Guild Wars 2

So spirit weapons:
1) They still suffer from built-in artificial stupidity, especially the bow and shield which have the habbit of running towards any enemy without even being able to attack them.

2) Another thing about the AI – you can still execute commands and put them on cooldown without them doing anything when you have no enemy targeted (this doesn’t include the bow for obvious reasons) and even if you have, the weapons are still lazy to get into range before executing it.

3) Spirit weapons are not destroyed when commanded – good.

4) Expeditious Spirit – is a direct result of a nerf to Spirit-Weapon Mastery. Before Spirit-Weapon Mastery used to reduce cooldowns of both the spirit weapon summons and their commands, now the second part was ripped out and remade as new Master tier trait (it’s barely Master tier worthy). This looks like lack of imagination here, why didn’t they just move Improved Spirit-Weapon Duration to this place is beyond me (they may have as well left the name as it was and make it a “Spirit weapons don’t expire” trait).

5) Sword of Justice – fine, but it would be nice if the command was more like Whirling Wrath.

6) Shield of the Avenger – having a new source of aegis is nice, but it has two downsides:
- you can’t use the command without an enemy in target (see #2)
- the effect is delayed because of the shield travel time which limits its on-demand/just-in-time defence

7) Bow of Truth – finally something good for the bow, well except for the part where the 1200 range is relative to you and not the bow.

My conclusion is that Spirit Weapons are still highly clunky and very stressful to use in any part of the game. This patch barely scratched that what is inherently wrong with Spirit Weapons.

Aza.2105:

Althalos.6734:

…

You aren’t including adrenal health, every warrior in pvp takes this with cleansing ire….

Also, zerker guardian has no sustain they have burst healing. Not sure why you included litany of wrath. Because its completely theoretical, in the sense that you must land all of your attacks to make use of it. Its a better group fight heal than it is for single fights because of this. So I wouldn’t bother including it in your mathematical analysis if I were you.

I also did not include Virtue of Resolve, which would be another 84 health/second extra for the guardian. But what I wanted to show is how much would a meditaion guardian have to pull off to match the sustain of a Healing Signet warrior. Yes, the guard would most likely have 4 blinds and a 3 trigger block, but the warrior also has more health and superior crowd control.

So in the end it’s extremly hit or miss (kill or die) for the guardian since he has less health to live through a burst and no reliable way to disengage if things don’t go well.

Warning – math ahead:
0 healing power Warrior with no traits and with Healing Signet = 362 health/second
Healing Signet: 362

0 healing power quad meditation, 30 Valor Guardian with Meditation Mastery and Monk’s Focus = 363.22 health/second
(base healing + Monk’s Focus) / ((skill cooldown * Meditation Mastery) + skill cast time)
Smite Condition: (0 + 1960) / ((20 * 0.8) + 0) = 122.50
Judge’s Intervention: (0 + 1960) / ((45 * 0.8) + 0) = 54.44
Contemplation of Purity: (0 + 1960) / ((60 * 0.8) + 0) = 40.83
Litany of Wrath: (1640 + 1960) / ((30 * 0.8) + 0.75) = 145.45 (not counting 20% damage to healing conversion)

Conclusion: A quad meditation guardian has the same sustain as a Healing Signet warrior if he uses his meditations whenever possible and the warrior denies him to gain extra 6 second 20% of damage healing from Litany of Wrath.

And to answer the OP:
Nothing changed and I can’t say they are more popular than before. PvE and sPvP premade teams will always take 1 guardian for utility, WvW groups will always use a mix of guardians and warriors as the main force with a few support mesmers and elementalists behind. It will stay this way as long as guardians will be stuck so deep inside group support/utility role or another profession ascends to their level.

I would rather go down the path of Virtues having synergies in their respective trait lines.
Virtue of Justice has two minor traits in Radiance – an effect enhancement and a reset trait.
Virtue of Courage tries to follow this example in Valor, but Valorous Defence is neither directly nor indirectly enhancing it and Courageous Return is extremly lacking.
Then there is Virtue of Resolve which should have its synergy minors in Honor, but has neither.
Consistency is what I would like to see here (yes even going as far as getting rid of Vigorous Precision and Selfless Daring for an enhancement and reset trait for Virtue of Resolve).

Just to throw in a few ideas:
Valorous Defense – Aegis grants 5s of Protection when it ends
Shield of Judgment (shield #4) – grants 20s Aegis instead of Protection
Vigorous Precision [rename] – Virtue of Resolve applies Vigor when activated
Selfless Daring [rename] – Virtue of Resolve is renewed when you use a healing skill

Ideas not related to Virtues:
Compress all Spirit Weapon traits into Zeal just like Signets are in Radiance, Meditations in Valor, Shouts in Honor etc.
Symbols for all main weapons, unbind existing symbol traits from Zeal and Honor and bring in different major traits for them in all trait lines, so they can be customized to cause variety of effects (Zeal – damage, Radiance – burning, Honor – healing etc.)

