Guild Wars 2

Of all the guardian builds i’ve tried, i’ve never found myself ever going deep into this tree… From the start, it offers toughness and crit damage.. Kind of weird right there, one trait that requires high precision, and another trait for tanking..
Its passives are extremely weak, any support you can gain from this tree can be gained twice over in Honor, which in my opinion has TOO MUCH GOOD STUFF!

The minors.
Adept. Auto aegis at 50%? That can be good, if you trait into aegis (in other trees)
Master. I guess that helps after you’ve already lose, if you get back up a free aegis is good (if you trait into it elsewhere again) Honor has a trait similiar to this, but it gives you AND your ally protection/aegis/regeneration when you revive them.
Grandmaster. Might when i block? With my shield? No? Mace can block one attack with the counter, so thats one stack of might. If you go mace/focus you can get 4 blocks, so thats 4 stacks of might.. by using tank/support weapons.

Major adepts. Burn attackers when you block, like fireshield but less useful, again we arnt warriors with shield stance. +30 toughness to allies? One of the most useless things ! Warrior can give like, +70 power to allies.
Lose HP slower while downed, very narrow, still weak, healing is better.

Purity only duplicate what our signet does, its supposed to tick every 10 seconds but given how conditions fly around, and that theirs no counter for this, i’ve yet to actually see this ever make a difference. Purity/signet SHOULD act like an Aegis for conditions, blocking the first condition to hit you every 10 seconds.

Retributive Armor, 5% of toughness = precision boost, FINALLY some Synergy ! 300 toughness for 30 Valor will give ya 15 precision, but 3000 toughness will get you 150, but even with the crit damage boost, your power wont let you hit that hard, unless your some kind of power/toughness/precision/crit damage tank build.

Major Masters.
Mace of justice, 5% mace damage… Mace is your defensive weapon still, and we’ve already seen most skills like this be improved, usually by combining existing traits, so maybe we’ll see 5% mace dmg +20% faster cooldown.

Glacial Heart. Since when did guardians use ice? This is our only Chill effect… We could do without, i’d rather use a weapon sigil and gurantee it, not rely on precision and luck, you cant even actually chill someone when you want too, it could go off at a useless time.

More shield and meditation skills, shield is in desperate need of help, this bad trait path makes it worse. The only meditation i use is already instant.

Grandmaster Majors.
Both of these are healing, but this trait line doesnt offer healing boosts, the heals are minor, warrior shouts AoE heal for more than you’ll self heal with meditations.

In conclusion, whatever build you are going for, you can probably make it better in other trait lines, if you want to DPS with good crit damage, no prec/crit for you, your stuck with some toughness. If you want to tank, no heal/toughness or toughness/boons for you, stuck with crit damage.

This trait line needs some serious help !

I still like it better than Zeal.
God, I hate Zeal.

I don’t use Zeal anymore unless i’m using my 1h build. I always max out Valor for the critical damage and some decent traits.(meditation and precision)

If you are going for 1h sword/(shield or focus), i find that going full 30 Radiance and 30 Valour synergise well due to their stats but other than that Valour is just slightly less horrible than Zeal in case of traits.

I think you’re missing the point. The block stuff syncs with Aegis. Every Aegis removed counts as a block. These are good traits, as with Aegis at half health, your F-key Aegis, Retreat, and the mace/focus blocks, you can build a stacks of might very quickly and maintain them over a decently long period of time. You’ll also notice this syncs up with the mace use in general.

I really like the valor tree, not sure why there’s so much hate for it.

Zeal is amazing for spirit weapons, especially if you want to burn with them, Plus 10 points into zeal is amazing for any damage dealer, your targets going to be on fire alot, thats a free 10% damage boost for all weapons.
@Tomkatt I’d rather spec into Virtures and Honor to make Aegis good, auto protection, faster cooldown, faster aegis refill, not to mention the boon duration boost. So what if aegis blocks and burns the enemy? Zeal will make that aegis AoE burn enemies, AND it applies to allies who receive my aegis.

Zeals got greatsword damage, which is the most popular Guardian weapon, and if your going for Greatsword, zeals got your power, and condition duration, which synergizes with the 10% bonus vs burners too.
The stats in this tree dont benefit meditation that much either, one of them burns, one of them heals, one of them boons and one of them hurts, toughness/crit dont belong on those, your forced to get precision just to make the crit damage useful, otherwise its a wasted stat.
Whether it was dps/condition/tank/heal/support or a hybrid, i always ended up working Valor out completely.

I think the Great Sword is severely lacking within the Zeal tree. 5% increase in damage? That’s so minute it’s not even funny. Also, Zealous blade heals you for 25 per hit, even with a tone of enemies nearby, it’s nothing. I also find that symbols are still not worth speccing. They’re so small and last a few seconds that it’s not noticeable. Obviously if you’re hitting #5 and then #3 on the GS, then it works really well. Other than that, not worth it in my opinion.

