Guild Wars 2

Char with a white coat. Mesmer.

“Charuman the White”

Table of Contents

1) Introduction
2) Boons and Conditions
3) Symbols
4) Virtues
5) Combos
6) Weapon Overview
7) Hammer
8) Greatsword
9) Staff
10) Mace
11) Sword
12) Scepter
13) Offhands
14) Healing Overview
15) Utilities Overview
16) Consecrations
17) Meditations
18) Shouts
19) Signets
20) Spirit Weapons
21) Elites
22) Traits Overview
23) Making A Build
24) FAQs

Change Log

12/19/12 – Minor description changes in accordance with recent patch notes.
11/5/12 – Changed description of Renewed Focus to reflect recent changes.
9/21/12 – Added mention of the DoT component of Binding Blade. Thanks Aseyhe.2948!
9/16/12 – Added section on Sword
9/16/12 – Began first round of corrections and small edits.
9/15/12 – First draft of the guide completed and posted.
9/15/12 – Finished Table of Contents.

External Link Here – Thank you LamaFc

Hello everyone,

This is my first attempt at a comprehensive and approachable guide for beginners (and curious veterans) to the Guardian class. Guild Wars 2 is a brand new game, and the meta-game is still in its infancy. Many of us are struggling to understand the principles of this game while shedding ourselves of the pre-conceived expectations cultivated by years of playing WoW. There is no trinity, no concept of DPS, no tank-and-spank, no backline healbotting and no “pure support role,” and so we’re all in one way or another learning to play all over again.

This guide will attempt to accomplish the following:

• Introduce new players to the mechanics of the class
• Talk about the fundamentals of every weapon option
• Offer an overview of the utilities
• Discuss trait synergies and the philosophy behind creating a build
• Encourage experimentation and promote some of GW2’s new mechanics
• Debunk myths, misconceptions and misinformation that’s been floating around

This guide will not do any of the following:

• Teach you how to be a healbot
• Teach you how to be a tank
• Teach you how to be DPS
• Tell you exactly how to play
• Teach you PVP (It’s just not the aim of this guide, nothing against PVP at all)
• Cover advanced or high-level concepts including deep theorycraft

So, here we go!

It’s ANet’s Fault: A Compendium on Complaining On The Forums
Inviable: Why This Class Is Broken And Why You Should Reroll
Schadenfreude: Slaughtering Necromancers And Feeling Good About it
The Light And How to Swing It: By Uther Pendragon

Guardian 101 – A Guide For Beginners

“Blade with whom I have lived, blade with whom I now die: serve right and justice one last time; seek one last heart of evil; still one last life of pain. Cut well, old friend. Then, farewell.”

Good Reasons To Play A Guardian:

• You want to play an aggressive, armored class that can support your allies while bringing the hurt on your enemies.
• You want a good mix of magic and melee, and a class that combines armor and weaponry with flashy spell effects.
• You’re a pyromaniac and like the thought of engulfing your enemies in blue flame.
• You’re a pyromaniac and like the thought of engulfing yourself in blue flame.
• You think bows and rifles are for sissies.
• You want to be just like Logan Thackeray—good, because we have an ability for that. It’s called “RETREAT!”. Seriously, it’s a Shout.

Bad Reasons To Play A Guardian:

• You want to play a passive healer.
• You want to soak up damage like a meatshield.
• You hate dodging.
• You’re a masochistic thief that wants to play the profession that just broke your back in sPVP. Yeah, I went there.
• You’re expecting Hammer of Justice and Divine Shield all over again.
• You read somewhere on the forums that Guardians are totally OP Easymode OMG.
• You think Countess Anise has a thing for Guardians. Seriously, give up. You’ve got no chance.
• Queen Jennah on the other hand…

The Guardian is a defensive soldier. A heavily armored combatant whose playstyle focuses on contending with enemies while supporting one’s allies with robust boon application, heals and shields. Guardians are remarkably versatile, capable of adhering to a broad range of playstyles—spreading conditions, dealing sudden bursts of damage, being an immovable wall—but a few basic principles define the core of every Guardian’s playstyle:

• Force Multipliers: Guardians are designed to be good at this. We can routinely and sustainably improve our allies. Our Virtues allow us to sacrifice personal benefits for powerful boons applies to all nearby allies. Our symbols, shouts, meditations, consecrations and traits let us strengthen our allies while going toe to toe with our enemies.

• Close to Mid Range: Guardians do have limited long range options, but nearly all of our action is going to happen on the front line. We are built for the frontline. If you are not engaging your enemy, if you are not swinging your weapon, if you are not dodging out of blows and smashing something pointy and/or smashy in your enemy’s face, you’re doing something wrong.

• Versatility: Guardian playstyle changes dramatically with weapon choice. Depending on our weapon choice, we could be playing aggressively and focusing on high damage and spreading Burning. Or we could be playing defensively and focusing on blocking and guarding our allies. Every single weapon choice is viable, but every single weapon choices changes the way we play. A warrior, for example, is going to be aggressive and smash faces in whether they’re wielding mace, axe, sword or hammer. With Guardians, it’s not so simple. Each of our weapons opens up a different set of tactics. If you’re going to play a Guardian seriously, expect to use every weapon at your disposal.

• Active Defense: Regardless of your style of play, your Guardian—any Guardian, in fact—will always have defensive abilities available to them. Defensive abilities are defined as abilities that mitigate damage, remove conditions, protect allies, apply boons and provide healing.

That’s Guardian in a nutshell. This is what a Guardian is not:

• …Pure Support: No Guardian build will ever have you sitting in the mid/back line dropping boons and heals. Ever. If you’re doing this, you’re wasting half of your available resources. Every class is expected to be aggressive, and Guardians are no different. Remember, the best kind of support is a dead enemy, so if you’re not busy dropping shields or using Healing Breeze, you need to be bringing the pain to your enemies.

• …Pure Damage: No Guardian trait line or weapon combination (with the possible exception of Sword/Torch, and even then) or Utility combination will ever eliminate the support component of your profession. You will never be able to focus purely and entirely on damage—or rather, you’d have to try very hard to do that.

• …Versatile at range: I’ll talk about this more when I get to weapons. But at the moment, Guardians do not have many options when it comes to range. Our only ranged weapon is Scepter, and possibly Staff at about mid-range. Scepter is a strong, reliable weapon, but because it’s our only ranged weapon, you’ll need to get used to keeping one in your pack. You don’t have to use it all the time, but there will be situations that necessitate staying at range.

• …A paladin: This is actually important to understand. While the Guardian’s abilities seem inspired by Paladin-esque concepts of justice, valor and holiness, the Guardian is not a paladin. There is no Guardian order. The Guardians do not serve a Deity any more than any other profession might. And while we may seem thematically similar to them, we are not Holy/Prot/Ret paladins for anyone coming from WoW. There is no tank spec. There is no healer spec. There is no DPS spec.

There is only you, your allies at your back, and your enemies before you. That’s the role of the Guardian.

The Fundamentals of Being A Guardian: Boons/Conditions, Symbols, Virtues

What are boons?

Boons are effects that improve your allies’ abilities somehow. Different Guardian abilities activate different boons. If you want to be literate in Guardian abilities, learn what the boons do. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Boons that improve damage:
  • Fury: 20% higher chance to crit
  • Might: Attacks deal more damage
  • Retaliation: Enemies who strike you take some damage in return

• Boons that mitigate damage:
  • Aegis: Block (take no damage from) the next attack. Regardless of how strong an attack is, if you block it, it has zero effect on you.
  • Regeneration: Gradually return health per second
  • Protection: Take 33% less damage from attacks.

• Boons that improve performance:
  • Stability: You can’t be knocked down, pushed back, launched, stunned, dazed or feared.
  • Swiftness: Move 33% faster
  • Vigor: Endurance regenerates twice as fast.

What Are Conditions?

Conditions are the opposite of boons. Conditions debilitate, weaken, harm or otherwise reduce your enemies’ ability to fight you. Here’s a quick rundown of all the conditions:

• Conditions that deal damage:
  • Bleeding: Deals damage per second.
  • Burning: Deals damage per second. We do a LOT of this. Learn to love the Burn.
  • Confusion: Enemy takes damage when they use a skill.
  • Poison: Deals damage per second and reduces healing.

• Conditions that weaken the enemy:
  • Blind: The enemy’s next attack is an automatic miss. Think of this as a free block.
  • Chilled: Reduce movement speed by 66%. Skills recharge slower.
  • Crippled: Reduce movement speed by 50%
  • Fear: Enemies run away.
  • Immobilize: Prevent all movement.
  • Vulnerability: Enemy takes 1% more damage per stack.
  • Weakness: Half of your attacks deal low (glancing) damage. Endurance regenerates slowly.

Guardians have access to nearly every boon. Might, Retaliation, Aegis and Regeneration are probably your most common, but you have easy access to Vigor and Stability too. Fury is a bit harder to come by.

As for Conditions, we spread Burning like nobody’s business. But that’s about all we have. Guardians do have some strong Blind abilities, one or two Immobilizations and access to limited Vulnerability. But our most common condition is by far Burning.

Okay. So what about Symbols?

So, Symbols are a mechanic peculiar to Guardians. A Symbol is an area we create on the ground that damages enemies and provides a boon to allies in its radius. Later on I’ll discuss traits that improve Symbols, but for now, here’s a list of all our symbols:

• Symbol of Faith: Mace – Deals damage to enemies and grants regeneration to allies.
• Symbol of Judgement: Downed State – Heal Allies, Damage Enemies.
• Symbol of Protection: Hammer – Damage enemies and grant Protection to allies.
• Symbol of Swiftness: Staff – Damage enemies, grant Swiftness to allies.
• Symbol of Wrath: Greatsword – Damage enemies and causes Burning. Grant Retaliation to allies.

And how about Virtues?

Guardians have access to three Virtues, which are our Profession skills. Virtues come in two flavors: Passive and Active. As long as you don’t activate a Virtue, it’s in Passive mode, and gives you a small boost of some sort. When you activate the Virtue, you lose the Passive bonus and get the Active bonus. The Passive bonus returns once your Virtue is off cooldown.

Think of Virtues like signets that you always have. They give you small, constant bonuses when not in use, and if you activate them, they grant bigger bonuses to your entire team. Here’s a quick overview:

• Virtue of Justice: Passive – Every fifth attack burns the enemy for one second. Active: All nearby allies deal 5 seconds of burning on their next attack.

How to use it: Leave it on, for the most part. Virtue of Justice essentially makes your fifth strike deal more damage. A strike is defined as any time you hit your enemy. So any weapon or skill that has multiple, fast strikes is going to activate Passive Virtue of Justice more frequently, right? I’ll cover Justice synergy more thoroughly when I get to specific weapons, but the rule of thumb is: The faster your weapon attacks, the more damage you get out of this Virtue.

Activate Virtue of Justice when you have several allies around you. Every nearby ally’s next attack will set the enemy on fire for five seconds. So if it’s five of you attacking one champion, that’s 25 seconds of burning. Not too shabby.

Virtue of Justice comes off cooldown pretty quickly, so feel free to use it liberally if you have allies around you.

• Virtue of Resolve: Passive – Regenerate Health. Active: Heal yourself and nearby allies.

How to use it: Leave it on. You won’t notice it, but it’s there to help you. Virtue of Resolve grants you a small amount of health back every three seconds, but it does add up over the course of a battle.

Because of the long cooldown, activating Virtue of Resolve just to heal yourself is not recommended except in a pinch. Use it when you need to spread a modest heal to your nearby allies. It’s strong enough to save them if they’re starting to get low.

• Virtue of Courage: Passive – Grants Aegis every 40 seconds. Activate: Grant Aegis to yourself and nearby allies.

How to use it: Again, leave it on. The cooldown on this is way too long to justify using it except in particular situations. Courage gives you a free Aegis every 40 seconds. That’s a free block every 40 seconds. Every 40 seconds, you’ll totally negate one attack. Activating it gives Virtue immediately to every ally around you. It can be a great lifesaver if you’re expecting nearby allies to take a big amount of damage, or if you just want to give them some mitigation in anticipation of a lot of damage.

Either way, rule of thumb: Leave it on. Use Courage if you desperately, absolutely need to block something NOW. Otherwise, save it for when you’ve got allies around you who are under attack.

Hang on. What about Combos? Guardians have all these Combo Fields…

We sure do. So, Combos are one of the underrated mechanics of GW2 at the time of writing this guide. People tend to glaze over it, or ignore its efficacy when discussing an ability. I honestly cannot understand why—Combos are wonderful. Combos add so much to a Guardian’s group dynamic. But how do they work?

Combos are pretty simple in theory. A combo is created by a Combo Field + Combo Finisher. Every Combo Field has a particular type. The type of Combo Field you create determines the effects of the Combo Finisher. Let’s take Hammer for example.

Hammer has Symbol of Protection, which is also a Combo Field: Light. You can tell it’s a Combo Field by the bright, shining borders. Hammer also has Mighty Blow, which is a Combo Finisher. If you perform Mighty Blow (Combo Finisher) inside Symbol of Protection (Combo Field), you produce a Combo effect.

Why are Combo Fields so useful? Simple: Any ally can activate them. The more allies you have performing Combo Finishers inside your Combo Field, the more Combos you create. Here’s a quick list of our available Combo Fields:

Combo Field: Light plus …
… Combo Finisher: Blast = Area Retaliation
… Combo Finisher: Leap = Retaliation
… Combo Finisher: Projectile = Remove Condition
… Combo Finisher: Whirl = Cleansing Bolts

Combo Field: Fire plus …
… Combo Finisher: Blast = Area Might
… Combo Finisher: Leap = Fire Armor
… Combo Finisher: Projectile = Burning
… Combo Finisher: Whirl = Burning Bolts

This seems like a lot to take in, and it is, but you’ll get used to it the more you play.

Understanding Weapons

Guardians have access to the following weapons:

• Two Handed
  • Hammer
  • Greatsword
  • Staff

• Main-Hand Only
  • Sword
  • Scepter
  • Mace

• Off-Hand Only
  • Focus
  • Shield
  • Torch

• Underwater
  • Spear
  • Trident

Every weapon you equip grants you a different set of abilities that provides you with a different set of tactics. Two-Handed and Underwater weapons grant you a grand total of five attack skills. Main-Hand weapons grant you three, and Off-Hand weapons grant you two. You can combine Main Hand and Off-Hand weapons in any way you like.

