Guild Wars 2

Hey guys I’ve been running Knights (with two PVT) for WvW and FOTM on my guardian and I was wondering what the best armor/runes I should be running. So far I’ve been running Sceptor-(shield or focus)/Staff and been using my shouts to help my friends out in FOTM by taking away conditions and providing regular Aegis. Should I be using Clerics for the heal or should I just focus on staying alive with as much PVT gear?

I’ve had this Guardian for awhile and recently came back with all the bugs that are facing the Engineer so though I’d ask for some advise.

the thing u have to understand with clerics gear is that it isnt going to make u a super crazy spike healer… cleric gear shines when you are able to play your class when you learn how to/when to dodge/block and mitigate the incoming damage. clerics hear is amazing but if u just stand there and get pounded on expecting your healing gear to save your kitten then your mistaken. CLerics gear helps all your little heals like virtue of resolve, regen, AH, Dodge roll heal, etc it provides substantial healing making you able to endure over time rather than 1 burst heal every now and then.

I personally try to maintain 16k hitpoints and 3k armor. After that I push Zerker’s stats as much as possible. I like a little more hp if I’m not in an AH spec though. Gear is a mix of Soldiers, Zerker and Knight. With AH Hammer I can face tank for quite a while before having to back off and have decent damage with it. Running 2x each Sup Runes of Earth, Monks and Water for 50% Protection duration. Full zerker’s is one strategy for higher level fractals as you’ll get 1shot with any amount of HP/Armor so just get good at dodging, least thats what I’ve been told.

From what I’ve read the heal from dodge scales the best out of any of our abilities with healing power. But this content is doable without a guardian healing if every party member can keep themselves alive. So healing the group is nice but not necessary depending on the skill level of the group.

Blood~

You have to balance between vitality and healing power.

PTV armor and PTV jewelry:

20k HP is great, but not if you can’t fill it up with your heals.

PTV armor and cleric/magi jewelry:

16-20k HP and massive heals to sustain you and your team in battle.

It also depends on your build. Not sure if using healing gear without AH or heal on dodge is worth it. Runes depend on your role in fight. Are you running with a melee train in a large zerg? Small team battling?

Core melee train uses Soldier Runes/Shouts and Support train can use Soldiers or Water/Monk for boosting Protection up-time.

As far as WvW though my guild talks about using them as “Font-liners”, would I be better off with PVT gear and runes of the Dolyak or Soldiers since I like the shouts?

Absolutely go PVT if you’re playing front-line. The “Front-liners” typically use PVT armor/jewelry and Soldier runes. Since you’re all spamming shouts it’s hard for the enemy to CC you.

You don’t HAVE to use PVT jewelry, but remember your goal is to stay alive during a push so don’t lower your survivability too much. The damage is coming from your ranged players.

I’m personally able to pull off front-lining and line-breaking quite well in Cleric’s gear. The healing power also helps with upkeep on fellow front-liners, if that’s your thing.

Christos uses Cleric’s armor AND jewelry, if I’m not mistaken, and uses dodging as a cornerstone to his survivability. This puts out a lot of heals if you’re using Selfless Daring and allows you to linger in the enemy lines for quite a while. The build has 1 leap and 1 teleport for positioning yourself in battle, if you wanted to try it out – Healway Guardian

I’d actually say it’s worth testing both.

For frontline, PVT is the gold standard and even then sometimes you won’t feel it’s enough. That’s just the nature of the front line.

Clerics is great on a guardian, really. It does what it does very well and can work pretty well even on frontlines, depending on how you play it.

Goloith.6349:

Hey guys I’ve been running Knights (with two PVT) for WvW and FOTM on my guardian and I was wondering what the best armor/runes I should be running. So far I’ve been running Sceptor-(shield or focus)/Staff and been using my shouts to help my friends out in FOTM by taking away conditions and providing regular Aegis. Should I be using Clerics for the heal or should I just focus on staying alive with as much PVT gear?

I’ve had this Guardian for awhile and recently came back with all the bugs that are facing the Engineer so though I’d ask for some advise.

If you are going clerics then go all the way or not at all because any half measure will nerf your build and not achieve the healing you want anyway.