I wish there was an actual option to set up a custom order for boon and condition removal.

- add a standard 5 target AoE cap
- let the Aegis trigger for the Guardian as well
- drop the cooldown to 5 seconds
- rework Virtue of Courage (cooldown 30 seconds, 10% damage reduction passive, 30s Aegis active)

I got this same idea a day ago, the new GM trait could have easily been a +30% boon duration. All guardian builds have to use boons in some form, this would at least bring those which focus on them back on track.

It would be nice if it was an actual block similar to Shelter and not just absorbtion.

twisted fate.7251:

… “tactical withdraw” …

This -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Qgs29veFrdE#t=141

hooma.9642:

running as fast like a ferrari has nothing to with trinity. all classes can build in every possible way. there are enough tools, like in this example runes, to compensate in some way possible disadvantages throught design. is it equal effective? no, but why should it?

Because all professions were meant to be able to perform in every aspect of game on equal level, they were just meant to do their job in a different way. Which actually means guardians should have been given something in return in form of traits/profession mechanics and not mandatory items.

And a bit more on topic, I’m more in favor of granting the guardian better access to soft CC than more mobility.

Uhtameit.2413:

I know quite a few decent guardians who use torch with scepter in PvP so it’s not that weak. For instance it’s quite good coupled with sword/focus and the GM trait that gives +15% crit one one-hand weapons.

Again, no no no no, I suggested to get the trait to chill because the OP asked for soft cc options. This is one of the few guardian already possesses. Don’t bend my words into some other meaning : the trait is not amazing, but it is a soft cc. And it is pretty much reliable if you use it with the GM i just mentionned that could get you around 65% crit.

Glacial Heart works with hammer only which is a two handed weapon, Right-Hand Strength doesn’t apply here. In addition, you have to sacrifice Monk’s Focus (read sustain) if you want to have Focused Mind for Fury and Glacial Heart at the same time.

hooma.9642:

so u have a suv but it is boring and the ferrari is just more fun to drive. but cause stupid design philosophy of ferrari u cant drive with them off-road. ???

seems reasonable

And I thought every profession was supposed to be able to everything, this is not a trinity game or is it?

Sometimes I wonder why Selfless Daring actually exists when obviously there should have been a recharge trait for Virtue of Resolve in that place. Justice has one in Radiance and Courage in Valor so logically Honor should have one for Resolve.
It’s still a very good trait and it’s a bit sad to take a hit in our sustain department because of 50% weaker Vigorous Precision.

I can’t say that Aegis traits are bad, there is just the problem with not having enough Aegis sources in the first place. With no traits and using Virtue of Courage and Retreat, which are the only two sources of AoE Aegis, you can apply it only once every ~75 seconds.

While the damage looks nice on paper there are some extremes to consider. Having 5 guardians split in 5 parties of 5 you get 25 triggers of Shattered Aegis, which can get split among 125 targets yielding laughable 500 damage per target or everyone hitting the same group of five dealing heavy 12500 damage per target (assuming they won’t die before that just by getting roflstomped by 25 people).
By looking at these two extremes my conclusion is you won’t get any decent results unless you manage to force everyone to fight in an area not larger than a size traited symbol against significally smaller force, but no less than 5 targets. Otherwise most of the damage will be split appart or completly wasted.

Honestly, there are much better and more reliable sources of AoE bursts.

I expect quite a lot, because after I tried out almost every possible build it felt like there is something missing, like the profession is unfinished, like if only the basics of the original design were implemented and the rest was just glued onto it.

During the time since release if the guardian was steered slowly patch by patch towards the original vision of what the guardian is, according to devs, supposed to be – a boon powered warrior, I believe that by this day the guardian would already be at the right spot. Unfortunately the new GM traits definitely show that the original design was forgotten a long time ago.

Personally I think the original vision is good, just badly (or not) implemented. I mean without shouts and 30 in virtues we really don’t have much boons to throw around at all. We can’t get a 100% uptime on anything besides Regeneration, Protection and Swiftness which are:
1. weapon locked
2. delivered by static symbols in short ticks
3. impossible to keep up all at once
Then we have 3 trait lines which barely grant any access to boons and boon duration is going to take a hit in the next patch on top of it.

I noticed this too, I think it may have something to do with the target having -condition duration effects.

Farzo.8410:

Althalos.6734:

It’s interesting they finally managed to come up with a new Aegis source and that in a way very close to what I always wished for (on block trigger). I still do think it could simply recharge Virtue of Courage on block, that would open up Courageous Return for a remake to something useful.
Anyway it may be the first step towards a valid “blocking” build, something like mace/focus + Defender’s Flame + Guardian Runes, but I’m pretty certain it still won’t be enough.

It got a 20 seconds CD.

Yea, I know, that’s why I wrote it may be a first step, but won’t be enough, 10 would be just right. I don’t really know how exactly the game mechanics around Aegis work, but with this trait Aegis may actually proc another Aegis (not just stack duration) making our Virtue of Courage essentially a double block instead of a single one.