Before I get into the specifics of weapons, I want to make a few things clear:

1) Every weapon is viable. There is no such thing as an inviable weapon. I’m actually not a fan of the way “inviable” gets thrown around as a word—if you see someone on the forums or in the game complaining about how Hammer or Mace or Greatsword is inviable in such-and-such situation, they’re just whining. Trust me. Now, there is such a thing as a weapon being more useful in one situation and less useful in another. That is important to remember. If you want to deal big spike damage, swinging a scepter is probably not your best option, for example. And if you want range, swinging a mace is probably not your best option. But Scepter sure is.

2) Keep a good copy of every single weapon in your inventory. Seriously. Just because you can switch between two weapons in combat doesn’t mean you should only ever rely on two weapons. You are a Guardian. You have access to an entire range of weapons. Keep all of them, and learn two switch weapon sets when you’re anticipating their use. I’ll talk more about this later, but I want this idea percolating in your minds for a while.

3) You are not defined by your weapon. You are not limited by your weapon. While it’s true that certain Traits do encourage the use of certain weapons, remember that Traits are not at all permanent. Look, just because you have a Trait that gives you +15% Crit with a one handed weapon doesn’t mean you can never ever use a staff or a hammer. Be flexible.

Hammer: Because I May Be A Guardian, But I Can Still Bash Your Face In

Ah, the Hammer. Big. Slow. Ponderous. The hammer is actually surprisingly versatile for something that looks like it was designed for a single ultraviolent purpose. The Hammer is a slow weapon partly because it has a built in symbol in its attack chain. Yes. That’s right. Every three attacks, Hammer creates a big Symbol of Protection on the ground that gives you and all your friends Protection for a little while. It also hits like a truck, if you could swing a truck with both hands.

Hammer Skills:

Hammer Swing/Hammer Bash/Symbol of Protection – This is your auto-attack. The first two swings come out at an average speed, but the last swing is very slow. Time it right and it’ll hit hard and create a Symbol of Protection on the ground, dealing additional damage to enemies and protecting allies. Oh, and it doubles as a Combo Field: Light

Mighty Blow: Learn to love it. Mighty Blow is just straight damage. With Mighty Blow, timing is everything. It hits hard and fast, so use it just after a Symbol of Protection to lay on a sudden spike of damage. Remember that it’s a Combo Finisher too, so use it to activate any combo fields.

Zealot’s Embrace: A long range immobilize. Use it to help close distance or control fleeing enemies. Use it to keep enemies from chasing your less armored allies.

Banish: I can’t get over how much fun this attack is. Despite the relatively long cooldown, Banish deals a modest amount of damage and sends an enemy flying. Use it to interrupt enemy skills, and keep them controlled—an enemy flying through the air and struggling to get back up is an enemy that isn’t attacking. Send enemies off cliffs. Keep them off your allies.

Ring of Warding: One of two wards the Guardian gets. This is an amazingly versatile ability, and one of the few abilities that can force an enemy to stay on you. I don’t actually recommend this, by the way. Forcing an enemy to hit you is about the worst way to mitigate damage. Instead, consider using it as a cage. Lock an enemy in—you’re free to run out, but they’re not. Also, it’s not terribly wide, but you can use it to lock up choke points.

Why The Hammer is Awesome:

• Free symbol in an auto-attack chain. Seriously, free symbol!
• High damage. Hammer’s damage is unsteady and tends to come slow, but when it hits, it hits hard.
• Mighty Blow is amazing. Seriously, this ability is beautiful. Short cooldown. High damage. Area effect. Small leap. And on top of all that? It’s a combo finisher! Do it right after Symbol of Protection to grant Retaliation on everyone.
• Good Control: Zealot’s Embrace, Banish and Ring of Warding let you control movement. Keep enemies locked in place or send them flying.

Interesting Synergies:

• Any Combo Field. Hammer has access to one of our few combo finishers, and it’s on a very short cooldown. Any weapon with a combo field works well with Hammer. Any utility that creates a Combo Field works well with Hammer. Purging Flames is particularly useful: Combo Field Fire, free condition removal, free area damage. Sounds exactly like what Hammer could use.

• Hammer/Greatsword: Twice the symbols and finishers. Extra control. Hammer and Greatsword together can deal a lot of close area damage quickly, and have enough control to keep enemies together. Two combo finishers and fields mean added group support.

• Hammer/Staff: Two wards. Hammer can work as a finisher for Symbol of Swiftness. Empower works well as a pre-Hammer setup.

• Hammer/Scepter: Decent ranged option. An extra immobilize and a long range, albeit slow, projectile give you options at any range. The beauty of Scepter, though? Smite. Use smite in melee, switch to Hammer and immediately lay down your attack chain + Mighty Blow. The area damage is just tremendous. Then, as a cherry on top, use Banish, chase, start the process all over again.

• Hammer/Sword: Sword’s teleport is a great distance closer. Use it to jump in, and switch to Hammer. The extra blind should keep you safe from the first attack.

Greatsword: Or, A Lesson In Inspiring Warrior Jealousy

Another highly versatile two-hander, faster than Hammer and a bit more well-rounded, Greatsword is a popular everyman’s weapon, useful in leveling, general PVE, and even support. Greatsword is reasonably fast, at least compared to Hammer, and provides Might in your attack chain. It’s designed for fighting multiple enemies, comes with a combo field, three combo finishers, a distance closer and control.

Greatsword Skills:

Strike/Vengeful Strike/Wrathful Strike: A solid, wide-sweeping attack chain. This chain grants you three seconds of Might at the end of it. For every enemy you strike, you’ll stack another Might. The duration is static, but the intensity grows with every enemy you hit. Three seconds is coincidentally about long enough for another chain, meaning constant Greatsword auto-attack = constant Might.

Symbol of Wrath: The damage is strong and racks up the longer an enemy stays inside the Symbol’s borders. It also provides retaliation, but not for long, so it’s useful to use just before an enemy strikes you. To top it off, it’s a Combo Field. Use it with Whirling Wrath, as detailed below.

Whirling Wrath: Best used when facing multiple enemies, which is exactly what Greatsword is designed to do. Whirling Wrath will trigger Cleansing Bolts off Symbol of Wrath, granting condition removal to nearby allies. It also hits hard, though the damage is variable, and tends to be more reliable when you have more than one enemy beside you. The closer you are to enemies, the more Whirling Wrath’s projectiles will hit.

Leap of Faith: The cooldown is a little long to use this indiscriminately. It is, however, a good distance closer coupled with good mitigation due to the Blind effect. Don’t use it purely for damage, but use it to jump into a group, or leap to an enemy charging at an ally. It’s a Leap finisher—not, in fact, all that great from Symbol of Wrath (your Retaliation might not do much if your enemy is blinded—it has to actually hit you to trigger Retaliation), but the Leap is worth keeping in mind.

Binding Blade: Control and an interrupt. Binding Blade does modest damage and produces a leash on the enemy. Use the Pull ability to interrupt them and immediately drag them on to you. The distance—a medium 600—takes a little getting used to, but this is a useful way to either corrall enemies, punish them for running away from you or create setups for Whirling Wrath. This is a Whirl finisher.

Binding Blade also has a significant DoT component. It isn’t a bad idea to allow the DoT to deal some damage before Pulling.

Judge’s Intervention and Merciful Intervention are your two aggressive and defensive teleports, respectively. Judge’s Intervention works similar to Purging Flames, in fact. It has a shorter Burning duration and no persistent area, but it breaks stun, travels a considerable 1200 range and breaks stun to boot. With 45 seconds of cooldown, this is a modestly reliable ability which, augmented by traits, can be available every couple significant encounters. Use this to close distance instantly or break out of stun and reposition yourself. You can actually use this defensively by targetting an enemy en route to an ally. And, you know. Intervene.

Merciful Intervention is a bit trickier. It’s available half as often as Judge’s Intervention, so you don’t want to waste it, but it can be a lifesaver. Just be aware of the 1200 range; it’s a double edged sword. Merciful Intervention will take you to the ally with the lowest health in a relatively wide range, and that might not always be the ally you want to go to. Still, the hefty heal creates a kind of triage effect, and you can save a life. Depending on the situation of the ally, this would be a good time to apply boons and heals, or remove conditions, or just shove away whatever it is that’s smacking them. Despite its theme, Merciful Intervention is both offensive and defensive. It’s offensive in the sense that it can immediately take you to the point of most danger—which is often the front line.

Just be careful with it. The teleport is far and the advantage of instantly arriving at an ally’s side can be used to get you out of a tough spot too. But have an eye on your allies before you use this ability.

Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity are your two condition removal meditations. Smite Condition is easy to use and straightforward. In fact, I recommend every beginner Guardian get used to using this ability. Learning to use Smite Condition will teach you to anticipate and react to condition application—and immediately punish every enemy around you for solid damage the moment they drop a condition on you. Any condition. At a mere 20 second cooldown, this is a reliable staple of any Meditation-oriented Guardian—or any Guardian.

Contemplation of Purity is a fascinating specimen of a Utility. Here is a perfect example of a Utility skill that can be easily wasted, but if used correctly, has enormous potential to change the tide of a battle. It’s a stun breaker that instantly converts every condition on you into a boon. Damage-dealing conditions become Regenerations. Movement reduction conditions give you speed. Weakness gives you Might. For general condition removal, Contemplation of Purity has a prohibitively long recharge time. But in areas and encounters where you expect heavy condition application, it’s a game-changer.

Interesting Synergies

• Obviously, any way to invite conditions onto yourself can be exploited to trigger Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity. Keep an eye on the descriptions of your enemies. If it says something like “Applies Conditions” or “Bleeds,” then listen for the sound-byte your character makes when they’re inflicted with a condition. That’s your trigger.

• The most obvious synergy, however, is between “Save Yourselves!” and Contemplation of Purity. In a situation where multiple allies suffer from multiple conditions, Save Yourselves + Contemplation of Purity rids everyone within a 600 range of every condition, and then turns all those conditions into stacking boons on you. How awesome is that?

• Monk’s Focus, the Valor XII trait, gives every Meditation a modest heal component, adding to your personal survivability and mitigation. It also transforms Merciful Intervention into a double-dipper: you can retreat to a hurt ally, heal your ally, and patch yourself up at the same time. And Smite Condition with a heal component is just exquisite.

Shouts: Now Step Over To the Abdominator, and I Will Shout Slogans At You!

Shouts are utilities Guardians share with Rangers and Warriors. Powerful little bits of rhetoric we bellow and inspire you to acts of greatness or something. Shouts are versatile, the one common thread between them being their synergy with allies around you. The more allies you have, the better your shouts. The Honor trait line governs Shouts.

Let’s start with Save Yourselves, since I’ve already just mentioned it. Save Yourselves is a bit of a power-up. To be honest, in most PVE and general leveling, you’ll rarely draw conditions to yourself. In that case, Save Yourselves becomes a powerful, if selfish, shout that stacks a ton of conditions on you. Best used in anticipation of a tougher fight. However, Save Yourselves in a condition-heavy fight with allies can save a lot of lives. Just make sure you can survive it.

Stand Your Ground and Hold The Line are on relatively short recharges, making them routinely available for most significant encounters. At 4-6 second duration, they last long enough to give your allies a boost of momentum, but can be squandered if used at the wrong time. It’s tempting to just lay out a Shout and hope it makes a difference—but don’t do that. Stand Your Ground is a great Shout when you want to give your allies a bit more momentum, and they’re in melee with several enemies. The Retaliation will add a lot of damage for every blow dealt by enemies, and Stability should prevent any annoying stuns, dazes and knockdowns.

Hold The Line, on the other hand, is a bit more defensive. You want to use it to soften the blow, just prior to several enemies attacking you. Use Stand Your Ground to give your allies a boost to momentum, but use Hold the Line to rob your enemies of momentum. Allies with Protection and Regeneration are going to be able to withstand the first wave of attacks pretty well, which means a better counterattack.

And don’t mock _Retreat. I know I do, but Retreat has a lot of general use. Despite the relatively long cooldown, the boons last a while. You don’t have to use it defensively at all—in fact, I recommend using it for the opposite of running away: Charging! This is a great shout when rushing into battle. The free Aegis will nullify the first attack of the enemy, and you’ll close distance fast, and be able to stay on top of any fleeing enemies. The free Block is also similar to Virtue of Courage—use it to give all your allies solid mitigation just before a big enemy attack.

If you see a lot of allies standing around in glowing red circles—you know, the ones that indiciate something bad is about to happen to them? Use Retreat. It’ll help.

Interesting Synergies

• Going deep in the Virtues traits improves Boon duration by up to 30%, which will help take your Shouts that extra mile.

• Altruistic Healing, the Valor XI trait, will heal you for every boon you apply to every ally. With several allies around you, Shouts are a good way to get those heals rolling. The heals, by the way, are relatively small, but combined with everything else you do, they can provide you with a fair amount of mitigation.

• Going down the Honor line? Pure of Voice and Superior Aria means your Shouts become much more reliable and become a potent form of condition removal.

• Shattered Aegis, The Zeal V Trait, makes “Retreat!” a more aggressive weapon. Every Aegis you apply to your allies is going to pay off as a Burn.

Signets: Almost like extra Virtues

The concept of the Signet should be pretty familiar to you. Virtues function in exactly the same way. While they’re equipped and inactive, they provide a constant passive bonus to you. Once you use them, you enjoy a shorter duration but more powerful bonus. Guardians can actually do some amazing things with our Signets.

Signet of Judgment has the fastest recharge of every Signet in our repertoire. At 20 seconds—16 with Signet Mastery—expect it up at every fight, if not twice a fight. This is an underrated but wonderful signet. While passive, you’ll take 10% less damage from every source. Activated, and all nearby enemies gain Weakness, further crippling their damage capacity, while all nearby allies gain Retaliation, punishing the enemies for the pitiful damage they somehow manage to deal.

Signet of Wrath and Bane Signet provide more control. Bane Signet’s long range interrupt deals a modest amount of damage, while knockdown functions as a movement control, an interrupt, and even a makeshift stun. Wrath adds a long immobilization, which, coupled with Hammer and Scepter, can keep an unfortunate enemy chained to ground for nearly long enough to kill it outright. Wrath provides +50 Condition Damage at 80, which is equal to about 12 more damage per second on Burning, and Bane Signet provides 90 Power at level 80, which is a little less than 3 stacks of Might.

Signet of Mercy is an oddball. It’s probably going to sit passive in your Utility bar for 90% of its use, partly because its Active power is so rarely used, and partly because its cooldown is so terribly long. For exactly these reasons, it benefits quite a bit from Signet Mastery (which reduces its cooldown by 48 seconds) and should be used with care. But Signet of Mercy is an instant revive. Not a rally. A revive. Any ally—player or NPC—dead nearby can be brought instantly to life with a click of a button. It’s hard to overestimate just how important having another ally alive can be, so judicious use of Signet of Mercy can competely turn the tide of a losing battle.

