Guild Wars 2

So I’m a casual player on GW2 and I want other people’s opinions on how I should build my guardian. I just got her to 80 and I will probably go down the berserker road because from what I’ve read it seems the most affective(effective?).

I like using a mace/focus and a greatsword, so all I’m wondering is where I could get a good pair of berserker armor/weapons that will be good for PvE.

And if you think any other build besides berserker would be better please put in some input, I don’t know how guardians are usually built.

Thankyou

You can get berserker armor from doing either Citadel of Flame (CoF) or Arah to get tokens, and use the dungeon tokens to buy berserker armor from the dungeon merchant in lions arch. Or you could just buy the armor directly from the trading post, but that will cost you a bit of gold

Berserker is the best. CoE or Crucible of Eternity also has Berserker gear, in addition to CoF and Arah.

The following links can give you information on the dungeons if you have never done them before as well as some builds.

http://gw2dungeons.net/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-Playing-Guardian-in-Dungeons/first#content

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

The best place to start if here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

All gear is listed/linked.

No one yet mentioned WvW and Karma gear. Neither can be salvaged or Mystic Forged, so any runes applied are there permanently. But they might be the easiest to get and least cost ( 5g44s+ 950 badges or 242k karma).

Good Luck!

Here’s a complete build guide for you OP, it contains all you need for the berserker guardian build in dungeons/PvE. It is the most effective build for dungeons.

I recommend you aim for scholar runes and Night/Force sigils for your first set. Subsequent sets can have x Slaying sigils for daytime dungeons.

Dungeon build guide: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/12501056-dnt-guardian-build-62415

DPS calculations:
http://imgur.com/a/ncGxx#0
http://imgur.com/a/ncGxx#1

Your weapon sets are a good choice, also consider trying out torch instead of focus for increased damage.

Acquiring gear:
As for where to get berserker gear I recommend an easy way which is to do these dungeons listed easiest to hardest:

• Citadel of Flame
• Crucible of Eternity
• Arah

Turn in their tokens for berserker stat gear from the dungeon token merchant in Lion’s Arch, be sure to select the correct stats.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon_merchant

Ascended gear:
When considering Ascended gear, start off with exotic and then aim to get ascended Accessories > Weapons > Armor. These can be acquired via:

• Guild Missions,
• Laurels + Ecto turn in,
• WvW tokens + Ecto
• Fractals.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ascended_trinkets

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

I got now a question on the part, “till you get celestial” – why celestial?

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

I wouldn’t go with burning yet as we don’t know if Anet is going to nerf it.

Direct damage still the safest way at the moment.

In dungeons, the time you spend building up condis is not worthwhile vs direct damage given how fast bosses die. Personally I think it’d be great to see more variety, where there’s more choice but as it stands atm zerk is still going to be the most suitable.

I am however quite happy about the new meta build including a torch and getting to throw it multiple times due to the trait, it’s a refreshing change for a weapon seldom used before the patch.

DarkSnowman.8527:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

I got now a question on the part, “till you get celestial” – why celestial?

These gears are all worse than berserker for pve. We tried sinister vs berserker and it was 14% less dps without unscathed and only gets worse with that applied. Burning isn’t worth gearing for. It is a nice added bonus though.

If you’re a casual player who does both PvE and WvW content, you’re gonna want to get two independent gear sets for these very different play styles. For dungeons and most general PvE content, it’s hard to go wrong with full Berzerkers, but you almost certainly will not use zerk for WvW, unless you’re a solo power roamer. For WvW, the most common gear has probably been Soldiers, with other gear like Knight’s sometimes seen. Now, with the current changes to burning, some people are experimenting with condi gear like Carrion, Dire, Sinister. Not sure about celestial anymore. I think the consensus is that it took a very heavy nerf with the ferocity patch a while back.

If the main goal is PvE, you could try a modified Altruistic/Voice build for high utility/survivability without sacrificing too much damage. Its a power build that trades high crit damage (Ferocity) for extra toughness, sustained healing and a crap ton of utility. This build worked for anything thats not a speed run, and recycles extremely quickly; making it my favorite for Dungeon pugs, World boss and PvE wandering.

