719 Power, 593 Toughness, 322 Precision (15%), 313 Vitality, 60 Healing Power, 60 Condition Damage, 27% Critical Damage

Now if I were to do the far simpler Knight’s Armor of Divinity with Soldier’s Trinkets, I’d have the following:
792 Power, 721 Toughness, 406 Vitality, 284 Precision (13%), 60 Healing Power, 60 Condition Damage, 12% Critical Damage

The drop is Precision is rather minor in my opinion. The Critical Damage does go down a good bit, but the Power, Toughness, and Vitality all have notable increase. I can always increase the Precision and Critical Damage by using Ruby Jewels on my Soldier’s Trinkets, especially Earring since there is no full Soldier’s Ascended of them yet. [If I did use all Ruby Jewels on the Soldier’s Trinkets, it would lose 60 Toughness and Vitality and gain 60 Precision and 18% Critical Damage.]

While I may have messed up in the math somewhere, I think I am satisfied with that build. I will plan to get Knight’s Armor and Soldier’s Trinkets for my Guardian. If I ever want to make it more Healing focused, I can always get a new set of armor to help there. So for now I think the best thing to do is work on the traits.

I think you need to step back from dry numbers and re-trait to try AH in a group situation.

I run a mostly defensive build, and thought AH looked like nothing special based on the theorycrafting, but going on the ‘there has to be something to it, if it is so popular’ theory, I felt I should at least try it and judge for myself.

What I found surprised me. We tend to take for granted all the boons we pump out to allies. I made no other changes than switching to AH and I was stunned at the difference it made. The number of times I had to be concerned about the level of my health went way down. The number of times I had to resort to using my active self heals went down, and overall I spent less time just trying to stay alive and more time concentrating on offense than before. Just as important, this survivability came despite the tradeoff of traits required to make the switch.

It is really easy to try, a few silver to reset traits, and it also turned out that the traits I had to give up, were not deal breakers, i.e. the numerous heals made them unnecessary. If that does not convince you, you can switch back for a few more silver.

Well for now I am sticking to my original build plan of 0/0/20/30/20 [20 in Valor with Purity (V) and Strength in Numbers (IV). 30 in Honor with Writ of Exaltation (III), Writ of the Merciful (X), and Battle Presence (XII). 20 in Virtues with Vengeful (II) and Absolute Resolution (IX).] Once I hit Level 80, I will see how I use my Guardian and go from there. I got the Armor figured out now and I just got done reviewing Weapon’s Sigil and Stats.

The main thing I need to see first is if I do play my Guardian in a team a lot or only occasionally. While the above build is meant for a team, I can modify it easily enough to be for solo. I don’t feel like a 0/0/30/20/20 build would work as well for solo, although I will certainly consider trying it. It is a bit annoying that I will have to lose Battle Presence or Absolute Resolution to get AH; since both combo together so my build feels lacking without either.
Still, traits are far easier to play around with than armor and weapons. Mainly due to the 20 gold difference to redo >.>