Interesting Synergies

• Spirit Weapons synergize well with certain playstyles. The high damage and area-damage of Sword makes it well suited to aggressive, damage oriented playstyles. Greatsword and Sword/Torch will feel right at home with Sword of Justice’s additional, raw damage. But even playstyles that emphasize a more defensive role could use Sword of Justice to fill in some gaps in damage. Midline Guardians can use Hammer of Wisdom to keep enemies off their more vulnerable allies. Even aggressive, high-damage Guardians can use Bow of Truth to help mitigate some of their gaps in defense, and provide necessary condition removal that allows them to stay focused on their task.

• If you want to maximize your Spirit Weapon potential, you’ll need to look to traits. Zeal provides three traits—Eternal Spirit, Spirit Weapon Mastery, and Wrathful Spirits—which allow you to use Spirit weapons more frequently, let you keep your Spirit Weapon around after Commanding it, and improve their damage. Radiance’s “A Fire Inside” gives Spirit Weapons a burning effect, and Virtues “Improved Spirit Weapon” duration allows you to keep them around longer.

Taken together, we’re looking at up to three Spirit Weapons readily available in most encounters, all of which cause burning, deal a solid amount of constant, passive damage, knock back enemies, knock down foes, reflect projectiles, spread weakness, remove conditions and heal allies. It’s like a personal army!

A Few Words On Elites

If you’re a total beginner to the Guardian class, you don’t have to worry about Elites right now. You’ve got enough on your mind, between worrying about Queensdale’s bandit problems to internal debates about the peculiar frequency of giant terrifying worms destroying everyone’s crops. Take it easy. Put it aside for a little while.

But by the time you approach your first Elite unlock, you should be excited. These are the Big Guns of your Utility line-up. Your trump cards. You’ve been working toward them for thirty-something levels, and they should change the way you play a Guardian.

Well—hold on.

Elites may be some of your most powerful skills in terms of pure numbers. But your Elite does not define your playstyle. In most cases, you are not going to build around your Elites. Guardian Elites are emergency buttons—long cooldown panic buttons the careful application of which can have the greatest single influence on a battle. But you need to remember that while Elites are powerful in and of themselves, your playstyle should never hinge upon the use of an elite.

Renewed Focus is poorly understood, and at first glance, lends itself to a defensive ability best used to withstand powerful attacks. In fact, the true value of Renewed Focus is not in its invulnerability, but the renewal of your Virtues. Renewed Focus grants you three seconds of invulnerability; attack skills have no effect on you, and any damage you take will be from ongoing conditions, which Renewed Focus does not cure. The key to using Renewed Focus, however, is returning all your Virtues to you and having three seconds of time to return some cooldowns. Renewed Focus essentially presses a reset button on an encounter, returning all your Virtue resources to you. Burn your Virtues prior to using Renewed Focus, absorb any attacks coming your way, and return to battle stronger.

Tome of Wrath and Tome of Courage temporarily transform you into powerful sources of aggressive or defensive magic. Each Tome lasts twenty seconds—thirty, with Elite Focus (Virtues Master Trait). Generally speaking, Wrath spreads conditions on enemies while granting aggressive boons to allies (Might, Swiftness, Fury, Quickness), while Courage heals allies, cures conditions, blinds enemies, and grants protection. Both Tomes include one very powerful spell you’ll only have time to cast once. Might’s “Judgment” deals tremendous area damage, coupled with a knockdown. Courage’s “Light of Deliverance” is a full heal on five nearby allies.

Courage is not going to turn you into a healbot for twenty (or thirty) seconds. Neither is Wrath going to transform you into a condition and damage machine. These tomes should be used in critical moments, as safety nets to catch a runaway encounter from going south. Unexpected adds, downed allies, difficult odds.

Traits: Bringing It All Together

If you’re like me and came to Guild Wars from a background in MMORPGs, traits will—at first glance—seem like the ubiquitous Talent Tree system, a set of available specializations that further define your character, a template for creating builds.

Builds in Guild Wars 2 are much more fluid. The key to understanding Traits is realizing that they’re temporary. Traits are not set in stone. There is no single damage Trait line. There is no Support Trait line. To top it off, the Traits you unlock aren’t set in stone—every 10 points you invest in a Trait line unlocks a set of Traits, all of which can be switched and mixed around at your pleasure. To top it off, resetting Traits is cheap, and at Level 80, costs 3.5 silver.

The lesson is that you shouldn’t feel tethered to your Traits. Your Traits are not who you are. Your Traits augment, enhance and enable your chosen playstyle, but they can, and should, and will, be changed to suit your situation, your build, your weapon, and—of course—your whim.

If you’re brand new to Guild Wars 2, then Traits are an additional way to customize your character’s abilities, first available at level 11. As you progress in level, you’ll unlock more Trait points, which you may invest as you please. By level 80, you will have accumulated 70 Trait points to divide among your five Trait Lines.

Throughought this guide, I have attempted to illustrate particular synergies between Traits and Skills. It’s important to disassociate the thought of a particular Trait line being intended for a particular playstyle. Different Trait lines enhance your build in different ways. What if you wanted better Symbols? You could go into Zeal. Or you could go into Honor. What if you wanted more damage? Honor improves recharge on Two-Handed weapons. But Zeal improves Greatsword damage. And Radiance is great for one-handed damage. And Virtues improves your damage by Burning.

The point I’m trying to make is this: Traits should free you, not lock you down. Traits should encourage you to experiment with builds, try new things, express yourself imaginatively and see what works for you. Traits exist to give you the tools to make your favorite playstyle work for you.

Here’s a quick overview of Guardian Traits, and a brief rundown on picking the Traits right for you:

• Zeal
  • Each point invested in Zeal improves your Power by 10 and your Condition Duration by 1%
  • Zeal includes Traits that support aggressive use of Symbols, aggressive use of Spirit Weapons, Greatsword, Focus and Scepter damage.
  • Players interested in Spirit Weapons will likely invest in Zeal. Players who want to capitalize on Burning should look into Zeal for Fiery Wrath and Condition Duration. Aggressive players of every build will get some mileage out of Zeal, either through improved Power, more aggressive Symbols, or superior Focus recharge.

• Radiance
  • Each point invested in Radiance improves your Precision by 10 and your Condition Damage by 10.
  • Radiance includes Traits that improve Signets, allow frequent Virtue of Justice use, enhance Blinds, improve One-Handed weapons and improve Torch skills.
  • Players who want to use Virtue of Justice often should take Radiance. Radiance is excellent for damage builds using one-handed weapons, sword+torch players, Burning builds, and heavy signet use.

• Valor
  • Each point invested in Valor improves Toughness by 10 and Critical Damage by 1%
  • Valor includes Traits that improve block mechanics, remove conditions, enhance Meditations, reward Mace, Hammer and Shield play, and improve personal survivability.
  • Contrary to the Shield and Toughness support, Valor is not just a defensive line. Players interested in more Crit damage, players who apply frequent boons to allies and make frequent use of Meditations will get mileage out of Valor.

• Honor
  • Each point in Honor improves Vitality by 10 and Healing Power by 10
  • Honor includes Traits that improve symbols, improve signets, improve Shouts, reward critical hits and improve Endurance regeneration. Honor also improves recharge on Two Handed weapons and allows for better reviving.
  • Honor is not just a healing tree. Vitality is useful for everyone (as is Healing, honestly), and Honor is an excellent tree for builds that want to capitalize on a high critical rating. Symbol support and shout support makes Honor useful for any build.

• Virtues
  • Each point in Virtues improves Boon Duration by 1% and Virtue Recharge Rate by 1%
  • Virtues improves the efficacy and availability of your Virtues, improves Consecrations, improves Spirit Weapons and Elite Skills.
  • Virtues are a core mechanic for Guardians, and consequently, any given playstyle can benefit from the traits offered here. Master and Grandmaster Traits are especially useful to players who want to make Virtue of Justice twice as dangerous.

Why the Greatsword is Awesome:

• An aggressive weapon set that also provides good support.
• Free Might!
• Three whole combo finishers. Seriously. Three!
• Potent at close range.
• Solid choice for leveling. Dispose of multiple enemies quickly.

Interesting Synergies

• Greatsword/Staff: Apply Empower and Symbol of Swiftness, then close distance with the Sword. Staff gives you a potent mid-range support option, letting you function across several ranges with Greatsword in tow. Dropping Symbol of Swiftness in the middle of a fight, and then leaping into it, has a certain satisfaction.

• Greatsword/Mace: Mace is the defensive version of Greatsword. Greatsword allows you to attack several enemies effectively at close range. Mace lets you defend against several enemies effectively at close range. Switching to Mace gives you good defensive options while staying at an ideal Greatsword range. A good Protector’s Strike is a great time to switch to Greatsword and turn momentum.

• Greatsword/Scepter: Smite at melee. I can’t emphasize how effective this is. Smite, switch, Symbol, Whirling Wrath. Frontloaded close-range area damage, plus a decent ranged option if necessary.

• Greatsword/Sword: More synergy than you’d expect. Two blinds means the possibility of keeping a single enemy’s attacks nullified more consistently. Two distance closers means greater mobility. Sword lets you open hard with some powerful, single target attacks, especially when coupled with Torch. Switch to Greatsword to clean up.

Staff: There’s A Gandalf Reference Here Somewhere. I’m not going to make it though.

Don’t mistake Staff for a dedicated healer weapon. Staff is versatile and comes with powerful support abilities, and every Guardian should keep a good staff in their inventory, regardless of your build, spec or playstyle. The Staff provides strong mid-range support and functions best when you’re with allies, but not necessarily in the thick of the fray. Use it to grant Empower and drop a Symbol in anticipation of a big fight, or roll back to the midline, use Empower, then switch back to a more aggressive weapon. Line of Warding may be the single most powerful ability available to Guardians.

Staff Skills:

Wave of Wrath: Rainbow power! Wave of Wrath hits all enemies at 600 range across a very wide arc. Per-hit damage is middle-of-the-road, but the wide range makes up for it. Use this ability to tag multiple opponents in dynamic group events. Use this ability to lay damage on swarms of enemies. Use this ability with a good amount of crit and Empowering Might (Honor VIII) to grant several stacks of Might to all your allies—constantly. Use this ability with Renewed Justice (Radiance 15) to keep Virtue of Justice constantly recharging.

Orb of Light: Moves relatively slow, but has a fast cooldown. In tightly packed areas or with enemies up against walls, Orb of Light can add a lot of damage—fast. Detonate it for a modest heal to all allies in radius. See what I mean about benefitting from fighting in tightly packed areas, or having allies around?

Symbol of Swiftness: Grant a speed boost to any ally that steps in its radius, in addition to being a nice Combo Field. This symbol actually works in interesting ways. The Swiftness lasts eight seconds, and it activates the full duration per pulse (i.e, once a second). So every time an ally runs through Symbol of Swiftness, they should get a full eight seconds of extra speed. Run back through it to refresh. With traits that improve Symbols and reduce cooldowns on Staff abilities, expect to see this symbol in every fight.

Empower: Don’t let the long channel time dissuade you. Use this from the midline to give your front line a very powerful (12 stacks) Might boost and a strong heal. Use it in anticipation/preparation for a fight before switching to an aggressive weapon like Greatsword. Use it with Altruistic Healer to give you lots of health back. The cooldown is sufficiently low that, especially with a trait, you could use it in every significant encounter. This is one big reason to have Staff in your pack at all times.

Line of Warding: Hello, coolest and most versatile ability in the entire Guardian line. Line of Warding creates a line in front of you that no enemy can cross. At all. For a whole five seconds. Use it to block off entire corridors. Use it to force enemies to run around objects or use it to split enemies apart. Use it to block or create choke points. Use it while screaming “You shall not pass!” …kittenit. I made the reference, didn’t I? sigh

Why the Staff is Awesome

• Wide attack arc that tags multiple enemies. That’s a lot of Virtue of Justice triggers!
• Useful support skills that synergize well with any weapon, useful in any situation.
• Line of Warding
• Powerful ranged symbol, readily available.
• High Might stacking, synergizes well with Altruistic Healing and any content in which you have allies around you.

• Sword/Mace: One of my favorite combinations while leveling. Sword is versatile and provides very high single-target damage and Virtue of Justice triggers. Mace provides strong healing. Outnumbered? Use mace. Thin them out. Switch to Sword. Or use Sword to close distance and apply blind. Use the blind time to switch to mace and drop your Symbol. Their next attack misses, and you block their second attack with Protector’s Strike. What’s that? You just nullified two attacks, gave yourself Regeneration and dealt a huge counter? Yeah. This is why Mace rocks.

• Mace + Focus: Solid synergy. Focus gives a limited ranged attack while closing distance, but more importantly, it gives you a blind. With allies close to you, that’s free Regen which stacks well with Symbol. The blind will mitigate one attack, and Shield of Wrath will mitigate three more, and Protector’s Strike will mitigate a fourth.

• Mace + Shield: Classic cleric look. Actually, Mace and Shield work well. It might not seem like it at first, but Shield of Judgement and Protector’s Strike provide damage, protection, a block and a counter. Shield of Absorption is a little tricky to use. You don’t want to scatter enemies you have under control, but you do want to scatter enemies that are out of control. Use it to lay down a quick, safe heal on nearby allies or stop projectiles while closing distance.

• Mace + Torch: I don’t see much of this around, and I don’t know why, because it’s awesome. Zealot’s Flame is great for mace, because you want to have one or two enemies around you. You can handle that. And with Zealot’s Flame, you can punish them too. Zealot’s Fire is a solid long range attack, which Mace lacks. And Cleansing Flame can finish up enemies you’ve corralled and weakened through Protector’s Strike.

Scepter: Guardian Tennis Club

Ah, Scepter. The Guardian relationship with Scepter is…a lot like a shotgun wedding. You’re pretty much stuck with it. Or else. So you better learn to love it. Seriously though, Scepter’s slow projectile speed and wibbly-wobbly bubbly looking projectile aside, this is a highly effective midrange weapon (long range if you’re against more stable foes in PVE—Champions, for example) that also happens to be our only ranged weapon. And I just cannot say enough good things about Smite.

Scepter Skills:

Orb of Wrath: Slow, bright, shiny. Yeah, it’s pretty much this, except, you know, dangerous and it hurts things. Orb of Wrath’s slow projectile speed really only matters at past the ~800 range. It’s effective against stable Champions at long range, but, surprisingly, it actually does well in melee, especially when compared with….

