Guild Wars 2

Decided to post this after seeing people upset about AH changes in the patch in case it helps or at least entertains, seeing alot of videos with build threads.. I realize alot of people will feel it’s crazy to play without AH in the situations I do but I find with blood sigil on hammer and omnomberry ghosts/pie I can stay alive with my group pretty well without AH, I don’t particularly recommend my build to all players. I’ve played with AH a good bit and I know it’s the best overall WvW trait and it’s a good idea to do WvW in general with that trait. (I havent even tested it post nerf yet)

Here is my newest video before I start rambling if that’s all you care to check out, with diff builds centered around 0/15/0/30/5 http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASRlYg67WFSOEm4ERuA7DAE7BGhfGB I don’t really recommend trying this build vs AH ones if you’re not with some kind of coordinated/organized group with decent toughness/vital.

Outside of the traits linked above I feel there are alot of options, the only things in my build I won’t change right now are 20% reduction on shouts, 20% reduction on 2h cooldown, Empowering Might and 15 into Radiance is a must for me for the justice renewal on a kill.

Right now my usual build when with a good small group is 0/20/0/30/20(http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASRlYg67WFSOEm4ESmiVKBtUAQEE2DMC+yIA) 20 in Virtues to get indomitable courage for extra stability and general boon/retaliation buffs… 20 into Radiance I pick up vulnerability on blind(works with Justice reset nicely and got buffed) and reduction on signet cooldown (I get it just for the self heal signet).. 30 Honor for Empowering Might, 2H Mastery and Shout cd reduction all obvious choices with 30 in that tree I think. There are lots of good ways to work around the core build I think though… i’m pretty interested to hear what others using EM are going with and why.

Utility skills are pretty much always Save Yourselves, Stand Your Ground and Judges Intervention, stability, burst, survivability and a teleport for hammer ring, all irreplaceable for this style of play/trait setup for me.

For gear I go with a big mix and change it around here and there, pretty much everything is a pretty good mix of precision/power/toughness/vitality/crit damage, no rune set right now(of course I think some are very good) just a mix of ruby and emerald orbs, weapon sigils I stack precision or fire blast on GS, Hammer i’m experimenting right now with rune of blood for the heal proc. (also, heal proc food + master maintenance oils)

In a nutshell the build adds damage to your team with EM, provides good stability and decent boon support in general, swapping between Hammer and Greatsword frequently is a must to make use of the shortened cooldowns on all the combo fields/finishers and CC. It’s about fast takedowns of groups, what I find fun.

There are lots of other good ways to work around Empowering Might, you can get it with Altruistic Healing but doesn’t mix well with my preferred style of play, i’d hate to lose either the 15 in Radiance or 2h mastery trait, but i’ve done it without either of those and it’s a totally fine build in general imho.

20/15/0/30/5 is another build I do sometimes for less stability/boon support and more raw damage output with 10% on burning and 5% greatsword damage in Zeal.

Anyways i’ll stop rambling, just still trying to help/entertain and learn so thought i’d post this.

Previous videos
Vol. 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvPm5GLBpfI
Vol. 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdJgVZ4eAUQ

When do you cue to pop indomitable courage anyway? I can’t think of any DOT CC other than twister off the top of my head.

kaffaljidhma.1496:

When do you cue to pop indomitable courage anyway? I can’t think of any DOT CC other than twister off the top of my head.

The stability stays up after aegis is gone.

I’m wondering where you’d need it in WvW aside from cliffside battles since – oh, I see, for dunking.

kaffaljidhma.1496:

I’m wondering where you’d need it in WvW aside from cliffside battles since – oh, I see, for dunking.

I find stability very important for making a push as a group, it affects teammates also, it’s precious more seconds to stay in combo fields and do what we need to do to take down a larger group before we start to get cc’d all over the place.

So basically a rich man’s retreat is what you’re saying, where you use it to cross no-man’s-land both ways.

Great videos. You have a real sold group, which is why I suspect AH isn’t necessary for you. Keep up the zerg busting!

Bumping for a great movie. We run similar builds with the main difference being that I use mace and shield instead of GS for more group support and downed state management with shield of absorption.

I notice that you guys don’t even really try to stomp you AoE people down and saturate that area to deny revives. Shortbow thieves are great for this. We typically don’t have the ranged AoE to do this and having to stomp the players you down can be really frustrating.

For the person questioning the VoC stability trait, it can be a game-changer. The stability can be used to stomp, revive, or it can be used to protect a tome cast.

