Guild Wars 2

I have a guardian currently at level 25 and my main focus with my 80s is WvW. I’m not sure if I’m going to like the playstyle in WvW. It seems a guardian would have trouble getting around the map quickly, and not output especially good damage.

So IF you like playing a guardian in WvW, what’s your role, and what do you enjoy about it?

defend tower gates is nice on a guard.

and, in zergs; try to soak up dmg and die first in zergs so that others can dps, do that by being flashy and disturbing, but hard to kill.

There are a few threads already with some nice solo or small group roaming builds.

Amins.3710 has a really good thread and he posts regular videos.

I’ve recently been trying a variation of the Boonway Build by Kharel Arhew.1437 for my WvW roaming build. Its a nice balanced build with plenty of mobility via Swiftness and other sources.

Read through the forums, there are good suggestions (boonway, healway, crithammer). You can be tanky and hard to kill, burst healer, very strong boon giver: You just have to experiment.

As for mobility – I see a lot of threads about our lack of mobility. When in a zerg you get swiftness all the time; when solo roaming you can use “Retreat!”, staff #3, Judge’s Intervention, and even sword #2. It’s not as bad as you might think.

I play a Soldier (Power, Toughness, Vitality) Guardian. Power’s almost at the highest possible (3400~), 20% crit chance and 25% crit damage, 2900 Armor and 20k Health unbuffed.

The coolest part about playing this Guardian in WvW is being a mini-fortress, getting in the middle of 20, dropping a Symbol of Wrath / Binding Blades / Whirling Wrath, downing 3~5+ and running out.

When needed, I pull my Staff and grant a bunch of Might and Heals around me.
Wall of Reflection in the middle of the field, doesn’t kill anyone, but most of the time sorta prevents the enemy advances for a while.

Another great thing is surviving glass cannon bursts. Those thieves who pop Quickness and I see the Heartseeker spam (by then I already got hit by Cloak and Dagger and Backstab) and my health is still above 50%.

Or tanking the Warrior’s Bolas + Hundred Blades. Even cooler is Symbol of Wrath + Whirling Wrath when the Warrior does this. I get down to 50% or less, but so does he. He probably popped utilities in the process, and I still have everything up.

The annoying part: They notice they won’t kill me and they start running, and I can’t catch them. At all.

During Attack Sieges I’m a support profession, I just stand still dropping Symbols, Orb of Light and Empower while my fellow Elementalists rain down on walls. I can stand a pretty good time under Arrow Cart rains, so I’m one who keeps ressing everyone around me.
During Defend Sieges I can play support with Wall of Reflection and Shield of the Avenger for those on top of walls, or sometimes I drop down and try to down/scare people away from the Rams, or just to scare those rangeds. Tome of Wrath sometimes during defend sieges is also awesome too. Feels like an Elementalist on crack.

What’s annoying 2: Dying when I go inside the enemy zerg to attempt a kill, or when I’m trampled because of my lack of “mobility” – though Guardians have pretty decent ways of escapes, they’re subpar compared to an Elementalist or Thief.

For killing masses and when I get kitten off after my 2nd or 3rd death to the same zerg, I log on my Elementalist and I get my revenge getting thousands of kills without dying.
For playing in a specialized group though, the Guardian feels awesome with it’s strong support/damage capabilities.

PS: For running around the map, Greatsword & Staff, reduced two handed CDs. I also use Rune of the Pack so I have a 9.6 sec Swiftness every 12 sec, when it’s down I swap to Greatsword and Leap of Faith. It’s pretty decent to walk around.

What I like is that I see threads like these that remind me what the Rangers forum could be like.

I currently run a tanky dps build on my Guardian, with my primary stat focuses being power and vitality. I try to balance out the rest of my stats so I have decent crit chance, toughness, crit damage, healing power and condition damage. My weapons of choice are either sword and shield / scepter and torch, or hammer / scepter and torch. Utilities I go for Judge’s Intervention, Retreat, and Contemplations of Purity so I’m super mobile and can turn any / all conditions on me into boons at the drop of a hat. My rune set is the Vampirism set to I have 5% lifesteal normally, 100% lifesteal after healing, and at 10% hp I become invulnerable via mist form if things get hairy. For traits I have immobilizes place 5 stacks of vulnerability, 20% shout cooldown, and MF / Meditation cooldown so JI and CoP not only heal me but have a lower cooldown. I swap between the 20% 2h cooldown or the 90 toughness shield trait depending on which I feel like rolling with that day as well. I’m also traited so that when enemies are on fire I do 10% extra damage, so I abuse both the passive and active versions of our F1 when I can, and keep an enemy ignited via torch #4 when F1 is on cooldown. It’s an awesome counter build to thieves and any class that build glass cannon or relies on condition damage because not only can I get 3 aegis’ up back to back (passive aegis popup, Retreat, F3,) but I have enough sustain / condition removal to essentially get free buffs when they try to stack conditions on me. And since the enemy is almost always ignited I’m doing tons of bonus damage from both the ignite effect and the 10% free additional damage to them. The only counters I’ve seen to this build have been shatter / confusion Mesmers just because those confusion stacks really mess me up as I’m swapping out weapon sets constantly during a fight to maximize my damage output.

^^ wall – o – text just crit me. []D plz.

Love the guardian.

Roles I fulfill:
1) DPS & Epidemic / Condition Removal
2) Stability for Stomping / Escape from “Bombing”
3) Dmg Soak
4) 1st one in, last one res’d.

Other roles, for which I don’t:
5) Boon Dispenser
6) Healer

Lorelei.3918:

What I like is that I see threads like these that remind me what the Rangers forum could be like.

Is this a compliment?

I also enjoy this forum a lot more than the Elementalist’s (another one I read often). Maybe because here we get some actual discussion on some interesting stuff rather than just complaints and QQs about nerfs.

In zergs, I do not enjoy playing Guardian, however, it is still an extremely handy class to have in the zerg. Your heals, aegis, survivability, and projectile block/reflect keeps people alive. The problem with that of course is that you aren’t rewarded for support and it’s just plain boring.

However, I really enjoy roaming solo or in small groups and flipping camps. The Guardian is capable of some very nice DPS paired with extreme survivability with the right stuff.