Guild Wars 2

Hey guys!

After running around in different Boards here, I came to the conclusion, that Guardian would fit my needs the most, as I already have Warrior & Rev on 80 and can easily share armor between those.

Now, I’m mostly interested in Fractals, maybe sometimes a Raid.
I had a pause from that game for about 3 Years and base my opinion solely on
Metabattle.

I know, that Greatsword didn’t used to be the best for higher Fractals, due to the Boon Thieves stealing Retaliation and wiping the whole party in a short time – after looking it up now, I found out, those were taken out of Fractals, does that mean, Greatsword is now viable for higher Level fracs?

My idea would be Zeal, Radiance, DH, collection some weapons to react on different siutations.
Mostly Greatsword, Sword, Torch / Shield, Hammer for Raids and Longbow for Open World content, if I like to use it Solo.
Is Scepter still the Main option for High Level fracs, or can it be replaced by the Greatsword now?

Edit: Wouldn’t GS + S/T make sense with Marauder’s, Viper’s over Berserker’s ?
Marauder’s for more survivability and little less Damage (roughly 5% i think?) or Viper’s for the added Cond damage?
GS + S/T adds a lot of burning with the Traits, I’m a bit confused tbh

Hi!
Well there are two ways to approach FotM as a Guardian if you want to run Meta builds (meta being understood as max DPS or max utility for your party). Both builds can be found here: http://qtfy.enjin.com/guardian

I can say that Hammer build will boost your patty’s survivability by giving constant Protection, downside is that you can mess up some fields with your symbol and that you practically will be camping hammer auto attack with ocasional CC on bosses.

I recommend second build (Scepter-Sword /Torch) because is our highest damage output while lot of survivability by staying ranged with Scepter. The Radiance traitline adds some good burn damage with your torch. I f you’re having a tough time surviving you can always equip a Focus with your Sword.

About gear: I’d say to stick with zerker. Guardian is one of the classes with highest survivability via blinds, blocks and reflects. Full Viper (with some Sinister) will go a lot better with your Warrior. Remember crafting Viper gear can be expensive while Berserker can be purchased from some dungeons or easily crafted. All the condi damage you’ll need will come from your traits in Radiance. IMHO Marauder loses too much damage in exchange of a small boost to Vitality that is not “that important”. Remember Toughness is for negating Direct dmg while Vitality is for negating Condition dmg (you won’t have lots of condi pressure in most fractals).

About GS: kitten I wish GS could comeback so we would have a more versatile rotation. Right now GS will bring less damage than Scepter-Sword/Torch and less utility than Hammer you can still go along with it but just know this. You might also be called out by some players in FotM and Raid Pugs.

Well, then I think I will stick to leveling my Mesmer..

Thanks for your advice, tho!
It’s sad, how balancing teams are completely ignoring the most interesting classes and weapons and favor like 90% AA damage, it’s so dull.

Revenant? Dead.
Guardian with INTERESTING weapons? Dead.
Power Necromancer? So dead it’s beyond undead.

I’m sorry for my saltyness, but I came back, thought I’d see some improvements after 4 years of Zerker meta and it became even more dull.

But, ignore the above:
I have a group of Guildies around, so I don’t have to worry about being kicked from parties – tho, how big is the actual tradeoff in damage with Sc / Sw + Torch in comparison to GS / Sw + Torch?
Because on Metabattle, Sw / T + GS is listed as the only Fractal build for Guardians atm. At least on Metalevel

I recommend having hammer, sword, scepter and the appropriate offhand weapons available. That allows you to switch to what is needed – some groups will profit a lot from hammer, some won’t. Anything else, including GS, is either useless or an absolute niche weapon.

With regard to gear, zerker or marauder, but not some condi crap. Iirc, marauder was something like -5% damage traded for +30% HP, which isn’t that bad if you are new and/or rather insecure. Btw, vitality is not just for negating condi damage. It is effective against anything until you get to the point where sustained incoming damage is substantially bigger than anything you can heal.