You might want to look into runes of lyssa. You gain all boons when you use an elite, including stability. That synergizes nicely with the guardian elites. I’m not using the tome personally, but you would gain stability passively every time you use it which would help protect the long cast time heal. The side stat is precision which also fits in nicely with your build and food choice.

a quick view on your overall stats (perc, vital, power, .. etc) would be great, just started to play guardian and dont have the gold for lot of exotic changing gear, for now.

khefka.2804:

^ Rune of Lyssa doesn’t work with Guardian tomes.

Okay, never tested it since I don’t use the Tome (haven’t used it on a damage build since it was nerfed hard in beta). It works very nicely with Renewed Focus, which is the only thing I’ve been using. Tome without stability is too fragile, IMO.

Oozo.7856:

Bumping for a great movie. We run similar builds with the main difference being that I use mace and shield instead of GS for more group support and downed state management with shield of absorption.

I notice that you guys don’t even really try to stomp you AoE people down and saturate that area to deny revives. Shortbow thieves are great for this. We typically don’t have the ranged AoE to do this and having to stomp the players you down can be really frustrating.

For the person questioning the VoC stability trait, it can be a game-changer. The stability can be used to stomp, revive, or it can be used to protect a tome cast.

You might want to look into runes of lyssa. You gain all boons when you use an elite, including stability. That synergizes nicely with the guardian elites. I’m not using the tome personally, but you would gain stability passively every time you use it which would help protect the long cast time heal. The side stat is precision which also fits in nicely with your build and food choice.

Thanks Oozo, you have some great videos, too bad to hear lyssa doesn’t work with tome, it’s an interesting rune set… I am addicted to Tome of Courage and am lucky that I usually have someone to stealth me or Mesmer to give quickness. ToC #5 is my favorite ability in the game probably.

Vektor.1476:

a quick view on your overall stats (perc, vital, power, .. etc) would be great, just started to play guardian and dont have the gold for lot of exotic changing gear, for now.

Well generally I just use power/toughness/vitality armor with precision/toughness/power + power/vitality/crit damage jewelry, pretty mixed up, all ruby and emerald orbs, I change my gear around so I can’t really say anything in particular, it’s hard to strike a balance on stats in this game.. often I toss some of my berserkers armor into the mix.

khefka.2804:

^ Rune of Lyssa doesn’t work with Guardian tomes.

That’s incorrect, it DOES work, but the rune triggers when the effects of an Elite Skill end, rather than when you trigger it.

The reason it works with Renewed Focus is that it’s only a 3 second immunity, so you go immune for 3 seconds, then clear all conditions and gain all boons.

With the Tomes, you’re waiting 20 seconds for it to trigger.

hey there, just wanted to say i LOVE your videos. i’ve been mainly PvE-centric so far with the occasionaly jump into WvW. maybe a couple times a week. looking to get more focused on it as i’m nearing some of my PvE-goals (mainly weapon skins lol) and want to focus more on WvW. have been using an AHbuild as well and trying to diversify. after watching your videos, it looks fun. oen thin gi appreciate is that you’re always switching builds, gear, and you still perform awesome. so major kudos.

one quick question, in your current playstyle, what is staple for you to maintain your heals / health? though it seems more to come in the form of mitigation and knowing wen to dis-engage and then reengage your enemies.

lastly, i’ve recently further delved into the virtues line and picked up stability on IC and i. love. it. experimenting with a boon duration build with 0/0/10/30/30 now hehe but i’m in a phase of trying new stuff out now lol. gonna give this some more time and might give something along the lines of your build ; ))

akamon.2769:

one quick question, in your current playstyle, what is staple for you to maintain your heals / health? though it seems more to come in the form of mitigation and knowing wen to dis-engage and then reengage your enemies.

Thanks glad you’re enjoying the vids, as for health maintenance i’d say yeah part of it is definitely being shifty and all over the place… avoiding circles… disappearing into a crowd? To me it’s one of the hardest parts of worldpvp, not tunnel visioning and seeing what’s coming, knowing when to duck and dodge.

Omnomberry ghosts and master maintenance oil are very important, i’m also using the sigil of blood on my hammer atm.

As for builds like 30 honor 30 virtues, I can’t do it(with this style of guardian play), 15 into Radiance is the heart of it all, with a group that can kill fast and wants alot of kills, the VOJ refreshes with the might stacks from 5 virtues, the blinds, the new trait giving 3 stacks of vulnerability on a blind, the fire proc, it’s like an engine that gets started if you can get fast kills… take a good look at 20 radiance, signet CD reduction and vuln on blinds, very important stuff, the 8 seconds or whatever earlier you get the heal signet back up is kind of super important to me I notice when I don’t have it, if it doesn’t come back just in time to save your life it will be back at work cleansing conditions that are sure to be on you at that point in a fight.

