Guild Wars 2

I main elementalist and also have a level 80 thief mesmer and necro. For my last 80 I was thinking about guardian or engineer. What sort of impressions do you have about your class that can help me make this choice? I’d probably mainly use it for pve and wvw. Also what weapons are best in each situation? Scepter/focus seems like a really cool combo as does greatsword, but I’m not sure about sword or hammer or staff.

The Guardian is the Best GW2 Supporter Class. Expecially in wvsw and dungeons.
You can make your build, but you’re required to be a supporter, or a bunker. DPS is not the best build for a guardian. A dps guardian can deal a high damage, expeccialy in a team of warriors that give might and inflict vulnerability to the enemy (dungeon fights), but you have only 12k of hp… If you don’t play as a Meditation build or if you’re not a skilled player that know when use it’s block skills in every single moment, whit a specific build, you can’t play as a dps (not in dungeons that require a lot of capacity).
If you chose to be a Supporter you’re welcome in almost all the teams for enithing more harder than CoF 1. About the Support Build. there’s a lot of builds and hybrids, but the best is always 0/0/6/6/2 for pve and 0/0/2/6/6 for wvsw whit Soldier equipment.
Weapons: If you’re not a dps you can ignore the following weapons: Sword. Scepter, Torch. Scepter+Focus can give you high dps, but if you’re not a dps you don’t need it, because that weapons don’t give to your team any advantage. But if you chose to make a dps guardian (guardian dps is good, but harder than other classes to play) you can play whit GS and Scepter+Focus, that is a good combo, expecially for spvp.
But don’t use a berserker guardian in wvsw, because you drop dead before you can use your healing skill.
Whit a Support/Bunker build (and the best/only-really-good build for the guardian is the support/bunker build) your perfect weapon is the Staff, whit Hammer or Greatsword.
Staff give Empower (12 stack of Might and a lot of heal), a Line that the enemy can’t cross, good for wvsw and some dungeons, and is a AoE weapon, whit huge range, good to attack a large amount of enemy at the same time. And give swiftness.
GS grant you a good dps and you can pull your enemy to you. That is good for wvsw (you can grab and pull dosn an enemy on the wall. It’s funny) and in pve you can do the same whit monsters to obtain “aggro”.
Hammer is expecially good in pve, that give you Protection (perma-protection whit a good build) and you can obtain a Blast skill (skill 2), that is always good. In wvsw you can hold the enemy in place, knock them back and immobilize. That’s really good in Zerg fights. And your Blast Finisher is good. (Hammer skill 2 is the only Blast Finisher of the guardian. Focus skill 5 give you a blast, but do a combo whit that blast is hard).

Then:
Guardian is the Perfect Supporter. Give defensive boons, clean conditions whie every whout to itself and to allies, high defensive and self-healing ability, a lot of stability skills and some CC (GS skill 2, Staff skill 5 and Hammer skill 3-4-5).
The weakness of the Guardian is the low amount of possible builds. On 20 utility skills, only 12 can really be played. And 4 of them only whit Meditation Build. And only sometimes you can use Hallowed Ground and Purging Flames: in wvsw, whit a specific build.
If you make a Guardian you probably end whit a Support Build whit Shouts.

There’s a lot of funny builds that grant you to use spirit weapons or signets, but only for fun.

You can make a personal Build, expecially in PvE, but in High level Dungeons (fractal, for example) and WvsW you have to be a Supporter.
Sad but True.

^Do people actually believe this? (PvE).
Regardless of gear, a guardian can support really well through the use of well-timed evades and active defenses (Aegis, Blind, Invuln).
Berserker gear is the best choice to clear PvE content. Since you main an Elementalist, I will assume that you’re used to being squishy and won’t be having much trouble.

^^ Lol, stop giving bad advice. All of the guardians ‘support’ can be provided whist running a meta DPS build, we are NOT a supporter class, our DPS is pretty kitten high (run the kitten meta builds, don’t try to be some PVTHero failsupporter and drag down any good groups~)

Also, do not use a meditation build in PvE, its just bad and offers nothing.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

^^ Lol, stop giving bad advice. All of the guardians ‘support’ can be provided whist running a meta DPS build, we are NOT a supporter class, our DPS is pretty kitten high (run the kitten meta builds, don’t try to be some PVTHero failsupporter and drag down any good groups~)

Also, do not use a meditation build in PvE, its just bad and offers nothing.

Thanks for your response, and yeah I agree. I was a bit gullible though and believed him for a second, which almost scared me away from making a guardian lol.

You might want to try this:

http://gw2dungeons.net/?Builds

Guardian since Beta..

I prefer Warrior but Guardian also does everything I want it to..

Farming nodes for example, I have a constant speed boost which is good for roaming solo in WvW as well.

PVE is easy.. I’m sure you’ve seen guardians take on a lot of damage and still stay alive. It’s obviously a very melee class with the flexibility of ranged with the very slow scepter.

PVP is meh with Guardian.. maybe it’s me but I find arenas better with other classes.

I would absolutely pick a Guardian over an Engineer unless you like constantly dropping stuff.. I guess Guardian requires less interaction in that regard too.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

Also, do not use a meditation build in PvE, its just bad and offers nothing.

As much as I agree with the rest of your statement, I prefer meds more than anything else when roaming PvE or soloing dungeons. But I do see where you are coming from, with a warrior the fury bonus becomes redundant, no support for allies really, and the 2k heals aren’t needed since everything dies before they can hurt you.

In dungeons any good guard would swap utilities around anyway, like AC p2 end boss, wall of reflect ftw. So to sum it up, meds are not bad by any means, just when you have a good group you are better off using something else like consecrations.

Well in PvE guards are certainly better than engies. For gear choices it’s still easy to survive as a full zerk guard using meta dps traits (4,5,0,0,5) so just run with that. The guy who said 0,0,6,6,2 has l2p issues