Guild Wars 2

So it’s time for me to roll an alt, I have two level 80’s now. I decided guardian and Necro only cause I don’t see them every where. So please long time guardians teach me! What do I need to know, all information given will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

As always, I suggest the AH build:

0/x/30/20(at least)/5

This is if you are a fan of 2-handed weapons, balance among support/dps, and like to survive.

Same here! I’m hoping to get some advice for a Healing/Toughness/Vitality(I know this probably doesn’t exist for gear stats) focused support Guardian, and could use any help I can get!

:)

Ejiofor.4801:

Same here! I’m hoping to get some advice for a Healing/Toughness/Vitality(I know this probably doesn’t exist for gear stats) focused support Guardian, and could use any help I can get!

:)

Look at my posts and you’ll see.

Ok I’ve never messed with the guardian or even researched yet so AH is what? Thank you

AH is altruistic healing and probably the bread and butter in almost any group focused pvp/pve build. Sure there are other builds that work but if there was a world championship in GW2 the first 20 spots would incorporate either a AH build or a monks focus build.

Both major traits are end traits in Valor traitline.

Most you need to know are compiled in this thread and even though im the writer its a lot of people that made that thread what it is. It works with what ever weapon you use even though mace, hammer and staff benefits the most due to the amount of boons they spread to the team.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-Hammer-and-Altruistic-Healing-gameplay/page/7#post1269958

When levelling, you want the Hammer of Wisdom skill and the Sword of Justice skill because they do damage that isn’t dependent on your crappy levelling gear.

Long-time Guardian player here since beta.

Altruistic Healing is NOT support. It is NOT altruistic either. AH heals you every time you grant a boon to allies. AH is the key component to tanky builds. The reason why AH is considered support is because, for it to be effective, you have to grant boons to allies.

Because of this built-in synergy of tankiness and support, most Guardians sacrifice damage and go 0/0/30/20/20 or 0/0/30/30/10. The first 30 gets you the grandmaster trait Altruistic Healing and +300 Toughness. The second 20-30 allows you to buff your Shouts and gain healing abilities. The last 10-20 gives more buffing and focuses on your Virtues.

If you run an AH build, the three weapons you’ll focus on will be Hammer, Staff, and Mace. The Hammer is a very balanced weapon, but can dish out a lot of AoE Protection and Retaliation. The Staff is basically a utility weapon that can support. The Mace is your generic tank weapon.

If you wanted to focus on 1h weapons (which are more damage/dueling based) you would want to look at 30 Radiance as there is a trait for +15% increased critical chance.

If you don’t want to be buff-centric but want survival, then 30 Valor and the grandmaster Monk’s Focus will be good. This trait heals you (significantly) every time you use a Meditation utility skill.

The Zeal line is generally useless compared to the other lines, unless you happen to want a particular 1st tier Major trait.

There are a bunch of trait combinations out there you’ll eventually learn by messing with your builds.

BTW if you want maximum damage, use the Greatsword.

AH is for groups… it’s dependent on giving your allies boons to heal yourself, the healing from it just solo is weak post-vigor proc nerf. If you plan on being the first to charge into zergs or doing solo work, monk’s focus is far better (heals you when you use meditations).

For leveling just use dps gear with staff + greatsword and find a group of mobs. Use the staff to buff yourself with 12 stacks of might, then GS 5,4,3,2,1,1,1,1 and you’ll quickly have a lot of dead mobs. Then use the staff to give yourself swiftness and move on to the next group and repeat.

Thank you everyone, I’m currently level 3. I will be taking all this advice and putting it in game. Thanks for your help and time. Also please check us out at Buddahtribe.net we are an online gaming community. No matter what server your on or like us on Facebook search Buddahtribe. I assume gear for the guardian should focus on healing then?

Mortalitas.9710:

I assume gear for the guardian should focus on healing then?

No the first priority should be, imo ofc, crit rating if its AH you aim for and when pve leveling, the second stat should be toughness and the third might be healing even though i find boonduration to be more important for the team.

The only skill that scales really well with healing power is our heal on dodge, i dont find one skill to be worth the investment and there are other classes that can play as healer and do it better.

I play in a rather skillfull wvw team and a really good Tpvp team and none of our guardian builds incorporate a lot of healing power, we use water fields exclusively for that.

The thing with guardians is that they give up almost everything, besides HP, when going for stacked healrating.

Our strength is to negate damage, not reactive mitigate damage and in this game heals are by far the worst kind of support. 100% uptime on protection and area stability is much more powerful.

There are other opinions ofc but if you look for max effect i find this to be true. BUT if you want heal power there are interesting builds for that as well, still with decent critchance and crit damage.

Basically build how you want to play but be aware what you are loosing.