0/15/0/20/5 I can’t see any way out of those particular traits anymore for my type of guardianing.

haha have a ton of fun watching your vids! yea, i need to learn to do that better! i don’t extensively WvW but i already know my greatness weakness – situational awareness and like you said, “disappearing into a crowd” lol. turn around to see all your allies having fled already and you’re caught in a sea of red. and inevitably, your death lol.

ahh gotcha, that’s awesome. i’ve been experimenting with blood and omnom ghosts as well.

i’m sort of trying to build off your build, mixing and matching my own style but i don’t think at this point i can afford to use what you do. ; )) one of the reasons being is i usually roam solo, and follow groups when i can, but even then, it’s not guaranteed. you and your team work really good together, and i feel can benefit a bit more from some of the traits and playstyle you’ve learned to adapt. not sure if that’s right, but just a feeling heh. i think i need even a bit more survivability in terms of traits / gear. like you mentioned, i LOVE 15 in radiance and that’s one of our best traits i feel. and specced with blinds, 5 in virtues. works wonder, but thing is i don’t always kill as fast in WvW so i feel points can, for now, be better spent elsewhere heh.

but i’ll keep experimenting in WvW and see how close i can get to this. ; )) i want to play more with meditations as well, so might be speccing more into valour.

and oh, the signet heal is MASSIVE when you use it. and it does have a super short CD. i’ve been accustomed to shelter and the 2 sec block has been a life saver for me. plus for a while, burns on blocks but may have to relook into the signet heal – used it way early on

Love the video dislike the music lol……

shelter > heal signet imo.

if you worry about the condi removal, remove 10 from radiance for 10 in valor. but i guess you really want radiance 15, which is solid. soldier runes then

shelter is ridiculously better than heal sig when you can time the block properly.

on a more related note : good show.

akamon.2769:

stuff

Keep experimenting IMO part of why this game is so awesome is there are so many viable builds it’s miraculous, i’ve been working on some solo play since i’ve been off work a bit and and trying things out, triple meditation today. Maybe have some of that in my next vid or a later vid.

Darkmoon Mist Raven.5913:

shelter > heal signet imo.

Hmm Shelter vs Signet is a tough one.. when I do my soloing/duoing shield build with block traits I sometimes use shelter and try hard to time it, but doing what I do in group WvW I think the conditions disappearing + the extra 4k heal offset the chance to block 4k damage to make shelter worth it.

Shelter is great, I just think it suits more of a tanky guardian who is happy being in the line of fire, i’m usually more about topping myself off after ducking out of harms way when blinds blocks and stability aren’t going for a sec and then coming back full health, 100% hp I find is much less aggro, rather they attack someone else who has less than full health, I love topping myself off with that spike, it’s like after rolling around a couple of times in a pile of giant Norns theyre wondering where that Asura with 50% hp went. Maybe i’m crazy but I swear that’s for me the knock against the be low hp and regen alot/block alot with altruistic healing type style, I believe the more you’re at low health % the more focus fire you’ll receive.. of course this is sometimes the proper intention of a guardian, to draw focus fire away from squishy teammates, I do take that on in some situations where I want them to attack me.

I’ve slowed down clips of me in the roughest situations and not often do I see 4k damage worth of hits on me 2 seconds before my signet heal goes off, seems like most of the times it would save more health than signet heal is when i’m locked down caught and going to the downed state no matter what I do, having conditions drop off of me while I haven’t used signet seals the deal for me.

It’s a good debate though, I see them as equal abilities for different situations and it’s hard to figure out for me.. and I should mention that I realize it’s not only damage that gets blocked with shelter, which is what makes it most interesting, I don’t agree that shelter is always superior.

Silentstorm.7531:

Love the video dislike the music lol……

Nooo, the music is awesome did you listen to it loud on good earphones? Anyways glad you liked it despite that, personally i’m always muting pvp videos hehe, esp ones with singing.

