Guild Wars 2

Greetings, Guardian people! I need help! I’m new to the Guardian, and I’ve created a couple of builds that I’d say are pretty good for me. The problem is, I don’t have experience with said builds. >.>

The builds, unbuffed…
Build #1 – Soldier/Berserker Mix
Build #2 – Soldier/Cleric Mix

Build #1 is a decent hybrid in my opinion, while build #2 screams BUNKER! The problem with build #2 is that I want to be able to kill people 1v1, and it may be too bunkery! I’m not sure, though.

Things I do in WvW:
- Escort and defend yaks. (I’ll be carrying a Staff in my bag for this.)
- Attempt to hold camps, alone.
- Attempt to hold towers, alone or with very few people.
- Smaller group (5 – 15) tower sieges. Most times I’m just a part of the group, but there are times that I lead.

I tend to stay back home when in WvW. I build siege on towers, upgrade stuff, defend camps, etc. I’m always the first to call incs, so I need to stay alive (vs 5+ people) as long as possible in order for the zerg to get to the camp/tower before it’s taken. Also, I plan on getting a commander tag eventually. It’ll be more for defense than offense (so I can finally say “ON MY TAG AT xxx” when a big group rolls through trying to take something important), but I will lead some small-scale attacks, too.

So, which build is best for my needs? If you have any trait, skill, or gear suggestions, feel free to let me know! The only thing I for sure don’t want to change is my Greatsword + Sword/Shield weapon combo. Thanks!!!

P.S. I have no idea what sigils or food buffs to use.

Edit: Oh, and I’ve been doing all of this on a Ranger if that helps at all. There have been so many times when I’ve said either “Dang, I wish I was a Warrior…” or “Dang, I wish I was a Guardian…” Much more of the latter. xD

Bumpity bump. XP

i will probably suggest the first one…
remember that you are in wvw and there is enough defence that can save you from a massive attack. So if you want to survive you need a nice defence but also a good attack in order to kill people fast… anyway knight/berserker will be better than soldier/berserker for your aims

Sadly there’s no such thing as an ideal do-everything build, and you’ve got a pretty broad range of activities there. If your goal is to hold things alone, you don’t have a whole lot of other concerns besides making yourself as powerful as possible, but any time you’re in a group you definitely owe it to your group to picket their defenses as well as yours.

That said: Both of these are group-centric and not solo minded at all. You’re sacrificing a lot of personal damage for a lot of group support. PoV and Absolute Resolution are generally thought of as some of the least selfish support options. The second build is a terrible use of Cleric’s gear since you have zero useful heals to take advantage of your healing power. You only really see Clerics gear used in conjunction with healing weapons like Mace and Staff on account of their direct heals and Regeneration output. So keep that in mind.

foofad.5162:

The second build is a terrible use of Cleric’s gear since you have zero useful heals to take advantage of your healing power. You only really see Clerics gear used in conjunction with healing weapons like Mace and Staff on account of their direct heals and Regeneration output. So keep that in mind.

Slight disagreement on his healing power being entirely useless in build #2: he has 15 points in honor, which scales 1:1 with healing power, and I believe the shield has a .8 scale on its second activation.

That being said, if you’re running healing power, staff and mace/shield are your best weapons to take advantage of it (greatest number of weapon skills that take advantage of healing power).

Empower scales 1:1 as well and doesn’t require you to throw away dodges that should be used to avoid big hits, imo.

Depends on the situation. If you have 15 in honor, chances are you have permanent (or near-permanent) vigor anyway, so using a dodge every now and then for healing when your endurance is full isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and you’re rarely at full health in WvW except out-of-combat. That being the case, the extra healing power will help keep you topped off. You can dodge 4 times for every Empower you can get off if you have vigor (ignoring the cooldown reduction; that reduces it to 3 times per Empower).

