Guild Wars 2

Hey all, I have played guard since launch and absolutely love it!! But I’m having such a hard time with building a roaming build for WvW. I would like to use GS/S+F…and I would like to be able to survive but be able to kill enemies. Please don’t tell me to re-roll warrior or any other class, I have plenty of lvl 80’s I just like my guard the best.

Mainly what I’m looking for in this build is:

A) Solo camps in WvW
B) Do decent DPS
C) Survive in at least a 1 v 2

For solo I would definitely recommend a Meditations build.

I believe one of the big medi burst builds atm is 10/5/30/5/20, picking up all the Meditation traits, (CD + Fury + Medis heal), +10% damage to burning targets, and then trait in virtues to for Virtue of resolve to remove 3 condis.

Judges Intervention + Smite Condi + Contemplation of Purity.

If you end up running with a group, swap your 10 point trait in virtues for Consecrations cooldown and swap CoP for Purging flames. Less self cleanse, but much more group cleanse.

Gear is really up to you, but I’d shoot for around 3.2-3.4k power, 70+% crit damage, 33% crit chance pre fury, and 2.8k armor (more if you want to be able to hold 1v2 for a bit, probably around 3k). Personally I’m not big on vit, but if you want some, I’d recommend using either Celestial or Valk pieces to get it.

K U T M.4539:

For solo I would definitely recommend a Meditations build.

I believe one of the big medi burst builds atm is 10/5/30/5/20, picking up all the Meditation traits, (CD + Fury + Medis heal), +10% damage to burning targets, and then trait in virtues to for Virtue of resolve to remove 3 condis.

Judges Intervention + Smite Condi + Contemplation of Purity.

If you end up running with a group, swap your 10 point trait in virtues for Consecrations cooldown and swap CoP for Purging flames. Less self cleanse, but much more group cleanse.

Gear is really up to you, but I’d shoot for around 3.2-3.4k power, 70+% crit damage, 33% crit chance pre fury, and 2.8k armor (more if you want to be able to hold 1v2 for a bit, probably around 3k). Personally I’m not big on vit, but if you want some, I’d recommend using either Celestial or Valk pieces to get it.

Actually the VoJ blind + Sword Blind + Focus bouncing blind are gonna save his rear far more than a 200 armor increase. Throw some Energy runes in there for color + perma vigor and voila

Arlette.9684:

K U T M.4539:

For solo I would definitely recommend a Meditations build.

I believe one of the big medi burst builds atm is 10/5/30/5/20, picking up all the Meditation traits, (CD + Fury + Medis heal), +10% damage to burning targets, and then trait in virtues to for Virtue of resolve to remove 3 condis.

Judges Intervention + Smite Condi + Contemplation of Purity.

If you end up running with a group, swap your 10 point trait in virtues for Consecrations cooldown and swap CoP for Purging flames. Less self cleanse, but much more group cleanse.

Gear is really up to you, but I’d shoot for around 3.2-3.4k power, 70+% crit damage, 33% crit chance pre fury, and 2.8k armor (more if you want to be able to hold 1v2 for a bit, probably around 3k). Personally I’m not big on vit, but if you want some, I’d recommend using either Celestial or Valk pieces to get it.

Actually the VoJ blind + Sword Blind + Focus bouncing blind are gonna save his rear far more than a 200 armor increase. Throw some Energy runes in there for color + perma vigor and voila

True, but the build I explained already has perma vigor + the blinds. Playing with perma vigor and energy sigils is so trolololol though, and is a really good idea. I do it on engi when playing glassier builds.

K U T M.4539:

Arlette.9684:

K U T M.4539:

For solo I would definitely recommend a Meditations build.

I believe one of the big medi burst builds atm is 10/5/30/5/20, picking up all the Meditation traits, (CD + Fury + Medis heal), +10% damage to burning targets, and then trait in virtues to for Virtue of resolve to remove 3 condis.

Judges Intervention + Smite Condi + Contemplation of Purity.

If you end up running with a group, swap your 10 point trait in virtues for Consecrations cooldown and swap CoP for Purging flames. Less self cleanse, but much more group cleanse.

