Guild Wars 2

Note: This build is heavily based on Brutaly’s AH hammer build, so all props go to him.

High damage and survivability is what everyone wants, and that’s what you get with this build! Impossible you say, no very possible. Follow this build and you will feel like a champ.

Lets go over the most important part first, gear. Without the right gear even the best build is bad.

Helm- Knight
Shoulders- Soldier
Chest- Soldier
Gauntlets- Soldier
Leggings- Knight
Boots- Soldier

x6 of Runes of Divinity

Weapons- Greatsword (Soldier w/Sigil of Rage)
Hammer (Valkyrie w/Sigil of Strength)

Backpiece- Soldier w/Exquisite Ruby Jewel
Earrings- Knight w/Exquisite Ruby Jewel
Rings- Soldier and Knight w/Exquisite Beryl Jewel
Amulet- Knight w/Exquisite Beryl Jewel

Food:
Plate of Orrian Steak Frittes
Master maintenance oil

Screenshot at the bottom of the page so you can see what it should look like.

Traits: 0/5/30/30/5
Purity
Retributive Armor
Altruistic Healing
Superior Aria
Empowering Might
Pure of Voice

Utilities:
Shelter
Hold The Line
Stand Your Ground
Save Yourselves
Renewed Focus

Lastly vids so you can see how to play it. The vids will do a lot more explaining then me trying to write it out lol.

This build is highly effective in all areas. (PvP, WvW, and PvE) It’s also a blast to play, so go enjoy yourselves.

Thanks for the build.
Could you explain (through text, and in brief) some comparison between yours and the Brutaly’s hammer build?
Why this mix between knight and soldier armor?
Why “Paragon”? Usually it comes with “Paragon of Virtues” but you have only 5 in the virtues line ^^
Why Shelter instead of the healing signet? (I always have issues with Shelter as it is best used when you know the enemy will hit you hard, and I have difficulties timing it good)
Why the runes of divinity?

Sure Hitlain

The build relies heavily on crit and AH, just like Brutaly’s.

The reason you mix it is, If you got full Knight you have terrible Vitality, and if you go full Soldier you crit is horrible. You balance it out to get the best of both worlds.

You only need 5 into virtues to get Inspired Virtue. Which is boons when activating your virtues, and ofc you have AH. So it just really another for of healing. If you pop all your virtues at once(try not to do this only for desperate measures lol). It’s pretty much another healing skill.

Shelter is my fav. One it blocks attacks, plus if you have Might of the Protector you gain might for blocks. As you can see in the video at one point I get 19 stacks of might because of this.

Divinity for two reasons. One it adds to all your stats, so you can get a more balanced build, but the better reason is the extra 12% crit dmg.

I sometimes pop all my virtues at once, but when I have renewed virtue on, so I can refresh them at once…
I’m at work so cannot watch your video, I’ll do it later.
Can you remind me what might does? I’m french so unsure what the french word is.

About runes, I have thought about a 6xLyssa as well. Divinity provides % critical damage, but Lyssa improves precision, and therefore the critical chances. Dunno what’s better. And the 6th Lyssa provides a way to dismiss all conditions you have on you… and sometimes especially in Orr, when I have a few undeads on me, it is not uncommon I end up with 6 conditions at once, and it hurts badly ^^

I’m not very experimented so I’m not sure about what I say though, but this is my current feeling…

Might is a boon which increases power and condition damage and can stack in intensity up to 25 times. The effect of might is determined by the following formula:
0.375 * Level + 5 = Power and Condition Damage per stack (e.g. 35 at level 80).
With 25 stacks of might at level 80, the bonus is +875 Power and Condition Damage.

Conditions you don’t really have to worry about for the most part. Since you have Pure of Voice and using all shouts. Yeah I know sometimes they aren’t reliable, but you also have a high health pool to help.

What is this soldier armour about?
I mean I don’t find it here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Draconic_armor

I like your build because for the most part I play with GS and hammer, just switching to other weapons according to my need (like the staff when I have to run long distances in a map ^^).