Your crit chance is low try aiming for 40%

This is the build our close to what i run my staff has the 25 stacks of healing power putting me at around 1240 healing power and with food and traits 3600 toughness and about 21k HP my dodges heal me for over 1100 HP if there is a warrior my toughness gets to 3700 or 3800 dont remember but i usually run with 2 other guardians i swap stakitten once i get the 25 stacks to another staff with soldiers crest

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR5elYgaCXFyvDfIFRuAbBYPw4H741jEKxHC-j0yAocA0FMHQQOBWEN2KLR0YHAVpHI9Cm6EWpmUXSR0qBA-w

Kharel Arhew.1437:

Depends on the situation. If you have 15 in honor, chances are you have permanent (or near-permanent) vigor anyway, so using a dodge every now and then for healing when your endurance is full isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and you’re rarely at full health in WvW except out-of-combat. That being the case, the extra healing power will help keep you topped off. You can dodge 4 times for every Empower you can get off if you have vigor (ignoring the cooldown reduction; that reduces it to 3 times per Empower).

Empower also heals for more than twice what Daring does. With 1k healing power you’re looking at 2.5k from Empower and 1.15k from Daring. Detonate an Orb of Light for an additional 1300 every 8-12 seconds. So if you’re rotating between Empower and Orb detonations and Mace every swap cooldown, getting in 2 full mace AA chains (500~ healing each), plus the regen from Mace (255/tick), focus, or another 1500 from detonating Shield of Absorbtion, and well…

Point is, Clerics with only Selfless Daring is not nearly as useful as Clerics with Mace or Staff, to the point of being silly without at least one or the other if not both.

foofad.5162:

Kharel Arhew.1437:

Depends on the situation. If you have 15 in honor, chances are you have permanent (or near-permanent) vigor anyway, so using a dodge every now and then for healing when your endurance is full isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and you’re rarely at full health in WvW except out-of-combat. That being the case, the extra healing power will help keep you topped off. You can dodge 4 times for every Empower you can get off if you have vigor (ignoring the cooldown reduction; that reduces it to 3 times per Empower).

Empower also heals for more than twice what Daring does. With 1k healing power you’re looking at 2.5k from Empower and 1.15k from Daring. Detonate an Orb of Light for an additional 1300 every 8-12 seconds. So if you’re rotating between Empower and Orb detonations and Mace every swap cooldown, getting in 2 full mace AA chains (500~ healing each), plus the regen from Mace (255/tick), focus, or another 1500 from detonating Shield of Absorbtion, and well…

Point is, Clerics with only Selfless Daring is not nearly as useful as Clerics with Mace or Staff, to the point of being silly without at least one or the other if not both.

Alrighty. :o

Thanks everyone. So, Foofy … may I call you Foofy? Foofy, what would you suggest for a bunker Greatsword + Sword/Shield Guardian? Also, how much Power/Precision should I aim for to be able to do decent damage?

I’m not really the authority on bunker builds, and I’m not even really sure that you can be a bunker build without capture points. That’s what “bunker” means – you can sit on a capture point in sPvP and not die. Since WvW is by its nature much more open and mobile, it makes much less sense to build specifically for durability since you are no longer talking about defending a small static location against at most a handfull of player. Instead you’re talking about defending a large open space and a half dozen NPCs against a horde potentially.

All that is to say that in my opinion, building for tanking alone in WvW is not wise, and instead you should build for a balanced approach at the tankiest. You need to be able to kill the glassy players and run away from the tanky players that can’t kill you in time. I know of a few hybrid builds in the 50-65% of full DPS build range that you might like though, if you want that. I’ve never spent much time with trying to tank WvW.

I would use a combo of two builds depending on what you feel like doing as its gonna be very hard to get a build that’s good at both roaming and holding down a point.

