Guild Wars 2

I am 0/30/30/5/5 atm

sword/shield

and greatsword

all divinity and beserker ammy

This is cool, but any other suggestions?

I am really loving triple med dps

I don’t know why anyone would choose to play a guardian in spvp as a dps when you could play a warrior and do everything, and I mean everything, better.

I LOVE this. Anyone have some tips on runes and weapons?

been trying mace/torch and GS…really like it

although GS feels kind of lackluster sometimes

Divinity.8041:

I LOVE this. Anyone have some tips on runes and weapons?

been trying mace/torch and GS…really like it

although GS feels kind of lackluster sometimes

You choose DPS, which is fine, you give up support AND defense. In short, you will get insta gibbed and a dead player isn’t of any help.

I think you are spot on with the 0/30/30/5/5 trait setup. With the new fury on meditation changes, DPS guardians are even more locked into triple meditations. Any dps build that doesn’t use meditations (and thus 30 into valor) is not viable.

The 5 points in honor and virtues are well worth the cost, giving you constant vigor as well as access to might/regen/protection boons when using virtues. The protection is the most significant if you use it well (i.e., when being bursted).

The only question with this new patch is whether to use the rest of the traits in radiance or zeal. In my opinion, radiance traits are still superior to picking up zeal. Even though zeal gives extra power and the 10% on burning from the first trait choice can be nice, what a lot of people don’t know is that radiance also gives significant damage boosts: 1) the extra base precision significantly increases your crit chancel (18% based on a build editor); the level 30 trait right-hand strength increases it even more (15% onehand weapons), 2) 25 points into radiance gets you 10% more damage to enemies with any condition, and 3) with 20 points you can pick up Radiant Fire which gives 20% increased burning duration and torch cooldown reduction. I’ve compared the difference using zeal traits compared to radiance traits in an excel spreadsheet and found the radiance to be overall superior, in addition to having better supporting trait choices.

Personally, I use sword/torch and scepter/focus. First, about the greatsword. Greatsword can be OK, the #3 is nice for mobility and the retal field is helpful when fighting on a point. However, I find that I die way to easily to good players when using it. The abilities are too apparent to enemies and very easily dodged. Furthermore, you are extremely vulnerable when using it. Spinning around with the greatsword #2 or #5 is just inviting an enemy to burst you or land an otherwise hard to hit ability on you. If you do one of these attacks in the middle of a teamfight, you’re going to take so much damage you will either be dead or forced to back out.

The onehanded weapons synergize extremely well with the 30 points into radiance. The torch gives you some underrated abilities. The #4 can cause significant burning if you have a lot of enemies around you and the follow-up attack hits like a truck. The #5 is great to use on clumps of enemies such as when one player is down and teammates are trying to power-res them. I like focus better than shield. It gives way more personal survivability.

I like to have the scepter because it gives a ranged option (notice I didn’t say good or great ranged option, just “a” ranged option). The ability to sit outside the main action where you are not taking the brunt of AoE damage and still contribute is very important. The #3 is also great for setting up bursts. I know the scepter has it’s weaknesses with slow-moving orbs and the #2 not hitting for it’s full potential, but a DPS guard simply can’t sit in a fight for too long. We are glassy and don’t have that kind of sustain in a big team fight. Despite these limitations, I still use the scepter because it can be effective if your enemy is not focusing on you and it’s better than nothing if the enemy is out of range. By only using melee weapons, you are limiting yourself to only contributing when being right up in the action (and likely taking a lot of damage).

For runes, condi’s are so prevalent in this meta that I feel there is only one good choice: Lyssa runes. Even with smite condition and contemplation of purity, conditions are so heavily used in this game and so easily reapplied. Coupled with the guardians extremely low health pool, you need all the condi removal you can get.

From my experience so far, this build is very effective versus other glass classes like typical thief or mesmer builds. But it has trouble when dealing with sustain classes like regen warriors, bunker rangers, etc.

Dominus.4153:

From my experience so far, this build is very effective versus other glass classes like typical thief or mesmer builds. But it has trouble when dealing with sustain classes like regen warriors, bunker rangers, etc.

Still not addressing who gets first hit or if you do and they just say ok, and leave. You can’t stop them outside of Scepter 3 which you mentioned.

Crapgame.6519:

Dominus.4153:

From my experience so far, this build is very effective versus other glass classes like typical thief or mesmer builds. But it has trouble when dealing with sustain classes like regen warriors, bunker rangers, etc.

Still not addressing who gets first hit or if you do and they just say ok, and leave. You can’t stop them outside of Scepter 3 which you mentioned.

I absolutely agree that this is a weakness of guardians. Our best dps weapons lack quality CC. There are classes that are going to be able to back out of a fight no matter what we do. Thus, guardians have to fight a positional game more than being a player-killer. Fighting on points and jumping in to support another teammate are where guardians are the strongest.

However, you can be effective enough to counter another glass if they jump you and you should be able to ward them off. You have several options to block a burst (2 stun breakers, shelter, renewed focus) and can then counter with some quick damage abilities (torch 4 can be activated without breaking other skills, smite condition). Landing a decent burst on a thief for example and loading them up with a little burning will force them to back out of a fight for some time.

If you want the best dps plus survivalbility I would go with Sc/Fc instead of GS. Start fight with 5 focus then scep 3 wait 1.5s ish and teleport on targeted exploding your focus ability. Hits like a brick. Sc does 1.5k a hit too so you can still be productive not being in the middle of an aoe spamfest.

http://tinyurl.com/SilvenGuardianBuilds

That’s why I’ve written this up, we already had fury before the buff to meditations so it did nothing to be honest.
DPS =/= burst builds.
DPS has staying power (so damage consistently) meditations are used for burst due to having no staying power.