Utility Skills/Meditation Build
Atm i run my guardian with full zerker and trait for meditations and its very powerful however while lvl’ing you can trait the same way but id use shouts and change out MF for Ah(but you cant trait them at lvl 50 anyway), but yeah i think you will find 10/15/20( not sure hot many points you have) using shouts a lot better.
i’m actually playing almost full zerker with meditations. i used to slot Stand Your Ground.. argubly one of our strongest skills. though, at times, i’ll run triple meds and enjoy that a lot. both CoP and SYG are stun breakers. one gives stability, one condition cleanse. iw ould switch depending on what situation you’re in. lot of CC and knockbanks potential? take SYG. lot of conditions? nobrainer CoP. though CoP does act as an additional small heal if you’re running MF. which will come later on.
Akaigi | Warrior Made of Wood
[CDS] – Sanctum of Rall
I have a similar story to akamon, although recently I’ve been enjoying having the Bane Signet on my toolbar.
Although it’s hard to give up SYG, being able to hit a fleeing target for >3k + knockdown at 1200 range is really useful, and is often my finishing move. It’s not so handy for PvE though (unless you are planning to speed run content)
The nicest thing about guardian PvE is that your utility bar doesn’t need to be a static thing – I’m constantly switching traits and utilities depending on what I’m about to face.
I’m reminded of an old comment I made in the dungeon forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Peeps-arent-taking-enough-UTILITY-utilities/first#post1436000
o snap, Tarsius, i didn’t mention but recently i’ve been running double meditations with Bane Signet as well lol.
definitely agree that you can keep changing on the fly as you go and face different enemies! same goes for each dungeon, or each encounter, or in WvW when you’re off to different objectives. don’t be afraid to switch major traits even while playing. : ))
Akaigi | Warrior Made of Wood
[CDS] – Sanctum of Rall
I’m happy to have an embarrassment of riches in slots 7, 8, 9, but now that I’m approaching level 50 and have some punch I think it’s time to focus.
The goal is a 10/25 or 30/30/?/? build primarily for PvE with the focus on dps. My inclination is to go full meditation skills, e.g. smite condition, contemplation of purity, judge’s intervention, but stand your ground seemed so indispensable as I leveled.
It’s great fun to fly in with judge’s intervention, hit zealot’s defense, and then lay more burn on with my torch, but I keep thinking one of my meditations needs to go in favor of stand your ground at higher levels.
I’m psychologically married to smite condition, but contemplation of purity’s longish cooldown makes me wonder if that should go in favor of stand your ground? Does my plan to go nearly full zerker gear make contemplation of purity a better option? Thoughts?
Meditation build is fun and very good damage and the first build I started off with my first character. (Guard) I’ve played since day one of GW2 with a meditation guard, and have switched to AH build at some point due to my new focus on WvW but I still believe meditation is a very good alternative, if built right.
At your level it’s probably not really that beneficial to build towards your end build since you will not have the appropriate gear and traits for them.
If I were you I’d focus on leveling, then once you hit 80 you can respect your traits to your final setup, and start doing dungeons for gear. (Or craft yourself some, depending on what stats you want. )
Take a look at this build: (Look at the gear, runes, and sigils because they are important)
Here’s the explanation:
Full soldiers armor with full knights jewelry in order to bring your hp up since if you went zerk or knights or only splash a little vit in you will only have around 12k life and be squashed pretty quickly if not totally careful.
At the same time I compensated for the precision and power with the runes of the pack and the trait that gives 15% more crit chance.
I had setup both weapon sets to be 1 handed in order to take advantage of the trait.
I had both with sigil of bloodlust on the offhand in order to consistently generate bloodlust as you fight. At 25 stacks you will gain 250 extra free power, which brings the damage up by a lot.
Sigil of strength is self explanatory.
The true crit chance is at 59%. While that is not as high as some of the pure glass cannon builds out there this build is far more survivable in all situations and the damage is still high due to this setup and your hp is far higher and your armor is through the roof.
Also, the added benefit here is that all the gear except for jewelry can be farmed from dungeons like AC, which makes this the easiest path for you as a new guardian.
Note: bloodlust sigils can get a bit spendy so be prepared for that…
(edited by DeathPanel.8362)