Guild Wars 2

most of the commander guardians that i see use staff. And they don’t die often. Is the secret in their gear setup?

If you’re a commander who runs a guardian, would you mind sharing your gear setup and build?

Regards,

I use harbringers paragon build. You can find it in the guardian forums somewhere.

If your goal is to just not die and you don’t care about damage, just grab all Soldiers gear, go 0/0/30/30/10 or some variation thereof and run Save Yourselves, Contemplation of Purity, and Signet of Judgement. Take a shield and a mace for your offset, or a hammer. Pick traits to maximize your damage mitigation, condition clearing, and you’re good to go.

It is because staff is the best weapon for a wvw guardian.

Pukknub.7368:

It is because staff is the best weapon for a wvw guardian.

Kind of this. I feel like it is anyway. You don’t have the best range but it’s a bit safer than melee. Also if you’re running AH, Empower is a second heal. Plus, for large fights, you’re tagging everything with the huge cone attack. 3 gives you a ranged damage move to throw in the center of a group or as a world roaming tool with your zerg and wall of “sit your kitten down” is great fun.

I’ll switch to GS sometimes but usually if I’m running with the swarm, it’s staff forever. The only place it just falls short on is keep sieges mostly since your character doesn’t seem to know how to up the staff up. But I’m pretty sure it gets hot in all that plate armor so I try not to make fun of my little trooper.

Im really not a good player and couldnt win a 1v1 to save my life, but with a staff I can follow my commander straight into an enemy zerg tagging everything with auto attack and come out the other side. I stay alive way longer than I should thanks to the staff. This is my testimonial.

Cavendish.2168:

Im really not a good player and couldnt win a 1v1 to save my life, but with a staff I can follow my commander straight into an enemy zerg tagging everything with auto attack and come out the other side. I stay alive way longer than I should thanks to the staff. This is my testimonial.

Lol. Well said.

However, “not a good” player is very subjective. I’m sure you are a swell player but using the staff allows a wee bit more room for error. Well, at least I think so. It is a very good weapon for WvW zerg warfare.

All guardians should carry at least one. Just too many situations whereas they come in handy to ignore. Speed and travel, AOE, keep defense, CC, etc.

I’m not a commander but I run with GS/Staff (most of the time) in WvWvW and I would agree with the above posts. I’m not the greatest player but I feel like the staff is a good back up option that saves me quite a bit – I like to go steaming in with the GS and then once people have caught up and my cooldowns have been used, I back off a little (If I need to) switch to the staff and recover…

If I’m not using the Staff – which is admittedly quite rare – I will go with Sword/Shield although might change up the Shield for a Focus as these offer a bit more defensive/block-wise (which really annoys me).

I don’t Command on my Gardian but I run full zerk gear with soldier runes. GS or Hammer/Staff 0,5,30,30,5 AH and Writ of the merciful. I get good damage and decent survivability but if I were to lead and plan on not dying I would probably gear up in PVT using the same build. Staff is the best all around group weapon you can use. AoE auto attack, AoE might for increase group DPS, Symbol which hurts you enemy as well a heal yourself when traited properly. Line of warding is great at choke points when combined with Balistas and AC.

I would run something similar to this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|6.1k.h8|9.1k.h1j.e.1k.h2|1k.7x.1c.7x.1k.7x.1c.7x.1k.7x.1c.7x|4u.0.2u.0.3u.0.21l.0.31l.0.2u.0|0.f6.u69b.k28.5|5r.7|v.19.16.z.1i|e
Depending on your playstyle/group comp/zerg status on your server, you might want to think about going full PVT and skip the Cleric elements. Regardless, I would run those traits for both.

Personally, I run the above setup in two different ways: the PVT/Cleric mix and a PVT/Knight mix(basically wherever you see Cleric above, substitute it with Knights).

As for the secondary weapon set, I pretty much run one of the following: sword+focus, sword+shield, mace+shield, GS, or hammer. The staff is a constant in ALL of them though, as it allows for a nice heal and buffs; plus run speed, walls, and GREAT tagging for badges.

Personally I run GS/Staff with PVT Shout gear and weapons with stamina gain on kill (for dodge healing)

Staff is a must for the healing/boon spiking/blocking. The reason I like the GS is for it’s mobility. The leap can save you so many times and also is great to get to the front of the zerg fast.

Honestly a zerg should have enough Guardians with Clerics gear that you should just focus on staying alive. If a person wanted to, you could always go mace or sceptor/shield or focus instead of GS for more tank.