Guild Wars 2

Xernth.8561:

I’ve been playing a Right Hand Strength build and am looking to start a conversation about gear/weapon/trait choices, etc.

For traits, I’ve been playing:
Radiance (Blind Exposure, Powerful Blades, Right Hand Strength)
Honor (Superior Aria, Empowering Might)
Virtues(Vengeful, Supreme Justice)

Based on some forum reading here, I’m going to consider dumping Supreme Justice for Pure of Voice, though I’d need to consider the implication of losing 10% boon duration.

Gearwise, I’ve been building a PVT set of armor and trinkets with ruby gems in the trinkets. For Runes, I have 2 Strength for Might Duration and 4 Citadel for Fury duration and generating Fury. Between significant Fury uptime and RHS I feel like I don’t need to go out of my way to gear Precision, which is nice. Sigils are Strength and Force.

Weapons, I’ve been using Sword/Shield and Scepter/Focus. I am a pretty new 80 and the PvE content is still new to me, so I feel I have to play Scepter so I can stand back on content I’m learning.

For Utility skills, I think Save Yourselves is a must, I’ve been using Judge’s Intervention and Purging Flames for mobility and condition removal and because they help tag mobs in PvE. If I swap to Pure of Voice, obviously I’d want another shout or two.

The build is entirely based around the synergy between RHS, Empowering Might and fast hitting weapons. I think it makes at least a reasonable amount of sense. Looking forward to hearing suggestions or potential improvements.

Is this a PvE only build or are you looking to pvp/wvw with this as well? Either way I would dump supreme justice for something else, as hitting on burning on 4 attacks is not going to be that much of a boost. I would say take the 10 out of virtues and put it into zeal for fiery wrath to increase your damage on burning enemies by 10%, because you have VoJ refresh on kill, you should be able to spam it every mob on PvE.

I personally build for WvW so i’m not sure how much help other than that I can be depending on the content you are doing.

Teamkiller.4315:

Also, to a lot of guardians, you underestimate the power of your own autoattacks, I rarely see them used when I fight other guardians. Did you know the autoattack chain on the Greatsword has high dps than whirling wrath? The only reason you would use whirling wrath is for up front burst and/or AOE, I use it when he stealths so he can’t backstab me without taking punishment in return.

1h Sword AA, such insane damage when you can actually stay on someone. lol

roachsrealm.9284:

as a main guardian, I’d like to put my input on this.

I’ve never felt the guardian wasn’t mobile. I’ve rarely encountered a situation where I said “man I wish this enemy was crippled”

with just GS alone and 1 utility slot for a teleport-to-enemy skill, you have 3 closers. skill 2 to leap to, skill 5 to pull toward, and a utility to insta-melee. It’s all about the order you use the skills.

then there are alternative forms of crowd control, less direct than cripple or gap closers. staff 5, hammer 5, and other similar skills all produce the same end result: keeping your enemy where you want them.

while I do agree that Zeal could use some work, I find that traiting into raw power on a guardian just isn’t as effective as other classes. dump some extra into Radiance, and go full vitality. Don’t even use the grandmaster traits: all symbol effects. GS still does tons of damage and you don’t sacrifice party support.

CC has never been an issue with me. It’s boon removal or condition damage that is severely lacking on a guardian. You can CC all you like, but if they have stability, you kind of just have to outlast for a while.

Apparently you must not roam that often then. Literally every class can go “oh hey this fight with this guardian isn’t going to great, See ya” and get out alive and fine. We have a total of 2 charges (one requires a target), 1 teleport (which is on a 45 second cd) a pull (which falls off the second someone steps out of 600 range) A signet with immobilize (which has a horrible passive) a signet with a knockdown (actually very good) scepter immobilize (pretty decent, but scepter is broken as a range weapon) and an immobilize on our hammer (very easy to side step outside of like 300 range) and that is literally it for our mobility and CC. Our swiftness is tied to a horrible utility shout, and a symbol on a non damage weapon. So if you play roaming damage at all, you are out of luck if someone runs and has swiftness.

So lets see, theives, cant catch at all, stealth removes our use of JI and 1h sword leap, they also get spammable teleports. (this is fine though, as I view thieves most deserving of mobility). Warriors: cripple on almost every weapon, a trait that makes cripples immobilize, useful ranged weapon, 2 charges on GS, charge and immobilize utilities, hammer has 2 knockdowns and a cripple, easy 30 second swiftness from elite sigil. They are also almost impossible to catch if they are determined to get away. Ele, Ride the lightning, flame charge, multiple slows, very easy condition removal so locking them down with immobilize is useless. The list goes on and on. The only way to start to catch other classes is almost to burn each gap closer one after another, which leaves us with nothing very very quickly, in which swiftness just gives them a straight out running advantage.