[If anyone has tweaking suggestions in light of the new game meta, I’m wanting to hear it]

I ran this before the trait changes, and am in the process of retooling it for the new game meta. It has suboptimal DPS compared to the new meta, but you aren’t bound to a weapon set to make it work. The old target was to have ~2500 Power and around 2500 Defense (Armor+Tough), 15k health (which is about +400 vit over your base stats, 130 of which is off trooper runes) and some Healing to boost altruistic and Symbols (if traited), and runs Trooper runes for the shout bonus. Gearing is up to you, but since ascended rings/amulets are cheap you can get off stats (like soldiers or clerics) through them, along with a zerks sets to swap out for more focused builds. That way you can keep a few set of dungeon zerks armor with different rune sets for different builds very cheaply.

The 2 core specs are Valor and Honor (most builds run at least one of the 2 anyway). The third is a choice based on weapon, although Virtues gives a nice burning boost (at least until they nerf it). Solo fighting will be a bit slower, but you can keep the momentum of any group going very easily.

-Traits-
Valor: Any Adept, Strength in Numbers, and Altruistic Healing
Honor: Any Adept, Empowering Might, and Pure of Voice (or Writ of Persistence if you have symbol heavy weapons)

Virtues (my temp setup): Any adept, Supreme Justice, Permeating Wrath (or Battle Presence for world bosses). The goal easy passive burning and group support.
-Or-
Zeal for symbol synergy for direct damage. Radiance isn’t recommended since it needs either virtues or zeal to really make the burning work for you.

For utilities “Hold the line” and “Stand your Ground” are favored for their short cool downs, which aids cleansing. Use Shelter for healing; the blocks are just better then any benefit you could get from “Receive the light”. The elite is your choice. If running virtues, you can use Renewal to burst your virtues and recover them, but Wrath is better if you run zeal to give massive burst damage Great Sword.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

So do you get celestial armor in fractals? A friend of mine was telling me I should get celestial, but I’ve never done fractals.

Girdie.7480:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

So do you get celestial armor in fractals? A friend of mine was telling me I should get celestial, but I’ve never done fractals.

You can get ascended weapon and armor boxes in fractals. You get to pick from a set of stats given the box type you get. You can now change them to what you want if you got something you didn’t through the mystic forge. The info given is wrong though. Berserker has the best stats for guardian for pve. Condi gear leads to lower dps. You only want to get celestial if you want something tankier at a loss of some dps.

Berserker guardian builds for max dps, Zealot for carrier builds (~15% lower DPS, 120% higher HPS, double the AoE blocks/s). Mace/focus|GS is a Zealot-type build while full DPS is GS|sword/torch. Then there’s also zerk Hammer|Mace/Torch for relatively high (non-maxed) dps with a lower skill floor, for a more relaxed playstyle.

I never favoured going full dps on a class that doesn’t have particularly high dps in the first place, but if it’s your only character, different story. Burning stacks are insufficient for Sinister to be as effective, stay away from that.

Celestials are an ele/engineer stat. Mixes of Knight and Berserker have both greater DPS and survivability than celestial on the guardian.

Girdie.7480:

So I’m a casual player on GW2 and I want other people’s opinions on how I should build my guardian. I just got her to 80 and I will probably go down the berserker road because from what I’ve read it seems the most affective(effective?).

I like using a mace/focus and a greatsword, so all I’m wondering is where I could get a good pair of berserker armor/weapons that will be good for PvE.

And if you think any other build besides berserker would be better please put in some input, I don’t know how guardians are usually built.

Thankyou

If you are new the best way is to farm citadel of flame explorable path 1 and 2 for tokens to get the exotic berserker armor and weapon pieces. For jewelry you can either farm pristine tokens in fractals of the mists dungeon for ascended berserkers or just craft them or buy exotic berserker jewelry from trading post if you don’t want to craft.

Useful to join a guild as well, the commendations from guild missions allow you to get relatively cheap ascended accessories.

Ascended amulet is from Laurels. Think it was 25 + 200 badges of honor in WvW for the best deal.

Zealot trinkets don’t exist so if going that route those slots are taken by berserker, while if you’re going the berserker route it’s still going to be berserker jewelry, so…