Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing guardian since release and up to this point I sometimes think I’ve tried every build out there (even burn builds! Wasn’t my fancy). But over time I have taken the best of what I like to do regarding how to play a guardian, and combine them together to utilize what’s best for me, with enough leverage to it to be rearranged for everybody. With that said, here’s my build with brief details.

http://tinyurl.com/m4zysta

I like to be the backbone of the group. Not through a linear strategy, but by being what everyone else can depend on to unleash themselves 100% and higher. That doesn’t mean through pure knights or soldiers, but with a good supply of damage and a proper “cap” of defensive stats (namely Toughness/Vitality and AH) to ensure that even without any particilar support from pugs or friends you can manage the best of any situation throughout its engagement and be independent and dependant at the same time. Let’s explain the choices:

- Ascended Zerker Amulet and Rings – Basically the best stat output you can manage, and it bumps our damage output
- Valkyrie/Zerker Accessories, Cavelier/Zerker Back – I wanted to get the most out of my trinkets to boost my damage but made a few variations to push the defensive aspect, especially the vitality I score out of it.
- Knight Hammer/Staff – I felt zerker stats weren’t necessary and I could use the toughness to push towards my ideal armor “cap”
- Knights/Zerker Armor Mix – Any stat junky will take a snap at me for not utilizing stat ratios to get more crit damage, but I find a slightly higher amount of toughness to be better than less armor and slightly more damage.
- Azurite Orbs – These became my new favorite orbs very quickly because they filled the final gaps in my build. 120/90/90 V/T/P gave me the proper 15k health any guardian could feel safe with, and the 1.7k Toughness, which puts me at what I believe to be the guardians’ defensive “cap”

The Defensive Cap
1.3k Vitality and 1.7k Toughness give just under 15k health and 2.9k armor. I find that it is within these numbers I can utilize so much into direct damage and not overkill my tanky-ness (any other class would obviously want more, but even in solo play AH is our “oomph” that lets us not push to be fully tank like)

Variations
I’m a huge fan of staff. Thats why I keep it secondary always. Empower is your back up heal and it’s too good to not waste. I keep a bloodlust sigil on it to get power stacked up fast. Afterwards you’re free to either keep the weapon for the supportive nature of it, or swap to any weapon of your liking. Hopefully a Scepter or Sword to add variety to the fighting.

Hammer is my spine. It does everything I want out of a weapon. I use the extra 5 points in Zeal to add a % increase to my party through the vulnerability, rather than EM which I find ok but not as glamorous as using larger and longer symbols (purely opinion! Im very respectful to other people’s beliefs on a topic). With that said I can say that GS and Mace have great potential with this build. Mace is a good symbol weapon too and more supportive. If you go the greatsword route just move towards Radiance instead of Zeal. Blinds and the VoJ’s can balance the tanky-ness of the hammer, most notably trash/large fights.

Anyone can offer variations, but what I always give people respect for when posting their own builds is that they show how they play to give others ideas. We feed off each other as a community to branch out ideas to create new builds, so I felt like sharing a build I can say im proud of.

Let me know what you think about it!
-Felix V

AoE Condition removal and traited WoR are the main reason why they even bring you to a party, and you have neither. What u are trying to do is min maxing your stats while forgetting your utility/support role. You are playing you guard more akin to a warrior tbh

Toss soldier runes in there, IMO

I had forgotten to also say that Bane Signet is just a place holder for any skill you find necessary for a fight. So I am almost always taking WoR. Whether its WvW or fractals/dungeons.

And as for AoE condition removal, you must not have seen purity stacked with SoR to help not only with conditions but when you use Save Yourselves. Runes of the soldier are just overkill in my opinion and having one party condition wipe is good enough. SoP on all the time with my hammer setup more than helps with party condition removal since I typically anchor and have everyone stack on me and/or combo off of my fields.

I get what you’re saying, but Soldier Runes are overkill to me and, like I already mentioned, you can make variations to make it your own. So I hope I got my point across

At first glance I wanted to agree with Hunter about the condition removal, but after you explained your logic and I evaluated it, I guess I understand and it makes sense.

So you have 2 passive condition removals on yourself, and one group condition wipe via Save Yourselves!

Save Yourselves! is almost stronger than the Pure of Voice and Soldiers runes because it can wipe more than 1 or 2 conditions from allies…but the down side is the guardian needs to be able to handle having ALL the conditions on their self.

With Light Fields all around you, anyone shooting projectiles your direction will cause a cleansing projectile which should wipe all those conditions on you, so that creates a pretty strong synergy with ranged players and melee.

You keep the boons off them, and they cleanse if off you.

The only downside is the long cooldown and big gaps between where you can’t help your allies, where Pure of Voice or soldiers runes could maintain 1 or 2 conditions frequently.

Other than that, you pretty much run an AH hammer setup, and there are many different variations on how you want your gear to support that. Yours looks like it should be decent damage.

You can always build it to your level of safety, but I went with what helped my style without over doing it, so to speak. I can always handle large amounts of conditions with my passive removals and AH, and everyone benefits through light fields with whirl/projectile finishers. I try to make every group I run with feel secure being near me, and in return we put out more damage and I benefit from them using my combo fields.

Move 15 from zeal to Radiance.

His reason for 15 in zeal is to give more vulnerability on targets to help group do damage.

If there are already better forms of capping vulnerability without it, then sure more crit more chances to proc vigorous precision for more rolls, but he doesn’t really need the extra crit rate as it is.

Doing so may free up more stat slots for something other than precision though.

I don’t think the build is all that bad honestly, for what he is doing.

You could also argue that better dodging negates the need for toughness, but that’s another discussion.

Already explained moving zeal to radiance as an alternative… Read the thread please

@CMF dodging isn’t as important as it is keeping the group stable. I will keep my dodges ready for important attacks, but I prefer the toughness to support the protection upkeep and keep my group still to keep any pug from freaking out. I have a zerker build and a healing build but this lets me be the aforementioned “catalyst” to take groups through anything with ease.

Understood McClueless, I didn’t mean wanton random dodging all the time. Big important skill dodges at the correct times.

Some fights have those attacks happen a few seconds earlier, so those without vigor find themselves not ready for the third or forth attack.

Your build has the sufficient level of crit to maintain vigor (I think it was about 30-40 crit needed last time I checked?), so it is really a non-issue.

I was just playing devils advocate on why one would want to scrap toughness for other stats. Factor in all the little small hits that happen in trash fights or in general, and toughness helps keep you steady and not having to randomly dodge small easy attacks and you can then save them for the big important ones.

With 30 points down valor and protection boon on, I think that gives you somewhere around 57% damage reduction? Anything above 50% is good enough, and if you hit 80% damage reduction then jeesus…but your vitality and damage output will suffer doing that…so it balances itself out?

This almost makes me want to go full toughness and see what happens…combined with Lemongrass Poultry for vit from toughness, and a x/x/30/30/x shout setup you should have decent condition control and healing input……again pointless damage with that and your group might hate you for just standing there :p

Yeah I understand. I appreciate the reply

Side note: for those kind of fights I like to aim a good hammer #3 to score at least one crit to prep myself and let my group position itself. Pretty effective method IMHO

CMF.5461:

This almost makes me want to go full toughness and see what happens…combined with Lemongrass Poultry for vit from toughness, and a x/x/30/30/x shout setup you should have decent condition control and healing input……again pointless damage with that and your group might hate you for just standing there :p

Yeah thats why I like my select level of vitality and toughness. I could only imagine getting 80% damage reduction xD be a brick house that hits like a wet noodle