From the wiki:

Toughness is a defensive character attribute. Each attribute point put into toughness increases the armor of the character by one, which improves the character’s ability to withstand direct damage. Toughness has no effect on falling damage.

Vitality is a defensive attribute. Each attribute point put into vitality increases the maximum health of the character by ten hitpoints. More health allows a character to better withstand burst damage and degenerative damage.

(that’s the reason Marauder gear/amulet are popular choices for Guardian in WvW and PvP)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toughness
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vitality

On Topic:

OP I Suggest to make a Viper Necro or a Burnzerker if you are looking for something different. Condition damage builds are really fun to play and on high demand.

Thanks for your input!
And yeah, I already know about all of those Specs, but sadly they don’t use stuff I’m not really into / can’t get my mind working with.

I got Howler, so first thing that came to my mind was Tempest, but I can’t stand being so incredibly squishy..
Necro, Power Necro is amazing, Greatsword + Dagger / Axe & Warhorn is so much fun.
But it’s damage is flatout bottom line and just complete garbage..
Ranger with Sword / Warhorn + Staff as a Healer would be a thing, but I trade ALOT of damage for that little stuff Warhorn offers.

Then we have Mesmer, I love playing tanks and Mesmer is interesting, but beside Sword, his weapons are just “meh”
Guard has awesome weapons AND is lots of fun, but I lose using Warhorn AND Greatsword so…yeah…. ^^’
I’m quite salty concerning what my Main will be.
Considering, I love playing Necro, I think I should just stick with my Power Necro, but I don’t want to play a build, where I never get invited to ANYTHING..
Another pro for Necro, I always keep my Warhorn, as Viper Necro also goes with Warhorn.

NumenorLord.6539:

From the wiki:
[…]

Before you quote something from the wiki, please think about whether it makes sense. In this case, it doesn’t.

And Engi isn’t even mentioned…ouch! But yea, I feel your pain in regards to playing the class you love yet never getting a nod for anything, i.e. me on Engi. But just stay true to what you like and like you said, you have guildies so run with them! Guardian is quite fun even without GS!

Adding to what others said, GS can offer good utility and a bit of burst. When I use DH in frac (not so often anymore) I open up with GS 5 pull, 4 and 2 (3 optional for blind) then swap to Scepter/Sword/Hammer on trash and boss mobs (Uncategorized end boss, Mai final phase, Snowblind in general, Furnace in general, Molten when adds spawn during effigy, Subject 6 etc). Grouping up mobs is more important than having higher dps on a single mob. So GS is still good, but its more of a utility weapon than a main weapon.

Edit: If you want to dish out condi damage, you might want to look at Permeating Wrath with Scepter + Torch. On multiple targets your condition damage increases exponentially with this, and you don’t even need to have condi gear. What I used unorganized pugs was Zeal (3,3,3) – Virtues (varies, varies, 1) – DH (1 or 2, 2, 1 or 3) and Scepter + Torch / X, full zerk. With Procession of Blades and normal Scepter rotation you are able to stack up to 25 might on yourself almost all times (useful when noone gives might) and you will have over 1k condition damage.

CptAurellian.9537:

NumenorLord.6539:

From the wiki:
[…]

Before you quote something from the wiki, please think about whether it makes sense. In this case, it doesn’t.

How does it not make sense? It’s the definition and it’s what each of those stats do, you’re pretty wrong.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAsfSnsABFChddCWdCEEhl4BzaDkvSBy7v+3CsKAslqXA-TBSBAB4ph5m9HoU9HAeCAYpM4KlempE8hTBQAgDAP/8zP/8z98zP/8zPXKA9EaB-e

That’s a build I came up with now.
I used the Dungeon build and…somehow…twisted it with the Raid build, should be fine I think? They don’t differ that much.