It’s interesting they finally managed to come up with a new Aegis source and that in a way very close to what I always wished for (on block trigger). I still do think it could simply recharge Virtue of Courage on block, that would open up Courageous Return for a remake to something useful.
Anyway it may be the first step towards a valid “blocking” build, something like mace/focus + Defender’s Flame + Guardian Runes, but I’m pretty certain it still won’t be enough.

It should have been a sustain boost, something like “Heal X ammount of health per second for each condition you have”. A flat +300 vitality, that’s just worthless.

The answer is simple – class design, what’s useful and what makes sense usually comes only after what the profession was actually meant to do.
A water field on mace symbol would break the original design/vision of the profession unless all other symbols would get their own type of combo field as well.
I don’t see symbols being Light only as a problem, symbols are kind of a design flaw by themselves. The problem lies in the lack of usefulness of light field itself and the lack of useful finishers besides blasts from Mighty Blow a guardian can produce.
Fortunately overwriting other fields by Symbol of Faith (and also Swiftness and Wrath) can be avoided by not using it at all, but Symbol of Protection on hammer is a completly different story.

Wishful thinking:
Valorous Defense (Valor 5pts minor trait)
– When an Aegis you applied is removed, it grants Protection (5s).

Shield of Judgment (shield #4)
– reduce cooldown to 20s
– gives Aegis (20s)
– stuns foes (2s)

Shield of Absorption (shield #5)
– reduce cooldown to 30s
– gives 5 triggers of block to you and up to 4 allies (10s) in 600 range around you
Shield of Absorption sequence (shield #5)
– detonate all remaining blocks to heal for 300+0.5xHP per detonated block

Now we suddenly have a useful shield that actually blocks.

Getting kited is not a problem for just this trait or greatsword, actually GS at least has a leap and a pull. In any form of pvp 6 out of 8 classes will attempt to kite you simply because they can while still dealing damage. And here arises the question – Are there too many class builds capable of projecting damage at range while also packing a decent ammount of crowd control? From what I’ve seen in my solo roaming attempts it really looks like that.
Fortunately the guardian class doesn’t have much realiable soft CC itself, so adding a source of cripple and/or chill here and there would be much easier than to rebalance all of the other class builds. Cripple on symbols is a popular idea, Glacial Heart is another adept for tweaking, etc.
With the access to soft CC, many of current problems of guardian class in pvp would suddenly vanish or at least fade away to some degree.

I will skip the standard “there is no pure support” talk and answer the HP scaling question.
When you look at the wiki – Regeneration, you can see it scales of Healing Power at 0.125 per point. Which means 1000 Healing Power basically doubles the effect of Regeneration (130+125). Most skills in game which apply healing in some way also scale of Healing Power, the rate is just not mentioned in tooltips anywhere in game. Check the wiki for those.

Let’s be reasonable here, scaling of Power is pointless, in that case it may as well be a % of damage dealt like Litany of Wrath.
For the sake of making stats like Healing Power more viable I incline more towards letting it work like now (base + HP% per hit), but make the HP scaling sharper (0.05 for starters). Right now 1250 HP effectively doubles healing from Zealous Blade pushing it to 50 health per hit. This number may look good, but 1250 HP is a heavy investment and a big sacrifice in damage compartment, so I think tinkering with HP scaling is the way to go, we just didn’t hit the sweet spot yet.
Basically my point of view about healing and sustain is – “You want more sustain? You invest in Healing Power and/or Boon Duration.” The last thing we need is another warrior class.

Quad meditation WvW roamer wannabe:
Exotic version
Ascended version

From what I see here it looks like Zealot stats are worth it only for armor with the rest being a combination of Knight, Cleric and Soldier.

There is one more and very important problem – AI. It uses the same AI as any other summon which makes it charge at your enemies despite not having any offensive ability at all. Shield of the Avenger also suffers from this AI deficit, but its abilities at least make up for it unlike BoT’s random condition cleansing and PBAoE command.

Funny how my latest change to symbology build (link in signature) was adding Hydromancy sigils on weapon swap as well (using a single mace and two identical shields) and I got some interesting results out of it. I guess this is the direction we will all head to as guardians unless we get a different reliable way to stop/slow down enemies.

Actually Perfect Inscriptions affect Signet of Resolve in a specific way. It makes it to remove 2 conditions instead of 1 every 10 seconds (see Signet of Resolve notes on Wiki).

ANet really disappointed me here, because this update was actually a bug fix as Perfect Inscriptions were meant to work like this even before it.

Whenever I tried to put together a build like this I always asked one important question:
Why did ANet decide to build defence mostly around a single game mechanic – evasion, why not block, or parry (technically there is Protector’s Strike, but mechanics wise it’s still a block)?

