Guild Wars 2

Hey guys!

Just wanted to quickly ask you if this is viable:

I am currently playing Guardian which disappointed me at the end game mostly because I could not find the right set up..

Now I found something I like and would like your input on it:

So I am going with Greatsword – Mace/Shield with traits going as follows:
30,30,0,10,0
But armor wise I went for power, toughness and vitality and I am wondering if that will affect my DPS in the long run? All weapons and trinkets are Power, Precision and Condition damage, and armor is that way so I am not a squishy.

Don’t know if that makes sense but if it does, drop what you think and anything you can suggest I will definitely try it out!

Thanks!

What do you feel like you are lacking in the build? Survivability? Utility? Damage?
1 & 2 are fairly easy to tweak, however if you wanted even more damage guardian might not be the class for you.

I made a thread asking for a bit of a critique on my build here (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Tanky-DPS-Guardian-Build-Critique/first#post663276) and overall I am happy with it, but i want to make it better.

My opinion on guardian weapons overall are as follows…
Greatsword and Hammer are excellent for PbAoE damage, I wouldn’t reccomend using both but using one gives you good presence. Staff is excellent as a support tool and has a pretty good mid range attack, good for tagging in events but the support is amazing.
Sword is excellent for mobility and has good one handed damage.
Scepter is your best bet for a true ranged attack even if its slow, the immobilize is nice and the ranged AoE can do some good work.
Mace is for people who want to be tankier, however its an attrition tank, not straight up tank, you will probably want a bit of healing power to compliment it.
Focus is excellent at making you tankier, Shield is good as a support off hand, and torch is your damaging off hand.

By the sounds of it, you want to deal damage. Both raw and conditional. If this is true, I would say go for Greatsword and Sword and Torch. As far as traits go, I’d need to know a bit more about what exactly you are disappointed by in your build and what you want to do as far as in game (wvw, pve, dungeons, pvp, etc) and how to go about changing that into something you enjoy.

What I am lacking is either I have to give up damage for toughness or toughness for damage so in the end I hate being squishy and I hated dealing low damage… so it is a dilemma.. Question on will p,t,v armor affect my DPS drastically?

I use P,T,V armor and I wouldn’t say that it affects it drastically. In my opinion you are trying to go for too much damage and you end up sacrificing your survivability for it.

Carrion (Con, Vit, Pow), Knight’s (Tough, Pow, Prec), & Valk (Pow, Vit, Crit Dmg) all give decent amount of damage and survivability. Tuning Crystals, Sharpening Stones, and Toning Oils all convert Toughness and Vitality into Conditional Damag, Power, or Prescision respectively although you can only use one at a time.

How I treat traits personally are for the effects. The stats they give are secondary, and I can always fill those stats which I want more of with gear. No matter what gear you get, you cannot get those trait runes except via points and those need to be decided first. As someone on my thread I linked mentioned, putting 15 points into Radiance gives an AoE Blind when activating Virtue of Justice and renews justice whenever you kill something (ie when something you tagged dies). Putting 5 points into Virtues gives might each time you activate justice, so the more you kill the more AoE Might you give to you and your allies.

I personally find 30 points in Zeal a waste, and the only reason I use 20 in there is for the Spirit Weapon effects.

But to be honest, if you want to survive all the time but still want to build glass cannon, maybe you should look at warrior. That is not to say that its impossible and in no way should you not try, but I don’t know how much you are willing to sacrifice in damage to survive more.

Guardians have one of the lowest hp pools in the game at level 80. They are naturally tanky due to their features which become more effective via traiting. But if you ignore those traits and focus more on damage in all aspects, you are moderately tanky with a low hp pool and slightly higher than average base armor (without toughness).

I had the same problem … trying to find the balance that gave me reasonable survival rates with good damage.

I found a happy place though. I found that 30/30/X/X/X builds were leaning too much into offensive and conversely, ignoring the first two trait lines was too defensive as well. Anything in between that felt lackluster on both aspects. Then I started to think about how I could incorporate better burning into my play since it’s free and I was largely ignoring it. At this point, I believe that the best balance between offense and defense requires some attention to condition damage and 15 in Radiance. Beyond that, you can pretty much put your traits where ever you wish.

Your traits give you lots of defense and you can tune your gear to where ever you want to be on that offensive/defensive spectrum. For reference, my build is 0/15/30/20/5 with full Pow/Vit/CD armor/weapons and a mix of Chrysocola/Coral Jewelry. I’m using a hammer with bloodlust sigil, then swaping to GS with Force sigil when I have 25 bloodlust counters. I’m also using full Flame Legion Runes but Runes with CD are the cheapest there are as an alternative.

i think knight’s gear is really good. you get pow, which is “essential” for dmg, and this is further augmented by all the precision you’re getting. and then toughness to beef you up a bit. then for your armour, you can play around with i’d say.. knight’s for even more toughness and precision, berserker’s for added damage, or valkyrie if you feel lacking in the HP department.

i personally run the crithammer + AH build. yes many are running it now, but it’s really fun. extremely survivable. yet i don’t feel i am lacking in the dmg department at all. consistently hitting 2k hits and sometimes even up to 3k, depending on mob and conditions. the high crit chance helps. always mobile. the traits i’m running is 0/5/30/30/5. another variation is 0/15/30/20/5. main focus is altruistic healing for valor grandmaster trait. you get heals from boons you give yourself AND allies. you can maybe try it out in the Mists first if you feel it’s too “defensive” before investing in it.

i love might stacking as well – staff #4, which also heals for every tick. even more if allies are around me. runes if you’d like you can go fire x2 strength x2 hoelbrak x2 for extra dmg as well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR5dlYgKCnFyvDfIFRuAbGEUgVFiH2DNmR4D

I ran something like this for a while. Damage and survivability were both good.

Thank You for response, I kinda found something with greatsword and have not decided on second set. Going with 20/15/10/20/5. Seems scattered but hey why not if it works! doing good amounts of damage considering all my armor is power/toughness/vitality… so I am not squishy anymore and dealing damage I wanted with a nice amount of health :P

Try 0/30/0/10/30 with Sword/Torch for constant burning damage, fast attacks and a lot of VoJ. You’ll be able to keep burning, blind, retaliation, and vulnerability up a lot. Those will augment your straight damage as well as increase survivability using lotsa blinds. Off hand set could have focus for another blind skill and added survivability.

Hey Seras, going to try it out now! Will update how it goes

Tried it out, loved it! Armor and health pool seems to be just right and damage output is okay !! Gonna use it for now!