Sorem.9157:

Bakitten291:

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

I slightly disagree, as honor is the secondary symbol line, which includes larger, longer lasting, and healing symbols, all of which make sense together. Where as vulnerability, cc, and more damage would make more sense as an offensive line. Keep in mind that most symbols are used currently for the defensive buffs they give, not for damage. It would make sense to be able to spec more towards them doing damage. which can only be done if CC is attached to them. It would also allow a specialized build around symbols, which there currently is, but only works in spvp

Sorem.9157:

immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower

Sorry, I forgot to say that the immobilize would only be put in effect on the initial casting of the symbol, not on each tick, kind of like how engineer glue gun and ranger’s muddy terrain work. And yes I do agree that having immobilize on each tick would be extremely OP.

Well, better XD But i still think it would be too much, a 1s immobilize would be enough to get a full WW out and the cripple afterwards would easily give you a few auto-attacks to finish the target off. Idk, i think immobilize is kind of a strong thing to have as such an easy access on the greatsword.

I’d be in probably for a chill though, or even just cripple.

The symbol on the GS is a decently long CD though, but i do understand, Immobilize might be a bit too much on something like that. I would love personally to make our slows chill based, but last time I mentioned that everyone went nuts saying that chill is too strong of a condition to put as our snare. (even though ele’s can get some liberal use of it and still be one of the most mobile classes.)

Roe.3679:

Thank you for the responses and discussion, everyone!

I don’t see myself using a GS simply because it seems to require a rotation to do the most damage. The skills don’t seem situational to me and that turns me away from it. I do like the hammer and I could see myself switching into it depending on my group. When fighting Guardians I know when they have their GS out to just use a few dodges at the right times and their damage plummets.

I can also see using a mix of armor/weapons/trinks to get a good balance of offensive and defensive stats.

@ Bash – thank you for the build, I definitely see myself using this. I very much appreciate your post.

@ foofad – Why is ZD flawed?

@ Zackie – thank you for the tesing, if nothing else it at least showed me what some of the Guard’s minor traits can do. It’s awesome that Guardians actually have useful minor traits.

I wouldn’t say that GS really has a rotation, it is more or less knowing when to press what buttons for max damage. Only use WW when you know you can land alot of hits, only use symbol if you are about to be bursted, or if you think you can keep some one on it, things like that.

As far as ZD being flawed its a common complain against 1h Sword but is one you can easily get around. The main issue is that you are rooted for the casting, and that at range, the projectile blades can easily be avoided my strafing. Also, it doesn’t actually block projectiles, it absorbs them, which means it gets no synergy from the might on block trait. (25 point valor) The mobility and range issues are easily solved by using judges intervention to jump on top of an enemy a split second after the wind up and before the actual damage starts being cast. This is done because judges intervention has no global cooldown activation, and can used mid cast of any skill (some work better than others) It does take some getting used to it, because if you jump to early, most people will dodge away, if you jump too late you miss damage. The wind up is about a half a second long, but once you get used to it, it become second nature.

This plays a key role for 2 reason. 1) it adds burning for the 20% extra damage 2) the blades are unavoidable at close range (unless of course there is a dodge). Your other options to land the hits are using an immobilize, or knockdown to root the target, then casting the skill. This can be achieved through either Bane signet (knockdown) signet of wrath (immobilize) scepter #3 then weapon switch, Hammer #3 then weapon switch, or GS #5 to pull, then weapons switch. The last one takes a bit more timing, because if you try to weapons switch even a split second too soon it wont finish the animation for the pull and you lose it.

Roe.3679:

Would a 1 handed build look like 10/30/30/0/0? Or can that vary and still be successful?

Thank you for the responses so far, by the way!

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|b.1g.h2.d.1c.h19|2.1p.0|1n.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1n.7c.1c.7c|1p.61.1n.61.1n.61.1g.61.1i.61.1c.61|a2.u24b.u64c.0.0|16.1|w.1a.15.13.1i|e

This is my current build which I also roam/small group with. Sword is switchable for scepter and does more damage (7k zealots are so much fun), however you will find that its hard to land hits on certain mobile classes (thieves and eles for the most part) in which scepter will be better. Torch is switchable for focus as well, depending on if you prefer to go offensive or defensive for an offhand. GS is good all around and compliments the build well.