For a guardian there are only two forms this build can exist in:
1. retaliation
- maximum boon duration, preferably full Virtues line
- blasting symbols, Stand Your Ground, Signet of Judgement
- very high sustain needed (healing power)
- high power so retaliation deals at least some decent damage
- cleric equip

2. burn on block
- very high condition damage needed and condition duration if possible
- mace, focus, Shelter, aegis
- decent sustain needed
- Rune of the Guardian x6
- apothecary equip

The retaliation variant desperately tries to oppose the current game mechanics revolving around not taking hits at all while the blocking one fits in there much better, but in both cases I can’t find enough sources of retaliation and blocks respectively to make it work. Traits spread out in different trees don’t help much either. Additionally neither build works against condition users.

So my answers are:
1. Do we need more survival to make our existing defensive damage work better over a longer duration?
Yes, in the form of active blocks, channeled preferably (Shelter, warrior Shield Stance).

2. Or do we need more damage while defensive?
No, we just need more ways to project the damage, see #1.

3. Would conditions help answer this problem?
Yes, sort of. As long as blocking fits better inside current game mechanics, burning on block is superior, again see #1 and #2. Otherwise we could use more skills like Protector’s Strike.

- First and foremost, pet and summons AI fix, they need to be able to attack on move. This will benefit not just the Guardian, but also other classes with pets.

- A separate “full support” AI for pets and summons which do not have any form of basic attack (in the case of Guardian – Shield of the Avenger and Bow of Truth), so they stick to their master at all times.

Weapons:
Sword

• Flashing Blade
  - add – create a Symbol of Stability after teleport (5 seconds duration)

Mace

• Protector’s Strike
  - add sequence skill to cancel channeling and grant protection

Scepter

• Smite
  - change to Symbol of Fury (6 seconds cooldown, 3 seconds duration)

Greatsword

• Symbol of Wrath
  - increase duration to 6 seconds

Hammer

• third chain attack
  - remove Symbol of Protection
  - add 1 second AoE knockdown
• Zealot’s Embrace
  - change to Symbol of Protection (12 seconds cooldown, 6 seconds duration)

Shield

• Shield of Judgement
  - reduce cooldown to 20 seconds
  - change 5 seconds of Protection to 20 seconds of Aegis
  - add – inflicts 2 seconds stun to foes
• Shield of Absorbtion
  - add blast finisher to its sequence
  - increase healing coeficient

Utility skills:
Spirit Weapons

• all
  - remove duration

Sword of Justice

• command
  - change to Whirling Wrath like attack

Hammer of Wisdom

• third chain attack
  - change to knockdown instead of knockback
• command
  - change to AoE knockdown

Bow of Truth

• command
  - should be ground targeted

Renewed Focus

• skill type
  - change to meditation

Traits:
Zeal

• Zealot’s Speed
  - change to gain 10 seconds of swiftness on weapon swap (20-second cooldown)

• Symbolic Exposure
  - change to symbols apply 1 second cripple to foes

• Symbolic Power
  - rename to Zealot’s Power
  - change to – power is increased by 10% (as character attribute, not symbols damage)

• Wrathful Spirits
  - reduce damage bonus to 20%
  - add – spirit weapons cause burning

Radiance

• A Fire Inside
  - change to – critical hits you deal cause 1 second burning

Valor

• Courageous Return
  - change to – Virtue of Courage is recharged when your health rises above 50% (30-second cooldown)

Honor

• Elusive Power
  - rename to Restored Resolution
  - change to – Virtue of Resolve is recharged when you use a healing skill

• Writ of Exaltation
  - add – increases duration of symbols by 50%

• Writ of Persistence
  - change/remove

Virtues

• Power of the Virtuous
  - change to – deal 2% extra damage for each active virtue you have

• Improved Spirit Weapon Duration
  - rename to Resilient Spirits
  - change to – increase Spirit Weapons health and toughness

• Empowered Virtue (new Virtues master major trait)
  - Virtue of Justice causes burning every 4 attacks instead of 5
  - Virtue of Resolve’s passive effect is 25% stronger
  - Virtue of Courage’s passive effect triggers every 30 seconds

• Radiant Virtue (new Virtues master major trait)
  - When activating Virtue of Justice, the burn duration is increased
  - Activating Virtue of Resolve removes three conditions
  - Activating Virtue of Courage also breaks stun for any ally affected by the ability

• Absolute Virtue (new Virtues grandmaster major trait)
  - Virtue of Justice’s passive effect no longer burns your target, but instead burns the area around you each time it activates
  - Virtue of Resolve cures a condition every 10 seconds
  - Virtue of Courage reduces incoming damage by 10%

• Supreme Virtue (new Virtues grandmaster major trait)
  - Virtues now also apply the following boons: Justice: fury, Resolve: vigor, Courage: stability
  - +20% boon duration

• Supreme Justice
  - remove

• Absolute Resolution
  - remove

• Indomitable Courage
  - remove

• Permeating Wrath
  - remove

• Shielded Mind
  - remove

What irks me the most about Virtues is extreme inconsistency between them:
1. Extreme cooldown disparity.
2. There is no actual 10 points major trait that can directly affect any of them.
3.
a. Virtue of Justice – 30 seconds base recharge (21 traited), can be upgraded by 4 minor traits and 2 major traits with an option to be instantly recharged, its synergy trait line is Radiance.
b. Virtue of Resolve – 60 seconds base recharge (42 traited), can be upgraded by 2 minor traits and 2 major traits with an option to be instantly recharged, its synergy trait line is Honor.
c. Virtue of Courage – 90 seconds base recharge (63 traited), can be upgraded by 3 minor traits and 2 major traits with an option to be instantly recharged, its synergy trait line is Valor.