Smite: I <3 Smite. Smite does a lot of damage. Smite does a lot of damage in a relatively small area. Smite is balanced around the fact that enemies run out of that area and stop taking damage. Smite also has a small cooldown? So what makes smite so awesome? Use it in melee. Melee enemies aren’t going to run away from you despite being kitten-slapped a dozen times by the Gods. It’ll turn the melee vicinity into a death zone. Seriously, try leveling with Smite. Just try the first 10 levels. You’ll be shocked to see how fast things die.

Chains of Light: In order to understand Chains of Light, you need to think about it as a bridge between Scepter and whatever other weapon you’re using. Sure, Chains of Light is nice to stop an enemy and then drop a Smite on them, but it’s even nicer when you’re using Scepter to attack from range and want to keep something locked down while you enter melee. The Vulnerability is small, but significant, and stacks well with Vulnerability from other allies. And, as always, feel free to use Immobilize as a means of mitigation—keep an enemy OFF your teammate.

Why The Scepter Is Awesome

• Long range attack that goes through enemies. Reliable up to mid-range and strong at full-range in PVE.
• Smite. Smite makes every melee scenario so much better. Smite is free damage on a short cooldown. Smite works with nearly every weapon.
• Learning to move between melee and midrange is a staple of good Guardian play. Chains of Light gives you a reliable snare option and added control.
• Did I mention Smite?
• You get to work on developing a really sweet backhand.
• Play tennis with Zhaitan. Seriously. I don’t think another class can really compete with that.

But what about Shelter? At first blush, Shelter seems strangely below par. With a mere ten second cooldown advantage over Signet of Resolve (or a paltry two seconds, with Improved Signets), Shelter heals for half Signet’s health return. Why would you ever use it? The answer is in mitigation. Shelter gives you a two second block, during which any and every attack aimed at you is blocked. Depending on how well you time your Shelter, you could be saving yourself a great deal of damage. Therefore, in terms of raw numbers, Signet of Resolve is superior to Shelter. But if your build and playstyle emphasizes blocks, you’ll get a lot of mileage out of Shelter, provided you use it at the right opportunity.

And finally, we have Healing Breeze. At Signet of Resolve’s base cooldown, Healing Breeze returns less health to you, with the added payoff of returning health to all allies in a cone in front of you. Depending on your build and your party dynamic, Healing Breeze might be your Heal of choice. Use it to top off the health of nearby allies and keep your momentum going.

Remember, you can—and should—change your skills on the fly. If you’re playing solo and just leveling, Signet of Resolve is probably the way to go. But if you’re about to run headfirst into a group event, then why not switch to Healing Breeze? If you’re anticipating a lot of damage, or facing several opponents, or using a Block build, consider switching in to Shelter as necessary.

Guardian Utilities: The Accidental Red Herring

If you’re new to Guild Wars and a veteran of MMORPGs, Guardian Utilities will almost certainly throw you a curve. Nearly every new player—myself included—tend to assume that Utilities are where the heart of our support lies. Utilities should provide the heals, the shields, the condition removal or the boons necessary for us to fulfill our support role. Right?

Well, no.

You see, utilities all have pretty long cooldowns across the board. Even if you wanted to, you can’t use utilities indiscriminately, or constantly. Utilities are trump cards. They’re powerful abilities available every one or two—maybe even three or four—significant encounters. The key to mastering Utilities lies within two basic principles:

• The Principle of Timing: Which says “Utilities are easy to use, and easy to waste.” It’s tempting to use a utility when the opportunity presents itself. It’s tempting to rush into a group of enemies and drop Hallowed Ground, just because. Don’t. Don’t do it. Timing dictates the efficacy of a utility, and a well-timed utility can and will turn the tide of a battle, while a poorly timed, wasted utility becomes swept into the numerical white-noise of the battle. The difference between a well-timed Wall of Reflection and a poorly timed Wall of Reflection is victory and defeat. Smart use of “Hold the Line!” takes that ability deeper and further than ad-hoc spam.

• The Principle of Adaptation: Which says, “Utilities that sit in your skill bar for too long grow stale.” Don’t leave your Utility slots filled with the same skills for ten levels. Outside of combat, when a utility is not on cooldown, you can switch it in and out of your skill bar instantly. Plan on running solo across a field of dangerous enemies? Switch one of your abilities with “Retreat!” Are you entering a zone with enemies that spread conditions? Then you’ll want to swap in Smite Conditions, Signet of Resolve and perhaps Purging Flames. Are you fighting Burn-immune destroyers? (How I hate them!) Get rid of Judge’s Intervention and Purging Flames, and get something else—maybe “Hold the Line!” Soloing? Need some help pressuring an enemy down? Pick up one or two Spirit Weapons. Utility skills are like clothes. Keep them fresh and change them often. Otherwise, well…I don’t know. Play something ugly and smelly like a Warrior.

So the reason I call Utilities an accidental ‘red herring,’ is because they tend to fool new players into assuming that these are the core abilities of your class. They’re not. Let me repeat that.

Utilities are not the core of your support.

Hang on. I need to shout this one from the mountain tops.

Utilities are not the core of your support. The core of your support is YOU. Support is defined by the aggregate of your utilities, your traits, your weapons, and most importantly, your playstyle!

Anyone who tells you differently is either mistaken or some kind of pernicious curmudgeon who wants you to feel bad because you’re not a dedicated healer. Are you going to let people like that run your life? Snaff did. And now he’s dead.

(Okay, that was kind of mean. I’m sorry.)

Consecrations: Or, Get Off My Lawn

Consecrations are Guardian skills that emphasize terrain control. Consecrations activate effects on the ground around you (or, with the right Traits, somewhere near you), which grant benefits to your allies and make your enemies regret stepping into your territory. Consecrations are governed by the Virtues trait, and run the gamut from routinely useful to highly specialized. Here they are:

Hallowed Ground and Purging Flames are your only two Combo Field: Fire abilities. For this reason alone, they deserve special consideration. Hallowed Ground has a relatively long cooldown and will likely require Master of Consecrations (Virtues VI) to use routinely. In general, while leveling, you probably won’t need to worry about stability much. Not too many PVE enemies are going to daze, stun or knock you back in ways that can’t be easily predicted and dodged.

On the other hand, Purging Flames is a powerful and useful ability that will find room in just about any build. If you’re in melee, Purging Flames is your friend. It’s a wide-field burn with a duration about equal to Virtue of Justice when activated, removes a condition from yourself and all allies. Any enemies that enter the area immediately trigger five seconds of burn, so use it to punish enemies swarming through choke points.

Sanctuary and Wall of Reflection are your two defensive Consecrations. Sanctuary itself is pretty ridiculous. Provided whoever’s inside it stays inside it, they’re completely safe from the outside world and all its scary existential threats for a good six seconds. And they’ll take a pretty decent heal on top of that (equal to about one and a half Healing Breeze on allies. Or half a Shelter). The problem with Sanctuary is that it’s small. With a radius of 120, this is a pretty small, if totally durable, turtle shell. Master of Consecrations, again, pays dividends in this skill. Don’t forget that you could, if you really wanted, use this to cut off a choke point. It’d have to be a tiny one though.

Wall of Reflection is different. Don’t confuse this with Shield of Absorption—this is actually a wall. A flat plane, two dimensional wall you drop in front of you. This is also the sort of ability that you want to use when you want to show off your mad Guardian timing. Wall of Reflection reflects all projectiles. All projectiles. If it flies through the air and wants to hurt you, Wall will send it right back.

Interesting Synergies

• Purging Flames is universally usable (more or less) and available often enough to exploit for its Combo Field: Fire. If you aren’t worried about closing distance (Purging Flames does require you and your enemy to stay put), this works great with Hammer and Greatsword for their Combo Finishers.

• Consecrated Ground (Virtues III) is ridiculous and you want to take a good, hard look at it. Consecrated Ground’s unhelpful tooltip doesn’t explain that it essentially turns every consecration from an AoE effect centered around your player to an AoE effect that you target. The distance is pretty long. This means you can drop Purging Flames on a pack of enemies and allies without actually being in the fray. Useful if you’re the sort to use Scepter and/or Staff, or just like having ranged options. This is particularly cool with Wall of Reflection, because it lets you cover a MUCH wider area of reflection. If you can properly gauge the trajectory of incoming projectiles, you don’t have to be anywhere near the projectile to send it flying back. Have you ever thrown a tennis racket to intercept a serve and sent it back? It’s kind of like that.

• Fiery Wrath (Zeal II) works pretty well with Purging Flames. Purging Flames sets all enemies on fire for five seconds. Because Burning duration stacks, and because we have so much of it, Purging Flames can be used to help keep burn up constantly, and therefore, help keep your Fiery Wrath bonus up.

Meditations: Finding Inner Peace In A Sea of Violence and Slaughter—Caused Mostly By You

Meditations are a relatively versatile set of utilities. Along with providing robust Condition mitigation, they can help fill in mobility gaps with useful teleports. Meditation bonuses come from the Valor tree, and despite the Valor tree’s (not entirely factual) reputation as a defensive tree, Meditations can and should be used aggressively as often as they are defensively.

Interesting Synergies

• Perfect Inscriptions deserves its own section. This is a Grandmaster Tier Honor Trait that fundamentally changes the way your Signets work. Perfect Inscriptions improves the passive effect of all signets by 20%. On its own, that might not seem like much. But it makes Signet of Resolve heal not one, but two, conditions every ten seconds. Take Purity (Valor V) and that’s three conditions every ten seconds. Take Inscribed Removal and Signet Mastery, and now all your Signets double as condition removal—with a sixteen second recharge on Signet of Judgment. So, theoretically, in the space of ten to sixteen seconds at the most, you could strip yourself of four different Conditions.

• Binding Jeopardy (Zeal I) applies five stacks of Vulnerability every time you Immobilize an enemy. This works remarkably well if you’re using Signet of Wrath with Zealot’s Embrace and Chains of Light. On top of eight seconds of Immobilization, you’re looking at 12 stacks of Vulnerability. So not only do you have an enemy rooted to the ground, but he’s about to take a ton of damage if everyone targets him.

Spirit Weapons: Look, I Already Made A Bad Gandalf Reference; Don’t Make Me Quote Thundercats

I don’t see nearly as much discussion on Spirit Weapons as I should. Are you guys all scared of using them or something? They’re totally independent pets. There’s very little micromanagement. They’re versatile. Dangerous. They deal solid damage, have great effects, and you can improve them to the sky with Traits. Seriously, why aren’t you using these? Spirit Weapons can account for a massive improvement in damage and mitigation, and you can use up to three at a time!

Spirit Weapons work like this. You summon one. It lasts its base duration, or you can burn it early for a powerful attack. Once it’s un-summoned, the ability begins to recharge. When it’s off recharge, you can use ita again. Some people have this notion that Spirit Weapons begin recharging the moment you summon them. This is false. You have to wait for them to disappear before they recharge.

Let’s go over your divine panoply of awesome weaponry:

Sword of Justice is your first (usually) available Spirit Weapon, and it is beautiful. Summon it, and for thirty seconds, this weapon bobs along beside you with all the glee and zeal of a happy puppy, slaughtering and slicing through whatever enemies you’re up against. Damage is strong, duration lasts a good while, and the recharge is likewise short. You can Command the sword to destroy itself before its duration runs dry, dealing high damage (the equivalent of about 4 sword strikes) to everyone in a wide radius. If you’re trying to spike damage, you should have a Sword of Justice.

Hammer of Wisdom is a bit more specialized. Damage comes in three-hit chains, with appended knockback. Command the Hammer to destroy itself for a big, 600-radius knockdown on all enemies for an impressive three seconds. Three seconds is a long time in the heat of battle. Hammer of Wisdom does take longer than Sword to recharge (45 seconds) and lasts for a shorter duration (20 seconds), but the control it brings is worth it. Consider Hammer of Wisdom when you want to lock down a group of enemies, or you’re more interested in mitigation than raw damage.

Shield of the Avenger and Bow of Truth are your defensive weapons. Both their cooldowns are longer than usual (60 seconds) and they last as long as the Hammer of Wisdom (20 seconds). The Shield of the Avenger will follow you and periodically lay down an effect visually similar to Shield of Absorption that absorbs projectiles. Remember that, unlike Shield of Absorption, the Shield of Avenger’s effect does not cause a knockback. Be aware of both the Shield and the Bow’s tendency to lag behind you as well, at the time of writing this guide. Command Shield of the Avenger to act as a more aggressive version of Shield’s Shield of Judgement ability. Instead of granting Protection to allies, it Weakens all enemies.

Bow of Truth is a bit more passive. Rely on it to keep conditions off your allies so you can focus on smashing faces. _Command_ing the Bow of Truth will create an area around you that provides steady healing over time to any ally that enters its radius. For this reason, you’ll want to position yourself so that Bow of Truth’s Command ability hits the allies that need it most. Don’t blow this on just healing yourself. Both Shield of the Avenger and Bow of Truth are remarkably useful for midline play, but support any playstyle effectively.

But hang on—how should I make my build? Where do I put my first trait points?

I can’t tell you specifically how to build, partly because I don’t know your playstyle, and I don’t want to feed you cookie-cutter builds. Traits are about experimentation, and I’d rather not get in the way of that. Still, here are a few quick guidelines and some synergies to consider when making a build:

• Your stat bonuses are important, but they aren’t everything. The closer you get to 80, the less your Trait line’s stat bonuses matter in comparison to the quality of gear available. Pick a Trait line for its Major Traits first, its Minor traits second, and its Stat bonuses last.

• In general, in this game, versatility will always trump pure specialization. No class, not Guardian, not Thief, not Necromancer, not Ranger, is purely specialized for one role. Combat is fluid and will require defense, healing, movement and support as much as it will require raw damage. If you’re building for a heavy damage build, it’s a good idea to include some traits or utilities that improve survivability. If you’re building a tough, survivable, defensive character, allow yourself some room for good offensive options as well.

• The most valuable Trait line is that which grants you several traits you want. Taking a Trait line for just one or two Traits is certainly an option, but your first priority should be going down a Trait line with as many Traits that appeal to you as possible. When you hit 80, then you’ll have enough Trait points to dip into different lines specifically for one or two Traits.

• Remember, you can switch Traits on the fly. Every Trait tier you reach unlocks a set of Traits. You can change these Traits at will. If you have a Trait that gives you +5% damage on mace, but you’re tired of using a mace and switch to a scepter, then just switch that trait out. Don’t feel like you have to take a specific trait just because you’re using a specific weapon. You don’t need 30 Zeal just because you’re using a Greatsword.

