Guild Wars 2

i can’t figure out a good build for my greatsword guardian, i can’t decide what offhand weapons to equip and i can’t figure out how to form my guardian into a tanky/damage build. can anyone help me with this? i’m not so good at creating builds from scratch

Hey, sorry for the late reply but I am also a fan of the greatsword and can offer some suggestions. First let’s start with traits.

[Traiting]
For survivability, I must say our valor trait line is one of the most favorable—due toe “Altruistic Healing,” for most effective defensive builds, this is something you really want to consider investing it (plus it gives you 30% crit damage!). I also personally think it only makes sense to get the 20% reduction on cd for greatsword if you want to do a greatsword build so you might want to consider the honor trait line too (not maxed, you can get the trait skill at 20). If you try that out, you’ll have 20 points left to focus in wherever you want pretty much. Adding power will increase damage stabiliy but as far as effective trait skills go, it’s pretty useless traitline (imo at least, it would be better to get berserker armor to make up for power and invest your traits into something more useful) because traits are more for the trait skills than stat bonuses. Also at a certain point, crit chance + crit dmg have a much higher gain than power.

[Off-hand weapon]
You’ve got a few options here. It really depends on what you want to do and your experiences. If you HATE fighting ranged people, I’d suggest the scepter…that’s like the best thing we go in terms of range haha (you’ll see a lot of threads complaining about our lack of range). If you want to put more emphasis on your greatsword, might I suggest staff? it’s a good default to switch to for a bit to kite and fight mid-range, but the best part is empower (which is a weapon skill that gives you 12? stacks of might)—do that and weapon swap to gs to harness that great burst of power, by the time you are on cd, you can do it again pretty much.

[Armor]
Knight or Berserker—depending on if you want more defense or power.

[Utilities]
Shouts is very useful, if you are going for 20% gs cd reduction, the first trait skill in the honor line can be used for 20% shout cd reduction. Save Yourselves or Retreat is a good investment, to get around places for sure but also for manuevring around your opponent with great boons (retreat for speed and that amazing aegis, and Save Yourselves (SY for short) for all other boons).

Get Renewed Focus! Unless you want to support your team, don’t go for tomes imo. You get 3 secs of invulenrability and yoru virtues are reset. (Using virtues heals you quite a bit with altruistic healing btw).

[Runes][Sigils]
Almost missed this, but most people say for most guardians, its best to invest in boons duration in which 2 monk runes, 2 water runes, …er I forget the other 2, would help. I personally use rune of lyssa for the 6th rune effect where it makes my elite skill remove all conditions and give me all boons for 5 seconds. It’s a great recovery skill that kinda just brings your character back to life haha plus I feel like a super saiyan doing it.

Sigil…of strength is the best to go with with good crit chance (40%+ with or without fury).

Anyways, my tips!
glhf