Guild Wars 2

The Archon

First, a quick note about the name – this build is an aggressive support build, devoted to bringing out the best in a team if you define “best” as “we’re still alive and they are all dead now – wow, that was quick…” The name is an homage to the truly ancient Electronic Arts game “Archon” where the player was the mastermind commanding an army of fantastical creatures, using strategy and reflexes to get the very best out of each member of his army. It also plays on the angelic themes that linger in the Guardian profession and are rooted in the Paragons who are the in-game source of Guardian traditions. Enough flowery language – on with the killin’!

Traits
0/30/10/20/10

Primary Trait set-up

Radiance:
Justice is Blind – When activating Virtue of Justice, nearby foes are blinded.
Renewed Justice – Virtue of Justice is renewed when you kill a foe.
Radiant Power – +10% damage to foes inflicted with any condition.

Radiance Adept: II Signet Mastery (-20% cooldown on signets)
Radiance Master: X Powerful Blades ( +5% sword damage)
Radiance Grandmaster: XI Right-Hand Strength ( +15% sword crit chance)

Valor:
Valorous Defense – Gain aegis when your health reaches 50%.

Valor Adept: VI Retributive Armor (~60 precision).

Honor:
Vigorous Precision – Gain 5 seconds of vigor when you deliver a critical hit. This effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds.
Selfless Daring – The end of your dodge roll heals nearby allies.

Honor Adept: I Wrathful Spirit (Aegis gives retaliation when it ends)
Honor Master: VIII Empowering Might (allies gain might for 5s on critical hits)

Virtues:
Inspired Virtue – Virtues now also apply the following boons: Justice/might, Resolve/regeneration, Courage/protection

Virtues Adept: VI Master of Consecrations (Consecrations recharge 20% faster and last longer)

Weapon Set 1: Sword and Torch
Sigil of Generosity/Sigil of Accuracy

Heal Skill: Signet of Resolve
Button 7: “Retreat!” #
Button 8: Purging Flames
Button 9: Wall of Reflection
Button 0: Renewed Focus

1. this slot changes frequently as circumstances dictate

Armor: Rampager (or Koss)
Runes: 2x Hoelbrak, 2x of Fire, 2x Strength (x2 Pirate an acceptable substitute on a budget)

Jewelry: Mixed Magi or Clerics as available. Favor Emeralds when upgrading fractal drops.

Your goal outside of direct beat-down is to build and maintain 6-8 stacks of might on yourself and all nearby allies with fast, high crit chance attacks (around 70% on your sword attacks). Your Empowered Might and activated Virtue of Justice boons last for 9 seconds (+60% might duration, +20% all boon durations), so stacking them is a lot easier than it sounds. Your sword auto-attack will do a decent job of this by itself, but buttons 3 and 5 are amazing. Button 4 and purging flames give you AoE burning options, but do not overlook that button 4 can be re-tapped for a ranged attack and button 5 has more reach than your melee skills – it’s often useful to stand in or behind your Wall of Reflection and use torch skills to keep attacking and sustaining your Might generation

Like any Radiance build, using your Virtue of Justice at the right time is key. You want to get off both 5 and 3 early. Both are huge multi-hit skills which will trigger the kitten burn and almost certainly proc Empowered Might. Then the determination has to be made do you need AoE blindness/Might/Retaliation now-or-later. Remember VoJ resets on every kill, but the 3 stacks of Might lasts 9 seconds, so a kill with the virtue not on cooldown is group-wide Might wasted.

Because of the high crit rate you are going to have Vigor. Lots of it. Do not be shy about dodging for your own safety or to heal yourself and anybody around you. OTOH you are NOT a bunker. You kill things and you help other people kill things. Guardians are very survivable right out of the box, but aside from the extra boons associated with cashing in your Virtues (and resetting them with your elite) your defensive options are not as deep or layered as many Guardian builds.

While your Signet of Resolve and Purging Flames give you some condition removal at a distance (or while fleeing – hey, it happens), while engaged you should have no difficulties with conditions – the Sigil of Generosity will move them off you and on to your target so fast you may never even notice you had them, proving it is indeed better to give than to receive.