Main weapons S+T / Hammer, having a Utility / Open World GS and LB, as well as a Shield and Scepter + Focus.
I think, the Torch is a more valuable option, as this builds focuses a lot on Burning Damage as well as direct damage, so rendering the Shield quite worthless.
I like the Shield, but I see, it only has it’s niche uses, as well as the Greatsword.
Sadly, Longbow is completely worthless atm…
>sadface.jpg

But, I also really enjoy playing S+T / Hammer! It’s so much fun and leveling is quite fast as well.

Maybe some input, what to change, what is complete bullcrap etc?
And the infusions…well, yeah, I took the Vitality ones, as I’m not used to playing a squishy – I know, Guardians have a lot of things to mitigate damage, but not even 12k HP is not that much. Maybe other gear, I can use?
Shouldn’t Valkyrie + the Sharpening Stone equal in roughly the same damage?
And to sum it up; I’m using that strange Valkyrie / Berserker necklace (the small stone figure from the Laurel vendor) as I already purchased that on my Warrior.

TL;DR: Would that build be viable for High Level Fractals and Raiding?

Edit: Didn’t craft anything so far ascended, my Guardian is lvl 20-ish, meanwhile I prepare and craft ascended gear.
So far, Berserker’s Ring, Backpack (from Scarlet Event in 2014) , Necklace and a Chestpiece.
I already have a Zojja’s Insignia, so I have a weapon choice – is the regular Sword my main weapon? If yes, I will craft this one first.

NumenorLord.6539:

How does it not make sense? It’s the definition and it’s what each of those stats do, you’re pretty wrong.

You still fail to get the actual context of what those stats do. Slavishly sticking to the wiki definitions doesn’t cut it.

A typical full berserker guardian will have (all values rounded) roughly 13,000 HP and 2250 armor. Armor scales in a way that doubling it reduces direct damage taken by 50%. Hence, to increase your survivability against direct damage by 100%, you can either double your HP or double your armor. Doing so requires 1300 vitality or 2250 toughness, respectively. Observation: vitality is much cheaper for this purpose, because guardian is a low-HP class.

Now toughness has one innate advantage in case of direct damage: it simply reduces damage taken, therefore lowering the amount of healing needed to get back to full health. Since condition damage usually does not put up that much pressure in fractals, the weakness of toughness is less relevant there. That would, in theory, probably balance out the “cheaper” price tag of vitality if you are healing-restricted.

However, for toughness to become superior, you actually need to be restricted by the amount of healing which is available over a long period of time. In my fractal experience, that happens rather rarely and most nasty situations could also be overcome by a larger health pool. As long as you can heal the damage taken, it doesn’t matter whether you take less damage or have a higher buffer to take it. That is why vitality a) does help against direct damage in content like fractals and is b) surprisingly efficient.

Additionally, there is one very practical reason for marauder stats, if berserker is too squishy for someone: there simply is no equivalent with toughness instead of vitality. All toughness-based stat combinations will either yield substantially reduced offensive stats for the same defense or vice versa.

GS 5 pull is really good. And since you rarely have both a mesmer and a guard in your frac party. A guard will be assumed to be doing the pulls. Pulling mobs together so the temp can blind them and your group can nuke them down is vital for frac running. So using gs is not a problem. All that said, having all the weapons. Hammer, gs, sword, scepter, torch, focus and even shield and knowing when and how to use them is what differs a good and a ok guard.

Greatsword5 is good in
1) Volcanic boss, Lava spawns phase
2) Cliffside boss, hammer phase
3) Urban Battleground, city battle
4) Aetherblade, cannon phase
5) Thaumanova, starting phase (but ppl mostly skip it nowadays xD) Subject 6 boss
6) Solid Ocean, upon reaching final boss, mobs clearing
7) Chaos Island, Mewmew robot phase
8) Nightmare, final boss, final phase for the cleaves (so you could rally xD)

CptAurellian.9537:

NumenorLord.6539:

How does it not make sense? It’s the definition and it’s what each of those stats do, you’re pretty wrong.