For PVT you should mix with knights gear to get a decent amount of crit chance. (knights gear also has higher toughness rating than pvt.)

For runes you want either runes of the soldier (for removal of a condition each time you shout, this stacks with pure of voice) or 2x sup water, 2x sup monk, 2x major sanctuary runes for max increase to boon duration.

This is assuming you are running the standard AH build. 0 0 30 30 10.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3|2.1g.h1|9.1c.h19.e.1c.h8|1n.7r.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1p.61.2u.0.3u.0.1p.61.1p.61.2u.0|0.0.u69b.k59.k39|3a.8|e

What I’m running atm. It’s a WvW build tho.
Utilities are shelter heal, stand your ground, wall of reflection, judges intervention and renewed focus

I’m a fan of using knight’s armor with zerker and valk mixed in for hp/damage… then with the perma vigor just learn to dodge well and use your utilities/judgements to mitigate damage when needed. I also prefer Monk’s focus to AH (burst healing/condition removal/mobility) unless I KNOW I’ll have enough people around me to make AH more worth while.

Armor = Full knights with Ruby or beryl orbs
Accessories = full ascended zerker
Weapon = PVT (so you don’t swap stats/runes when you get a legendary which is PVT)

Soldier runes are a waste because once you throw in Wall of reflection and Shield of the avenger you are left with 1 shout on a 30+ sec cooldown, so worthless. You don’t need the extra HP.

Assuming you throw in 20 in honor and from PVT weapon you should sit around 14-15k health which is plenty. Dodging > vit

Im lvl 48 fractal so i know what im talking about.

Cleric = worthless in PVE and semi worthless in WvW unless going full healing/boon duration (see healway)

Zerker armor and especially weapon suffers from too many stat loss on crit dmg conversion.

Most runes i also find worthless, If you are confy on HP, Ruby orbs currently offer you an amazing DPS option, you get 120 power, 84 prec and 12 crit %.
And if for a moment you consider divinity runes i will personally come and kick your kitten IRL…they are that bad and overpriced.

Armor – Full zerker w/dolyak runes
Accessories – Full ascended zerker
Weapon Types: Greatsword with Scepter/shield or focus
Weapon stats – Zerker w/superior sigil of strength

Traits – 0/5/30/30/5 (Altruistic Healing and Empowering Might)

Food: Omnomberry Pie and Master Maintenance Oil

This is not for people who are lazy and who do not know how to move and evade well. I focus on getting health through burst skills and shouts. Jump in with the GS use all your abilities, virtues, utility skills then get the heck out and range till you get your shouts back then do it again. I’ve used this build all the way up to fractals 19 only thing holding me back from going forward is my agony resist. I don’t do much wvw or pvp for that matter but I know this works in pve/dungeons.

Other things to note you can generally get around 9 to 15 stacks of might using this since every crit you have the chance of getting two stacks each time. With the food you should be around 50% crit chance and around 3100 attack base. I am pretty sure that you could get those might stacks even higher if you used boon duration runes on your armor.

Excursion.9752:

up to fractals 19 only

Terrible advice. At 26 you start facing lvl 82 trash mobs. At lvl 30+ most of them will 2 shot you. Your DPS uptime is miniscule, since you have to openly avoid melee due to being a squishy. Whatever you gain as DPS, you lose by the low DPS uptime, as well as gain the headache of being a paper tower. Your Build is better suited for a warrior TBH.

You will have <13k HP, that means 1 shot by most boss attacks. You can do lvl 18 fractal with 0 agony resist. Whats holding you back is ur glass cannon build and set up, not your Agony resist.

PS: Doylak runes = worthless

Hunter.4783:

Excursion.9752:

up to fractals 19 only

Terrible advice. At 26 you start facing lvl 82 trash mobs. At lvl 30+ most of them will 2 shot you. Your DPS uptime is miniscule, since you have to openly avoid melee due to being a squishy. Whatever you gain as DPS, you lose by the low DPS uptime, as well as gain the headache of being a paper tower. Your Build is better suited for a warrior TBH.

You will have <13k HP, that means 1 shot by most boss attacks. You can do lvl 18 fractal with 0 agony resist. Whats holding you back is ur glass cannon build and set up, not your Agony resist.