I had a 0/15/30/20/5 build, then I switched to a 0/5/30/30/5, now I’m in a 0/0/30/30/10, considering perhaps to a 0/5/30/30/5 again… With 4 parts of knight armor so far… exotic hammer but rare GS, and I have to find better weapons. But I’m broken and so I can’t even complete my armor yet…

Soldier armor is Power/Vitality/Toughness.

You can get it from the temples in Orr and invader gear in WvW. Also some dungeons have it.

I’ve always said you’ve got nice stats Harb. Thanks for posting this and the videos to show it in action.

I just have one issue with the build specifically, but it’s more of a personal preference. IMO, crit chance should be at the least +40%. I’d suggest replacing the food with Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup (100 precision, 10% critdamage). Then when you want to go more tanky, switch back to the Steak Frittes.

Ya, food is a preference. You can use whatever you what! I don’t always use Steak Frittes, it’s just what I use the most.

Oh ok Soldier armor is not a draconic one And so this is a Karma armor…
Sometimes I wonder if I should not drop jewellery and train cooking instead, as jewels… once you have them… so… you have them… but food you have to make a lot ^^

Harbinger.8637:

Ya, food is a preference. You can use whatever you what! I don’t always use Steak Frittes, it’s just what I use the most.

Do you mind posting a picture of what your guardians stats are without food buffs?

Bullwinkel.7839:

Harbinger.8637:

Ya, food is a preference. You can use whatever you what! I don’t always use Steak Frittes, it’s just what I use the most.

Do you mind posting a picture of what your guardians stats are without food buffs?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Post-Your-Stats-1/first
Check the last page, about four posts up. He posted a picture of it there a couple days ago.

Here’s an uncut sPvP match so you can see how it fairs when everyone is on an even playing level, and it’s not so much about gear.

Slight changes to the build in sPvP:

Sigil of Hydromancy on the Hammer
Berserker amulet w/Celestial

Also kitten on my build without food or oil, so you can see what kind you want to get and such.

hey great build and i used it as a bse to build up the stats i wanted to hit for my staple AH build. mixed and matched a bit here and there.

and great choice on hydromancy on hammer. i absolutely love having it. ; )) one of the most fun sigils in the game atm.

our base stats are quite similar, though i went for a little more crit chance, but seemingly quite a bit of vit! kept trying to figure out how you got your vit so high. then i remembered we were using different runes and some slight differences in the trinkets :PP heh

will check out the vid during lunch.

Where do you get the soldier back piece from? Is it a karma item?

Tanoros.9867:

Where do you get the soldier back piece from? Is it a karma item?

Added to Karma vendors last patch.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/28/gw2-new-orr-temple-exotics/

Xavi,

Thank you. I’ve been away from home since the latest patch. Perfect!

It’s too bad the temples are rarely open for the merchants. Well, at least on my server anyways.

You can get the guild backpiece. It’s PVT, just with -2 stats. Not much of a difference.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

It’s too bad the temples are rarely open for the merchants. Well, at least on my server anyways.

Soldiers Spineguard is available on the TP for like 20s. its about -2 stats lower than the Karma one, like Harbinger said. It’s cheaper than the Guild backpack which is like 5g? If you want a cheaper option. Both work great.

What about in PvE, how would this fair? I’m not talking about world PvE but dungeons and fractals. Which can get incredibly hard.

I run dungeons and fotm with it. Works fine, you always have 4 other people so AH works great. I usually pull all the agro, so you can tank and dps at the same time.

Got to agree with akamon.2769, great build and used your stats as a base! Though I went with full knight armor, soldier runes and mostly knight accessories but weird mixture there.

Anyways stats turned out to be unbuffed;

Attack: 2866
Crit Chance: 35
Crit Damage: 62
Armor: 3002
Health: 17,335

And using maintenance oil, Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup changes the stats to;
Crit Chance: 48
Crit Damage: 72

Once get ascended rings and amulet should be at 80% crit damage.

Again thank you for this build and stat base!

What about Omnomberry pie? Wouldn’t the raw healing from that be overwhelming comapared to other foods?

Omnomberry is kinda meh, just because how slow your hammer attacks are. If you switch out the hammer with sword or scepter then all means go Omnomberry.

After playing around some more Curry Butternut Squash Soup, is probably the best food to use with this build.