You still fail to get the actual context of what those stats do. Slavishly sticking to the wiki definitions doesn’t cut it.

A typical full berserker guardian will have (all values rounded) roughly 13,000 HP and 2250 armor. Armor scales in a way that doubling it reduces direct damage taken by 50%. Hence, to increase your survivability against direct damage by 100%, you can either double your HP or double your armor. Doing so requires 1300 vitality or 2250 toughness, respectively. Observation: vitality is much cheaper for this purpose, because guardian is a low-HP class.

Now toughness has one innate advantage in case of direct damage: it simply reduces damage taken, therefore lowering the amount of healing needed to get back to full health. Since condition damage usually does not put up that much pressure in fractals, the weakness of toughness is less relevant there. That would, in theory, probably balance out the “cheaper” price tag of vitality if you are healing-restricted.

However, for toughness to become superior, you actually need to be restricted by the amount of healing which is available over a long period of time. In my fractal experience, that happens rather rarely and most nasty situations could also be overcome by a larger health pool. As long as you can heal the damage taken, it doesn’t matter whether you take less damage or have a higher buffer to take it. That is why vitality a) does help against direct damage in content like fractals and is b) surprisingly efficient.

Additionally, there is one very practical reason for marauder stats, if berserker is too squishy for someone: there simply is no equivalent with toughness instead of vitality. All toughness-based stat combinations will either yield substantially reduced offensive stats for the same defense or vice versa.

Well, what I see here is a lot of assumptions made from personal experience and a derailed conversation from what OP is asking. If someone wants to run Marauder I couldn’t care less, will they be optimal? No. Will they still down and make his party down due longer fights? Probably. But if in your experience that works, as I said before I couldn’t care less. Yes it’s probably cheaper to build vitality than toughness but that does not change the fact that toughness negates direct damage while vitality denies condition damage, sorry but it is what it is even if you want/need to justify using marauder. Ever thought that maybe if you survived longer running FotM with Marauder it’s because Agony has a lower impact since you have more vitality to withstand it?

I also would like to learn about this topic right now I have an ascended sword torch greatsword and hammer and full zerker ascended gear is there anything else i might need to craft?

I would start with Scepter and then get Focus and Shield.

NumenorLord.6539:

CptAurellian.9537:

NumenorLord.6539:

How does it not make sense? It’s the definition and it’s what each of those stats do, you’re pretty wrong.

You still fail to get the actual context of what those stats do. Slavishly sticking to the wiki definitions doesn’t cut it.

A typical full berserker guardian will have (all values rounded) roughly 13,000 HP and 2250 armor. Armor scales in a way that doubling it reduces direct damage taken by 50%. Hence, to increase your survivability against direct damage by 100%, you can either double your HP or double your armor. Doing so requires 1300 vitality or 2250 toughness, respectively. Observation: vitality is much cheaper for this purpose, because guardian is a low-HP class.

Now toughness has one innate advantage in case of direct damage: it simply reduces damage taken, therefore lowering the amount of healing needed to get back to full health. Since condition damage usually does not put up that much pressure in fractals, the weakness of toughness is less relevant there. That would, in theory, probably balance out the “cheaper” price tag of vitality if you are healing-restricted.

However, for toughness to become superior, you actually need to be restricted by the amount of healing which is available over a long period of time. In my fractal experience, that happens rather rarely and most nasty situations could also be overcome by a larger health pool. As long as you can heal the damage taken, it doesn’t matter whether you take less damage or have a higher buffer to take it. That is why vitality a) does help against direct damage in content like fractals and is b) surprisingly efficient.

Additionally, there is one very practical reason for marauder stats, if berserker is too squishy for someone: there simply is no equivalent with toughness instead of vitality. All toughness-based stat combinations will either yield substantially reduced offensive stats for the same defense or vice versa.

