Guild Wars 2

So, to preface this: I am a pretty noob guardian, but like my retribution paladin when I played WoW… I aways am intrigued by the “holy warrior” classes. I have been playing again recently (enough so that I’ve become somewhat familiar with the game, again), and this is my first shot at coming up with something that attempts to accomplish the following goals:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQRArf8dl0ApcoVDxbI8DNRY9AgH0fYFq41DIGxGC-zkyAYsBRTUCE9BkEBnALiGbFsIasqFMd5QkVmoejioVTGAmxA-w

1. Flexibility in target engagement: both Strong melee with sword/focus and modest kiting/range with scepter/shield.

2. Balanced stats: 3000+ attack with some might stacking, 55% base crit chance with 1h weapons, 3100+ toughness and a modest amount of health @ ~15k. 50% Crit damage (so 175% higher than a normal attack). A modest amount of fury and vulnerability stacking.

3. Mobility: meditations and sword #2.

4. Condition clearing: Smite Conditions, runes of the hoelbrak and lemongrass poultry soup (if stacking… -60% duration).

5. Roles: Roaming, Small group (usually randoms), Zerg flanker/striker.

I welcome feedback to either optimize this build as posted, or to re-engineer it from the ground up with a more optimal setup. As this is also my chance to learn from a more seasoned community, please consider providing justifications to changes to the build.

Things I am wondering:

1. Gear/rune/sigil optimization.

2. How this performs with the current WvW meta.

3. If scepter/sh is more viable than simply adding more mobility through, say… greatsword.

4. Other options, in general, that could possibly fulfill the intent of scepter/sh (which is really the offset for this build)

Thank you in advance for your feedback!

Your link is to a hambow war so unless this is a troll thread (seems unlikely) you might want to fix it. Your stats seem solid enough and s/f + sc/sh is a good combo, though in wvw greatsword might be better for mobility in helping escape the zerg, probably more up to personal opinion.

WHOOPS! Was looking up hambows and built off of that. Fixing!

FIXED!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRArd8elUgSDHHyNEf4Eh1DAeQ/VVIeXPgYEbIA-jUCBYfDim+IwEIRM1UQM3UZtYqIas6aYKXAqYLqWGA9xA-w
Change the food to omnom berry ghosts and youve got extremely high sustain, really great dmg, tons of blinds, blocks, and dodges for defense, and soft CC through hydromancy sigils for chasing/sticking on people, and teleports with sword and JI to either get away or chase.
(Dont use hydromancy/energy until the March 18th patch. 2 on swap sigils are bugged in that one will put the other on CD, without getting the benefit of the second. Just use energy/accuracy for now. Should give you plenty of time to get the gear anyway)

I use the build Carpboy linked. It’s really good. I completely ravaged a warrior with it the other day in about twenty seconds, and this was a duel we both knew was coming. I use slightly less Cav and more Valk instead though to get my HP up to 16k which is more comfortable for resisting bursts and conditions, at least for me. I also use Searing Flames rather than Blind Exposure, I find the boon stripping to be more useful than the Vuln for duels, but for group work I’d stick with BE since you’re more likely to Vuln more than one guy at a time, thus making it more worthwhile.

Thank you for the insightful replies. I only have two questions as your builds stand:

1. How does the synergy work as far as combos and damage rotations? Not exactly fixed, but rather how to generate the most damage with a certain rotation involving the weapon sets with swaps? (Example: condition warrior s/s, lb using a lb opener fire fields into a sword 2 in order to both stack fire damage and fire firefield combo into fire shield with might/burning as you begin your bleed and torment stacks) Follow on: would sword/focus, scepter/shield work with this build, or is it better to use your focus 5 and swap to sword/shield for closing/burst?

2. Searing Flames: uptime and usage of the only two abilities which cause burning as compared to the relatively low cooldown of Flashing Blade and focus 4. Thoughts?

1. Well you precast focus 5 whilst using CoL/smite/scepter auto, then a split second before it explodes you swap and use JI followed by some sword autos and if they put a condition on you use smite condition since that also does a ton of dmg. At this point theyll either be downed or super low. If they try to heal knock them back with shield, if not wait until they do since thats the only real reason i use a shield, to interrupt heals. Use blinds/blocks as needed. Use scepter to kite or to set up a CoL->smite combo. Use sword to stick on people and for the awesome auto.

2. I dont use it nor reccomend it for a reason

Searing Flames is great in duels. That’s it. If it’s just you and one other person, the extra vuln isn’t doing too terribly much. Since you’re looking at proccing it every sword auto chain, and every smite, plus off of every other fifth hit in a row, it goes off without much issue at all. They recently dropped the cooldown of it, and made it so that it only ever goes off if they actually have a boon to strip. So between those two improvements it’s a much better dueling trait than it was in the past. It’s particularly useful against other classes with Protection, as well as stripping Regen and Vigor off of people. It’s not game changing but it’s a big swing in your favor if you can strip someone’s Protection right before a CoL + Smite/ZD combo.

If you have a partner, or you’re facing more than one enemy, it’s outclassed by having more vuln.

At 15k HP with decent armour and no significant amount of healing power, you’ll melt like a snowman in summer while roaming. I’d recommend less power and less crit and invest more in healing power.

Guardian roaming builds almost universally rely on sustain through healing while bashing your enemies in the floor with mobility weapons such as the GS and sword.

Aedrion.6483:

At 15k HP with decent armour and no significant amount of healing power, you’ll melt like a snowman in summer while roaming. I’d recommend less power and less crit and invest more in healing power.

Guardian roaming builds almost universally rely on sustain through healing while bashing your enemies in the floor with mobility weapons such as the GS and sword.

Not necessarily.

Guardian has amazing spiking potential with sword + mediations.
I once faught a roaming guardian that uses similar mediation build, and I find him pretty deadly since whenever he strikes, it hurts like hell. It’s hard to avoid his attack too since he has instant teleportation similar to thief. Fortunately I still melt down him with my condition after all his mediations went to CD, but it was a really close one.

Honestly, it’s not that guardian is bad for roaming and spiking, it that it’s rare to find a decent enough guardian dedicated for roaming in WvW. They mostly run group shout build with Staff/ GS/Hammer and hoping to win a dual with those lol… (Those Guardians are sooo easy to kill one on one)

Aedrion.6483:

At 15k HP with decent armour and no significant amount of healing power, you’ll melt like a snowman in summer while roaming. I’d recommend less power and less crit and invest more in healing power.

Guardian roaming builds almost universally rely on sustain through healing while bashing your enemies in the floor with mobility weapons such as the GS and sword.

Not at all. Heal way is the only roaming build that stacks healing power, and it sucks for roaming. Sure you never die, but you never kill anyone either. Monks focus heals a lot especially with smite condition on a 16 sec CD. Trust me, you definitely don’t lack any sustain