If you still need some direction, I’m going to include a very flexible build that I think is a good choice for beginners who don’t know what to take:

1) Go down Radiance. Go up to at least 15 for Renewed Justice.
2) After you hit 15 Radiance, take 5 Virtues.
3) When you’re done with that, take 10 Zeal for Fiery Wrath.
4) Put it all together. 15 Radiance returns your Virtue of Justice every time an enemy you’ve attacked dies. Solo, this means Virtue of Justice is up every single fight. Guaranteed. In a team, this means you’ll be spamming Virtue of Justice every time anything dies, granting you and your entire team multiple stacks of Might, plus 5s of burning against every foe. Finally, you’ll personally deal more damage on burning foes.

Why do I recommend this build? It’s the one build I can think of, right now, that’s flexible enough to fit any and every playstyle and every weapon. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s newbie-friendly, and it’ll get you used to a few concepts:

• It will teach you to pay attention to enemy deaths and the details of a battle.
• It will give you some insight into how momentum works, and the benefit of stacking Might.
• It will make you feel powerful and active
• It will allow you to branch out and experiment after getting a taste of how Traits work.

When you’re ready to experiment with traits, here’s a small list of interesting synergies I’ve discovered. Feel free to come up with your own:

• Taking both the Zeal and Honor trees makes your Symbols potentially very powerful. They heal, deal more damage, apply vulnerability and cover a larger radius.
• Taking Radiance and Honor lets you support your allies through crits. Radiance adds a great deal of Crit chance to one-handed weapons, which Honor rewards by causing Crits to grant all allies five seconds of stacking Might, along with giving you near constant Vigor.
• Taking Valor and Radiance gives you very powerful crits, and allows you to build for Meditations, encouraging a highly aggressive, teleport-centric style of play.
• Power of the Virtuous works very well with “Save Yourselves!” granting you a sudden boost of boons, and therefore, a big boost in damage.
• Virtues and Honor work well together, with the improved Boon duration synergizing with Honor’s emphasis on shouts, and Honor’s improved Healing options working well with Virtue’s boosts to Virtue of Resolve.
• Zeal, Radiance and Virtues make Spirit Weapons monstrous, while providing you with a good boost to offensive power.
• Altruistic Healing works very well with Empower (Staff) and Empowering Might (Radiance)
• Tired of Hammer’s slow Chain 3 attack, Symbol of Protection? Boost it with some Traits, and make it one of the most powerful auto-attacks in the game.
• Elite Focus lets you cast certain long-recharge Tome spells twice.

Interesting Synergies

• Staff/Mace: A very defensive combination. Mace benefits from being able to corrall and control enemies, which staff provides. Taken together, Mace and Staff provide the gamut of team support. Mace’s symbols, auto-attack chains and Protector’s Strike protect allies from multiple opponents at close range, while Staff functions well at close to mid range, providing additional healing as well as boons. Staff/Mace lets a Guardian play defense at every range.

• Staff/Scepter: In terms of abilities, Staff and Scepter tend not to mesh together in obvious ways. Scepter benefits from 600-800 range, but works fine at closer ranges. What Scepter and Staff together do is allow you to play a more mid-range Guardian, working not from the front lines but not staying in the back either. Smite works well for keeping damage going while you apply Empower on your allies. Combine Line of Warding with Chains of Light and Smite to split apart and damage enemies.

• Staff/Sword: Depending on how you play it, and your off-hand, Staff and Sword can cover a broad range of strategies. Sword is a versatile weapon with good mitigation through Blind and high single-target damage capacity. If you play an aggressive Sword/Torch setup, Staff lets you move between ranges, applying Empower and fighting from midrange while you wait for a good opportunity to step in with sword. A more defensive Sword usually requires pressure from Zealot’s Defense plus Blind application, and staying at range. Staff gives you things to do while Sword’s abilities come off cooldown.

Mace: Hammer’s Healier Little Brother

Mace, like Hammer, is a slow, steady, powerful weapon. Unlike Hammer, it’s highly defensive, built for attrition, blocks and counters. Swinging a mace could help you get through fights that might otherwise leave you plastered to the ground in a big, bloody, vaguely Guardian-shaped mess. Seriously, Mace saves lives.

Mace Skills:

True Strike/Pure Strike/Faithful Strike: A relatively slow attack chain that ends in a big uppercut and a small heal. The heal might not seem like much, but with a decent amount of +Healing, a steady attack chain, and additional healing, defense and mitigation from your other abilities, it serves its purpose in the aggregate defensive strategy that is Mace.

Symbol of Faith: I love this attack. A little on the slow side, but it punches a damaging symbol of the ground that grants Regeneration to all allies, including yourself. This, along with Faithful Strike, keeps a small but steady stream of mitigation to any allies that crowd around you like the shining, mace wielding, face bashing beacon of defense that you are. A fast recharge makes it a dependable and useful Combo Field as well. Free Retaliation and Condition removal for everyone!

Protector’s Strike: This is what I love about Mace. Every single attack skill works well together. Symbol of Faith and Faithful Strike keep up mitigation through heals, and Protector’s Strike gives you an area block followed by a big counter. If nothing hits you, free Protection for all nearby allies. You can move while you use Protector’s Strike, and any ally inside its radius should be guarded by your block. By the way, the counter attack? Hits everyone around you like a sucker punch square in the jaw. It hurts.

Why the Mace is awesome

• Self-sustaining synergy. All three abilities work great together in some kind of sturdy, unbreakable kittentail of mitigation.
• Fifteen seconds is a small cooldown for what is essentially an area block coupled with a big AoE damage.
• Low cooldown Symbol.
• Mixes steady, strong damage with excellent mitigation, and allows for active defense of a vulnerable party member.
• Nearby allies will flock to you for heals and boons, making you popular and loved! By everyone!
• Except your enemies.
• Cause they’ll be dead.

Interesting Synergies

• 180 Radius on Symbol of Faith is a bit small, but if you go into the Honor line, you can make the Symbol about 50% bigger and stack additional heals. Really nice for an eight-second ability.

• Mace/Scepter: Oh God. Smite. Smite is so good with Mace. Pull enemies with Orb of Wrath. Smite when they get close. Immediately switch to Mace and use Protector’s Strike to block and counter their first attack for huge damage. Plus, without Mace’s movement options, Orb of Wrath’s range comes in real handy.

Interesting Synergies

• Scepter/Sword: Smite adds some much needed AoE potential to a sword build. Having Smite on your enemies before switching to sword racks up a lot of damage and Burning from Virtue of Justice, fast. Immobilize and Flashing Blade adds a great deal of battlefield control. However, pairing Scepter with Sword depends fundamentally on what you pair Sword with. Smite + Sword/Torch is just obscene amounts of damage. Scepter + Sword/Focus is versatile at any range.

• Scepter + Focus: Two ray attacks mean Scepter and Focus let you play well at range, while Shield of Wrath will let you close distance. In fact, if you create a Shield of Wrath setup where it detonates just as you’re closing distance with enemies, that’s an ideal time to switch to a melee weapon and go to town. Scepter+Focus is a strong weapon-switch option for moving from range to melee. Shield of Wrath has another synergy with Smite, if you take Defender’s Flame. Spread lots of burning through Block, then drop Smite for more damage and Virtue of Justice triggers.

• Scepter + Shield: A mid-range combination for protecting the midline from projectiles and applying Protection from behind. Also works as a solid choice for switching to a defensive melee weapon when closing distance. Begin attacking by range while you close distance, apply Shield of Judgement, then switch weapons. If you find yourself at range again, switch back to Scepter to keep attacking and have access to Shield of Absorption for additional mitigation.

• Scepter + Torch: A melee setup. Smite, Zealot’s Flame and Cleansing Flame is a huge amount of damage provided your enemies are relatively close together. Switch to it after closing distance with a melee weapon to finish off enemies, or switch to a defensive melee weapon for mitigation and cleanup.

Offhand Weapons

Your off-hand weapons don’t work in exactly the same was as main-hand or two hand weapons. Most of them, with the possible exception of torch, include long cooldown abilities. What off-hand weapons actually do is let you augment your main-hand weapons. I’ve covered main-hand/off-hand synergies above, but to reiterate briefly:

Focus

Focus is a bit of an odd-ball. It provides a pretty huge amount of mitigation through Ray of Judgement—provides a Blind along with reliable condition removal—and Shield of Wrath. For the most part, Focus works well with any weapon you’d like to use in melee. Blind is essentially a free block, and Shield of Wrath comes with an additional three blocks. This makes Focus a strong weapon for a defensive setup. But it can also deal solid damage. A detonated Shield of Wrath hits especially hard.

Shield

Shield provides more passive defense than Focus. With the right traits, and Shield’s inherent stats, you’ll stack more toughness on yourself. Where Shield differs from Focus, and distinguishes itself, is group synergy. Shield protects more allies than Focus. Shield of Judgement applies Protection to allies in its cone, and Shield of Absorption is potentially very powerful. Used at the right time, it completely nullifies all ranged attacks, and can be detonated early for a modest area heal. It’s a free Combo Field: Light to boot, providing potential for conditional removal and retaliation.

Torch

Torch. Set yourself on fire, and then set your enemies on fire, and then take their stuff from their charred corpses. Why settle for anything else? Torch spreads burning quickly through Zealot’s Flame, which doubles as a high damage (if relatively long-cooldown) ranged attack. Cleansing Flame also hits many, many times for a lot of damage, so it’s going to trigger at least two instances of passive Virtue of Justice. Remember, however, that Cleansing Flame does NOT set enemies on fire by Burning.

Healing Powers: How, When And Why

Every class has a healing power. Guardians are no different. Our heals are a little more versatile, including a potent self-heal, a more altruistic group-heal, and a defensive heal that sacrifices some raw health regeneration for added mitigation. So, which one’s the best one? How do you know which one to pick?

The honest truth is, there isn’t a best choice. If you want to look at pure numbers, then Signet of Resolve is wonderful. It returns a massive amount of health, removes conditions while inactive, and enjoys all the benefits of Signet-related traits. You can bring this down to a 32-second cooldown if you’d like, provided you take a few traits in Radiance.

These are just a few suggestions. I haven’t even begun to figure out all the possible synergies, strategies and tactics available to Guardians. No one has, and none of us will for a long, long time. That’s part of the fun of being part of an MMO community during its earliest days—we shape the metagame.

This leads me to the end of my guide, but before I wrap things up, I want to talk about a few issues frequently encountered by new players:

What’s the best build for dungeons?

There isn’t one. Dungeons are challenging, instanced content for five players, but victory in dungeons depends on preparation. Preparation requires coordination with your teammates, setting up your Utility skills and Traits in accordance with what works best with your team. Victory in dungeons requires coordination, good dodging and smart play more than overdependence on a specific build.

If anyone’s asking you to “go healer” for a dungeon, they’re probably just misguided. Steer clear.

I’m getting overwhelmed by enemies. What do I do?

Two things:

• Make judicious use of your defenses.
• Dodge.

Fights end relatively quickly in Guild Wars 2, and unlike other MMOs, standing toe to toe with the enemy and exchanging blows doesn’t work. Every enemy has a rhythm to their attacks, a timing between blows. As you practice, you’ll develop an instinct for this timing. Keybind your Dodge ability somewhere simple, and learn to dodge in anticipation of powerful attacks. Dodging alone will mitigate a tremendous amount of damage if done right.

Along with dodging, learn to use defenses judiciously. If you’re using a Mace, learn to time your blocks just before an enemy attack. Learn to stack blinds with dodge. For example, if I have a trait that makes Virtue of Justice cause Blind, I might do this: Flashing Blade to get in close; the enemy is blinded and misses. Virtue of Justice; the enemy is blinded again and misses. Dodge the next attack. Block the next one. Flashing blade again, the enemy’s blinded again.

Proper timing of your abilities can completely nullify an opponent’s ability to hit you. Standing there and taking blows, though, or wasting your blinds, dodges, leaps and heals lead to sloppy habits, which lead to dead Guardians, which makes Dwayna cry. You don’t want that, do you?

What kind of gear should I wear?

At the earlier levels, it honestly doesn’t matter much. Just upgrade as you go. As you approach 55-60, you’ll want to take a closer look at your stats. In general, you want a relatively even spread of stats, with an emphasis toward the kind of playstyle you enjoy. Gear comes and goes fine, so don’t worry too much about having the wrong kind of gear if you decide to suddenly change playstyle. But in general…

• Power and Vitality are important for everyone. Everyone needs to stay alive. Everyone needs to deal damage.
• Crit is nice, and definitely nice if you’re going deep Radiance or Honor for crit-centric Traits.
• Toughness is always fun to have, and will reduce the damage you take per blow. Every Guardian should invest in some, but defense-oriented Guardians should look more closely at it. Pack a shield, too, and take a trait if you want Toughness.
• Everyone benefits from some Healing Power. It improves your own self-heal, your Virtue of Resolve and several skills. Guardians that emphasize heals through their traits and weapon selection should dig deeper into Healing Power.
• Condition Damage is important for every Guardian owing to our Virtue of Justice. However, it’s important to remember that 25% of Condition Damage adds to our Burning damage per second. So if you have 100 Condition Damage, that’s an extra 25 damage every second on Burning enemies. Build accordingly.

What weapon should I use to level?

A lot of Guardians swear by Greatsword, and for good reason. It’s a versatile and powerful weapon. But, you know what? I leveled with Sword and whatever I wanted, because my build supported it, and I wanted to make the most out of Virtue of Justice. You should honestly have one decent copy of every Guardian weapon in your pack for any given situation, and you should switch weapons around to see what you like best.

It’s not like leveling is particularly hard, and most of your leveling happens from events, exploration, crafting and Hearts, not actual kills. Don’t let anyone tell you to pigeonhole yourself in one weapon.

I will make an exception for Scepter though. The truth is that it’s our only 1200 range weapon at the moment, and in the course of leveling, you will come across situations where you just need a good ranged option. In that case, having a Scepter on hand will save you.

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That’s all for now. I’ll update this as time goes on, and clean things up and make edits. Thanks for reading, if you got this far. If you’ve enjoyed the guide or have any questions, please let me know. If I got something wrong, please correct me.

-Eveningstar

Sword: The Best Scabbard Is The Enemy’s Face

Sword is one of the Guardian’s most aggressive weapon options. A fast attack speed, multiple strikes, a teleport to close distance and a high-damage ranged attack—all of which enjoy relatively short recharge times—facilitate a fast, mobile and active style of play. Sword deals damage—quite a lot of it—but its fast swing speed and dependence on Virtue of Justice triggers mean you’ll see smaller individual numbers than, say, Hammer, but more cumulative damage with the right builds.