I view Valor tree as a perfect combination between offense and defense (crit damage and toughness). Monk’s Focus heals for 2k which is amazing since you can have more than one meditation with one of them is on a 16 seconds cooldown, remove a condition, and do decent damage (I usually run two meditations, the last utility is situational).

Also, with my current gears (3134 attack, 56% crit chance), the 30% crit damage is better than 300 power from Zeal. I gain about 9.5% more damage with power (an increase from 3134 attack to 3434) vs 16.8% with crit damage. If you throw in the 5% greatsword damage, it’s only 14.5%. I do more damage with better survivability thanks to Monk’s Focus. I also am not taking into the advantage of condition duration from Zeal since burn caps out at 25 seconds. Virtue of Justice in a group of 5 already hits the cap.

With my 10/25/30/0/5, it’s probably the best out there at dealing damage (10% on burn, 10% on conditioned target, 30% crit damage) while keeping decent armor (2400) and Monk’s Focus.

Valor is a pretty good trait line, actually…it’s just highly specialized and all over the place. Plus, the second tier isn’t our best, so that makes sinking 30 points to gain a grandmaster trait in it kind of off-putting. If you’re looking at going all in, Valor is a fairly decent line. If you’re looking to just dabble, then yeah…I’d avoid it (imo).

Compared to spirit weapons, shouts, and consecrations, i didnt really like meditation EXCEPT for judges intervention (which is already instant, making the trait to make it instant useless). It just seems to have the most JUNK traits inside of it, while honor is so hard to pick between buffing symbols, buffing shouts, or one of the two amazing revival skills.

I personally love the Valor tree and meditations. I run Retributive Armor (switching out to Purity if require), Meditation Mastery, and Monk’s Focus. All of which benefits my offensive meditation build. I do agree that Valor is not a tree you dabble in. Outside of Meditation builds, at most you can put is 10 for Retributive Armor or Purity.

Deep Zeal build is only for spirit weapons.

are you kidding me? Valor is probably the strongest tree, and like others, it has a few useless things. but onto its uses:

- meditation specialization
- altruistic healing (one of the best traits in the game)
- glacial heart (if you cant see why having chill on crit every 45 secs, in addition to the sigils, is amazing, then i cant help you man)
- purity

in addition everyone who like dps should invest 10 in Zeal, and more for spirit weapon specialization. no tree is bad, but a few have more lackluster traits than others.

Valor has some of the strongest Grandmaster traits, but it is a top-heavy line in that regard; other lines are just fine with just 15 or 20 points sunk into them. If our other Grandmasters were fixed and brought up to par with Valor’s, then it would become very apparent that the line just isn’t balanced within itself.

And yes, Glacial Heart is lackluster, the only reason it seems nice is because tier 2 of Valor blows.

Valor is fantastic with a mace/shield and Honor (cleric) build.

Some of the other stuff in there is goofy for anything else, though, I agree. Also, I have a feeling we won’t ever see a mace cooldown reduction as the #3 is prettykittenpowerful as is (not to mention #2).

I have a hard time making a guardian build that does NOT include 30 valor. Triple (or double) meditation is perhaps THE strongest setup guardian has available, with instant stunbreaks, condition removals, and top notch self healing without even spec’ing for it (smite condition has a very low cooldown).

The other grandmaster basically gives you a second signet (or better) in wvw because of the mass amount of buffs you apply with staff 4, not to mention all the buffs you can apply with shouts and virtues. Don’t forget, although the description wasn’t updated, you now get -20% cooldown AND +90 toughness on the shield trait; also don’t forget that shield 5 heal is now enabled in all areas.

I honestly don’t see how a guardian, who innately has pitiful HP totals, can get much done without resorting to healing provided by 30 valor…

ens.9854:

I have a hard time making a guardian build that does NOT include 30 valor. Triple (or double) meditation is perhaps THE strongest setup guardian has available, with instant stunbreaks, condition removals, and top notch self healing without even spec’ing for it (smite condition has a very low cooldown).

The other grandmaster basically gives you a second signet (or better) in wvw because of the mass amount of buffs you apply with staff 4, not to mention all the buffs you can apply with shouts and virtues. Don’t forget, although the description wasn’t updated, you now get -20% cooldown AND +90 toughness on the shield trait; also don’t forget that shield 5 heal is now enabled in all areas.

I honestly don’t see how a guardian, who innately has pitiful HP totals, can get much done without resorting to healing provided by 30 valor…

It’s actually quite easy, though it is certainly more geared towards true support, rather than just ensuring your health stays above a certain point. For instance, putting 30 into Honor instead will make your symbols that much more effective, while giving you more healing and health overall. Toughness is nice and all, but I get that already through my heavy armor, runes, protection boons, etc.

