Guild Wars 2

strictly WvW

Hey folks, I have now been searching and gathering knowledge for a while and I want to share my thoughts on my to-be WvW Guardian build and would love all sorts of critics (even harsh ones) upon these thoughts. To ease up reading, I have tried to sum up and organize it all.

My objective

• A versatile (group + roam) tanky-a-bit-over-enough with sustain damage and massive CC (not looking for burst).
• “Support/Helping others” is NOT my priority as I will be going between groups and solo/small party.

Build guidelines I found
The Healway (typically 0 / 0 / 10 / 30 / 30 shouts and virtues, GS and Staff) <— seems boring
Altruistic Healer (typically 0 / 0 / 30 / 30 / 0 with 10 for free allocation, Hammer or GS and Staff) <— group dependent
Sword/Focus variations (which seemed to be more focused on small group fights) <— interesting but not viable in group

My acknowledgements

• I can’t “live off” a single set of weapons
• I need to apply constant pressure (since I don’t dot)
• Symbols can play a big role in guardian DPS (and tagging)
• Shelter is the best heal (blocks in WvW seem to be uber).
• Player skill makes the guardian more then traits and weapons
• Uptime of Virtues passive is nearly always better (can you confirm this?)

What I love about guardians

• Love Staff + Hammer double warding
• Love Hammer CC and sustain dps + protection symbol
• Love 1800 teleport gap shorten with Sword #2 + Judge’s Intervention (w/ blind or burn)

Not so much into

• I do NOT want AH (no player dependency please, despite being OP)
• I am not that fond of GS because it’s mainly burst and I already have other professions for that.
• Scepter seems boring (slow-mo blue balls?)

My dreams

To max Chill uptime with Glacial Heart (hammer on crit) + Chill sigils/runes (on hit, on be hit, on swap) for insane chill uptime. I think though I’d need to give up too much to make this work and I’m also unsure how (in)efficient this would be when trains collide.

Interesting chains

1. Hammer + Sword/??? : 1800 teleport w/ burn -> hammer immobilize -> hammer ward lock ->hammer auto sustain dmg -> hammer #4 CC before Ward disappears -> Sword #3
2. Hammer + Staff : Symbols (larger + longer) -> Wards

Utilities
I’m very keen on mixing 3 different types of utilities:

• Judge’s intervention (makes up for not having the GS leap) (+ stun breaks)
• “Stand Your Ground!” stability shout (+ stun breaks)
• Signet of Judgment 10% damage reduce (+ stun breaks)

Why not others

• “Hold the Line!”: hammer will be setting protection symbols constantly

What to swap for
Good practice will be to have a swap-able skill and I’d say:

• in big groups Judges intervention swaps for some Consecration

Stats

I’m completely lost here. Also because the whole build needs to blend together.

Toughness: I know the minimum Armor in WvW is advised to be 2800. Where around are you comfortable without sacrificing too much other stats?

Vitality: Also no idea and probably goes hand in hand with Toughness.

Power vs Crits: what is best for Hammer sustain dmg in distribution of Power/Precision/Ferocity? I have the feeling that high power, mid-high precision, mid-low ferocity would wield best results if aiming at some crit procs… but hammer slow hitting also makes me feel like high power, mid precision, mid ferocity could wield better crits… or how would 100% focus on power feel like? Is there such thing as a critless truck-hitting :o?

Condition damage and Healing power: is any of these worth ANY investment? I mean cond damage could affect burn… that’s it. Healing power I’m not so confident how much it is worth vs +Toughness or +Vitality. How does it make Virtue #2 and Shelter scale? I couldn’t find a common agreement anywhere I searched.

The rest

My remaining doubts reside on survivability factors and I am aware I will probably have to sacrifice something to get a nice balance of beefiness and survivability. Ultimately… what traits to use.

Vigor uptime and dodges… I love dodges… but does this mean I need to have crit chance to proc “Vigorous Precision” minor? Or are guardians supposed to rely more on blocks? (I am used to insane vigor uptime on my Ele)

Protection I get enough from Hammer symbol, but what Symbol trait is a must and what is not so needed? I could feel 2 seconds and larger area are both insanely helpful.

Look forward for y’all insights ^^

don’t hold back, but try to be constructive

Eva (morunas)

So much misinformation in ezeriel’s post…
Anyways, guardians are in a really good spot in wvw. They are essential in both small scale and large scale, as well as being beasts in roaming if specced and played properly.

