Guild Wars 2

Hi! Glad to see a new guardian around. Guardian’s main weakness while levelling is that our utilities have much higher CD than most other classes because they would be OP at 80 if they had a low CD. My advice would be to follow the Hammer PvE guide in obal’s recently stickied guide here (it’s in the second post):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE

I felt that 15/15/0/20/20 gave me the best balance of survivability and DPS, considering that I did most things alone. Here is my advice on point priority in your trait lines as you progress:

1) As foofad mentioned, 5 in Honor should be your first priority; then 15 in Radiance as ZoroDaOtter encouraged.
2) After that, another 15 in Honor to get Superior Aria for “Retreat!” and “Hold the Line!” spam as well as Writ of Persistence for perma-protection.
3) Continue with 20 in Virtues for Master of Consecrations for Wall of Reflection to better handle pesky ranged mobs; and Absolute Resolution for condition cleansing.
4) Finish with 15 in Zeal with Fiery Wrath for more DPS.

When exploring the world to level I run around with Shelter, “Hold the Line!”, Wall of Reflection, “Retreat!”, and Renewed Focus for a good spread of skills to handle almost any situation. For weapon swap I suggest Sceptre + Focus because some annoying storyline quests and more difficult world events favour ranged attacks for the lower-levelled, and focus is our best offhand weapon for PvE.

Hi OP. I hit 80 on my Guardian 5 days ago. I bought a full set of berserker rares off the trading post and upgraded everything with Ruby Orbs. I’m now using a GS/SF, 10/25/0/10/25 build. It works out very well in solo adventuring (I’m going for the “Been There, Done That” achievement) since everything up to veteran level dies at the end of one full rotation.

As for squishiness, I would advise you to get used to dodging and learning from painful mistakes. I find that tankier builds only give you the false impression that you can continually make mistakes, when ultimately you’ll be performing in dungeons and fractals where as few as 2 mistakes can leave you (and possibly the rest of your party) on the ground.

For solo adventuring, I often pick Shelter, “Hold the Line!”, Wall of Reflection, “Retreat!”, and Renewed Focus as my usual skills. I also advise learning to rotate your blinds, dodges, and blocks so you can come out of every fight with more than 90% health in preparation for transition from Ruby Orbs to Scholar Runes. Here’s a list of damage-avoidance sources when using the build I use, in order of priority:

Blinds:
Virtue of Justice
GS3
Focus4
Sword2

Blocks:
Shelter (which blocks everything during the duration of the animation)
Focus5
Retreat!
Virtue of Courage

I play GW2 on lowest settings with my laptop that’s mainly for work, as you can see from its lulz specs below:

Intel Core i5-2520M
4 GB RAM
Windows 7 32 bit
Intel Integrated Gfx (I know, stop laughing.)

When I started playing last week, GW2 ran smoothly while on lowest settings with my loser specs, but would crash every 15 mins or so. I was quite sure that my video card driver was up to date as I run Windows Update that does provide updates for the Intel driver.

I decided to give Windows Update the finger and use Intel Autodetect as recommended here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Are-your-drivers-up-to-date

Intel Autodetect informed me that I have been using an outdated driver, contrary to Windows Update. Upon updating the driver direct from Intel, lo and behold, GW2 stopped crashing. I have played for 7 hours straight without a crash. Thank you GW2 tech support team for your advice.

TL:DR, Windows Update lies like a pick-up artist, get your real latest driver direct from Intel Autodetect.