I don’t know what was the original lidea behind virtues, but with current setup we can fully upgrade only one of them and most of the time it’s Virtue of Justice that gets the spotlight because of reasons mentioned in point 3.a. It’s simply superior in every way to the other two in offense, defense and party support.

In order to fix this we would need a set of major traits in Virtue lane that would allow us to upgrade all of them at the same time instead of one or two like merging all improvements to passive effects into one, improvements to active effects into another, an additional boon per virtue in a third one, etc.
After that fix the disparity in their synergy trait lines like Virtue of Resolve not having an instant recharge minor trait in Honor and so.

Electro.4173:

Protector’s Strike actually has a whirl finisher on it right now.

Only if you don’t get hit, oddly enough. And it launches one single projectile because its so short. And its not listed in the tooltip.

Getting a strange whirl finisher replaced with a Blast would be great, though I’m not sure it makes much sense. Nothing about the attack looks like a blast. And you can always grab Focus if you want one, so having 2 with Mace / Focus might be a bit much.

Personally, what I’d do to Protector’s Strike is to make the “didn’t get hit” function triggerable by pressing 3 again (similar to Zealot’s Flame / Fire, Shield #5’s trigger heal, ect) so that you could choose either Protection or a block. Maybe increase Protection duration slightly. Keep the Whirl finisher and apply it to both the block and the Protect.

We share the idea about the trigger for protection part. Right now I feel kinda dumb when I wind up PS expecting to get hit just to end up running around holding my hand in the air and not getting hit at all. I mean I barely use PS for protection at all, the animation is a long wait to be worth it.

The reason why I suggested PS to have a blast finisher is for retaliation, because the single cleansing bolt it creates from whirl finisher is just laughable.

Dedrahel.9073:

“All player controlled minions. excluding Mesmer phantasm and clones because they were already increased in a previous patch, now have 71.43% more hit points in a PvE map.”

This is awesome, really. W SPIRIT WEAPONS

PvE only and on top of that I’m still very sceptic about their survivability. The best outcome I expect is they won’t get oneshot but twoshot.

The rest of guardian changes are once again only minor fixes, but what bothers me the most is Perfect Inscriptions and Signet of Resolve. If those notes are not fake, then wiki lied to us for the whole time, because it states that SoR already is affected by PI.

Mace is already the best source of healing a guardian has, what it needs is a blast finisher on Protector’s Strike whether it’s struck or not and access to a realiable source of cripple on symbols.

So I finally managed to get at least a half decent footage of my Symbology build – Meditation variant from WvWvW fighting against a thief. I didn’t win this one since I got jumped by two other thieves in the end, but I want to show it anyway to make a clearer picture of the potential this build has.

Except for an elementalist, a guardian and a necromancer I’ve already fought against every other class one on one and haven’t lost a single time, but I rarely win at the same time. Most of the fights end up with a draw.

In small team skirmishes it works rather well with a hammer, but I feel a bit useless in zerg fights.

Video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2H4k7IUNo

CMF.5461:

I’ll have to try it out with a dumbed down exotic version of it instead of ascended, but my only question is, what happens if you drop symbols out of it and just rely on meditations?

I have a feeling it will perform similar to what you have now, thus making it a meditation build and not a symbology centered build.
…
What was your focus on trinkets and setting up the stats? They seem kind of random.

Using just meditations is not enough as healing source, Symbol of Faith with Writ of the Merciful at 1000 healing power gives just over 400 healing per second, while fully traited meditations when used every time they are up can reach only 262. What this build actually does is combine those two sources for a greater effect.

My choice of trinkets was affected by the need to stabilise and balance the stats instead of maxing a single one of two. With just clerics, the build had way better healing, but lacked punch from missing extra power and critical. Knights pushed the already high armor over the top. 2x berserker, 2x knight, 2x cleric got the stats just right. You may ignore the infusions, I was just following the single offense, single defense ascended trinket path and they don’t have any significant impact anyway.

NOTE: Getting the gear is somewhat easy, it’s as simple as buying all Lyssa armor parts except for breastplate because it doesn’t have magi stats, you can get that one by buying Dwayna breastplate instead and putting a Lyssa rune in it.

CMF, if I may recommend, try the meditation variant I linked in my post right above yours. I’ve spent some time in WvW today and holy hell it acually works. Even with my rather average pvp skills I managed to cut through some interesting fights today. The best one was against a well played burst thief, the fight went on and on for over 5 minutes without any of us getting close to winning. It ended only after some warrior from my server entered the fight and Whirlwinded through the thief just as he entered stealth with low health. Through the fight the thief managed to pull several 5000 damage backstabs, but I was always able to recover from it. Unfortunately later I got into a fight with one burst thief and one condition thief and I must say that one was over before it even started.