So here is the build I use for roaming. Its got good damage and good survivability but is not a bunker. This build is fairly high skill level and can be tough to get good with it but once you get it down, its deadly. Remember to use virtue of justice when in a fight it gives you might and retal while giving them blind, vuln and burn plus it gets renewed each time a foe dies.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAsfRlYgSDHHyNEf4ESmiVCBtUAQE01DIiiaIA-jU0AocIsVApGwEGQKUgyeasJQhoCHQRlRjVpDoWwUmJVbGZPOg3AzdkUHSklCgiFAA-w

And heres a bunker build, you can swap on GS S/Sh and just change one trait and it should work quite well. I have used variations on this in wvw but I find it annoying because without friends you will die against more than one oponent…it will take bloody ages but at some point you will be healing less per second than they are damaging.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRApd5dlUgiCnFyKEfIFRugaBYPw4H941DK+QGC-jEyAorBRTNCNFKQZvioxWZLiGreBTpSEV7SIiqBA-w

foofad.5162:

I’m not really the authority on bunker builds, and I’m not even really sure that you can be a bunker build without capture points. That’s what “bunker” means – you can sit on a capture point in sPvP and not die. Since WvW is by its nature much more open and mobile, it makes much less sense to build specifically for durability since you are no longer talking about defending a small static location against at most a handfull of player. Instead you’re talking about defending a large open space and a half dozen NPCs against a horde potentially.

All that is to say that in my opinion, building for tanking alone in WvW is not wise, and instead you should build for a balanced approach at the tankiest. You need to be able to kill the glassy players and run away from the tanky players that can’t kill you in time. I know of a few hybrid builds in the 50-65% of full DPS build range that you might like though, if you want that. I’ve never spent much time with trying to tank WvW.

Show me the hybrid builds! ^-^

Thanks, Lurock!

I’d take Justice is Blind over Zealot’s Speed in that second build. You need more damage mitigation and that’s a good one. Also, your crit chance is so piddly anyway you’re better off with Purity or Strength in Numbers. I’d also take Writ of Exaltation over Persistence unless you’re using a hammer, because you’ll want to cast as wide a net as possible to get AH ticks when people are moving around.

zTales.4392:

foofad.5162:

I’m not really the authority on bunker builds, and I’m not even really sure that you can be a bunker build without capture points. That’s what “bunker” means – you can sit on a capture point in sPvP and not die. Since WvW is by its nature much more open and mobile, it makes much less sense to build specifically for durability since you are no longer talking about defending a small static location against at most a handfull of player. Instead you’re talking about defending a large open space and a half dozen NPCs against a horde potentially.

All that is to say that in my opinion, building for tanking alone in WvW is not wise, and instead you should build for a balanced approach at the tankiest. You need to be able to kill the glassy players and run away from the tanky players that can’t kill you in time. I know of a few hybrid builds in the 50-65% of full DPS build range that you might like though, if you want that. I’ve never spent much time with trying to tank WvW.

Show me the hybrid builds! ^-^

Thanks, Lurock!

This is one of the better ones I’ve run in WvW.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.4|c.1g.h1j.d.1g.h2|2.1g.h15|1c.a7.1c.74.1g.74.1c.74.1c.74.1c.74|1g.67.1p.67.1p.67.1p.67.1p.67.8g.67|a2.u6ab.u18c.0.0|2e.7|w.15.12.13.1i|e

Run whatever food you want. Good Fury uptime, decent health and armor, extremely high burst potential via Shield of Wrath, Zealot’s Defense, and Mighty Blow. Downside: No sources of swiftness, but you do have two teleports. Decent condition cleansing between the two Meditations and Focus. Hits like a truck.

If you feel like you aren’t tanky enough, swap the runes for Melandru and jewels for Soldier. You may find that you really don’t need the -condition duration though on account of all your cleansing; that being the case, swap to Wurm instead, which gives you a decent amount of damage on top of an extra 1.5k health. You can also just go ahead and commit to -condition duration and rock Melandru and Lemongrass Poultry Soup for maximum reduction.

this is ze best hybrid / all situations build