Bane signet’s passive is directly useful (moar damage!), but it’s activated effect is excellent for breaking tempo or turning an enemy’s clever escape strategy into a bit of a clown act. It has range, giving you a hidden threat that may be overlooked from a Guardian showing only melee weapons. Slot 6 is a toolbox though; you can switch to other Signets or Consecrations and still benefit from -20% cooldowns as needed.

Your consecrations have shorter cooldowns and extended durations – while you can shut down ranged attacks on yourself you can also drop Wall of Reflection before teleporting in with button 2, creating a solid position for your ranged teammates to fire from while you close to spread the burn and build Might stacks.

Your Virtues are laden with AoE buffs and give you retaliation (extended by Vengeful). Use them. Use them often. You have a full reset with your Elite, and you can cast your remaining virtues during the your elite’s 3 second channel, making sure you’ve milked every second of retaliation out of them before restocking the whole array.

I feel like you haven’t actually tried other builds with the guardian, and is just mainly theory crafting.

Also if this is for PvE; then there’s MUCH more benefital things you can put on your utility bar than… Oh let’s say; Bane Signet.

I’m playing it now, and I enjoy it .

I have 4 guardians of various levels and deliberately seperate weapon sets and roles, so I do tinker with totally different trait-lines. I like guardians a lot in all their capacities, I just wanted to share this one. I happen to like agressive support in most games (Nike is my screenname because my mains try to deliver victory unto their allies)

Bane signet IS an experiment. In the last few days its allowed me to mangle a few D/D elemetals and Thieves in WvW. I generally juggle that slot all the time – hence the toolbox comment. I had tried a more commited consecrations layout, but found Santuary to be a bit erratic and Hallowed Ground to be too situational to carry regularly. Since I already had Signet Mastery for self heals I was poking around with SIgnet options and found one that was better in practice than on paper – or at least more interesting .

That said, I am interested in specific suggestions for improvment.

hey Nike, hah, you put this guide up fast! and sounds pretty interesting from first glance.

i’m used to a shout heavy Guardian, even with different builds so i’ve been dabbling here and there (theoretically only atm) on a build that utilizes the variety of utilities the Guard has.

are you flexible on WoR and PF? PF i love. WoR seems more situational for me and when running WvW, it’s godsend, but i wouldn’t want to have it on my bar when running small strike missions and run into another small group. especially if they’re pimarily melee. am sure you’ve thought of this already, but i am a huge fan of indominable courage (securing stomps is so nice) or absolute resolution, especially with your slightly added healing power. so i would swap that with Master of Consecrations depending on the situation. and of course, adjust your bar accordingly.

not sure if i missed this – what’s your second weapon set?

also, do you feel at all lacking in toughness/armor?

akamon.2769:

hey Nike, hah, you put this guide up fast! and sounds pretty interesting from first glance.

I’d been playing something very close to it for a long time now, so it was mostly gathering text and spelling out some of the synergies.

i’m used to a shout heavy Guardian, even with different builds so i’ve been dabbling here and there (theoretically only atm) on a build that utilizes the variety of utilities the Guard has.

In some respects this build is a direct rebutal to shouts. Everybody uses them in the heavy armor crowd, and it easy to get wrapped up in the lure of 6x runes of the soldier. The recently introduced Sigil of Generosity is just so good on a high crit hit build that you really can ignore conditions, which lets you get away from shouts/Solider and explore other builds without feeling like you forgot your pants that morning.

Thats really one of the key synergies at work here – high crit/Empowered Might is sort of an obvious pattern the Devs intended, and the behavior of the 3 sword buttons and Right-Handed Strength obvious compliments it, but Sigil of Generosity is something new that ties into that engine beautifully.

are you flexible on WoR and PF? PF i love. WoR seems more situational for me and when running WvW, it’s godsend, but i wouldn’t want to have it on my bar when running small strike missions and run into another small group.