It’s worth mentioning that despite Sword’s propensity for aggression and the high damage of Zealot’s Defense, Sword doubles as a competent defensive weapon. The key is Flashing Blade, which—at a mere 10 second recharge—is a wonderful mitigation tool. Time your blinds in anticipation of the enemy’s attack.

Furthermore, while Zealot’s Defense does include an excellent (if short-duration) projectile nullifier, don’t feel obligated to save it as an anti-projectile. Zealot’s Defense does enough damage on its own to justify frequent use. Plus it looks amazing.

Why Sword is Awesome:

• A very fast attack speed, with a total of five strikes in a 3-attack chain. That’s five chances to Crit. That’s one free Virtue of Justice trigger every attack chain.
• Flashing Blade at a 10 second recharge is a highly usable tool for closing distance and applying blind.
• Excellent spike damage. Zealot’s Defense hits hard. Use it in conjunction with other high damage attacks to deal a big dent in the enemy’s health.
• Good anti-projectile defense.
• You get to do this
• And this

Interesting Synergies

• Virtue of Justice: Sword works so well with Virtue of Justice that I feel the synergy deserves its own mention. Remember that Virtue of Justice’s Passive ability triggers once every five strikes. (Four, if you take Supreme Justice in the Virtues line.) Sword Wave, the third attack in Sword’s auto-attack chain, actually counts as three strikes, bringing the total number of strikes in Sword’s attack chain to five—just enough to trigger Virtue of Justice every single time. Zealot’s Defense strikes eight times, guaranteeing at least one second of Burning from Virtue of Justice—two seconds if you have Supreme Justice.

• Empowering Might: This Honor trait works surprisingly well with Sword. Empowering Might grants Might to all nearby allies every time you land a critical hit. Sword’s five-strike attack chain and eight-strike Zealot’s Defense gives you many more chances to land a critical hit, and therefore, almost guarantees multiple stacks of Might on all nearby allies.

• Sword/Blind: The Sword is an excellent candidate for a playstyle heavy on blinds. Blinds are free mitigation. A blinded enemy will always miss its next attack. Combining Sword with Focus gives you some robust defensive abilities: an extra Blind from Ray of Judgment, and a block skill from Shield of Wrath. Take the Justice is Blind Trait for a third blind every time you activate Virtue of Justice. Chain Blinds and Blocks in anticipation of enemy attacks, and Sword becomes a survivable and defensive weapon.

• Sword/Torch: I’ve covered Torch already in the Offhand Weapon section, but Sword/Torch deserves its own section owing to its remarkable synergy. Torch provides raw and pure damage, which dovetails nicely with Sword’s Zealot’s Defense. Use Flashing Blade to close distance. Use Zealot’s Flame to get five seconds of burning going. One attack chain, one Zealot’s Defense, and one Cleansing Flame should trigger another four or five seconds of burning. If the enemy survives that kind of damage, Zealot’s Flame should set them on fire again for an additional five seconds upon expiration. Sword/Torch is one of Guardian’s most damage-focused combinations. If you crave high damage, explore this option.

• Sword/Any Other Weapon: I’m absent minded and skipped Sword in my first draft. However, commentary on Sword synergy with other weapon sets is available in the posts preceding this one. The sections on Mace, Greatsword, Hammer, Scepter and Staff all cover their various synergies with Sword.

…or, more accurately, why high base HP is possibly overrated.

The topic caught your attention, didn’t it? I want to toss out an idea I’ve been thinking about, although credit where credit’s due: I’m not by any means the first person to think about it, and this is something I’ve been dwelling on after listening to other players talk about toughness, effective health and survivability.

I want to advance this idea that the Warriors’ high health pool is overrated, and that the Guardian’s low health pool is actually a good thing. But in order to convince you of this idea, consider the following:

1. HP is Ablative Mitigation

Think of a high health pool as a form of ablative defense. It’s a buffer. Having a huge health pool can help you absorb front-loaded damage, but you’re not likely to get back all your HP over the course of a fight. A warrior with 25k HP can survive frontloaded, burst damage, but will likely spend the rest of the fight bouncing between 4k and 10k HP. Being healed back to full just doesn’t happen often in this game.

2. Armor/Toughness is Proportional Mitigation; Healing is Linear Mitigation

The damage you take is inversely proportional to your armor/toughness. The higher your armor, the smaller a percentage of damage you take from any given attack. Likewise, the value of your healing received is inversely proportional to your vitality. So a warrior with 25k HP gains a much smaller proportion of her health back from a 5k heal than a Guardian with 15k HP. Keep this in mind.

3. Avoidance Is The Best Mitigation

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In GW2’s case, an ounce of avoidance is worth a potentially infinite amount of mitigation. Dodge roll, missed attacks, block mechanics and invulnerability completely mitigate any incoming attack, to say nothing of absorption and reflective walls. Remember that the Guardian has a lot of these.

4. In PVE, Incoming Attacks Are Predictable

Solo a Guardian long enough and you’ll catch on to an enemy’s hidden “rhythm” of attacks. Enemies attack you at relatively fixed intervals. Their biggest attacks are almost always telegraphed, and red circles tell you exactly where you don’t want to be. The conclusion is that it’s easy to avoid attacks you can see coming, provided you have the tools to do so.

CONCLUSIONS

• ….Warriors don’t necessarily have it better than us. Their health pools are much higher, true, but high health usually just serves as a buffer, absorbing the first few big attacks but never really getting back to 100%.

• ….Lower health pools means greater vulnerability to conditions. Luckily, a Guardian can hardly sneeze without removing conditions, but it bears mentioning that our low health pools do come tacked on with this basic weakness. Conditions are potentially our undoing provided we’re not smart about removal, or lack removal options (certainly possible).

• …Guardian self-heals come in steady streams of small values rather than big bursts, making it ideal for builds with decent health/vitality but very high armor and toughness. Our readily available Protection boons multiply this effect. Guardians are therefore capable of much higher sustained survivability with lower health pools.

• …You don’t have to sacrifice damage for defense. Guardians do need Vitality, but not as much as you may think, and survivable builds probably don’t have to build purely on Power/Toughness/Vitality. If you have enough vitality to survive big attacks, you’re good to go. You have more than enough raw mitigation (Protection boons) and Avoidance (Blind, Vigor, Block, Invul) to handle telegraphed attacks.

• …There is a sweet spot for Guardian health, and I don’t know what it is, but it seems to be about 15k to 16k health. This is usually enough ablative defense against frontloaded damage, but also relatively easy to heal back to 100%

Sorta TL;DR Version: High health pools are basically ablative defense. They let you survive big, frontloaded damage, but you’re almost never going to be healed to 100% in an aggressive fight. The lower your health pool, the more mileage you get out of each individual HP healed. The lower your health pool, the more vulnerable you are to condition damage. The lower your health pool, the more vulnerable you are to spike damage. The higher your proportional mitigation (armor, toughness) and the more options you have for total avoidance (dodge roll, invul, block, miss), the less vulnerable you are to predictable damage. Most spike damage in PVE is predictable. Therefore Guardians actually don’t need that much health to perform well.

Thoughts?

The real casualty from this debate is not going to be measured in departing players. It will not be measured in a change in the atmosphere of the forum, and it will not be measured by the collective angst of the community.

I’m not going to slide down a slippery slope of anxiety and decry Guild Wars 2 as somehow ruined, or predict the game becoming a staid clone of Warcraft two years down the road. I think that’s a gross exaggeration of the circumstances based on very little evidence.

I won’t get into a shouting match by taking sides in the perennial Casual v Hardcore debate. That’s a facetious fight and one that won’t ever end, and decrying Casuals for ruining the game with their whining or Hardcore players for ruining the game with their demands just blatantly misses the point.

I don’t care about the gear grind, or Ascended gear. So you have a new tier of gear with an Infusion mechanic about as innovative as Fire Resist/Nature Resist or Radiance. Great. Fine, whatever. I’m still going to play this game. I’m still going to participate in the Guardian community. I’m still going to level my alts. I’m still going to participate in seasonal events.

The real casualty here isn’t my money (I’m not spending any anyway, besides the occasional purchase on the Gem Store). The real casualty here is good will.

The real casualty is credibility. GW2 was designed on the passions of a development team with a very specific design philosophy: Buck the Trinity, make the game accessible for everyone, and toss out gear progression. Just like in GW1, gear was supposed to “stop” at Exotic and not inflate beyond that. You’d get your Exotics, and you were done gearing. Now you could do what you wanted. Now you were free. You were ready for all the content the game could throw at you. Gear should not be a gateway for more content. Gear should not be something you should keep up with.
That was the principle on which ArenaNet built its good will. That was the basis of the trust it cultivated between itself and its community.

Credibility is a form of capital: hard to define, hard to measure, hard to build, and very easy to lose.
I’m still going to play this game. I’m still going to level alts, explore the world, collect exotics and try new builds. But I’m a lot less enthusiastic about the game today than I was last week. And I’m far, far less likely to trust ArenaNet in the future. I’m not leaving; I’m not voting with my feet or my wallet.

ANet hasn’t lost my subscription because there wasn’t one to begin with. They haven’t lost my interest because I still love the game they’ve created. What they have lost is my good will, and that’s not something I give lightly, and it’s also not something anyone else values except me.

But it is what it is.

Overpowered – (adj.) An expression of imbalance, used to describe everyone else’s class but yours.

Fanboy – (n.) 1. A sycophant; a player in immutable agreement with ANet’s design policies. 2. Someone with whom you disagree 3. Freakazoid’s short-lived sidekick.

Casual – (adj.) 1. Accessible; undemanding; without obligation. (n) 2. A satisfied player, usually characterized by keeping sane hours, prioritizing real life, and playing for fun. 3. The mortal enemy of the Hardcore. See: Hardcore

Hardcore – (adj.) 1. Difficult; demanding; a quality of game design which requires a high degree of mastery and practice. (n.) 2. A player whose time invested in a game is inversely proportional to his/her satisfaction. 3. Rytlock Brimstone

Inviable – (adj.) 1. The state of being untenable; unable to perform; not dependable. 2. A term used to describe a skill, weapon or profession that falls short of perfection in any given scenario. 3. Of situational use 4. Infertile offspring.

L2P – (acr.) 1. Learn To Play. 2. An expression suggesting disdain toward another player’s problems, legitimate or otherwise. Often preceded by LOL.

Endgame – (n.) 1. See – Carrot. 2. A concept of MMORPG design describing content that requires a player at the highest level, used to maintain a player’s interest. 3. A mediocre action-thriller movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and that one guy from Deliverance.

Carrot – (n.) 1. A long, crunchy root vegetable, orange in color. 2. (idiom.) Carrot and Stick – any unreachable goal. 3. The holy grail of MMO players and, incidentally, donkeys.

General Discussion Forums – (n.) 1. The Guild Wars 2 Community Hospital, characterized by a lobby perpetually overflowing with the ailing and the suffering. Highly contagious and generally toxic.

Roleplayer – (n.) One who participates in roleplay. A specimen of player who behaves and speaks in a way that preserves and enhances the immersion of the game world. 2. A frequent inhabitant in the taverns of Divinity’s Reach, characterized by a love of flowery prose, a contempt for outsiders (See: Hardcore) and bristling with indignation. 3. A favored target of angry trolls fresh from a loss in WvWvW and hunting for a seemingly easy target to mock. See also: Hardcore.

How many times have you tried to complete a map, only to discover you’re one measly Point of Interest away from 100%? And then you spend the next fifteen minutes scanning your map with a fine toothed comb trying to locate that tiny icon? I just did exactly that in Fireheart Rise. My last Point of Interest was totally camouflaged into the map, and incredibly difficult to locate.

I’ve found a way to make it a little easier find pesky PoI’s.

1. Open your Map.
2. Click the little Eye icon at the bottom left hand corner.
3. The icon lets you filter out what you’ll see on your map. Uncheck EVERYTHING, so that you have a clean map with nothing but waypoints.
4. With your Map zoomed in as much as possible, toggle the “World Completion” box on and off rapidly. Doing this makes your Points of Interest, Skill Challenges, Vistas and Renown Hearts “flash” on and off. The “flashing” effect will draw your eyes to any hidden or hard to see POI icons.
5. Repeat for different sections of the map. Drag the map to one area. Toggle World Completion on and off rapidly. Find whatever you’re missing.

OP,

I usually stay out of General Forums owing to its chronic toxicity, but I think you’re asking a legitimate question built on erroneous assumptions and basic fallacies.

First of all, before we answer any question at all, we need to know what is meant by “Trinity.” Trinity in this case doesn’t just mean something that comes in threes. Trinity is a way of describing the fundamental and essential tactical configuration of MMO combat in most games which divides all combat encounters into three basic parts: The tank, which holds aggro and stays alive; the healer, which keeps the tank and the rest of the party alive; the DPS, which kills the target.

It is a three-part system of combat into which every class, every spec, every piece of gear ties into. That is the Trinity.

When you take the word “Trinity” and use it to describe the three types of armor (Light/Medium/Heavy), you are unintentionally creating a false analogy by using the term incorrectly. The three armor types do not constitute a Trinity. They constitute a taxonomy. A method of organization.

Light/Medium/Heavy : Armor :: Scholar/Adventurer/Soldier : Profession

That’s it. That’s the extent of the armor differences. They’re wholly cosmetic, and the minor difference in overall armor values will not allow a Soldier to stay in combat and take hits while an Adventurer can’t. Only very specialized builds can take multiple hits in combat and survive—and even then, never indiscriminately. Broadcasted boss attacks WILL one shot you, regardless of your armor type.

The other practical reason you cannot wear another profession group’s armor type is simple but often overlooked:

PVP. There’s really no way to instantly identify an enemy’s profession and build. You have to be able to visually identify your enemy, by the animation/effects of their attacks, their equipped weapons and—yes—the style of their armor.

TL;DR: Not gonna give you one. Ask a complex question and get a complex answer.

‘Casual’ is just a stereotype created by frustrated ‘hardcore’ players who can’t understand why obsessively pouring dozens of hours into a game per week doesn’t make them any more fulfilled than the guy who plays for ten hours and seems happy as a clam and has a good set of gear to boot.

‘Casual’ is a vitriolic term used to express contempt for players less masochistic than you. It is a term used to express contempt for developers who design games for—Dwayna forbid—the 90% of gamers who do play ‘casually’ rather than “you,” the ultra-dedicated hardcore type, who’s grinding endgame, buying multiple accounts and dropping a lot of gold into the gem store.