PS: Doylak runes = worthless

That’s not whats holding me back at all. I have over 15k health 350 vitality with traits and dolyak runes. If you look at it closely I get tons of mini heals that add up in the thick of things. I’ve had conversations with 30+ guardians in fractals and they are scrapping their toughness for dps because it does not matter much when you get to higher levels. The faster things die the less time it has to hurt you. On your false comment about not needing AR for level 19. If you take a team into level 19 against the maw with 0 AR your team would all die from the first agony burst from him alone. You may like to pay for repair costs but I’m not a fan. That’s why I use the build I use because I actually know how to manage inside a fight. Just because you can’t run this build it does not make it horrible so hop down off your soapbox and try not to discredit people because its not the way YOU would play the guardian. Everyone has their OWN play style and its not really up to you to decide what works for everyone else. I just presented a build that works for me, Its not for everyone. But there is a chance that someone will like it and that is all its there for. No place in my post did I say that it was the end all be all build I actually said the opposite. And just a heads up I’m not squishy one WW can bring me to near full health from over half way down. Not to mention the shouts, justice, signet ect that I get to use as well. I’ve ran this through every path of every dungeon and had no problems as well. So what it really boils down to is…this build is not for you.

Hunter.4783:

Armor = Full knights with Ruby or beryl orbs
Accessories = full ascended zerker
Weapon = PVT (so you don’t swap stats/runes when you get a legendary which is PVT)

Soldier runes are a waste because once you throw in Wall of reflection and Shield of the avenger you are left with 1 shout on a 30+ sec cooldown, so worthless. You don’t need the extra HP.

Assuming you throw in 20 in honor and from PVT weapon you should sit around 14-15k health which is plenty. Dodging > vit

Im lvl 48 fractal so i know what im talking about.

Cleric = worthless in PVE and semi worthless in WvW unless going full healing/boon duration (see healway)

Zerker armor and especially weapon suffers from too many stat loss on crit dmg conversion.

Most runes i also find worthless, If you are confy on HP, Ruby orbs currently offer you an amazing DPS option, you get 120 power, 84 prec and 12 crit %.
And if for a moment you consider divinity runes i will personally come and kick your kitten IRL…they are that bad and overpriced.

Div runes are better than ruby orbs unless all you care about is dps.

Excursion.9752:

Hunter.4783:

Excursion.9752:

up to fractals 19 only

Terrible advice. At 26 you start facing lvl 82 trash mobs. At lvl 30+ most of them will 2 shot you. Your DPS uptime is miniscule, since you have to openly avoid melee due to being a squishy. Whatever you gain as DPS, you lose by the low DPS uptime, as well as gain the headache of being a paper tower. Your Build is better suited for a warrior TBH.

You will have <13k HP, that means 1 shot by most boss attacks. You can do lvl 18 fractal with 0 agony resist. Whats holding you back is ur glass cannon build and set up, not your Agony resist.

PS: Doylak runes = worthless

That’s not whats holding me back at all. I have over 15k health 350 vitality with traits and dolyak runes. If you look at it closely I get tons of mini heals that add up in the thick of things. I’ve had conversations with 30+ guardians in fractals and they are scrapping their toughness for dps because it does not matter much when you get to higher levels. The faster things die the less time it has to hurt you. On your false comment about not needing AR for level 19. If you take a team into level 19 against the maw with 0 AR your team would all die from the first agony burst from him alone. You may like to pay for repair costs but I’m not a fan. That’s why I use the build I use because I actually know how to manage inside a fight. Just because you can’t run this build it does not make it horrible so hop down off your soapbox and try not to discredit people because its not the way YOU would play the guardian. Everyone has their OWN play style and its not really up to you to decide what works for everyone else. I just presented a build that works for me, Its not for everyone. But there is a chance that someone will like it and that is all its there for. No place in my post did I say that it was the end all be all build I actually said the opposite. And just a heads up I’m not squishy one WW can bring me to near full health from over half way down. Not to mention the shouts, justice, signet ect that I get to use as well. I’ve ran this through every path of every dungeon and had no problems as well. So what it really boils down to is…this build is not for you.

