Guild Wars 2

Hello,
I got a problem with my 80 guardian. At the moment i mostly do dungeons and world explore ( events, achievements ). I got a full zerker gear from CoF, but thing is that on all dungeons im dying from just few hits, when light armor mates still live.
I decided that now i want to focus to get a more deffensive gear, which allows me to survive much more and protect my party a bit. I checked stats on armors on wiki and Im still confused what would be better: soldier or knight.
My goal is to be moslty deffensive but be able to do some dps. So I dont really know what is more important – toughness or vitality.
Next thing are traits. I have no idea what would be best for this kind of guardian. Id like to use greatsword and shield with mace/scepter/sword.

Please help me,
Thanks in advance.

Knight’s is virtually always the better choice than soldier’s, at least in PvE. However, I have the impression that the very first thing you should learn is combat awareness. That means right positioning, dodging and the timely use of your defensive abilities. If you die from just a few hits, you are not supposed to eat those hits but avoid them instead.

CptAurellian.9537:

Knight’s is virtually always the better choice than soldier’s

^ this
knights and zerker are the two best prefixs in pve atm

You shouldn’t be dying in dungeons even with all zerker. Do you have Vigorous Precision? If you don’t, consider picking it up, even if it’s just by dropping 5 points in Honor to get it. Then learn to dodge, knockback, blind, and Aegis when you need it. Guardians have a lot of active CC and blocks – you really shouldn’t be taking hits, except for small ones from trash.

So in game, there is no something like a real tank who takes all hits and can survive. I know about dodging, but sometimes it is just not enough.
In TA dungeon, blossoms take me so much hp. Once i was there with tanky guardian – mix of tough and vit he said – and he could run around them and still live.

So should i roll for knight gear then? What about traits? As i said mostly survival and bit of dps.

Thanks

The trick to not dying in the blooms is not standing in the blooms.

preface, I am very new and my opinion may mean very little.

Just for consideration your armor does not have to be all one set. I had all knights armor but I wanted to increase my vitality and critical damage, so now I use 3 pieces of knights and 3 pieces of valkyrie. Is this optimal? I have no idea, but I like it because I feel the extra vitality gives me more survivability. Also I feel its gives me a good base mix of precision, crit damage, vitality and toughness, which allows me to manipulate my stats situationaly by changing out my accessories.

you must understand game mechanism, first of all.
dodge is your best friend, no matter what armor you use.
However recomanded would be to have over 15000 hp /2600 defence.
Full defensive armor will not allow you to facetank dungeons, you must use your CC to avoid damage (scepter imobilize, gs pull , staf line of warding… etc)

OK, but still I really know nothing about traits i should go for
Cavendish actually yours answer was most helpful..
So what about mixing soldier and knight one? id have some power and vit and tough.

Well, what I did was really stupid and expensive. I bought multiple sets of exotic armor before I understood what I wanted my stats to look like or what was important to me. After I had an idea what I wanted I started mixing and matching until I had close to what I wanted. A much cheaper and more efficient way to do this would be to play around with gw2buildcraft or a similar build calculator to see what traits and armor will give you the stats you want.

If you dont know what stats you want to achieve there is a pretty good thread in this forum where other guardians post their stats and what armor they use to achieve those numbers.

As for what traits you want it depends on what you want your role to be. Some people make guardian builds to maximize their dps and others build to increase survivability and support. There are a lot of threads with different ideas for builds that will explain each trait and why its good for that build. Ultimately you will have to just try different different builds and different traits and see what you like best.

This one of the more popular builds and the one I am currently using. I hope this helps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWfgaA_MJw0&list=PLzYy8FVzP3HauPQvucrlqudKTQFkoa4kg&index=1

Also, you seems focused on power, vitality and toughness. Dont overlook precision which improves your crit chance. Certain traits are triggered on crits so increasing their frequency is desirable.

Especially for AH builds, precision is in most cases way more useful than vitality since quite a lot of your selfheal depends on Empowering Might procs, which in turn require a decent crit chance.

Just been in Arah with mates from guild. It appears that i had lowest amonut of hp.
Other guardian had 18k, engi had 21k, and mine was only 12k…

I feel like i should really so something about that

Did you die a lot? Because if not, then you’re golden. I haven’t had more than 15k HP in months and I do fine in dungeons.

Well, yeah, running with full set of something is not really always that good.

Like me for example, I run with full Soldier gear. I am most likely gimping myself and the party more than I help.

Though it has worked so far though, lol.

You are definitely gimping yourself. The question is whether or not your utility adds enough damage to the party to make it worthwhile.

Clerics!
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bigred.7639:

Hey what is the “Soldiers” set called by piece i just don’t know where to get them from. is there a Karma vender?

You can get soldiers armor from dungeons, AC or HOTW, you can also get then from karma vendors in Orr.

To op, I use mix of soldier, knights and berserker on my guardian. This is how i have them at the moment:
Soldiers – helm, chest, legs
Knights – shoulder, gloves, boots
berserker – weapons
trinkets – berserker amulet (acended), everything else soldier with ruby jewels

atm i have 1.9k power, 2.9k armor. 17k hp, 40% crit chance (5% from superior sigil of accuracy) and 75% crit damage. i am gonna soon swap out my soldier trinkets and get full acended. 2 acended soldiers rings. 2 acended berserker earrings, and soldiers backpiece. I will be giving up bit of hp and 1% crit damage in the process but i will increase my power and crit chance. I use AH build 0/15/30/20/5 but with what I have now it works awesome fore me in dungeons and WvW.

bigred.7639:

Hey what is the “Soldiers” set called by piece i just don’t know where to get them from. is there a Karma vender?

To add to the previous poster: Soldiers gear is Power primary, Vitality and Toughness secondary.