If you don’t want altruistic healing, i would probably go with something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApWolDxVI8DNBFRl5LseYnALwEcZAkgA-TVyHwABeCA+UG8QHwSleeU/R3+DxVCC4SAcRTAZAYGDA-w

Couple of points about the build:
-It is the tankiest version, so you can change the gear if you want more damage.
-You can swap retributive armor for either strength in numbers or cooldown reduction for JI
-Your role would be to cc enemies, support your group and secure stomps/ress.
-Damage would be decent, but you probably wouldn’t be able to kill anything solo, it would require more dps oriented gear.
-Precast ring of warding and JI combo is a fun way to get the opponnent to panic
-For solo i’d swap staff for gs or sword/focus

Other:
-Symbol traits are generaly not worth it, imo. You would give up too much to be able to take those, and possibly skip better traits.
-Stats depend alot on personal preference and what you feel most comfortable on. I started really tanky, and for roaming just started shaving off the tanky gear for more damage until i found the spot i like.
-Vigor is very important for guardians, especialy because of the selfless daring trait. About 20-30% crit chance should be enough to keep a decent uptime from the Vigorous Precision trait.
-Selfless daring scales really well with healing power, virtue of resolve and shelter less, but still decent. I prefer to have about 400-500 healing power in these kind of builds, it adds up nicely.

Hope i helped at least a bit. Those are from my personal experience, so if other guardians here have some different thoughts on the points i made, i wouldn’t mind being corrected.

All in all, when it comes to WvW, guards are in a real bad spot.

…of my eight level 80s, I feel the guard is the worst.

I use a mix of Soldiers and Knights with Runes of Speed, I keep my armor around 3K, crit around 45-50% and vitality depends greatly on build 15k-20k health.

I’ve found that the choices for builds are AH+EM (altruistic healing + empowering might), Meditations, or straight DPS

-If you go AH+EM:

Staff is for tagging stuff in zergs. You’re almost impossible to kill, and it’s fun BUT… if you step away from your zerg you are a free kill for every other class in the game.

If you swap to scepter/shield you can have some decent range for walls, and at least put up a bit of a fight against roamers.

Hammer works for small skirmish stuff. You won’t kill anyone on your own, but you’re helpful to small groups, and decent against direct damage thieves. A #2 hammer blast won’t kill a thief, but it will make them think twice.

If you use a greatsword, you rush in blow all your cooldowns and hope to kill someone with the burst, if you don’t kill them with your burst, you’re dead.

-Meditations are a mystery to me:

Meditation builds are usually DPS burst builds; so why do they bother getting the healing trait? I’ll never know, but keep Stand Your Ground on your toolbar, ‘cause you’ll need the stability.

Burst or die. There’s very little sustainability to these builds, and condition classes tend to eat them alive.

-Straight DPS

This is actually one of the more fun ways to play, as you can actually kill someone, usually thieves. I’ve started to grow fond of the 30-0-0-0-30 build with a greatsword.

…but you give up everything that makes a guardian, a guardian. And you can get AOE fire damage by using a torch.

All in all, every guardian build has major flaws that offset any advantage they may have, mostly caused by the talent lines.

Why traits that have synergy are so spread out I’ll never know, or worse, all in the same line so that you can’t get them, because you’d be forced to give up other must have skills. …three symbol traits in the vitality line? Thanks for nothing, Anet….

PS, healing scales horribly. Just swap to your signet, and look at your healing skills, and you can see how little +180 healing boosts them.

Ok that’s definitly a perspective on Guardian’s I haven’t heard before. Thanks for the input Looking forward for others views.

@crochip

Fantastic answer and I have the feeling that it lands very closely to what I will be playing. And yes JI is just so much fun with the Hammer ward and I think it could also work with #4 homerun xD Also thanks for the input on an advisable amount of healing power I will definitely aim for that there.

Just a few further thoughts

Condition removal (shouts + soldier runes)
Is this amount of condition removal really needed?

Hold the Line
Since I will be using Hammer mainly for damage won’t “Hold the Line” be less needed? Protection from hammer chain symbol seems to give much more protection uptime. In trains I will get less protection but I will be giving protection to everyone in front and behind me for a short duration (instead of 5 targets from shout) whereas in small fights I will be able to just stand on the symbol as often as possible. I was really thinking that together with Signet of Judgement would woop up a nice uptime of 43% damage reduction (so I could swap staff and heal/buff up then go back to hammer and then JI.
Since this is just “trait juggling” I will be testing it, checking how much shout trating will differ from better symbols (though I’d need to find some way to get condition removal).

