Guild Wars 2

My wife has a L40 Guardian and I’m playing Warrior. I’ve focused on DPS and we have had a relatively easy time duo’ing most content. We are now starting to do dungeons and will probably stay PvE at endgame. My wife doesn’t read the forums or research builds, but she plays her classes well once learned. What’s a good build for her Guard that will synergize well with my DPS Warrior? She is currently using Mace/x and Greatsword. I think she likes scepter for x, but she also uses shield and has been experimenting with the torch and a focus.

Thanks.

As you are leveling, there is really no right or wrong answer. I would recommend switching traits around frequently to try out different specific traits and see how they work together or work for her play-style. Retraining traits is incredibly cheap (probably less than 2 silver at that level).

There are a few traits that I have found fun and effective as I was leveling and at 80, and I play in a duo with my wife as well so maybe they would fit for your purpose too.

15pts in Radiance + 5 Points in Virtues + Whatever else you want

Every mob you kill resets Virtue of Justice. Every time she pops Virtue of Justice, each of you get 3 stacks of might. When you’re both mowing down enemies AOE style (I use greatsword as my main weapon as well), she can give you guys both a lot of might stacks as long as she remembers to keep popping VoJ. It takes a while to get used to always popping it but it’s a pretty easy adjustment. I bound my VoJ to my middle mouse button to make it easier and more accessible.

20 points in Honor for Two-Handed Mastery (plus either larger symbols or reduced Shout cooldown)

I run with this in most builds, I really enjoy having lower cooldowns on my weapon skills because it allows for more activity. When I want to use 1h weapons, I switch out Two-Handed Mastery for Empowering Might, which stacks might on everyone in the group.

20 points in Virtues -

I use this sometimes for the 25% increase in Virtue of Resolve, which also adds condition removal. I like stashing some condition removal somewhere and the 20% boon duration you get for going this far into the Virtues tree is useful in pretty much any Guardian build. The first tier traits all have a space as well. Extra retaliation uptime, longer lasting spirit weapons, two different consecration improvements… there’s basically always something useful in there.

10 points in Zeal for Fiery Wrath

Extra 10% damage for any enemies that are on fire, which will be all of them most of the time – especially when combined with the 15point Radiance trait. It’s a pretty cheap investment of trait points for a good chunk of damage.

Hope that’s a good starting point.

For a TL;DR summary, try what sounds interesting to see what works for both of you. Guardian has a lot of useful applications in duo play that are a lot of fun. Good luck.

Feel free to send me a PM if you have questions or to let me know how it goes =D

Thanks, ArcherT. I’ll pass this info along to my wife. She’s been stacking Vitality and Toughness gear, with Healing Power in her trinkets and was playing Mace/Shield, but found it too defensive (especially compared to my Warrior). So she’s been playing around with a Scepter, Smiting and having fun with ranged offense. She uses her virtues a lot so the 20 points in Virtues sounds like a good plan for both of us, I LOVE her buffs!

In PVE I always had great fun running 0/30/30/5/5. Mace/Focus and Scepter/Torch. With high crit and some range you can tear mobs apart. Mace/Focus is exceptionally tanky and effective for when you need to be.

Radiance 15 is the most important thing I can say about Guardians. I am just level 58 but leveling to 40 was so much more annoying compared to later when 15 Radiance was open. Getting Might, Blind, Vulnerability, and a lot of damage on an attack is simply so great AND having it recharge is worth its weight in gold.

I have been just using a Greatsword. Between Justice, Greatsword 3’s blind, and Aegis I have a difficult time dying. I can kill Veteran enemies and take no damage. Open with Greatsword 3, Enemy miss, Justice Blinds them, Enemy miss, Aegis blocks the next hit, the enemy is either dead or close to it. If I am feeling cute, I can use Retreat/F3 to get another Aegis and use the Elite skill that recharged Virtues to gain another Blind + Aegis. I like how the class avoids damage through effects rather than with a huge HP and mitigation pool.

Wow, great tips here. I’m sure she will have fun experimenting with these options.

We did Ascalon story mode, our first GW2dungeon ever, with a pug and completed it first time through. What a blast! What’s the next dungeon we should consider doing, that one was a lot harder thn I expected for being the first dungeon.

Thanks all!

Caudecus’s Mansion is available at level 40 (story-mode), and Twilight Arbor at 50. When you ding the requisite levels, you should get in-game mails from your “herald” to point you in the right direction. What’s more, the dungeons tie in with the personal story at those levels, if you’ve been progressing that too, but it’s totally not necessary.

You’ve gotten some good tips for your wife’s guardian – I definitely recommend 15 points in Radiance for those early synergies, and 5 in Virtues for that first really useful minor. But it sounds like you guys have the right attitude already: just switch things up and see what sort of playstyle grabs you. Leveling with a partner gives you a little bit of a safety net to try different things. When you get to 80, you can take a step back and re-examine what roles you like playing, and research what builds might be good for those playstyles.

I was going to add earlier, that it’s pretty safe to go with more offensive stats when you’re leveling up.

At 80, I like using Knight’s gear which has high Toughness plus precision and power, and then some Berserker and Valkyrie accessories which add critical damage, precision, power, and a little bit of Vitality.

Generally, when I am leveling any new character, I go with all offensive stats until I feel squishy and then shore up wherever necessary – either by traits or by gear.

In the case of the Guardian, there is a lot of good defense built right in to the class. Passive healing from Virtue of Resolve, Aegis, lots of Blind if you go with the Radiance traits, and a variety of ways to get passive and active condition removal. It makes it pretty easy to go with offense in your gear and not feel like you’re giving up a lot. Especially since you guys are playing together, it will be hard to get into truly tough situations as you’re out in the open world unless there are events with a lot of veterans or an overwhelming number of mobs.

Glad you have found some success with the first dungeon run – if you’re coming from WoW or Rift or another game of that ilk, the dungeons are like moving from middleweight to heavyweight.