This is my dps build I’ve mainly been running huge increase to dmg and still ton of survivability.

Harbinger.8637:

Omnomberry is kinda meh, just because how slow your hammer attacks are. If you switch out the hammer with sword or scepter then all means go Omnomberry.

After playing around some more Curry Butternut Squash Soup, is probably the best food to use with this build.

This is my dps build I’ve mainly been running huge increase to dmg and still ton of survivability.

Do you notice much of a difference having less the 3k armor?

What karma vendor sells a Soldier Greatsword? I can’t find one , or is there an alternative you recommend?

Aurik Astraeus.4106:

What karma vendor sells a Soldier Greatsword? I can’t find one , or is there an alternative you recommend?

Better do AC Dungeon (Ascalon Catacombs) easiest way to get soldier gs

That would be the Legendary greatswords, not a karma one, and ^ what he said.

I can notice the difference from 2800 to +3000. You just have to play smarter and not as reckless and you should be fine.

You can use Valkyrie on your GS. I really like Valkyrie, only difference is you will lose crit rate.

Here’s some random gameplay I frapped today of WvW, it’s of Stonemist defense. This was a REALLY frustrating fight for me. They where trying everything to kill me. I was constantly being dazed, pulled, knocked back, stunned, and etc. So it just show smart gameplay like positioning and knowing when to fallback. Nothing too fancy. Also keep in mind this is with my dps set.

To help put toughness into context, if you were to drop to 2800 from 3000 you would loose around 6.67% direct damage reduction. If you were to drop to 2900 from 3000 its around 3.33%.

My comments on the build:

-I think it has too much HP. Having a lot of HP does not necessarily mean you have high survivability. I think you can apply that extra vit into other stats.
-I’m not a fan of divinity runes. The math is not in its favor. There are better ways to gear then to use those runes especially for its cost.
-Having such a high crit damage and a low crit chance you are wasting stats. You are under utilizing the crit damage. It would be good to get those numbers closer together to increase your damage.

Other then that, its a nice build that guardians will definitely enjoy =). Covers all of the areas of survivability, support, and damage.

Great vids! Build is pretty cool. But one question: HOW DO YOU HAVE SO MANY KITTEN LEGENDARIES!?!?! I saw Juggernaut, Sunrise and The Moot. mad jealous…

Blasino.3128:

-I’m not a fan of divinity runes. The math is not in its favor. There are better ways to gear then to use those runes especially for its cost.

I’m curious as to other runes to use besides Divinity or Soldier with this build.

I know Divinity is expensive, full set is almost 50g. So here’s some alternates for you.

Hoelbrak and Strength- Great way to help further your might build up.

Pack- Power and Prec. Also nice set of boons when hit.

Lyssa- This is probably the second best you can go. One it gives u prec, but the using Renewed Focus with these runes turns it into a Contemplation of Purity. Keep in mind it doesn’t work with tomes.

Melandru- Toughness, -25% stun and conditions

Soldier- Shouts remove two conditions now.

The reason I run so much Vit, is because of WvW. You can never have too much when there’s huge battle with +50 people going on. Ya if you just do PvP or PvE you can get away with a lot less, but for me I do a lot of WvW.

I primarily www, my bunker/healing/support build has 14k =). I do not die very often.

Bunker/Healing, I’d hope you wouldn’t die often.

harbinger thank you so much for sharing this. ive seen your youtube vids, cant wait to try this out.

Blasino: can you like you full build/equips.. im curious about healing bunker too

Mr Fancypants.1270:

harbinger thank you so much for sharing this. ive seen your youtube vids, cant wait to try this out.

Blasino: can you like you full build/equips.. im curious about healing bunker too

I’ll PM you =). I rather not hijack Harbinger’s thread with different builds.

I’m only Divinity Runes short of completing this build. I think it is wonderful. Thanks for sharing. Actually seeing health bars go down is something I’m not use to.