The thing is of course if I’d drop Hold the Line from the build you suggested then traiting for shouts becomes not so good. However I like the addition of Indomitable courage, because even if I don’t trait Superior Aria, I’d still get Stability from 2 different skills (+ if I use Signet of Judgement I get one last “just-in-case” stun break).

Crit chance vs Vigor/Hammer chills and Celestial
Hmm on that build the crit chance is weakly on 22%… since hammer hits veryyyy sloooowly I would say to proc both Vigor trait AND chills could be a bit too low… and perhaps it could be here that “just” raising it to 40-50% would add some DPS flavor to the build (by sacrificing some toughness and some vitality, as you said it is indeed tanky and beefy). Thereby I will probably follow your advice on some slight gear change to get bit more crit chance and some more power.

I love celestial. My Engi is full ascended celestial (only miss some Precision to get closer to 80% crit chance on Fury). But on Guardians? I get that you add up the Healing Power with a decent outcome as you said from experience… but Condition damage? Is it really worth it? Do you get any noticeable difference in VoJ passive?

So stats wise I will be droping some beefiness (around 10-20% minus thoughness and vitality) for some extra crit chance (aiming at ~40%) and some power if I can.

Chills and Sigils
Great that you traited for the hammer chill. I really want to make that work.
But you added 2 non-stacking sigils (energy and hydromancy). Unless ANet changed this, sigils of the same type don’t stack (including on-swap). I LOVE sigil of energy (use it in every other character) but here I was thinking to do:

Staff : Sigil of Hydromancy (on-swap) + Sigil of Blood (power!)

Hammer : Sigil of Ice (30% chance on hit – not crit – Chill 2 seconds, 10s CD) + Sigil of Chilling (20% chill duration to pump Hammer crit chill to 6-7s).

And then some of the runes that add 30% chill duration like Superior Rune of the Ice

But really, thank you for a great answer look forward for further insights!

Cheers

In sum this is what I’d really want… except I am not sure what to sacrifice to get condition removal in:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApcotCxRI8DNBFRl5LseY3AVwCcZAkgA-TFSPwAiUG0UHAA1KUqJolSvC7PAWVlsKBJDAzYA-w

And I would definitely agree that for solo I should swap staff for Sword/something. That double teleport seems to be so much fun :P

-It’s WvW, there is almost never enough condi removal, soldier runes with shouts are a great way to have constant removal for you and your group.
Haven’t tested any chill runes, but i don’t think it wouldn’t work that great, the chill uptime will not be that high to justify the 6th bonus, and it usualy get cleared very fast.

-Hammer auto chain is veeery slow, and even after that you would need to stand on the symbol to get the protection. In wvw you will rarely stand that long in one spot, or at least you shouldn’t.
Hold the line has a very short cooldown so it synergizes well with soldier runes and pure of voice.
-You could maybe go melandru runes and swap the second stability for condi clear on virtue of resolve. And then leave the signet if you wish.

-Like i said, i made the tankiest possible build, geting some extra crit chance would be nice since it’s harder to proc the crits on hammer then on gs, for example.

-You won’t feel the condition damage increase on this build with celestial, but all other stats are useful. If you can get better stats with other gear, go for it. This is just my preferance.

-They did change the way sigils work, all sigils now have their own cooldowns, so both energy and hydromancy will proc when you swap weapons. Haven’t tested ice sigils, i prefer to have control over when i hit the chill. Also, hydromancy is aoe and also deals decent damage, ice is single target.
-If i have selfless daring on, double energy is a must for me. It’s a free dodge and 600hp heal.

You can test out the chill duration thingies, i’m sure it would be annoying to get hit by that without having condi removal to clear it.

hammer usage goes with concentration because of combos

morunas.1328:

Chills and Sigils
Great that you traited for the hammer chill. I really want to make that work.
But you added 2 non-stacking sigils (energy and hydromancy). Unless ANet changed this, sigils of the same type don’t stack (including on-swap). I LOVE sigil of energy (use it in every other character) but here I was thinking to do:

Staff : Sigil of Hydromancy (on-swap) + Sigil of Blood (power!)

Hammer : Sigil of Ice (30% chance on hit – not crit – Chill 2 seconds, 10s CD) + Sigil of Chilling (20% chill duration to pump Hammer crit chill to 6-7s).

And then some of the runes that add 30% chill duration like Superior Rune of the Ice

Cheers

After the patch on swap sigils work together. Energy and hydromancy work well together.

As an aside, anyone else’s greatest wish with guardian that they’d reduce Glacial Heart’s icd a little?

It’s gonna take more than a little.