Anyways I appreciate the feedback guys, the next vid will be better but alot of work as i’ve been recording billions of gigabytes a day so far and I already had a backlog of long fun fights which were meant to be in the last video but that vids project file corrupted and I lost 2 days of editing and had to start completely from scratch(now I save in steps)… and now I have to stop playing mostly for a week and a half of the holidays so maybe 2nd week of Jan it will be done.

lookingf forward to it! i’m trying to mess with a new build (only in theory for now) with triple meditation as well, and try using monk’s focus for some added healing. but we’ll see. currently running a boon duration build and seeing how that works heh.

one more thing, do you ever feel you don’t have enough mobility? i guess i got used to using swiftness from staff #3, though we have many other ways as well ; ))

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

p.s. love the music of your vids! lol

Awesome vids mate! You’re defo someone I look up to as a guardian. One question though, with your current 0 20 0 30 20 build, how do you remove conditions? Other than the signet of resolves’ passive, there’s no other trait/utility in your build that does so and you’re not using soldiers rune. I’m just curious how to survive a zergs condition damage if they start focusing on you.

Watching this video made me very sad…

Sad because it reminded me of your awesome Warhammer videos- and I really miss Warhammer.

looking forward to more videos (hopeuflly sooner than later)!D
easily one of my favourite Guardian vids to date.

Sorry late replies had a busy holidays was away alot. Almost done new WvW vid sorta, also making another set of vids now with just one fight sequence with clips too long for my usual vids.. here’s the first, with me learning triple shout with a dwayna rune set for one of the first times, couple of close calls and some failure.

akamon.2769:

one more thing, do you ever feel you don’t have enough mobility? i guess i got used to using swiftness from staff #3, though we have many other ways as well ; ))

Yeah I definitely struggle with mobility, teleporting, leaping and save yourselves short sprint are my only hope, I usually beg speed buffs off my teammates, I don’t see a way around it though.. I do end up with swiftness alot of the time, sometimes I plan my escape around my Judges Intervention cd

fxchin.8954:

Awesome vids mate! You’re defo someone I look up to as a guardian. One question though, with your current 0 20 0 30 20 build, how do you remove conditions? Other than the signet of resolves’ passive, there’s no other trait/utility in your build that does so and you’re not using soldiers rune. I’m just curious how to survive a zergs condition damage if they start focusing on you.

Thanks glad you like the vids, it’s funny you mention the conditions cause since my last vid i’ve been more annoyed with conditions than ever and have sometimes been using the 20pt trait in virtues to drop 3 conditions on virtue of resolve use, the signet periodic reduction does count for something I guess… it’s part of the endless brain teaser figuring out builds… in my solo builds i’m very anti conditions.

I think what it comes down to for me in what you see in my main videos is I just watch my conditions and back off when it’s too much, my vitality is pretty decent and that helps alot too in giving me time to react to a condition spam, also I get condition removal from teammates ideally, what i’ve decided is my main solution is to get really good at avoiding red circles, especially necro ones. Another thing about heavy conditions is if you see them early and know you have no bailout just run away asap to a safe spot to be brought up from downed, I think conditions are the worst if you don’t notice them being applied and react.

GANGLAND.6357:

Watching this video made me very sad…

Sad because it reminded me of your awesome Warhammer videos- and I really miss Warhammer.

I miss my Witch Hunter I’ll have a thief at some point and try to make him entertaining :P I’m actually excited about the potential of single target buffs and having to assist better like we did in WAR after this big talk theyre having about nerfing aoe.

Uploaded a new vid 0/20/0/30/20 group wvw

akamon.2769:

lookingf forward to it! i’m trying to mess with a new build (only in theory for now) with triple meditation as well, and try using monk’s focus for some added healing. but we’ll see. currently running a boon duration build and seeing how that works heh.

one more thing, do you ever feel you don’t have enough mobility? i guess i got used to using swiftness from staff #3, though we have many other ways as well ; ))

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

p.s. love the music of your vids! lol

Try runes of speed they help mobility quite a bit.

@Relentliss – i’ve debated using those as well. but so many other runes out there that entice me way more so i’d rather deal with what we have. ; )) one of these days though, if i can afford to, i’ll give it a shot.

a tangent, but wish we had ways of “extracting” runes from armour and slotting in new ones, instead of the existing replace. haha

@incomingray – love the new video! commented on your youtube as well and missed the link to your build. i’ve set up a new build as well and it’s practically the same as yours, minus a few trait choices depending on setup. triple meditation is great fun and takes some getting used to, but can’t wait to try it out more extensively in WvW. it’s a nice break from playing shouts only, which i love as well. JI in WvW is godsend, and i’m using CoP and SC, both of which are pretty fun and makes me mor eon my toes and paying beter attention to my conditions, positioning, and CDs. great stuff! was rooting for you the entire time when you faced run away man again. bah!