I have 4 guardians – I tend to be flexible about anything the class has to offer, and being able to change traits and utilities in the field is a strength of the game not to be ignored, ever. The list of Utilities above is what I carry walking into an unknown, or when dealing with stuff that just. doesn’t. scare. me. If I’m about to pound Old Tom there is a whole different spread I’ll pull out that pretty much neutralizes his green projectiles. If I’m between obvious conflicts in WvW, Bane Signet becomes Retreat just to cut down on the slog . If you don’t feel like you need to spoil somebody’s day with 2 second of ranged faceplant, Retreat is a better all around skill in that slot.

am sure you’ve thought of this already, but i am a huge fan of indominable courage (securing stomps is so nice) or absolute resolution, especially with your slightly added healing power. so i would swap that with Master of Consecrations depending on the situation. and of course, adjust your bar accordingly.

Loading 20 Honor/20 Virtues is actually the most recent iteration of my main Guardian – I’d run 30/10 for a long time with Battle Presence to maintain a trickle of healing to nearby allies… but the bugs in that trait and occasionally jumping out of my skin when I mistook a red “Immune” for a red name plate finally drove me to give it up. As such the master virtues slot is another one that like button 6 I’d consider a toolbox- I listed Vengeance as my first choice, but the option to ground cast consecrations and the various enhanced Virtue effects may prove more desirable. Even then I’d keep Master of Consecrations as pound for pound its just a very strong choice – 20% cooldown is a common enough reward for a slot, but cooldown and enhanced duration together is a sweet deal (if you aren’t bound and determined to load shouts ). Or maybe I just find myself in the middle of things that need a good, long Purging Flames more often than most.

If you’re more comfortable with Indomitable Courage, by all means, slot that – Its just another uptick to Renewed Focus’ potential. But its a defensive choice rather than an offensive one, so I’d shy away from it unless its been proven that my side is losing the scenario. I’d rather die running the more aggressive set and determine my limits for next time than play it safe the first time out and never know if I needed that extra cushion or not.

not sure if i missed this – what’s your second weapon set?

Amusingly I run sword/shield in the alternate position, using Generosity/Water for those “oh kitty-litter!” moments when defense really IS the better part of valor .

But I do hear the siren call of Greatsword some days. Greatsword is what sold me on the class. So it was a bit of a shock to find out sword/torch played so well.

also, do you feel at all lacking in toughness/armor?

No. Not at all. I get a little Toughness from mix and matched jewelry, but the native survivability of Guardians is really impressive. Now, compared to my tankier guardian I do have a few more hair-rasing narrow escapes… slowly swapping virtures for blinds, heal/regen, or Aegis/protection, then scraping by on 3 seconds of immortality before re-cashing the second set, all to buy precious moments until… Oh, hello Signet of Resolve. Bam! This fight is Mine.

doode, really appreciate the detailed reply!!D

and while i went off to lunch, i was just thinking, “o crap! i forgot to ask him how effective sigil of generosity was!” and you answered before i could get another question in. that’s awesome and glad to hear it’s so useful. i have various builds as well and would love to be able to test this with my high crit builds and like you said, no have to worry about conditional removal as much. i’ve used builds not using soldiers but then i’d try to stick with PoV (especialyl since it’s so buggy..), vice versa, so this is good to know and a lot of fun. looking forward to testing it! always looking for new builds as well and definitely don’t mind switching out all shouts for other utilities.

that’s good you feel so comfortable with your bar and i do appreciate the comparison between “going down going all out” vs “playing it safe”. ; )) i ’ll bring that with me into WvW the next time i hit up the mists.

strangely enough, i had an idea with x/x/x/20/20 as well. both lines offer SO much for the Guardian and i feel hard to stay away from them with any given build. glad to see someone else putting the virtues line to use as well. but yes, there are a few traits with TWO effects on them that often seem to be overlooked. you raise a good point, though i don’t use consecrations as much as i did early in-game. purging flames can be very good if it lasts long enough to pull off a few combos while cleansing conditions as well. does it remove conditions on a “per tick” basis?

ahh, so sword stays in, and then two different offhands? very interesting. the GS paired up with sword combo i want to say is very fun and mobile to play with. and gives HUGE mobility – chasing down or escaping foes.

and do i love using RF, while popping any available virtues, then blind again, block again, and your heal is back up.DDD can’t argue with the satisfaction with that. heh, clutch timing and execution. the Guardian is oh so fun.