In the context of the OP, ‘casual’ means a relatively run of the mill normal gamer who doesn’t play as often as him but still has better opportunities. The problem is that…

• Casual denotes time played, not skill. If the difference between casual and hardcore were measured in skill, then casual players shouldn’t be able to clear the same content. They can.
• The peculiar use of the term “casual” as a kind of pejorative illustrates just how backward and toxic the idea of hardcore gaming has become. Why shouldn’t we be casual players? Being able to enjoy the same game without having to invest tons of hours a week is a sign of good game design. There’s something fundamentally weird about mocking another player as a “casual” just because they keep sane /played hours.
• Unfortunately for some, ‘casual’ players—players who play primarily on their own, or with friends, or who don’t really do that much endgame content, or play less than roughly 20 hours a week—make up a huge population of the player base. Essentially, they are the playerbase. This is as true in World of Warcraft as it is in Guild Wars 2. Designing for the “hardcore” players at the cost of everyone else is an exclusionary design philosophy and a great way to dissuade players from being a part of your community.

Turning Smite into a symbol, or at least adding a symbol component, is an elegant solution to a few persistent Guardian issues.

• Scepter doesn’t have much (if any) real Trait support, despite being our only real ranged weapon. Giving it a Symbol solves that by opening up trait synergies in the Honor and Zeal line.

• Zeal is a difficult line to justify. It’s good for Spirit Weapons, one or two Adept traits and the Minor traits, and that’s about it. Adding a Symbol to Scepter helps fix this issue by making Zeal a more widely applicable line.

• Scepter is our only ranged option, and even then, it’s a 1-hand, which means we only get three skills. Of those three skills, two deal direct damage. Adding a Symbol helps alleviate this issue by giving the Scepter a little more tactical “muscle.”

It’s an elegant solution to so many little problems. I hope ANet looks into it.

Sovta.4719:

As long as players give them money why should they care?

Because caring cultivates loyalty, which drives a successful title.

MMORPGs aren’t a commodity market. MMORPGS are online communities that compete intensely for player investment. Strong communities lead to stable revenue and steady growth.

I play GW2 with—and have been playing with, since beta—a close friend of mine, who occasionally has to work very late hours. GW2 is one of our best ways to relax and have fun together. Tonight we didn’t get to play together until very nearly bedtime, but logging in to the Halloween Event was just spectacular.

We spent a half hour in Lion’s Arch checking out all the cool new stuff, and then roamed around leveling our characters in Harathi Hinterlands. The first time we saw a Raw Candy Corn mode was very much an “OMG!” moment. I’ve been loving all the detail that went into this event, including the great art, the scattered pumpkin carvings, the scavenger hunt and especially the Trick or Treat doors. The new achievements are all a whole lot of fun, and I’m very happy with the unrelated changes as well—4500 Karma from a single Daily was a huge surprise.

Thanks for turning what could’ve been a long and tiring night into a fun one for us, ANet. I’m really looking forward to checking out the rest of this content, maybe getting my hands on a rare recipe or two.

Now that I have your attention…

I’m not trying to troll anyone; this is an honest and sincere question intended to reflect critically on the nature of the Manifesto that everyone keeps quoting. I’ve been keeping up with the debate for a few days now, and despite my mixed feelings on this subject, I’m trying to make sense of what seems to be a powerful split in the community.

Nearly every argument that criticizes the recent Lost Shores patch and the addition of Ascended armor cites the GW2 Manifesto—the document which outlines ANet’s vision with the game, and articulates the underlying design philosophy. The addition of a new tier of gear, critics argue, and the introduction of a “gating” mechanic (Infusion) violates a basic premise of the Manifesto—that the rarity of a gear should not be defined by stats but by appearance, and you shouldn’t need to grind away at gear in order to have fun in a dungeon.

I’m not here to argue the small details: the 8% stat difference, the availability of Ascended in WvWvW, the readily available Infusions. I’d like to submit to you a question about the bigger picture, which is:

What if the Manifesto is wrong? What if some of the principles expressed in the Manifesto may seem attractive in rhetoric, but are realistically impractical?

Consider the following points:

1. A Manifesto Is Not A Binding Contract

By definition, a Manifesto is an expression of beliefs. It is a document that collates and expresses the philosophy that motivates a particular group to do what it does. In this case, ANet’s Manifesto is an expression of ANet’s highest ideal, of what they think the ideal MMO should feel like and should play like. You don’t see any specifics in a Manifesto; you just see ideologies. There are no quarterly design plans. There are no projections of future projects. In short, a Manifesto is wishful thinking. It’s an ideal pursued by the design company, but sometimes pragmatism requires compromising ideology and finding a middle ground.

If ANet did go back on one aspect of their Manifesto, presumably they did so consciously. Presumably it was a calculated risk. It’s possible that, ideally, rare gear would be defined by rare skins, rather than better stats. However, in practice, reality may have proved that rare skins just aren’t a fun enough incentive to run dungeons, and players do need some kind of tangible motivator, some actual upgrade to chase. Which leads me to my next point.

2. An MMO Is (probably) Defined By Gear Progression

Actually, Action-RPGs are defined by gear progression as well, so it’s probably safer to say that MMORPGs are defined by having large, vibrant worlds that support big populations, which create incentives for play by offering gear progression.

It’s true that ANet’s design Manifesto claimed otherwise—that gear progression was a backward and un-fun gameplay model, and players should be encouraged to play the game for something other than an abstract, impossible-to-reach carrot that was constantly out of reach. ANet wanted to create the first true post-WoW MMORPG by breaking out of vertical gear progression. And maybe the problem is that it failed.

Bear with me for a second. It may be hard to swallow, and it may be difficult to accept, but what if, just maybe, gear progression is an inevitable reality of a successful MMO? Is it not possible that, if we hate gear progression, we should probably not be playing MMORPGs, in the same way that if we hate loot pinatas, we should probably not be playing Diablo? I want to submit to you the possibility that gear progression is just a fact of MMORPGs, inescapable and inherent to the genre.

I’m not saying this to discourage you, but to just be brutally honest about the whole thing. Every MMORPG has loot progression. All of them. They all create incentive by allowing your character to get better and better, and stronger and stronger, over time. MMORPGs are a carrot on a stick that you chase down a road constantly being paved by the designers. They just are. Until someone comes up with a way to totally undermine that basic principle, this is the definition of the MMORPG. And if you don’t like gear progression, then it may very well be that MMORPGs are not the right genre for you.

3. All Types Of Progression Are Important: Vertical and Horizontal

This is a reference to something said by Lead Designer Isaiah Cartwright in a Kotaku interview. All forms of progression are important. Vertical progression for those who want it. Horizontal progression for those who want it.

(Horizontal progression is defined as progressing through the game by achieving different, broader goals which do not include a statistical component—more weapon skins, more areas to explore, more titles to get. Vertical progression is defined as progressing through the game by become statistically better, and having stronger stats, stronger powers, stronger gear.)

In other words, gear progression is here to stay. It’s a fact of GW2. The reason it’s here to stay is because the developers have stated that they want the game to be as inclusive as possible to all types of players. There’s going to be more gear-independent content for those who want it (i.e, world events like Lost Shores), and there’s going to be more and better gear for those who want it (i.e, Ascended Armor, and whatever’s coming in the future.)

So the question is not whether or not Ascended armor is going to go away (it’s not) or if gear progression is going to go away (it’s not). Gear progression is here to stay because this is an MMO, and if ANet defines GW2 as an MMORPG and GW1 as a CORPG, then it follows that GW2 will include the tropes that define an MMORPG—including gear progression.

So the question is not whether or not GW2 will have gear progression—it does, and it will, and it will continue to progress over time, through expansions and new content.

The question, however, is whether that gear progression will be prohibitively inaccessible as it was in WoW, in which getting new gear meant raiding, meant showing up 3-4 times a week and grinding out instances for upgrades. ANet doesn’t want this. They want gear progression to be there for everybody, to be available for everybody, and to be open to you even if you aren’t a hardcore player.

TLDR Version

• The Manifesto is not a binding contract; it is by definition an expression of an ideology. It’s somewhere between PR and Design Philosophy, but it is not set in stone. If we insist that GW2 broke its own Manifesto, all ANet has to do is demonstrate that Ascended gear was a success in order to demonstrate that the Manifesto was wrong.

• Gear Progression is accepted de facto as essential to MMORPGs. The Manifesto described a game that wasn’t an MMO. GW2 was, and is, an MMO.

• The question is not whether or not your gear should get better: the question is whether or not improving your gear and progressing your game is accessible and fun without feeling like a second job.

• It’s natural to feel betrayed, upset and angry. I totally, absolutely sympathize. But it’s probably not constructive to linger on it and hold a grudge. Look at the big picture, and be philosophical about this.

Please, please try to keep responses constructive. As a disclaimer, I am not taking sides in the Hardcore vs Casual argument, and I’m not at all trying to keep people from voicing very valid complaints about this game. I’m just encouraging the community to be philosophical about the issue and try to look at the big picture in a rational way.

…E.b.on Vanguard Greatsword. It’s beautiful and sleek. Stately, and yet artful. But most importantly, it feels like a small accomplishment.

I hit 80 on my second Guardian last night—Valerie Cross. Her story is that she’s an ex Ebon Vanguard, wounded in battle just before the Queen’s treaty. So, right off the bat, there’s some emotional investment in getting myself a good weapon from the Ebon Vanguard, like a symbol of my character’s achievements.

I equipped myself in a full set of rares (barring jewelry and sigils) at 80 for about 1.5 gold. My gear “grind” was essentially done. With these rares, I’m instance-ready. There isn’t a single PVE dungeon I can’t do, and no content for which I am underequipped.

This is a huge paradigm shift for me. After six years of hardcore raiding in World of Warcraft, of a model of “endgame” that meant no piece of equipment was ever special, no piece of equipment ever truly meaningful, and every gear slot, every item, every epic was just a stepping stone to the next inevitable upgrade. Where the transience of gear atrophied its own feeling of “specialness.”

This is one of the few times in an MMO I’ve actually felt “done.” Where I’ve reached (reasonably close to) the peak of my character’s equipped gear, and all that remains is to do as I please. Now I have the luxury of hunting down rare and beautiful items because of how cool they look. Now I have the luxury of doing as I please, rolling an alt, taking it easy, kicking back.

The concept of endgame is something we’ve created, together, players and developers alike. Tier after tier after tier of gear, endlessly. The feeling of being “done,” I realize, doesn’t bore me at all: it liberates me. There is no Sisyphean exercise in constantly gearing up and upgrading ad nauseum.

Consequently, I can take a moment and really appreciate the feeling of lasting, permanent and real accomplishment in forking over the not insubstantial amount of karma that went to my beautiful new greatsword.

There’s been a lot of talk about endgame and loot tiers, so I just felt like sharing an anecdote.

(Disclaimer, because this forum seems pretty inflammable lately: This post is just an anecdotal expression of a moment of clarity and fun experienced by me, the player of Valerie Cross. It is NOT an indictment of the community’s criticism toward or defense of the “endgame.” It is not, except purely tangentially, a participation in the “endgame” debate.)

Edit: Screenshots!

I just don’t understand it. I swear, I see Charr, Norn, Asura and Sylvari all the time. But the vast majority of the player base is human in real life. Are people just in denial of their own species or something?

One of the reasons Guardians seem to have fewer choices than Warriors is because Warriors’ weapon skills work differently.

The playstyle of a Warrior depends powerfully on switching out weapons. Warrior weapons are all pretty aggressive; they’re almost all attack skills, and almost all of them deal damage or inflict a condition in a very particular way. Playing a Warrior means taking full advantage of a wide range of tactical options in battle.

Put another way: Warriors are designed to be highly versatile in their aggression. They’re designed to be able to attack in a dozen different ways.

Guardians are designed to be versatile in our defenses. We have far more defensive and support options than a Warrior, and our weapons reflect this. A warrior’s skills give them a dozen different ways to kill an enemy. But our skills give us a dozen different ways to protect all our allies. We have fewer options, but our individual skills can affect the battle more profoundly than those of a warrior.

Cynical.2097:

Reaching the end of this game, i’ve realized that Anet has done worse than Blizzard’s Diablo 3 in terms of loot.

I can spend all day doing dungeons and farming and find nothing worth any value. Even blizzard notice that having a end game with low drop chance on items is a bad game design.

Spending large amounts of time attempting to hunt items with no avail is turning me further and further away from the game…

Diablo 3 suffered a great deal because the fundamental expectation behind Diablo is that it’s a loot pinata. This is what Diablo is all about. This is what every single Diablo clone has ever been all about, from Titan Quest to Borderlands. You play Diablo so that you can hit things until they die and shiny things fountain out of their corpses.

The basic problem with Diablo 3 is that it stopped being a loot pinata once you started approaching the more difficult areas of the game. We can talk about the viability of its revamped stat/ability system, but the core of the matter is this: You got your loot from the Auction House. Not from random drops. The Auction House.

The implementation of the Auction House created a sense of staid, stolid predictability to a game played primarily for its slot-machine unpredictability. You play Torchlight, Diablo 2 and Titan Quest for the loot. Because you want to kill bosses and farm areas and see what kind of haul you drag in. Once we had an Auction House, all this disappeared, and all we did was farm loot so we could sell it for gold so we could save that gold to buy exactly the right item we wanted. There was no sense of chance. No addicting gamble. No loot pinata.

Therefore, fundamentally, your comparison between Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 is a false analogy, because Guild Wars 2 is not played primarily for loot, at all. It was never advertised as a game that depends on random loot mechanics. It is not a franchise known for its shiny loot. Nothing in the history of ANet or Guild Wars suggests that this is the sort of game you should play if you want to trick yourself out on phat lootz.

Is there a problem with loot not being all that rewarding? Arguably, yes. And the devs are working on that. We just got the addition to karma in dungeons, but expect to see better loot on world bosses, dungeons, mini dungeons and chests.

Your basic premise is flawed though. Comparing Diablo 3 to Guild Wars 2 on the basis of loot is a false analogy, for the reasons mentioned above.

Good on you for reporting them, Krosslite, and for keeping your head high. This sort of behavior is pretty much bullying and should not be tolerated at all, by anyone.

You can’t mention specific names in the forums, but if you’re on Tarnished Coast, feel free to PM me the names of those involved. I’ll keep an eye out and let my friends know.

@OP,

A lot of people will tell you it’s your own fault, that you invested in a game that isn’t suited to you and provides nothing for you. I feel these criticisms are unfair. You clearly derived pleasure from being the backbone of your team, a “healer” in the sense that you provided the non-violent support that kept your team going.