After that most fights got rather messy, while I could take down one group of two, I couldn’t scratch another elsewhere. The most important factor was (as I expected) heavy condition and hard crowd control usage. 1v1 is almost trivial, 1v2 is doable depending on what enemies you face, 1v3+ unwise to enter.

So I faced my share of ups and downs, but I can say all in all I’ve never experienced anything close to what I did with this build today.

OK I came across this one just as I was about to go to sleep. The original idea about using fully traited honor symbols is still there, but I’ve tinkered around the option of using tripple mediations instead of signets.

With somewhat reduced condition removal and less damage than the signet build, it gained a bit of mobility and extra healing, burning and direct damage sources, so every utility skill gives you healing of some sort. I also managed to squeeze out 16000 health and 3000 armor on top of that. Just too bad the trait lines became way too generic 10/0/30/30/0.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V8;4NFk20I33G-90;9;49-TT-1;303B269;15JV0-NV0ytbUytbUn-FekMs5-cc7dq-z01263E_I52L0Lc3B0;4cX9kc1BeY

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|9.1k.h2.e.1k.h1|2.1k.h2|1a.7i.1a.7i.1a.7i.1a.7i.1a.7i.1c.7i|2s.e14.21l.e14.31l.e17.21j.e14.31j.e17.2s.e14|a2.0.u14c.u37a.0|0.0|w.12.15.13.1i|e

Works just as well as the signet one against packs of enemies in Orr, now I have to do extensive testing in WvW.

EDIT:
Most recent variant (v5):
Symbology v5 – GW2Skills

CMF.5461:

Damage is decent and the healing is higher. I would swap out the soldiers back maybe and drop the vitality infusions as well as possibly change out longer symbols, but how does it feel playing?

Mixed feelings I must say, probably because of it being an actual Signet build, but still an improvement over 30/0/0/30/10 spirit weapon/symbol build I normaly run as I don’t have to worry about keeping them alive.

In PvE it’s easy to keep enemies inside of symbols and with longer lasting symbols, dropping the Protection one together with Symbol of Faith is almost godlike. Crowd control is a problem because of just one stunbreaker and no access to stability, so lots of dodging needs to be involved to counter it. Conditions are much less of issue aside from poison, that’s the enemy #1 here.

The hardest part in WvW (and PvP) is keeping your opponent inside as long as possible, longer lasting symbols can be switched for something else as the enemy most likely won’t stay inside for full duration anyway. Hammer is important here (again that darn scepter Smite not being a symbol), otherwise Bane Signet is not enough as CC on its own.

Generaly lots of tactical weapon swapping is needed. Also, in both cases mobility is almost nonexistant, unfortunately I don’t see any way to at least shorten travel time other than having to carry a staff in your bag.

I believe you just made a full circle and almost got back to the original 0/30/20/20/0. When it comes to Altruistic Healing vs Writ of the Merciful and healing power, at 1000 healing power you would need to have at least 2 other people standing inside of the symbol to get the same healing with AH as you would with WotM and as healing power increases, WotM gets better and better. By going for WotM you also have access to Selfless Daring, so more survival on top of that.

It seems like one can’t become unique in any other way than the actual symbol reliance.
If only Smite was a symbol for the sake of weapon swapping and double symbols.

EDIT: updated my build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeSlYgaCHEyIEf4Eh1DCawCi9Qje8jXFcIA-jgCBoNCiEBgUBBKLqIasFOMasFVAKbYKXER12xp2UeIaCBMaBA-e

So I gave this a shot and ended up with a bunker variation with signets. It has improved condition removal and high healing power, but loses heavily on DPS, so switching jewels/weapons to berserkers may help to hit the sweet spot:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS5elYgaCHEyIEf4Eh1DCawCi9Qje8jXFcIA-jQCBoNCyEBwUBBKLqIasVRFRjVNjIqWZDzOO1myDRDA-e
It did rather well in Orr especially against groups of enemies, but I didn’t test it in WvW so maybe today.

Lordryux.9785:

..he literally made my 28k hp look like childs play and it was gone in about 10 seconds..

That would require a more in depth analysis, but I think that person did not actually use a 100% SW build, but rather a variation of a standard DPS build utilising “A Fire Inside” and VoJ share to get extra burning uptime for “Fiery Wrath” in zeal. Basically a 30/30/0/0/10 full berserker glass cannon.

I really don’t recommend to go a DPS build depending on spirit weapons because of how easily the DPS can be killed, literally.

But anyway, in order to get the maximum from spirit weapons you have to take 30 in zeal and pick every spirit weapon trait there, then head for 20 in radiance and take “A Fire Inside”. After that take 10 in virtues for “Improved Spirit Weapon Duration”. This will also improve Virtue of Justice synergy in radiance. The remaining points can be used as needed.