I wouldn’t trait vengeful on a built where you only get indirect 3sec retaliations. It’s unlikely you’ll get hit much, if at all, in the 3/4 of a second extra duration on them. On the other hand, spike builds could use unscathed contender for a rather huge boost on your burst, especially if you open with blindness, or the ranged skills like sword 3 and torch 4 and 5, or you stand behind another melee and take advantage of the slightly longer range on sword attacks.

Heinel.6548:

I wouldn’t trait vengeful on a built where you only get indirect 3sec retaliations. It’s unlikely you’ll get hit much, if at all, in the 3/4 of a second extra duration on them. On the other hand, spike builds could use unscathed contender for a rather huge boost on your burst, especially if you open with blindness, or the ranged skills like sword 3 and torch 4 and 5, or you stand behind another melee and take advantage of the slightly longer range on sword attacks.

Good points. I’m gonna take my Archon out to WvW today to refine it. I’ll run Unscathed Contender and see how it feels.

I do want to get a more definite go-to choice for the Virtues Master slot.

Oh, a quick note for players on a budget (maybe everybody knows this, but I just noticed it) – If you want to use the same main hand in both weapon set-ups you can just leave the main hand slot blank in set-up 2 and clicking swap will only swap the offhand. If you want to try sword/torch and sword/shield you only need one sword and so you will only need 1 Sigil of Generosity (on the sword) to have your condition-transfer in both modes.

First of all I felt the same:

Jay.3284:

I feel like you haven’t actually tried other builds with the guardian, and is just mainly theory crafting.

For a moment I even thought you were trolling when I read those two:

Nike.2631:

The recently introduced Sigil of Generosity is just so good on a high crit hit build that you really can ignore conditions

Nike.2631:

While your Signet of Resolve and Purging Flames give you some condition removal at a distance (or while fleeing – hey, it happens), while engaged you should have no difficulties with conditions – the Sigil of Generosity will move them off you and on to your target so fast you may never even notice you had them, proving it is indeed better to give than to receive.

For your information that sigil has 10 second cooldown.

As for shouts:

Nike.2631:

Everybody uses them in the heavy armor crowd, and it easy to get wrapped up in the lure of 6x runes of the soldier.

There is a reason everybody uses them. It’s because they do far more for you and your party than your utilities(purging flames, bane signet) ever will, not to mention 2 out of 4 shouts are stun breakers, which you don’t use + sword you use on both weapon sets(?!) means you are a dead meat to any half-decent ranged player, especially because you don’t have any sources of swiftness and only have one gap closer every 10 seconds.. not to mention condition builds will eat you alive, with ease.

You also have 70% critical chance? Overkill. A rather large chunk of that percentage should be invested into other stats, which would improve your character in general.

All in all you are just missing out on a guardian’s real potential.

Nike.2631:

being able to change traits and utilities in the field is a strength of the game not to be ignored

and gear. Why would you need 4 guardians then?

So I got interested and gave this build a shot with a set of rares and I’m happy to report that it’s working better than I expected it to, although with quite a few personal tweaks, with a full set of Knights on all my armor pieces and accessories and using a hammer as my off-hand. In PvE situations, as well as being a Charr, using Battle Roar, a blast finisher though Purging Flames and VoJ from the get go means an easy 8 to 10 stacks of might to start a fight with. With a Staff, it was just absurd how easy it was to maintain a great stack of might without losing too much combat effectiveness’ though getting tripped is an issue.

I’m thinking of branching away from your one-handed approach in favor of using a Hammer/Staff just for Empower and to use blast finishers through Purging Flames, and possibly try a tweaked 0/15/10/25/20 instead, using Purging Flames, WoR and Judges Intervention for WvW and maybe PF, Battle Roar and JI for PvE.

Can’t wait to try it out later.

I’ve been running a variation on this. I used the basic trait setup but changed most of the utilities and sigils. Had a blast with it in WvW and ruined many a thief’s day.

I run sword/shield and GS. Sigil of accuracy on the GS to help with the crit chance. Right now I’ve got a sigil of life on the sword and shield, but those are really just left over from my old support build, so I may swap those out for something else as I don’t really need to stack healing power anymore. Stacking perception might be more beneficial.

