Guild Wars 2

With all these new changes to the other classes, I can’t help but feel Guardians didn’t really receive anything that would sway me from the 2 builds I’ve always seen Guardians use. Yes, I know, we got a scepter buff, and I absolutely love it. I may be able to swap my sword for scepter now when roaming. There was nothing overly great, though. Anyone messed with anything new? I have my hammer and been swapping traits around, but it still feels like 0/0/30/30/10 is still the “foundation” for all builds, taking 10 points off one trait for another one. Maybe it’s just because I enjoy roaming WvW so much, but there’s always those thieves that do 7-8K crits, so in order to survive stealth burst, you need more than 13K HP, but if you’re doing that, then you can’t really move to far from standard builds.

Beside the Scepter projectile speed increase (which was the best part of this patch for us) I’m still not going to invest 20 points into Zeal or Radiance for the new traits, why? Because I’d lose important traits like Pure of Voice and those 10 points into Virtues that enhance AH builds further.

If I want more damage I’ll just gear for that or get a bloodlust sigil.

Lahm.7056:

Beside the Scepter projectile speed increase (which was the best part of this patch for us) I’m still not going to invest 20 points into Zeal or Radiance for the new traits, why? Because I’d lose important traits like Pure of Voice and those 10 points into Virtues that enhance AH builds further.

If I want more damage I’ll just gear for that or get a bloodlust sigil.

That’s what I’ve resorted to doing. I have the build I’ve always been using, but I have a box for all my weapons, a box for different sets of armor, and a box filling up with sets of trinkets. Got my Valk and Soldiers armor, workin on Berserker next, and my MF (LOLWOT) gear is in the bank. The only thing I’ve really switched is using Glacial Heart over Ret Armor right now, since chill is amazing. Not understanding why they made a trait to try to make condition Guardians more “viable” when we only have access to Burning for damage, and then other “utility” conditions. IDK, I may try to play with some other stuff, but I don’t see it working right now.

Kaizz.7306:

the 2 builds I’ve always seen Guardians use.

There is something else than AH?

There are “zero” new builds because DEVs doesn`t understand what guardian community want.

I agree that it’s hard to move TOO far from at least 30 in valor. Some do, but it’s pretty tough for me to give up since Monk’s Focus / Altruistic Healing are stupidly powerful.

However, for once I’ve been enticed to run 20 into Zeal and pick up Fiery Wrath + Zealous Blade which I’ve found works well in sPvP on a more offensive setup. Also, I had just started using the scepter, so the buffs there are awesome.

Condition builds are still not all there, I’m not sure what they’d have to do to make them viable short of going the route of necro and giving extra conditions to stack.

If you’re running a heal-based build, pure of heart / mace of justice is a great buff too.

TheBlueI.3486:

Kaizz.7306:

the 2 builds I’ve always seen Guardians use.

There is something else than AH?

I would say that there are, at least, 3 main builds:

AH build and it’s variations
Triple meditation build (with Monk’s Focus)
Boon duration