Guild Wars 2

Been messing around for awhile and I have been trying out a build for GS main and staff depending on the situation. My Build is 0/10/0/30/30 with 4 Atruism and 2 Water for the heal and boon Duration. (( 16 seconds of Save yourselves, holy balls)) Its ment to a balance build where I can stack might on allies and blind and Vuln on enemys along with high regen rate. I use Rune of blood for the littlebit extra Regen and Damage but im thinking of Switching to a variant wich is hammer focused using 10/0/0/30/30 for more controll

No feedback? XD come on guys theres gotta be some advice.

The cookie cutter build for guards right now is 30 in honor 30 in valor.
For Empowering might and Altruistic healing. None of the other trees really offer what these two trees can give.

Try out everything and go with what works for you. I’ve tried both AH and a boon duration build and have thoroughly enjoyed both, but found that I’m much more successful with the latter.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccz0mzMzmGNvmmGNvm0fVxGMMsqMs

I’m currently running this on fractals. Alternating mace and scepter depending on situation. As for teh utility you can always change “Hold The Line” to “Wall of Reflection” or “Signet of Judgement”. As for gears I use Soldier armor from AC or HotW with 2 monks, 2 water, 2 Earth.

Arsenic.8259:

The cookie cutter build for guards right now is 30 in honor 30 in valor.
For Empowering might and Altruistic healing. None of the other trees really offer what these two trees can give.

Honor has a lot of good traits. Valor is crap except for AH which is so strong that it’s worth spending 30 useless points just to get it. That’s broken (as is EM, but whatever).

Yaki.9563:

Valor is crap except for AH which is so strong that it’s worth spending 30 useless points just to get it.

Total crap, except for:
- Two useful stats, toughness and crit damage.
- Purity: Totally free condition removal every 10 seconds.
- Retributive Armor: 4-6% crit chance (depending on toughness) on all attacks.
- And Altruistic Healing, as you mention, which is one of the most overpowered abilities in the game.

And this is only one way of using it, not to mention its use for a meditation build. The minor abilities are fairly underwhelming, yes, but overall its an amazing tree.

OptimistPrime.8517:

Yaki.9563:

Valor is crap except for AH which is so strong that it’s worth spending 30 useless points just to get it.

Total crap, except for:
- Two useful stats, toughness and crit damage.
- Purity: Totally free condition removal every 10 seconds.
- Retributive Armor: 4-6% crit chance (depending on toughness) on all attacks.
- And Altruistic Healing, as you mention, which is one of the most overpowered abilities in the game.

And this is only one way of using it, not to mention its use for a meditation build. The minor abilities are fairly underwhelming, yes, but overall its an amazing tree.

I don’t think AH is overpowered, I think they should bring the other tree’s up on par with AH, or mostly Honor and Valor tree. As everyone knows, the honor tree just has to many good traits. Valor has some good traits and AH.

I think the problem here with trait choices is a series of “design issues” on the trait lines that always point you on the same direction:

- Only 4 professions in the game, and the Guardian isn’t one of them, have Critical Damage and Precision on the same trait line. Precision without CD is absolutly worthless except for specific “on crit” effects but even then it’s a bit of a waste to spend on Precision without CD (Power increases damage a huge lot more than Precision without investment on CD, to the point that if you have X points to invest on both, 80-90% of them would go to Power for Max damage results). And of course CD if you can’t crit at a decent rate is worthless too.

- Many people talk about AH, but something that is featured even in more builds than AH is 15 points in Radiance for constant Justice aplications. 150 extra points in Precision may not be seen as too much (a +7,14% critical chance), but it’s an investment, so most players would like that investment to be of use.

- Then add that one of the most solids lines, Honor (which also gives vitality, something awesome for a low tier HP profession), have some “on crit” effects too (including the first 5 points trait), so it goes in the lines of optimizing your crits. Then you find the nichest trait the Guardian has at the end of the line that gives you Critical Damage. And add that both lines will help to keep you alive and synergize too (Toughness makes Vitality better, and vice-versa).

So everything synergizes together IN ADITION to giving you the most wanted traits, leaving other distributions as inferior both for trait choices and for synergies between other lines. Even if you find some good traits for your build or the way you play, the lines won’t offer that level of synergy.

IMO every profession should get CD on the same line than Precision (that’s an overal problem rather than a Guardian one), and the Guardian should offer better traits on other lines, because the combination of both facts.

My Guardian is my second character, and comming from Thief (Thief has PERFECT Trait Lines atribute distribution, every pair of atributes on each line have great synergy so you can invest in any of them for the traits without worrying for the atributes combination as the synergy is already there), I was really frustrated when build crafting with the Guardian because mathematically (I love numbers and they’re incredibly useful if you know how to use them in games in adition to your own skill) everything pointed me in the same direction greatly limiting my options. I tested some builds trying to break with that concept, but all of them resulted on failed experiments , or at best, not optimal but semi-viable builds.