And after getting hit by you a few times prior to the maintenance, I’m tempted to try an even more offensive build.

just to add a little, i use Rune of the Pack with similar stats compared to Harbinger’s build here. : ))) partially because my build is named “Wolfborn” with Norn cultutal and wolfborn weapons, lol, the Pack just seemed to fit. so i had to make some tweaks in gear / trinkets to hit similar stats. and i have to say i love it.

getting Fury on a Guard and having that wolf howl over my head is always more fun to boot as well. ; ))

You are the best Harbringer!

Hello Harbinger, this might be a bit of a newbie question, you say you use a mix of knight’s and soldier’s gear. I have bought some of this from the Grenth temple (soldier’s ring and backpiece) but where can I find knight’s rings, and where can I get the armor? Do i have to buy it off the TP or is there a place I can go and dump more karma on it?

Thanks

Hi Harbinger, I like your build very much, it’s quite similar to the one I use. Only differences are runes, weapon and Pure of Voice.
For the runes it’s just a matter of preference: I prefer 2 divinity 2 monk 2 water for the +30% boon duration.
For the weapons, why Sigil of Rage? Is it for a spike in PVP?
And finally I hear that Pure of Voice doesn’t work with Save Yourselves and rarely works with Hold the Line… is it true? Do you only use it with Stand on your Ground?
I replaced a shout with Signet of Judgement and the trait with Two Handed Mastery just for these bugs.

@spongytoast

As far as I know no temple has Knight gear (please correct me if I’m wrong). I know a few dungeon sets do, but I just bought all my Knight gear from the tp.

@Codo

The main reason I use Rage is for the burst it will give you. When it procs your dps shoots up tremendously. Pure of Voice is a bit buggy right now.

Hold the Line. Sometimes it will remove a condition, but it never converts a condition into a boon.

As for Save Yourselves. The shout will remove all conditions from allies as part of the default behavior, but never converts them to boons. For yourself, it will never remove a condition.

I run all shouts still because it gives you enough benefits, even with it being bugged.

Harb, you and I run very similar stats and gear, although a different trait build. Lately, I’ve been debating which sigil is best. I currently use Strength to take advantage of the crit chance I have. At first I was begining to wonder about Blood, since leech is always useful, but not for that. It was for the use of the straight, unresisted damage is procs. Roughly figuring it up, I had decided that 1v1, whether its PvP or PvE, Blood would probably win out in damage proc’ing. However, what won me over using Strength instead of Blood was that, Strength provides a damage advantage over several opponents.

Anyways, sorry for getting off on a tangent there. What I’m looking now is Rage vs Strength. That quickness buff is soooo nice when it hits, but the sigil only provides a 10% chance with a 45 second CD. What I’m getting at is, how often do you see the Rage proc actually working? Do you think it’s worth it over Strength’s 30% chance? Have you tried using Strength before on the GS?

Well I originally had Strength on my GS and Battle on my Hammer.

It’s a great sigil, but the reason I stopped using it was I have plenty of other ways to gain might. As for Rage, it proc a lot for just being 10% chance. Only downside is the 45 second cd. Other then that I love it.

They are both great sigil can’t go wrong with either. Best thing is just to try them both out and see what u like. You can do this in PvP so you don’t have to waste gold on them.

I like your build a lot. I am looking to change my build up. Right now I am running a ‘tanky’ build.. but I’m probably doing it wrong. I mostly play PvE dungeons with friends. I do however dabble in WvW from time to time, but dungeons are my main focus at the moment. Would this build be viable for me? I would like to be able to support my teammates. If you think I should look elsewhere, could you give me a link/any suggestions? But I am willing to give this a try.

Also, I’ve done hotw/ac/ta/cof/arah/cm all paths legit (save for arah path 4, kitten you simin) and fracts lvl 8. Just a heads up, so I have been around the block a couple of times. Thank you.

Well I run all my dungeons and fotm with this build. Only difference is I’ll change out the hammer for scepter/focus in some fights.

Great part about this build is it pretty much does everything. You “tank”, you support your teammates with constant boons. Plus removing conditions, and on top of it you still do decent damage.

I can’t tell you if you’ll like it or not. That’s something you have to play and deicide.

Harbringer,

Can you post a screenie of your current gear/stats =D

hmm not much has changed. My guard only has one ascend piece right now, working on getting more. Most of them went to my warrior lol.

But this is what I typical run as of now.