Well, what I see here is a lot of assumptions made from personal experience and a derailed conversation from what OP is asking. If someone wants to run Marauder I couldn’t care less, will they be optimal? No. Will they still down and make his party down due longer fights? Probably. But if in your experience that works, as I said before I couldn’t care less. Yes it’s probably cheaper to build vitality than toughness but that does not change the fact that toughness negates direct damage while vitality denies condition damage, sorry but it is what it is even if you want/need to justify using marauder. Ever thought that maybe if you survived longer running FotM with Marauder it’s because Agony has a lower impact since you have more vitality to withstand it?

Vitality does not “deny” condition damage. Vitality does not “deny” or reduce any incoming damage. It simply increases the size of your health pool so you can sustain more damage before being downed. This obviously applies to both direct and condition damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAsfRnsABFChddCWdCEEhl4BrKA0AqXWbg81jSe/1/WgA-TBCBABZpM4MlgYp0LPNMVq+DO7PAwZAIgHBQAgDArv+6rv+6N8wDP8wDXKA9EaB-e
That’s the latest version of it.
What’s the difference with applying Burns between Scepter / Torch and Sword / Torch?
I would run Sword / Torch + Greatsword as Main weapons, other weapons I still have are Longbow, Scepter and Focus and I’ve read everywhere, that Scepter / Torch is the Main weapon for Burning?

Shostie.6435:

NumenorLord.6539:

CptAurellian.9537:

NumenorLord.6539:

How does it not make sense? It’s the definition and it’s what each of those stats do, you’re pretty wrong.

You still fail to get the actual context of what those stats do. Slavishly sticking to the wiki definitions doesn’t cut it.

A typical full berserker guardian will have (all values rounded) roughly 13,000 HP and 2250 armor. Armor scales in a way that doubling it reduces direct damage taken by 50%. Hence, to increase your survivability against direct damage by 100%, you can either double your HP or double your armor. Doing so requires 1300 vitality or 2250 toughness, respectively. Observation: vitality is much cheaper for this purpose, because guardian is a low-HP class.

Now toughness has one innate advantage in case of direct damage: it simply reduces damage taken, therefore lowering the amount of healing needed to get back to full health. Since condition damage usually does not put up that much pressure in fractals, the weakness of toughness is less relevant there. That would, in theory, probably balance out the “cheaper” price tag of vitality if you are healing-restricted.

However, for toughness to become superior, you actually need to be restricted by the amount of healing which is available over a long period of time. In my fractal experience, that happens rather rarely and most nasty situations could also be overcome by a larger health pool. As long as you can heal the damage taken, it doesn’t matter whether you take less damage or have a higher buffer to take it. That is why vitality a) does help against direct damage in content like fractals and is b) surprisingly efficient.

Additionally, there is one very practical reason for marauder stats, if berserker is too squishy for someone: there simply is no equivalent with toughness instead of vitality. All toughness-based stat combinations will either yield substantially reduced offensive stats for the same defense or vice versa.

Well, what I see here is a lot of assumptions made from personal experience and a derailed conversation from what OP is asking. If someone wants to run Marauder I couldn’t care less, will they be optimal? No. Will they still down and make his party down due longer fights? Probably. But if in your experience that works, as I said before I couldn’t care less. Yes it’s probably cheaper to build vitality than toughness but that does not change the fact that toughness negates direct damage while vitality denies condition damage, sorry but it is what it is even if you want/need to justify using marauder. Ever thought that maybe if you survived longer running FotM with Marauder it’s because Agony has a lower impact since you have more vitality to withstand it?

Vitality does not “deny” condition damage. Vitality does not “deny” or reduce any incoming damage. It simply increases the size of your health pool so you can sustain more damage before being downed. This obviously applies to both direct and condition damage.

It does, what you wrote actually is the definition of denying damage, having less impact is denying and no, it does not apply in the same measure to direct damage, which is negated by toughness.

One more thing, focusing on what you assume I said wrong won’t make your invalid arguments, that come from personal experience, right.