Not sure if you read the patch notes but life steal food now has an internal cooldown. So your WW won’t fill your healthbar any longer.

Hunter.4783:

Excursion.9752:

Hunter.4783:

Excursion.9752:

up to fractals 19 only

Terrible advice. At 26 you start facing lvl 82 trash mobs. At lvl 30+ most of them will 2 shot you. Your DPS uptime is miniscule, since you have to openly avoid melee due to being a squishy. Whatever you gain as DPS, you lose by the low DPS uptime, as well as gain the headache of being a paper tower. Your Build is better suited for a warrior TBH.

You will have <13k HP, that means 1 shot by most boss attacks. You can do lvl 18 fractal with 0 agony resist. Whats holding you back is ur glass cannon build and set up, not your Agony resist.

PS: Doylak runes = worthless

That’s not whats holding me back at all. I have over 15k health 350 vitality with traits and dolyak runes. If you look at it closely I get tons of mini heals that add up in the thick of things. I’ve had conversations with 30+ guardians in fractals and they are scrapping their toughness for dps because it does not matter much when you get to higher levels. The faster things die the less time it has to hurt you. On your false comment about not needing AR for level 19. If you take a team into level 19 against the maw with 0 AR your team would all die from the first agony burst from him alone. You may like to pay for repair costs but I’m not a fan. That’s why I use the build I use because I actually know how to manage inside a fight. Just because you can’t run this build it does not make it horrible so hop down off your soapbox and try not to discredit people because its not the way YOU would play the guardian. Everyone has their OWN play style and its not really up to you to decide what works for everyone else. I just presented a build that works for me, Its not for everyone. But there is a chance that someone will like it and that is all its there for. No place in my post did I say that it was the end all be all build I actually said the opposite. And just a heads up I’m not squishy one WW can bring me to near full health from over half way down. Not to mention the shouts, justice, signet ect that I get to use as well. I’ve ran this through every path of every dungeon and had no problems as well. So what it really boils down to is…this build is not for you.

Not sure if you read the patch notes but life steal food now has an internal cooldown. So your WW won’t fill your healthbar any longer.

I did read the patch notes and I know the health doesn’t pour in like it did. But if you use the pies with empowering might and have the sigil of strength its almost just as good. Because you have the chance to gain health many different ways while the internal cooldown is up.

Omnomberry Pie – 66% chance to steal life on critical with a 1 second internal cooldown.

Superior Sigil of Strength – 30% chance to apply might on critical every stack of might you heal yourself

Empowering Might – Nearby allies gain might for 5s when you land a critical hit. (keep in mind every party member you give might to gives you a bit of health)

Shouts – “Hold The Line, Save Yourselves, Stand Your Ground” all heal for every party member it hits.

Virtues – All virtues activations will give you life if you have at least 5 points traited in virtues. Resolve will not only give you and your party a decent heal it will also give you regeneration. On top of that if you are using Renewed Focus you can activate them twice if your in a hard spot.

So yeah I’m not hard up with the pies getting nerfed and really it wasn’t a nerf it was just to level the playing field because of the warriors Hundred Blades and whirling Axe abilities. Guardians other than the Whirling Wrath really don’t see that big of a change imo.

So to sum it up no matter what every time I crit I get some health with the chance to get two other small bits with the pies and the extra stack of might. On top of that I get the 30 hp per sec added to all of this from my dolyak runes every little bit helps and when add up all those little numbers you will find they are not that bad. People always want to see big giant heals and underestimate the power of micro heals.

IMO it really depends on your gameplay style and your role. For your reference:

Personally I go knights for dungeon (6 soldier rune) with AH and Pure of Voice as constant healing and condition removal is very useful for team

While for WvW where Zergs and conditions are common I use PVT armor (with 2 monk, 2 water and 2 crest of soldier) for better survival. In fact my earing and amulet are still using Knight since I don’t have enough laurel. With +35% boons dur and 2 hand mastery, i can get nearly permanent swiftness with staff which is very useful for WvW.

Apothecary and Giver’s not make the list?