If you do go sword and gs switch the signet CD radiance trait to blind exposure, as you can 12 stack vuln very easily with sword/focus in 1v1 battles. You can also change out the signet for contemplation of purity for an added condition removal/stun break, and extra healing, or run signet of judgement for a static extra 10% damage reduction.

Also, Strength in numbers can be switched out for just about any trait you want, I would suggest either meditation cd reduction, or purity for some added condition removal. I just like to have 3k armor as a min.

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

I slightly disagree, as honor is the secondary symbol line, which includes larger, longer lasting, and healing symbols, all of which make sense together. Where as vulnerability, cc, and more damage would make more sense as an offensive line. Keep in mind that most symbols are used currently for the defensive buffs they give, not for damage. It would make sense to be able to spec more towards them doing damage. which can only be done if CC is attached to them. It would also allow a specialized build around symbols, which there currently is, but only works in spvp

Sorem.9157:

immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower

Sorry, I forgot to say that the immobilize would only be put in effect on the initial casting of the symbol, not on each tick, kind of like how engineer glue gun and ranger’s muddy terrain work. And yes I do agree that having immobilize on each tick would be extremely OP.

1h sword, because I like to be different!
>.>

Either one honestly, depends on what style of play I am going for at the time. Hammer is nice with the mighty blow bursts and CC, GS is good for the mobility and vulnerability bombing with blind exposure (has this been confirmed to be a bug or intentional yet?

If I can make a suggestion, try taking the 10 out of zeal and putting 5 in radiance, and 5 more in honor. not only do you get some more health, but you also pick up the 10% damage increase for having less than 100% endurance, and you also get an added defense from aoe blind on justice use. (and 50 extra perc). Your effective power and effective health both end up going up from that change, despite losing the 100 power out of zeal. Or you could go 5 into virtues instead of justice to get the bonuses on virtue use as well.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|2.1c.h1|b.1g.h1a.f.1g.h1d|1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f.1c.7f|21j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0.31j.0.2u.0|a2.5.u16c.p18.0|1b.7|w.13.15.12.0|e (here is the link, its about 200 more power effective power and 800 effective health more)

Teamkiller.4315:

Setun.4368:

Teamkiller.4315:

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

I’ll put it in a way a non-guardian might understand. Shouts are to the rest of our utilities what deception skills are to the rest of a thief’s utilities. Similar analogies to other professions: cantrips for eles, elixirs for engineers, etc.

Basically they for the most part outclass our other utilities and can be “traited” to make them even stronger than they already are, compared to our other utilities. I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

They are, in fact, superior in 1 on 1 situations than spirit weapons and meditations. And they still are, with the exception of fighting S/D thieves, maybe.

Actually cantrips have a closer semblance to meditations than shouts(with the earth cantrip being the only cantrip that’s closer to a shout as it gives boons.) Shouts versus spirit weapons are indeed strong in favor of shouts, but they’re not stronger than meditations. Equal footing perhaps, but not better.

I would challenge any non-leaderboard-ranked meditation guardian to duel my shout guardian and I’d be willing to bet a significant amount of money that my shout guardian would win (or at the very least draw). And I’d be willing to do this in spvp, where shout guardians are nerfed to begin with.

And my analogy was more of “these utilities are just superior”, and that’s why you see shout guardians in far more abundance than medi just like cantrip eles are more common than arcane…not saying the other two can’t work but they tend to fall short of the better utility skills.

Just because something is popular does not mean that it is better, it just means more people are comfortable using that build. Personally, I stick with meditations as it fits my build and play style better. Once i get some free time I wouldn’t mind dueling you, well as long as you aren’t running healway… (sorry but i consider 100% retal uptime as cheap as you can get in a fight)

timidobserver.7925:

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

See, I honestly don’t want more mobility as a class. The dev’s have already said that guardians are meant to get into fights and hold their ground, which is an ideal I follow as well. Let warriors have all the mobility. I just think as a class we should be able to punish people who do jump into it with us in through different forms of CC. As it is at the moment, the only class that cant escape us is a necro, who has a ton of CC and range to make up for that fact. They also have conditions so even if someone does try to kite/run they are still going to be taking indirect damage. They really just need to give us some CC to help make up for the fact that we only have a very small amount bursty mobility on a very few select weapons.