Guild Wars 2 has done away with the trinity, so the concept of a healer as it relates to damage and tanking roles is no longer present. However, the absence of the “classic” trinity that’s dominated PVE mechanics for the last decade does not and should not eliminate the entire concept of team support.

I encourage you to think about healers outside the usual DPS-Healer-Tank tactical triangle that has become the de facto standard of PVE. Instead, try and remember what it was that drew you to playing a healer in the first place. The pleasure of being a force multiplier for your team? The idea that you could help keep your team alive in tough spots? The mother-bear playstyle that emphasized protecting the vulnerable and reviving the wounded?

If so, your playstyle may have a place in GW2, provided you’re willing to adapt. If you want to spam heals and fill green bars all day, this isn’t the game for you. But if you want to protect your allies, support their offense and help keep them out of harm’s way, then there are ways to build for that, and professions well suited to fulfilling the healer impulse, if not embodying the traditional healer playstyle. Guardians and Elementalists are a good starting point.

Good luck!

Shifu.4321:

The pre Lost Shores forums was pretty much civil. You had a few dissenters complaining about bugs, lack of content, missing trinity etc., but they were probably like 10% of the actual threads. All in all, pretty much a normal – even one of the better- game forums around.

The forums now reminds me of the scorched earth wasteland that the Diablo 3 and TOR forums became a few months after launch. Whoever is reading these forums must have a pretty negative picture from all the threads. Not certain if anet anticipated THIS much of a backlash (I’m sure they anticipated some).

Yeah, I agree. And you know, people aren’t really talking about this much but…

…this degree of constant negativity on the forums will, over the long term, have very real and tangible effects in shaping the identity of the forum community. The more consistently hostile a forum, the more likely we are to drive away sensible people who might have something very cool or imaginative or intelligent to share with us, but end up thinking, “Wow, look at these guys. They’d rip me apart. I’d rather not waste my time here.”

Consequently forums which stay ugly for a while tend to spiral, because they either drive away readership and discourage contributions or sort of become cannibalistic where just a small, angry core of perpetually dissatisfied players (or ex-players) who chase each other in circles over the same arguments over who’s ruining the game and why.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. I love forum communities and I’ve been part of at least a dozen major MMO communities over the last decade. This sort of situation can end up defining the tenor of a forum.

:(

I agree wholeheartedly with pretty much your entire post, Jenna.

We all need to stop and check ourselves because you got griefed once? That’s as disrespectful to all of us as that guild was to you.

The title of his thread may have given you that idea, but the contents of the thread aren’t lecturing the community in being a good citizen, but talking about a bad experience that happened to him and encouraging people who might have gone through similar experiences to make good use of the report function.

There’s nothing fundamentally disrespectful about Krosslite’s post. There is, however, something undeniably pernicious about a player or a group of players going out of their way to make someone else unhappy. Suggesting that these two things are similar is just false equivalence.

Well, that’s that, I guess.

Just seems odd that you decrease power output on the class when the only really damage it can do is with great sword or normal sword + shield.

The Oct 7th patch didn’t decrease the “power output” of the Guardian class by a significant amount. We had, in the long run, a modest nerf to a single ability on a single weapon coupled with a modest buff to a single ability on a single weapon. The buff to Leap of Faith is something no one is talking about, which is so weird. It significantly improves Greatsword/Sword+Focus synergy. Like, a lot.

Furthermore, Guardians can deal damage with the following weapons pretty significantly. Sword, Scepter, Focus, Torch, Greatsword, Hammer. Of these, Sword + Torch, Hammer and Greatsword deliver the most damage, while Scepter is potentially powerful at a closer range.

but considerng the staff and sceptre skills are a waste of time that leaves sword and shield or mace and shield
and tbh the mace skills aint that great either.

Staff is an excellent weapon, but it’s tailored more to support than damage, and shines with Trait support. Scepter, while dull, is effective at mid-range. And Mace is a solid weapon—just limited in its scope. It has a short cooldown Symbol, a heal on an auto-attack, and a strong block-counter that also protects nearby allies. Amazing? No. But definitely solid. You’ve also, conspicuously, left out Torch (awesome) and Focus (awesome)

And caste time on some of the "Elite " tome of wrath are pretty ridiculous one of them ha s a cast tiime of 45 seconds. To balance things how about reducing that a little.

Did you mean 4-5 seconds? Absolutely no spell in this game takes 45 seconds to cast.

There’s no guardian past greatsword, m8. You can’t even call it a nerf. It’s instant class destruction.
R.I.P. dear guardian. Was fun while it lasted.

I’m going to guess you were being sarcastic. In case you weren’t, I’m going to guess you were just blowing off steam. Because there isn’t even a fraction of truth to this statement.

And don’t try to sell me some “adapt” blah-blah-blah. I can see when a class gets nerfed to the ground. And then there’s nothing to stay for, nothing to adapt to. This patch killed my mes and my guard. Well, it’s time to play engi and war.

So what happens when Engineer and Warrior get nerfed too? What classes will you go to?

I really think you’re overreacting. The problem with your post is that it’s incredibly difficult to engage you and offer you some constructive advice when you say things like “There is nothing to stay for, nothing to adapt to.” Let’s look at what did happen:

1. Greatsword’s Symbol of Wrath went from a 10s Recharge to a 20s recharge
2. Leap of Faith went from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.

So overall, the patch changes the way you play Greatsword in the following ways:

• Symbol of Wrath contributes less overall damage in fights that last longer than 20 seconds provided your enemy stays within the radius of your Symbol for the entire 5s duration, and provided you use Symbol of Wrath precisely when it’s off cooldown. This is roughly equal to losing one auto-attack chain worth of damage in perfectly static fights every 20 seconds. In practice, roughly speaking, in a 30 second fight, this is the equivalent of losing one string of attacks, tops.

• Greatsword synergy with Zeal is now less obvious and less attractive. This is actually a pretty valid complaint. Zeal has two Greatsword traits—both of which are, admittedly, lackluster—but prior to the patch, Zeal worked pretty well with Greatsword. However, this problem is reflective of the issues inherent in the Zeal trait line, not Greatsword itself.

• Blind applications become significantly more reliable. Leap of Faith is now 15 seconds, or 12 with 20% Recharge reduction. Combine this with Flashing Blade (10s recharge), Ray of Judgement (25s recharge) and Virtue of Justice (30s—as low as 1-2 seconds with Renewed Justice), and you have the potential for constant and reliable mitigation in a way that was as easy before.

• Your only Leap Finisher in the entire profession gets 25% of its recharge shaved off. You have a much more reliable source of Leap Finisher, and Greatsword, overall, becomes less of a symbol weapon and more of a Combo Finisher weapon, allowing for significantly more group synergy with everyone else’s Combo Fields.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Eveningstar.6940:

I can back up my points if you’d like. I thought I did, but I can clarify. Is there a part of my post that you feel requires more evidence?

Do so. I don’t see any evidence from you, just speculation. By evidence I’m talking about links to elsewhere so I don’t have to take you at your word.

Another question: If the manifesto was wrong, why hasn’t ANET come out and said that it was wrong ?
If they do, I expect that most of the people complaining about the gear grind will just leave and the controversy will die overnight.

A lot of the points I’m making are by nature philosophical, rather than empirical, and so providing hard evidence isn’t really going to be a possibility. In this case, the evidence is visible in the argument itself.

Much of what I’m saying isn’t speculation, but observation. For example, a manifesto is not a contract. It just isn’t, by definition. But does this mean you shouldn’t feel upset or betrayed when someone goes against the basic philosophical principles which they sold to you? No. You have absolutely every right to be upset. I’d be, and was, and still kind of am, upset. But that’s not the point.

The point is this: It’s possible that the manifesto was just unrealistic to begin with. The manifesto describes a game that barely resembles an MMORPG. But the game itself is very recognizably an MMORPG. Quest hubs, theme-park style zones, a high level cap, gear upgrades while leveling, unlocking new abilities—it even as a rudimentary talent tree (the Trait system). GW2 is an MMO. It’s going to have some form of gear progression because it was designed like an MMO.

If ANet’s Manifesto was right, then GW2 would be a very, very different game, fundamentally. It’d be a LOT more like GW1. It’s not.

As for my second point, about MMORPGs being defined by gear progression, the evidence is in the history: EQ, EQ2, WoW, CoH, DCUO, CO, LOTRO, ToR, STO, AoC. The list goes on and on and on. Just about every MMORPG released in recent memory includes a system of character progression through gear—even City of Heroes had an abstract gear system via Enhancements.

GW1 did it differently, yes. It broke out of the gear progression mold. But it was so fundamentally different from every MMO in the genre, that even ANet called it a CORPG.

As for my third point, the evidence is in a link I provided, wherein a developer uses the quote “all progression is important,” in response to a question about whether Vertical progression is a priority.

Conclusion

The Greatsword changes do not reduce your damage at all in shorter fights (i.e, less than, say, 12-15 seconds) and may actually improve it. In longer fights, you will see a modest damage loss from the increased cooldown of Symbol of Wrath, but only in situations where you’re dropping Symbol down every ten seconds, and the enemy is staying inside the radius of Symbol for the entire duration. Furthermore, your only Leap finisher gets a lot better, and Greatsword gets significantly better at Combo Finishers, and your Blind options and Sword/Focus synergy becomes significantly better.

So, a modest if situational, weapon-dependent nerf coupled with a modest, less situational but also weapon dependent buff.

Seems like an okay trade-off. A small overall nerf at worst, but hardly the game breaking, Guardian killing, klaxon activating nerf to the ground you’re painting it to be.

Disappointed, but I’ll see what comes of it.

One of the perks of not having to pay a monthly subscription is that there’s really no “quitting,” except for writing the game off permanently as a protest.

Hold on. Put the brakes on for a second.

Arenanet doesn’t give out enough gold rewards or provides a means to make money that counters the sellers who ARE legit.
They exist. They take their job seriously, provide adequate security concerning your personal info and have been providing bargain prices since the inception of WoW.

There is no such thing as a “legit” gold seller. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that selling gold is in and of itself an illegal (read: illegitimate) act, there is absolutely no such thing as a legit gold seller. In the same way there’s no such thing as a legit smuggler or a legit counterfeiter or a legit bootlegger, and supporting these “enterprises” under the guise of legitimacy only encourages their existence in the first place.

There is absolutely no situation, under any reasonable circumstances, in which you should justify handing over your credit card information to a gold seller, or hiring farming services, or anything in that exceedingly dubious vein. Not only are you putting yourself at risk for hacking, theft, or possible bans from ArenaNet, but you are participating in—and therefore proliferating—a pernicious culture of gold trading that has done nothing but cause problems for the MMO community.

Every time you fork over real money to these people, you are implicitly encouraging the underhanded business of gold selling, and implicitly encouraging more sophisticated and more pervasive forms of botting, hacking and identity theft.

The problem is not ArenaNet’s prices or the low availability of gold or the cost of precursors.

These are problems which exist independent of the allure of gold sellers. Gold sellers don’t exist because precursors are expensive. Gold sellers don’t exist because gold is rare. Gold sellers exist because enough players are impatient and lack discretion.

If the price of a precursor is prohibitively high, then don’t go after one. If ArenaNet’s economic design leaves you penniless more often than you’d like, then hold ANet responsible. Don’t look to gold sellers for a solution.

Players need to get better at saying no, and taking a hardline stance. If getting a precursor is going to be a boring grind that sucks away months of your life—don’t do it. And don’t try to justify throwing away your integrity by paying gold sellers money. That is not a valid solution—it’s a cheap excuse by someone struggling to justify their own lack of discretion.

I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to be blunt. The quote above displays exactly the sort of reasoning that is slowly, steadily and inevitably giving support to gold sellers, botters and hackers. Don’t do it.

You don’t have to do crafting to make up for the level deficiency. I’ve been leveling a lot of alts to 80, and one of the things I do (in fact, all I do), is split my leveling between zones.

So I’ll do Kessex Hills until I’m level 19 or 20, and then stop and hit Plains of Ashford for a few levels, then come back and finish Kessex.

There are very few level brackets that don’t have multiple zones. Spread your leveling out a bit.

That’s fine. If you think the Symbol of Wrath buff isn’t worth much: great! Let’s have a civil talk about it. Maybe we’ll come to the conclusion that the issue isn’t SoW’s damage, but SoW’s cooldown and availability.

That’s constructive disagreement. Click the back button and take a peek at the handful of threads on the forums’ front page decrying ANet for destroying the profession, declaring the Guardian profession dead and whining about more nerfs. That’s not constructive at all.

You’re right that the 10% damage buff to SoW does not fix lost synergies. This is why I’ve been advocating changes to the synergies itself, rather than changes to Greatsword. The problem isn’t Greatsword so much as Greatsword’s synergy with Zeal is greatly reduced. So it’d be better to take a second look at Zeal.

The changes you proposed for SoW are all potentially possible through the Zeal tree, provided ANet gives Zeal a second look. Which they should.

Oh, in case you wonder what I call a good player base it would be at least 500k, preferably ove 1 million active players. I think that’s what you need to be able to grow afterwards.

What are you basing these numbers on? Are you just making them up, or is there some evidence behind it?

EVE online had about 357,000 active subscribers by 2010, and it’s still going relatively strong despite being as old as WoW. Meanwhile, Warhammer Online peaked at 800,000 and dropped to an average of 150,000 within the space of a year. Age of Conan peaked at 700,000 and dropped to under 100,000. Rift peaked at 600,000 and within a year, lost half that.

Meanwhile, City of Heroes began with less than 50,000 subscibers and lasted from 2004 to 2012 on an average of a mere 150,000 subscribers. CoH alone helped spur a spike of comic book themed MMOs, including Champions Online (still going) and DCUO (not as lucky).

WoW, on the other hand, peaked at 12M subscibers between 2009 and late 2010, and has been in steady decline, hitting just over 10M in Q1 2012. That’s a loss of subscribers that more than doubles the peak of other, smaller MMOs that have lasted years on a smaller subscriber base.

The other big hitters? Lineage and Lineage 2 and 2-3 million, Runescape at 4 million in 2009, and ToR which peaked at just under 2 million.

Oh, and the MMOs with the highest peak concurrent users? Fantasy Westward East, Zheng Tu Online, Yulgang, Wen Dao, Shaiya, World of Legend…and World of Warcraft. All of those have peak concurrent users between 400k and 2.5 million.

TLDR: Your “500k users or above for a successful game” makes absolutely no sense. Very few games actually peak at and maintain 500k+ users and succeed. Plenty of games peak higher than 500k and crash. Plenty other games never get above 500k, but last for years and years, and influence lots of games around them.