As spirit weapons don’t scale with any of your stats except for condition damage for burning from “A Fire Inside” trait, you may basically take any gear ranging from knight to berserker depending on what you prefer, but for a weapon I would take a hammer or greatsword. Keep in mind that even in knight equip your spirit weapons will still do less than 50% of the total damage this build can deal.

For more all around build I recommend a 30/0/0/30/10 build with fully traited symbols in Honor with cleric equip and mace/shield, hammer/staff. Technically putting yourself into a more support oriented position.

Spirit weapon choice:
Sword of Justice is a must as it is the primary source of damage with the most uptime, just don’t use it’s command as it only makes it lose DPS.
Hammer of Wisdom is second almost mandatory as it is the only other weapon that actually deals damage and has a knockdown on command (beware of it’s knockback on autoattack chain).
Shield of the Avenger is almost a cheat to nulify ranged damage, but can also inflict some damage and weakness to up to 5 enemies on command.
Bow of Truth might work for some very special situations, otherwise you can completly skip this one.

Here I must admit I don’t do sPvP so I can’t really tell you how well would this build work there, but from my experience from PvE and WvW I can tell you that the smaller a fight is, the better, as SWs can’t survive in AoE heavy and burst damage environment. In small scale combat they work as long as your opponent does not choose them to be primary target.

Some warnings:
- spirit weapons have very poor AI and low durability
- spirit weapon builds are highly vulnerable to conditions and crowd control
- prolonged exposure to above mentioned problems may cause frustration

Tested just now, no difference noticed. Single symbol can stack up to 4 and keeps it that way until it ends, even double symbol works fine – stacks up to 8~9.
NOTE: I have no extra condition duration besides +30% from Zeal.

EDIT: Tested in PvE.

I’m with Ramiah on this one, I wrote down all the issues spirit weapons are plagued by some 2 months ago here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Shield-of-the-Avenger-Improvements/2078620

I think SotA is already good enough so we can ignore it which leaves us with the sword, hammer and bow in need of a fix. On top of that they all share two major issues:
1. AI
- Ever wondered why that kitten BoT and SotA doesn’t stay by your side and charge mindlessly at the enemy despite they can’t attack at all? I guess someone in the dev team was too lazy to create a pure support NPC AI script. They didn’t even bother to fix the actual one they use, hence the “run to target > stop > swing > miss > wait for attack cooldown and run after it again” pattern SoJ and HoW use.

2. survivability
- Now here we stand in front of a whole lot of problems. Combining their limited duration with durability of a wet paper and rather long cooldowns even the stun breaker on SotA isn’t going to see much use, because it has to be already summoned (1.5s cast time, 30s duration, 48s cooldown) and the command can be used twice at most (12s cooldown) and it can be easily killed in under 3 seconds unless your enemy goes ranged. This results in a great dilema – “Will I cast the shield now so I have the command ready and risk it to run out of time before actual combat or will I try to cast it during combat and risk to be denied to do so?”

When ANet made them targetable they claimed that it will also make them a subject to support skills (boons, heals, etc.). While this is true I still think it was just a quick baked argument they threw in to cover the obvious nerf a bit, because in order to support them, you can only go virtues or symbols (which I prefer because of Zeal synergy and virtues requiring you to take additional traits in other lines you simply can’t get to). Shouts are out of question as they occupy utility slots as well.

Then there is also a problem with trait allocation, it’s too spread out, but I think that would be a subject for a discussion after the previous two issues are fixed.

While I actually like to run my 30/0/0/30/10 full cleric SW build as it seem to work with my playstyle the best, it’s just the two issues I mentioned here and rather high vulnerability to conditions and CC make it often really frustrating especially in WvW and high level PvE.

Personaly when I’m in need of change of playstyle I use something like this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|2.1k.h1j|6.1k.h1j|1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71h.1k.71h.1k.71h|31l.e17.31l.e17.21l.e14.31l.e17.21l.e14.3u.e17|0.a2.0.u29b.u29b|0.0|v.18.16.19.1i|e
This is more of a frontline support to provide boons, condition removal and healing for other people charging the enemy. But what you are looking for is probably closer to this one:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|9.1k.h1j.e.1k.h2|6.1k.h1j|1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71h.1k.71h.1k.71h|31l.e17.31l.e17.21l.e14.31l.e17.21l.e14.3u.e17|0.0.u479.k37.k36|0.0|v.y.11.z.1j|e
Now, it’s actually pretty hard to measure the effectivity of such support builds, but one thing is ceratian – the more people around you, the more effective you are. Not many people run full supports because of how this game is desinged, so you will probably feel a bit unique on the field. But just a fair warning – WvWvW fights don’t favor static gameplay which symbols and consecrations need to be fully effective, so you will get to use it at almost full potential only in tower siege/defence and chokepoint fights.

NOTES:
- buildcraft doesn’t have updated traits yet – Mace of Justice also gives 250 healing power and Strenght in Numbers gives 150 toughness instead of just 70.