Setun.4368:

I use 20 points into Zeal for my meditation / tanky dps build and with the 5 stacks of vulnerability when using an immobilize, + 10% increased damage to burning targets (something we do quite often and easily) I haven’t had a problem with the tree. Then again I also use hammer / scepter + torch as my weapon sets to maximize the immobilization trait.

I will say that I think hammer is much more of a bursty weapon vs the greatsword. Granted greatsword has the fast attacks people like, but with mighty blow on hammer on a 4-5 sec cooldown that crits for 4k at minimum versus most enemies, and the auto chain doing 850-1.2k on non crit hits, it packs way more punch per blow than the greatsword. Just my opinion / what I’ve seen damage wise with my character.

How many points do you have in radiance with your build? I ask because at 25 points you get radiant power, which means anytime you have a condition on a target, you are doing an extra 10% damage. Unless you run hammer/scepter/condition signet, odds are the extra points in zeal might be better placed in radiance, as you get a more constant damage buff. (also this turns burning into a free 20% damage boost)

If I run a 2h damage build i generally run 10/25/30/0/5 which is literally just a slightly modified version of my 10/30/30/0/0 1h strength build.

Arganthium.5638:

The build is very good, totally agree.

Not so sure I agree with the use of Scep though. It’s weak and easily avoided. Its only real grace against thieves is its ability to immobilize, but that’s about it.

I actually use the scepter almost like a melee weapon, it promises the hits, and if they get just out of normal melee range you are 90% of the time still making contact with it. Also, I generally get about 1.6-2k crits with it depending on enemy armor and buffs currently on me. Also smite is great to cast on you when you think a thief is about to backstab, as it hits rapidly and does pretty decent damage. Immobilizing on a smite while you are on top of them with the auto attacks will also drain ALOT of health off very fast, and you can also use bane signet to do some damage and keep them on smite longer. Normally I just use it to interupt/stop fleeing foes though. Also, Ji- > chains -> bane signet is a hell of a way to gap close on someone lol.

It is honestly something I have been picking up alot lately in Spvp and WvW, as it actually does a good amount of single target damage, and does keep the damage on people, which is hard to do with a sword against classes that have high mobility against us.

Arganthium.5638:

Ezeriel.9574:

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

Agree with parts of this, other parts I don’t. Doesn’t matter though.

The fact of the matter is, if you watched the consolation match between Guards and Thieves today at the SOAC tournament, you’ll have noticed that boon steal was huge. Prior to the match, we literally spec’d 4 of our 5 members to run S/D with BT (Trix VII) for insane boon removal (and then one of them dropped out for- lucky us- Jumper). I am certain that without that boon steal, we wouldn’t have won (and even then, it was a very close match O.o).

My point is that against boon steal thieves, if you’re gonna go solo, you just have to accept the facts and run a less boon-oriented build. For guards, this tends to be difficult, but I’m sure somebody out there has such a build. Maybe a meditation build. Idk. But, my biggest word of advice would be…
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS. Thieves will sweep up all your boons and… Well, gg. Anyways, if you can pull this off, you’ll be in a great position.

As for D/P blinds, I think the best build would be something including some combination of GS, Ham, and/or Sword/Shield or Torch. These weapons are really good for control, which is extremely useful if you can’t hit the thief a lot anyways.

General advice: run a Med or Consec build. Somebody will probably QQ me about this, but the idea is that these allow you to counter boon thieves while staying on top of them during fights, and that’s what you really need.

10/30/30/0/0 1h strength build is pretty much as boonless as you can get, and extremely powerful.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|b.1g.h2.d.1c.h19|1.1p.h1l|1n.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1n.7c.1c.7c|1p.61.1n.61.1n.61.1g.61.1i.61.1c.61|a2.u24b.u64c.0.0|16.1|w.1a.15.13.1i|e

is what I use right now. Scepter is good if your facing anything that tends to move alot or will try to kite you to death, sword with a ZD/JI combo can crit into the 7ks when done correctly. If you do use sword/gs as your weapons pick up vuln on blind, you can easily get a 12 stack from virtue, flashing blade, and ray of judgement, which opens glass thieves up for serious damage, If you can time a bane signet to Interupt their heal skill it is pretty much game over, but does require some practice.

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

Dietzen.6127:

Just noticed the full on dmg meditation build, gaining fury on being set on fire, has this been changed to work with torch #4? If not, why run this trait? If for no other reason that you get set on fire a lot?