@ Excursion.9752

Omnom as useful for a lot more than WW. For instance staff spam with high crit rate = 3-4 crits per swing = 670-1000 healing per swing in a big fight before the nerf. Large symbols can hit multiple enemies every second. Smite does up to 15 hits in a short period of time. Torch 5 can do an crazy number of crits if you have enemies bunched up. It was overpowered I’ll admit.

fishergrip.4082:

@ Excursion.9752

Omnom as useful for a lot more than WW. For instance staff spam with high crit rate = 3-4 crits per swing = 670-1000 healing per swing in a big fight before the nerf. Large symbols can hit multiple enemies every second. Smite does up to 15 hits in a short period of time. Torch 5 can do an crazy number of crits if you have enemies bunched up. It was overpowered I’ll admit.

You’re right I wasn’t thinking of all the different guard weapons. I use so few atm just because of the content that I am playing. I have not noticed a big difference since the nerf myself but it could just be because of the build I am using. Nice catch.

Good for survivability and killing:]

I have opted to go for full Soldier gear. (PTV)
The reasons for this solely rely on my traits. One would say, the more health the worse off you are. I disagree, as when in a team, or in a WVW zerg, there is constant healing going on, and being healed up to 25k health would simply mean you can take more of a beating ( survive bursts ) much better than a person in clerics gear for example.
Also, thanks to my traits, healing is pretty simple, and I also have 8 condition removals per 20 seconds.
I have survived in a 3 on 1 fight, and managed to take down 2 of them. No, they weren’t noobs.
Many would complain that my damage is not good in this build, well in fact, all you need is 1 thing to increase your damage by about 40%.
Using a simple potion, my critical chance goes up to 25% from 11% ( also my GS has +5% critical chance ).
I won’t simply give the name of the potion, but it is pretty common, and the more health and toughness you have, the more precision it gives you.

I have won countless duels ( in spvp ) with guardians who claimed that their clerics gear was unbeatable. True, all the fights lasted about 3-4 minutes each, but they simply couldn’t dish out enough damage to kill me, especially since I have a constant stream of regeneration.

I have been playing PTV guardian from the start, and am now finishing up my PTV ascended gear. I can honestly say, I love this build and it makes me feel like I can always lead my team to victory.

If you would like a better explanation of this build, send me a PM, and i’ll give some more details. But let’s put it this way, It’s much better than the Hammer-AH guide in this section.

Increasing your crit chance by 14% does not increase damage 40%.

fishergrip.4082:

Increasing your crit chance by 14% does not increase damage 40%.

For a PTV Guardian, the difference between 11% crit and 25% crit chance makes a big difference. No crit spins hit 2500 damage. Spins with crits hit 3500-4000.
I see the difference in this, if you don’t well that’s not my problem. :P

But to make this more believable to the sceptics, let’s make it 25% more overall damage.

+14% crit rate will increase your total damage by approx 12.5% starting at a base crit rate of 11%, assuming you have +50% crit damage. You’d need around +150% crit damage, to get close to +25% damage. Increasing crit does, of course, help with procs like sigil of fire, empowering might, etc. that can add to damage, but even with those you aren’t going to come close to +25%.

Throwing out random numbers like 40% and 25% reduces your credibility almost as much as acting all mysterious about your build as if you are running something nobody else has tried before.

fishergrip.4082:

+14% crit rate will increase your total damage by approx 12.5% starting at a base crit rate of 11%, assuming you have +50% crit damage. You’d need around +150% crit damage, to get close to +25% damage. Increasing crit does, of course, help with procs like sigil of fire, empowering might, etc. that can add to damage, but even with those you aren’t going to come close to +25%.

Throwing out random numbers like 40% and 25% reduces your credibility almost as much as acting all mysterious about your build as if you are running something nobody else has tried before.

I’m not sure if you can read, but I’m calculating the increase damage with GS spin. I hit 2500 with 11% crit. with 25% crit I hit up to 3500-4000. Now, try working out that % increase, it’s definitely not 12.5%
Now if you would like me to include the Logical equations such as, “Let us assume that the attack is done on the exact same mob both times” , just say so. Anyone can act smart nowadays. :P
And sure, many people may have tried it, but not many people master it.