For a guardian the hammer really is a swiss army knife – highly versatile. Unfortunately it’s also a bit of a downside at the same time. With five slots there is only so much space for all those skills that it’s offensive strength had to be compressed into boring 1,1,1,2 and Symbol of Protection to be the only one that can’t be cast on demad which I find to be a letdown.

I always wondered why aegis stacks duration only, it doesn’t make sense so +1 for the idea, but 3 stacks max.

PokerTuna.6170:

no – too op. thiefs for instance would be screwed – whole combo on our 5 stacks of aegis…

You don’t have to worry that much. It’s possibly a bug which will be fixed sometimes, but right now when a thief hits someone with aegis in stealth, he won’t get revealed because he doesn’t deal any damage, but he will still eat a stack.
Another note – multihit attacks are the true bane of aegis, there are only a few ways to apply it and all of them are on long cooldowns.

Mikau.6920:

…
I tried in PvP, I tried to make it work, but not worth.
In WoE, I didn’t test yet.
…

I did test the 30/0/0/30/10 + Cleric gear in WWW and I must say it has very poor performance. Spirit weapons, just like guardian himself, lack any form of improved mobility and their AI scripting is terrible against non-NPC targets. This problem is amplified by symbols being completly static as well. It can work somewhat in small group fight, but once zerg vs zerg or mass AoE usage comes into play, you are left there alone with nothing you can do.

Sylar.6802:

Do SW scale with my own power and stats?

Unfortunately they don’t aside from burning caused by the “A Fire Inside” trait which, as claimed by wiki, should use your condition damage. But condition damage stat on a guardian is one of the least useful, so getting it for just a single trait is not worth it.

Sylar.6802:

And would you recommend to take all the 3 SW traits in the Zeal line?
or shall I take the new GS trait, with some healing in it?

so for example 30/0/30/10?

That way I can also focus on bigger symbols etc.

Depends. “Zealous Blade” does not scale with healing power and you would have to sacrifice “Eternal Spirit” (which I would never do) or “Wrathful Spirits” (acceptable, but still a big sacrifice) for it. But it can work with the 30/0/0/30/10 build as an option because it also has its own symbol and Honor trait line has a Master grade trait which reduces cooldown by 20% on all 2-handed weapon skills. This, however, makes using a hammer much better option for its almost permanent protection+retaliation. So this is a matter of preference and situation, if you and your party don’t get hit too much – GS, otherwise hammer is the way. You may also consider using a staff for Empower and Mace/X for healing.

Symbol traits:
I would get larger and longer symbols, you can drop the healing one if you want to get the 2-handed cooldown reduction.

An important note:
The 30/0/0/30/10 build can be easily switched from SWs to GS/Shouts when SWs won’t work in certain areas so don’t lose hope for the GS.

A rough cleric/spirit weapon user build (Runes can be switched around for extra healing/vitality/toughness, sigils can be switched for energy for extra dodge healing etc.)
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|9.1k.h2.e.1k.h1|2.1k.h1|1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71g.1k.71g|31l.e17.21l.e14.31l.e17.21l.e14.31l.e17.3v.e17|u6ab.0.0.u379.a5|0.0|v.1g.1f.1h.1j|e

I used to run a spirit weapon/symbol build a while ago. I used it only only twice in dungeons. One was CoF story mode solo – took 4 hours, but it was doable and the other was AC story mode 3 people party – decent performance, but nothing special.

Now more about the SWs and the build itself:
Spirit weapons were buffed only slightly – Wrathful Spirits with increased damage and Shield of the Avenger command is now also a stunbreaker.
You will have to take 30 in Zeal for all SW major traits and 10 in Virtues for increased SW duration, then you will have to consider getting 20 in Radiance for “A Fire Inside” trait for more DPS (NOTE: this will technically make you a glass cannon) or some other line. I personally did not go into Radiance, but took 30 in Honor for all Symbol major traits instead. There were two main reasons I did this:
1. Symbols also benefit from the two minor traits you get by going full Zeal.
2. You get a decent tank for yourself and your SWs by using mace/shield, hammer or staff.
If you decide to go into honor, you may consider getting a full cleric set as well for the raw healing power, until then I would stick with the knight gear you mentioned, soldier simply doesn’t cut it. I must note that both SWs and symbols promote static playstyle so you will have to do a lot of tanking and/or healing therefore knight and cleric score even more points.

SW choice:
Sword – is a must, highest DPS, longest duration, shortest cooldown, but lowest health and command is almost useless
Hammer – highest health, decent damage, very useful command, but the main problem is its 3rd chain attack knockback often messing up your symbol placement and DPS, it’s best not to use it together with the sword, but “rotate” it instead while the sword is on cooldown, you can also let it tank for you for a while when needed
Shield – with the recent buff I think I would prefer it over the bow, use it’s command to reduce incomming damage as much as possible
Bow – switch with shield or hammer for more support and healing if needed, its heal can be used twice before it ends which translates to 2×4000 AoE healing (technically another healing utility)