Because you get set on fire ALOT. Running in just basic hotjoin, almost every time my two main sources of incoming damage are burning and retaliation. With burning being most of the damage.

1h sword + Focus is awesome for farming them. the multiple blinds, projectile absorb, and 4 blocks you get from focus #5 makes them pretty much do nothing to you. Add in virtue blind and refreshing on kill you can pretty much go from one to another to another.

Aza.2105:

Jon,

If you are still watching this thread, I have a question for you. What is the idea behind the scepter skill smite? To my knowledge its the only skill in game that is aoe and splits the damage among each target caught within it.

Why was it designed this way? Its kind of negates the fact that it is a aoe, because you are punished for hitting more than one foe.

I honestly believe it was because the scepter is supposed to play as more of a single target ranged weapon while staff is supposed to be the AoE ranged weapon. Also keep in mind that smite ticks ALOT faster than symbols/other AoE skills, as it does its damage faster that 1 second at a time. I think this is why they limited the potential of the skill like they did. Honestly I find it annoying as well. But I believe that was the design intention. If Jon could give us an actual answer though that would be awesome.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Staff Eles never listen…

Neither do I but I think that is only because it is you leading. >.>

Overextending FTW!!!

ODB.6891:

I’m fairly new to guardian, but I’ve taken a liking to the play style of the one handed sword+torch. So far, I’ve noticed some rather glaring deficiencies with the 1h sword:

1. Zero combo finishers (completely unable to take advantage of a combo field)
We have flashing blade, but it does not work as a leap finisher (it should).
We have zealot’s defense, but it does not work as a projectile finisher
2. The range on flashing blade’s teleport/leap is very short and does not snare
3. No symbol generated by any sword skill (inconsistent with the guardian profession)
The lack of a symbol generated by sword skills also means no boons generated
4. Zealot’s defense: short range, cancels on movement, only blocks ranged attacks, etc
Please replace this with a skill that generates a symbol

Oh yay this thread again!

1) Though the lack of finishers is somewhat disapointing, it really isn’t that big of a deal. no offhands we have can generate a field that could be used to combo off of so it would literally depend on our utilities to do.
2) It’s also a shadowstep which means it completly ignores snares, and it does AoE blind. the ONLY change I would say to make is to add just a tiny bit more damage, as it is one of the lowest damage skills in the game.
3) Symbols are almost exclusively for the 2h weapons, other than mace, there is no other main hand/offhand weapon that can make a symbol.
4) ZD is one of the highest single target damage dealing skills we have. (The only one that might be better is torch #4 yes, it roots you, but it is a short duration, and can easily be circumvented by using Judge’s intervention during casting or using on a stunned/knocked down/ immobilized foe. The ONLY thing that would be nice for this is if projectiles actually got blocked instead of absorbed. as it would create trait synergy.

Yeah, overall our downed state isn’t too horrible. #1’s damage is actually pretty decent if you are actually traited for damage instead of full bunker, and the healing symbol is pretty decent if you can get it off.

Ouch, Hey a 10/30/30/0/0 build does work very decently in spvp if played right and with 4 other guards as backup it could be a great sniper with amount of vulnerability it can easily throw out.

Please tell me at least one of you guys is 1h sword spec! Need to represent!!

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Bakitten291:

Nothing was mentioned of you having one! Besides, what more is there to hear you talk about that we haven’t already talked about before? :P

I’m scheduled for later this month. And… I don’t know. Maybe… something. >>; I mostly just get on your case for being squishy in WvW, haha.

I actually changed my spec this morning, along with a few other things and I think I min/maxed a bit better than before. Gained a bunch of health but lost a bit of damage, so we will have to test it later. And just no picking on me during your podcast! You know I have my uses!!

Lol, nice Amins. And holy crap 9k torch throw. even if upleveled that crazy. Ill have to look up your vid thread to see if you have a new build, dont want to derail this one too much.

Sandra Martino.3870:

Amins.3710:

On Heavy Armors w/o Protection – 1.5-1.7k
On Medium – Light w/o Protection 2.1-2.5k

30 Valor is not a pre-requisite to doing the most dmg.

It kinda is, with 30% extra crit damage.

And no, when all the stars align you will only hit 1.9-2.1 at max, never seen 2.5k. I have build my guardian around the absolutely maxed stats and ran around in wvw hitting upgraded lvl2 naked elementalists with 25 vuln stacks.

That said: it’s still indeed very good dps, much better then expected for guardians actually. However due to movement you might hit once in every 5-6 swings, degrading this awesome dps to null.

