Guild Wars 2

stemare.2578:

I’d suggesto you to go with berserker armor/weapons and knight trinkets. Once you get good at surviving with your guardian, get ascended berserker trinkets and you are done.
If you want to focus on team WvW, you can go soldier, but you’d be useless in PvE.

This isn’t a bad suggestion but I would say to start with knight’s armor and berserker’s trinkets instead, you get more crit damage out of it that way. Weapons still zerker. Of course that’s assuming you don’t want to just go crazy and dive straight into berserker everything, which can be a tough way to learn but is good if you’re up to it.

1. Guardians don’t generally get nerfed a lot but we are going to have a harder time keeping up vigor soon (along with other classes that have lots of vigor). I wouldn’t say guardians are OP, just that they happen to have access to mechanics that the state of the game favors.

2. The same trait lines for the two classes have vastly different uses so you’ll probably eventually be more comfortable with an entirely new build, possibly one that functions similarly. 0/0/30/30/10 is not the only way to go for PVT. Experiment a little, it’s cheap!

3. Zerk is the meta, but no one can really stop you from running PVT, and PVT can be nice if you end up doing WVW, or sometimes the more difficult world events.

4. I haven’t heard of anyone using spirit weapons well in their current state but there seem to be rumors going around that they will become more powerful soon.

If you do stay PVT try to at least put zerker accessories and gradually move that direction (assuming PVE). Really it’s like any other class that way. If anything guardians are one of the best classes to get used to zerk in due to having so many blocks and blinds.

I’ve also noticed this hair style has no dynamic movement (the other two new styles do). Not sure if that’s WAI but it seems like the main ponytail at least should sway like all other hairstyles do.

This is the build my Mesmer has been running since the day she hit 80, although I guess I’m an oddball in my major traits. I run increased manipulation range instead of deceptive dodging, and remove condition on heal instead of decreased glamour cooldown. Not a setup for everyone, but blink never leaves my #7 slot and I make the most of that extra range.

The other two slots I change constantly. Feedback is often there, but I rarely need it to cooldown faster (maybe for 10+ harpies and grawl shaman, but both of those cases benefit from condition heal). I use every skill except for maybe the mantra of pain and signet of midnight, and I’ve found that every time I’d like to use mimic, the attack I’m concerned with blows right through it. Mirror images is great for shattering during quick fights or when targets go down fast (phantasms disappear when their target is gone and are still cooling down).

I also seem to be one of the only people who run Mirror as their heal. This way my heal is on 15 sec CD, reflects projectiles, heals one condition, and grants swiftness because I use runes of the centaur. This helps greatly with mobility.

I do use full berserker gear and run Gs/sword focus. I’ve run this build through fractals to level 20+, also love it for dungeons, and it didn’t perform poorly in my short jaunt into pvp (plus it’s funny the level of panic illusionary berserker inspires if you get it up on a wall in wvw).

As far as concerns about phantasms being too squishy to provide reliable damage- I find that in this build the Regen they supply each other with is enough to keep them alive through a few attacks in almost every case, especially if I use wardens on projectile heavy bosses and berserkers spin themselves out if melee range. Plus, they recharge fast enough that it’s not too bad if they die, and when they’re down I can easily mass produce clones to shatter.

Sure! I have several sets of hotw armor and a handful of weapons. Can’t say my runs are the fastest, but I’d be happy to teach you. I’d prefer not to run story any time soon but I have more than one toon with access. Friend me if you like, I’m on most of the day, PST time zone.

Edit- gw2lfg is fantastic and I’ll use it to fill, but it isn’t exactly how I’d recommend learning ^^