Gear is really up to you, but I’d shoot for around 3.2-3.4k power, 70+% crit damage, 33% crit chance pre fury, and 2.8k armor (more if you want to be able to hold 1v2 for a bit, probably around 3k). Personally I’m not big on vit, but if you want some, I’d recommend using either Celestial or Valk pieces to get it.

Actually the VoJ blind + Sword Blind + Focus bouncing blind are gonna save his rear far more than a 200 armor increase. Throw some Energy runes in there for color + perma vigor and voila

True, but the build I explained already has perma vigor + the blinds. Playing with perma vigor and energy sigils is so trolololol though, and is a really good idea. I do it on engi when playing glassier builds.

My point was he can skip the extra toughness and invest it in dmg. And yes it’s really trololol and I love it. And I’m using that exact same build you suggested with gear left to personal preference of course but generally glassier gear sets work wonders with it.

One thing you need to be worried about with a solo build is making sure you can resist enemy bursts long enough to heal out of it. Generally speaking the more nasty bursts coming out of Thieves and Mesmers and other Guardians is in the neighborhood of 15k. So I’d aim for at least that much HP, with perhaps an extra thousand or two for good measure.

I’m still in the process of refining one, but there are several things to note. I am running either gs sc/f or sw/sh sc/f.

As mentioned, meditation is better for roaming. However, I’ve found that triple utility meditation generally is not that great for outnumbered fights. Guardian is fairly easy to kite, and with triple meditation, you have no on-demand swiftness or stability. While 1v1 you are incredibly powerful, in an outnumbered fight you have no chance of winning if your opponents just refuse to engage you head-on. Guardian disengage capabilities are also on the lower end (especially since the weapon set isn’t sw/x gs, and staff is also missing). Only necro has a harder time getting out of a bad situation in my opinion.

If you run the 10/5/30/5/20 build (which is the one I run with GS sc/f), consider dropping purity. I personally replaced it with stand your ground for accessible stability. It also helps because I chose to run litany instead of shelter, so the stability covers the activation and burst.

The other thing is that you absolutely need is passive movement speed because you don’t have a staff (even then staff has become lackluster out of group situations), and you really want to avoid retreat if you can help it. For any build, consider trying traveler or speed runes, and then work your build from there. The 25% movement speed will help you stick to your target much better. Not only is the regular move speed important, because leap of faith doesn’t function like a true leap (it can speed up or slow down depend on boon/condition), so you really want to make sure that you are going at max speed when you use it.

With the above, in 1v2 against competent opponents, I can win fairly consistently as long it’s not 2 range condi professions (I got ran over by a condi engi/necro the other day. Not even close). Another reason I dropped purity is because after that fight, I realized that they can reapply conditions so fast that purity really doesn’t matter, and I would be better served to take stability to not get stun-locked. Additionally, absolute resolution provides sufficient condi cleanse and when matched with some stability, provides you enough time to burst down one player quickly to make the fight more even.

For personal fine-tuning, only JI and smite condition are mandatory I think. I personally would like to have 3 meditations with meditation build though, so I am trying either litany and stand your ground or shelter/sig with purity (traits of course would need to change though).

As far as soloing camp, just swap out your 3rd utility for wall of reflection for the solo. Run into both scouts to force their black powder, move to center of all enemies, drop wall, pull everything in with gs, and just spin them to death. When the scouts can’t perma blind you or damage you, a camp can’t really hurt you and you are bursty enough to kill them and take the camp in under 90 seconds. Wall of reflection will also be off CD by the time camp flips so you can switch your utility back after taking the camp. Save JI for emergency extraction if you don’t think you can fight whoever shows up. Blind the supervisors backbreaker with F1, and just eat stun time from shield bash if you fail to dodge it.

If you are winning 1vX then those players aren’t component.

I would disagree. It’s really match-up dependent.

Additionally, it would also come down to the personal definition of competent. For me, I am not crazy enough to pick a fight against 2 marauders (And while ranking doesn’t speak volume on actual skill, it does generally speak volume about experience). But I am totally ok with picking a fight against avengers, and maybe even ransackers (match-up pending).

That aside, as I’m also fine-tuning my build (and also since I’m still relatively new to guardian), if anything i mentioned is wrong or not advisable please comment on those.

Purity is a very luck based trait and as a general rule, I steer clear of it.

Never underestimate the power of bad RNG, when you need good one for a change