Guild Wars 2

This is obviously a question focused on PvE and WvW.

And that is, is there an armor set that would apply equally well? I’m partial to Zerker stats on weapons, and can switch out trinkets as needed, but I tend to prefer to only have one set of armor if possible.

To that end, I’m looking for suggestions on a set of armor that would work on my Guard that allows one to frontline in WvW, probably with hammer, while still doing respectable damage in other areas of WvW and PvE.

Whether its simply a suggestion on the prefix/runes or a link to a full on build, I would appreciate any input, especially before I start working on Ascended (this is an alt).

There’s no such thing, however you can use any build and then just change the weapons (WvW train requires hammer right?).

I would just get the WvW zerg meta and use that in all area’s:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_AH_Frontliner

It will be great for WvW zergs, though probably too tanky for PvE.
What is respectable? You’ll do enough damage to kill mobs and they won’t be able to kill you fast.

However there are builds that do more damage, where you are killed faster aswell.

If you minmax your armor, you can be very competative in dps and survive well enough in wvw. To be honest though, I would just build towards wvw and forget about gearing for dungeons, unless you want to speedclear. Any dungeon can be done sufficiently in wvw gear. Just change your traits to something more pve oriented and you’ll be golden.

No there is no such thing. Unless you don’t mind being unoptiomal, because if so you can run anything you want

I would say celestial armor. With Melandru runes for WvW raid and Hoelbrack/Pack/Balthazar/whatever for PvE or “roaming”.

Celestial armor provides a decent boost for every stat, and you can adjust your tankiness, your busrt damage and your healing or condition damage swaping the trinkets and weapons. And assuming that you’re crafting a ascended one, it will be also useful for a Warrior if you want to reroll.

WvW

Knight’s Hammer, Soldier’s/Magi Staff
Soldier’s Armor + Trooper runes for shout build/PoV
Soldier’s Armor + Melandru runes for Consecrations/Virtues build
Berzerker Trinket’s

Pve
Berzerker GS, Sword, Focus, Scepter (Force + Accuracy sigils just to keep it casual)
Berzerker Armor + Scholar (best DPS)
Berzerker Armor + Flame Legion (cheap version)
Berzerker Trinkets

Please, it’s not hard to own 2 sets of armor and 2 extra weapons. Don’t be lazy please. People complain that there’s not enough use of the stats in the game and you have threads like this. Common’!?

You can do something not so bad for roaming and dungeon. A zerker gear with flame legion runes.

Full zerker trinket in dungeon and like 2-3 knight trinket while roaming.

You just gonna have to switch trait between both mode and you should be ok. You can keep the same weapons if you use GS + Sw/F while roaming. That’s the best you can get for two mode, 1 gear. But it will be terrible for Zerging. If you want to zerg, you really want a soldier armor. Or you put a celestial armor and be ordinary in all three mode.

If I go wvwvw i just swap my zerk trinkets for soldier. rest gets tuned with weapons and food.

saves bag space

This is a versatile build that I’ve been min-maxing for a while, and i’m trying to optimize it for both PVE and PVP. It’s not a Meta build, cuz I hate the Meta. There’s an exotic version for this as well, i’ll post both. Here’s the Ascended version. Here’s the Exotic Version.

The Ascended variant allows you to trade away some Knight’s Armor for some Berserker peices while still maintaining a decent armor rating. You gain a nice boost in DPS as well.

The one thing I don’t like about the build is the fact that I can’t use Runes of the Trooper. I really like the combo of Trooper Runes + Force of Will for the extra 3k HP + condi removal. If you want condi removal in a build without Trooper Runes, you need to trait for it and lose out on that extra 3k HP.

There’s other variatians to this build as well. You can go 0/3/6/4/1/ for extra blinds and stuff. That’s what I’d recommend running for PVE. Or go full Meta and go 4/5/0/0/5 with GS + Sw/Focus. There’s a Meta Hammer build as well, it’s 3/5/0/4/2.

Of course, you can have 2 sets of armor, one for PVE and one for PVP. Keep everything exactly the same, except the runes. Trooper for PVP, and Exuberance for PVE. But that’s just insane. If I had the time and money, I would do it. But then again, the new expansion is coming and it may shake the Meta up a bit and potentially invalidate current builds for being the “best” and hopefully make other types of builds/play-styles even more viable.

Hope this tickles your fancy.