I also run different utilities. I find Purging flames, save yourselves and stand your ground to work pretty well with this build.

Shaftronics.8651:

So I got interested and gave this build a shot with a set of rares and I’m happy to report that it’s working better than I expected it to, although with quite a few personal tweaks, with a full set of Knights on all my armor pieces and accessories and using a hammer as my off-hand. In PvE situations, as well as being a Charr, using Battle Roar, a blast finisher though Purging Flames and VoJ from the get go means an easy 8 to 10 stacks of might to start a fight with. With a Staff, it was just absurd how easy it was to maintain a great stack of might without losing too much combat effectiveness’ though getting tripped is an issue.

I’m thinking of branching away from your one-handed approach in favor of using a Hammer/Staff just for Empower and to use blast finishers through Purging Flames, and possibly try a tweaked 0/15/10/25/20 instead, using Purging Flames, WoR and Judges Intervention for WvW and maybe PF, Battle Roar and JI for PvE.

Can’t wait to try it out later.

Glad it inspired some experimentation .

I’m on a Norn with my main Guardian, so about the wackiest thing our racial skills allow is sliding past a certian humungous Karka in cat-stealth .

I’ve been tinkering too, and think I’m getting a bit better personal damage output with 10 Valor/10 Virtues. It loses half a second of might, but gains crit magnitude and toughness (70% crit, 22% damage).

It seems the Sigil of Generosity has changed since Wintersday – it now lists a 10 second cooldown on condition transfers. Probably a good change for balance, since when they came out I don’t think it had an internal cooldown. I’m still liking it, but its less central to the crit-engine.

Nike.2631:

Shaftronics.8651:

So I got interested and gave this build a shot with a set of rares and I’m happy to report that it’s working better than I expected it to, although with quite a few personal tweaks, with a full set of Knights on all my armor pieces and accessories and using a hammer as my off-hand. In PvE situations, as well as being a Charr, using Battle Roar, a blast finisher though Purging Flames and VoJ from the get go means an easy 8 to 10 stacks of might to start a fight with. With a Staff, it was just absurd how easy it was to maintain a great stack of might without losing too much combat effectiveness’ though getting tripped is an issue.

I’m thinking of branching away from your one-handed approach in favor of using a Hammer/Staff just for Empower and to use blast finishers through Purging Flames, and possibly try a tweaked 0/15/10/25/20 instead, using Purging Flames, WoR and Judges Intervention for WvW and maybe PF, Battle Roar and JI for PvE.

Can’t wait to try it out later.

Glad it inspired some experimentation .

I’m on a Norn with my main Guardian, so about the wackiest thing our racial skills allow is sliding past a certian humungous Karka in cat-stealth .

I’ve been tinkering too, and think I’m getting a bit better personal damage output with 10 Valor/10 Virtues. It loses half a second of might, but gains crit magnitude and toughness (70% crit, 22% damage).

It seems the Sigil of Generosity has changed since Wintersday – it now lists a 10 second cooldown on condition transfers. Probably a good change for balance, since when they came out I don’t think it had an internal cooldown. I’m still liking it, but its less central to the crit-engine.

I came to the same conclusion actually. I think the 10 points in valor are more useful than 20 in virtues for this build. Especially if you take the trait that gives 5% of toughness as a bonus to precision. Increases your crit rate even higher.

I never bothered with sigil of generosity though. I think you get more benefit out of sigil of accuracy to get as many crits as you can. I run a sigil of hydromancy on my offhand, but that’s just a personal preference of mine for wvw. Gotta love aoe chills in zergs.

I also tweaked this a bit and went with 6 soldiers runes and a shout based build. Occasionally I’ll switch in a consecration as the situation calls for it, but for the most part I’m running save yourselves, stand your ground and hold the line. Hold the line is what I usually swap out if I need purging flames or wall of reflection.

The only thing I really miss about having more points in virtues is the minor trait that grants retaliation when activating a virtue. With as often as you hit F1 in this build, that trait gives you almost constant uptime of retaliation when combined with save yourselves and stand your ground. But i decided the extra points in valor were more worthwhile due to the increased toughness, crit damage and precision (with the trait that grants a bonus to precision). After some more testing though, I may pop 5 points back in virtues just because that constant retaliation is so tempting.