The real problem here is that Valor has some of our most powerful traits at the end, which makes people wanting to overplay the tree as if it’s spectacular; it’s really not. Most of its traits are highly specialized, which means switching mid-combat lowers your efficacy. The two grandmaster traits are really there to do the same thing: heal you if you’re solo, or heal you if you’re in a group. They give nothing to the Guardian’s innate support ability to the rest of the group, which is why I say the line isn’t good. You give up too much utility to a group by devoting 30 points into it, since the lower traits just aren’t spectacular.

Virtues is perhaps just as powerful overall, but it’s lackluster after 20 points invested.

Radiance is a good tree, and perhaps more balanced than Honor, but it suffers from too many specific traits.

Zeal is, well…Zeal. Broken Grandmasters tend to do that. Still, good spirit weapon base, so it gives at least some utility while pushing out self boons.

Honor, imho, is the best line. You only have one weapon trait, but it affects three different weapons—two support, one dps (in theory). Your shouts, symbols, and virtues are affected by traits, which means you’ll gain something from it no matter what you’re using—sans meditations, of course. In fact, it’s biggest weakness is that the non-Grandmaster traits are so effective, that they would overshadow the Grandmasters even if they worked right/better. That’s what I think makes a good tree: that the lower traits are so good, you invest 30 points just to slot them all, Grandmasters bekitten

Valor is a decent enough line to sink 30 into, don’t get me wrong…I just don’t agree that Valor is what makes the strongest Guardian.

Draeka.5941:

ens.9854:

I have a hard time making a guardian build that does NOT include 30 valor. Triple (or double) meditation is perhaps THE strongest setup guardian has available, with instant stunbreaks, condition removals, and top notch self healing without even spec’ing for it (smite condition has a very low cooldown).

The other grandmaster basically gives you a second signet (or better) in wvw because of the mass amount of buffs you apply with staff 4, not to mention all the buffs you can apply with shouts and virtues. Don’t forget, although the description wasn’t updated, you now get -20% cooldown AND +90 toughness on the shield trait; also don’t forget that shield 5 heal is now enabled in all areas.

I honestly don’t see how a guardian, who innately has pitiful HP totals, can get much done without resorting to healing provided by 30 valor…

It’s actually quite easy, though it is certainly more geared towards true support, rather than just ensuring your health stays above a certain point. For instance, putting 30 into Honor instead will make your symbols that much more effective, while giving you more healing and health overall. Toughness is nice and all, but I get that already through my heavy armor, runes, protection boons, etc.

The real problem here is that Valor has some of our most powerful traits at the end, which makes people wanting to overplay the tree as if it’s spectacular; it’s really not. Most of its traits are highly specialized, which means switching mid-combat lowers your efficacy. The two grandmaster traits are really there to do the same thing: heal you if you’re solo, or heal you if you’re in a group. They give nothing to the Guardian’s innate support ability to the rest of the group, which is why I say the line isn’t good. You give up too much utility to a group by devoting 30 points into it, since the lower traits just aren’t spectacular.

Virtues is perhaps just as powerful overall, but it’s lackluster after 20 points invested.

Radiance is a good tree, and perhaps more balanced than Honor, but it suffers from too many specific traits.

Zeal is, well…Zeal. Broken Grandmasters tend to do that. Still, good spirit weapon base, so it gives at least some utility while pushing out self boons.

Honor, imho, is the best line. You only have one weapon trait, but it affects three different weapons—two support, one dps (in theory). Your shouts, symbols, and virtues are affected by traits, which means you’ll gain something from it no matter what you’re using—sans meditations, of course. In fact, it’s biggest weakness is that the non-Grandmaster traits are so effective, that they would overshadow the Grandmasters even if they worked right/better. That’s what I think makes a good tree: that the lower traits are so good, you invest 30 points just to slot them all, Grandmasters bekitten

Valor is a decent enough line to sink 30 into, don’t get me wrong…I just don’t agree that Valor is what makes the strongest Guardian.

It’s true that the Honor tree is really good. But for a damage build that needs the extra survivability, Valor is just better. It provides damage boost with crit damage and survivability with toughness and Monk’s focus. It’s just different playstyles. I prefer to stay alive and deal as much damage as I can (still supporting with cleansing bolts, inspired virtues, wall of reflects, etc..).

If i go mace/anything else i know im going Honor, spec into those symbols and that mace symbol becomes a large 400-500heal per tick area for all allies. I think valor could use something for Wards, (since you mentioned staff empower, and staff has a ward, and so does the hammer, also in this tree) back in beta guardians had a couple Ward traits for Circle of Warding and Line of Warding and stuff like sanctuary, but it was all taken out, hopefully it will find its way back.

Anyone remember the hilarious ‘wards hurt people for like 100 damage when they run into them’ trait? Good one a.net good one lol

I’d love it if our hammer’s ward could be traited to reflect projectiles…. >=D

I wouldnt, im generally not a fan of traits that make only one skill more effective, and its redundant on WoR to make all wards reflect. If a trait only effects one skill it has to be good, like Grenadier for engineers. If you make Ring of Warding ALSO pull enemies inside as it casts, THEN its golden.