After further testing, I’ve actually gone the opposite direction. I’m currently running 0/30/20/20. The toughness is just too tempting to pass up for WvW.

30 Valor is just a little too overwhelmingly common in my eyes. I just hope the Devs make good on their intentions to bring other builds up to par with the widely accepted standards, because AH is painfully near ubiquitous.

0/30/20/20/0

Left off the 0 in my last post. Only 20 valor. I lose some boon duration, but the increase in toughness allows me to stay in the middle of the fight a bit longer and keep proccing might for my allies. Not to mention the extra 20% to crit damage goes great with the high crit rate on this build. I do miss my extended consecrations though.

Edit: And I just realized I lost the first minor trait in virtues that makes Justice give might. So probably going to take at least 5 points out of valor and put them back in virtues. >.<

Coolness. What are you taking in the Valor master slot? You’re still running hammer?

Yeah. I really like what the first 10 points of Virtues gets you, but if any of the Valor master choices lined up with my weapon choice it would be hard to say ‘no’ to.

I’m up to 70%/+27% on my crit chance/magnitude. I’ve got a few more pieces of gear to tweak so that my own hits are a bit harder.

Well I was running Honorable Shield for the added toughness and shield skills cooldown (I usually go sword/shield and GS or Staff depending on the situation). But I’ll probably take 10 points out of valor again just because I want the first 5 of virtues. I would leave valor at 15, but I think you get better use out of extended consecrations than you do from Courage being recharged when you rally. So all things considered, I’ll likely go back to 0/30/10/20/10.

But having 15 in virtues is so tempting for the retaliation… I’m really stuck between getting that or leaving the points in valor for the extra toughness, crit damage and precision (from retributive armor). What I wouldn’t give for 5 more trait points.

My build is slightly different than yours in terms of gear though. I run all power/toughness/vit gear with knights jewelry. I sacrifice a bit of damage in order to make myself a little more tanky. My reasoning being that my job is to keep myself up as long as possible so as to keep buffing my allies. Damage is secondary for my playstyle.

Yeah, 0/30/10/20/10 has really been satsfying. The new patch improved sword behavior (fewer objects ignore the third strike). I have to look at Battle Presence again now that it’s fixed, but I think that’ll be a seperate build entirely.

Got my stats cleaned up. The page does not properly report the +5% crit chance from the Sigil of Accuracy or the 15% from Right-handed Strength (72% crit = Empowering Might procs almost instantly after comming off internal cooldown). I have +70% duration on Might buffs now, so keeping a couple of stacks on everyone is easy .

Nike.2631:

The name is an homage to the truly ancient Electronic Arts game “Archon”

I always thought I was the last man on Earth to know, and have played, that game. Kudos to you.

I am browsing this forum in search of knowledge as I rolled a Guardian alt and am very impressed by it although of course I am completely noob at it and still grasping the basics. This build doesn’t suit me, but thanks for sharing, it’s pretty educative anyway

I’ve been running a 0/30/20/20/0 build for quite some time now. I use it for PvE mainly. Sword/Torch and Scepter/Focus. Works great with heal on crit food and it feels like its the highest damage output out of all our weapon sets. GSword isn’t far behind though. I like the build because I can switch to GSword/Staff or what not easily with a trait change. I also wanted to try something other than AH or Monks and I was quite happy. Problem is that it relies on food in PvE. If they ever nerf the Omnom Pie this build will lose a big part of its survivability.

Blood~

Bloodgruve.6038:

I’ve been running a 0/30/20/20/0 build for quite some time now. I use it for PvE mainly. Sword/Torch and Scepter/Focus. Works great with heal on crit food and it feels like its the highest damage output out of all our weapon sets. GSword isn’t far behind though. I like the build because I can switch to GSword/Staff or what not easily with a trait change. I also wanted to try something other than AH or Monks and I was quite happy. Problem is that it relies on food in PvE. If they ever nerf the Omnom Pie this build will lose a big part of its survivability.

Blood~

Tests showed GS has the most dps unless you make a comparison with traits more suited for 1h sword.