Actually, no it is not. going 30 into radiance & zeal is actually the most damage. and thats not even including putting traits in for 10% damage on burning, 15% extra crit on one hand, vuln on blind, and vuln on immobilize. Also, it is very much possible with the right gear/trait setup. I was hitting 2k crits with a 10/30/30/0/0 setup without zerkers gear, With it I am sure it would get to 2.5k easy.

I love hitting one person with multiple blades. Are those damage ticks though? Because if they are they seem exceedingly high for some reason.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Bakitten291:

Looking forward to listening to amins’s show. Always been a fan of him on the forums. Will have to look into these later when i get home, but it sounds like I will have to wait for a WvW focused one.

Not mine? :< SOME FRIEND.

Nothing was mentioned of you having one! Besides, what more is there to hear you talk about that we haven’t already talked about before? :P

ithinkimhaunted.7412:

mambastik.8735:

So far the only thing the Signet has over Shelter is the massive heal. It is literally a life saver, from almost dead to completely healed – it’s a total reset. It destroys the enemy’s moral.

But I still prefer Shelter because of the many synergies. Gain might on block, heal while blocking with AH and gaining Might. And finally apply Fire on block, which itself leads to many other synergies like +10% dmg on enemy with Fire, +10% dmg on enemy with Conditions, remove boon on Fire, etc…

Coming out of Shelter, you have stacks of Might and an enemy ready to receive +20% incoming damage. Extremely dangerous combination.

I have to say i’ve completely over looked the synergy between shelter, valor 25, and AH. Thats making shelter look a whole lot better than it does at face value. Definitely going to be giving this a try.

Keep in mind, that the heals from AH are not going to be enough to cover the difference in healing amounts that signet gives. In the end you might get an extra 1k heals out of it if your lucky tbh, unless you get a very single minded zerg on you… which most likely that extra heals wont matter regardless which heal you choose.

Yeah, Considering I can get around 2k crits without full zerkers or damage based food, 2.5k seems very posssible. And the key to making it hit is treating it like a melee weapon that has an extra long range.

Looking forward to listening to amins’s show. Always been a fan of him on the forums. Will have to look into these later when i get home, but it sounds like I will have to wait for a WvW focused one.

Guess I will have to watch and time my blinds for that. And boon hate luckily doesnt hit my build, most i really have is aegis, might, and sometimes regen from focus #4 or retal from GS.

Crapgame.6519:

18k health pool? Heck, I’m still trying to figure out how you guys/gals get into the 15k range. I’m sitting close at 14,800 or so and feel like I’m roaming solo out in WvWvW using a wet paper bag for armor

Yeah i know what you mean, I was roaming with just over 13k at one point. I think i am at 14k now but I also have 3.2k armor so it kinda evens out. I also run condition durations reductions so the low health doesnt get chewed up by conditions as well.

Harbinger.8637:

Bakitten291:

Knighthonor.4061:

Shelter doesnt always block

Only against certain attacks which are considered unblockable. The only one that I believe is an issue is necro’s fear mark, which will interupt the skill.

Warriors are a problem now also. Active Might use shield bash or something similar. Then follow with 100b or Eviscerate.

Ugh im going to have to go look up warrior changes now, wasnt aware they had a change like that. 2 months off will do that to you i guess :/

Immolator.5640:

I disagree on the ‘faceroll retal buttons’ idea. Nothing about Chris’ build is easy, I’ve seen many try and fail to get it right, especially in more than 1vX situations; a good necro can easily turn the tide in one of those fights, or enough burst. Two backstabbers is generally enough, as it would be for most people; now I wholeheartedly believe that ‘The Dawnheart’ is on a completely different skill plain to me, watching his videos the way he plays it so perfectly is quite beautiful (no kitten , Retal was and is most every guardian’s most useful damage weapon, because let’s face it, we kind of got screwed over in the ranged department. Easier counters for this build have already been introduced, like the thieves having unblockables now, which counters a lot of the build’s damage negation.

As far as I know face rolling retal on this build is a complete understatement and generalisation of what is going on; yes you can take on 1v3s as long as you keep your focus and have a good understanding of the way PvP works, and they don’t. I’ve seen d/d eles fight the same fights and win, it all depends on opponent’s experience and build, which most of the time is a WvW spec rather than something built for small scale combat.

I call it faceroll because it is insanely easy to keep retal up almost 100% of the time, 3x virtues, 2 shouts, combo fields and massive boon duration, and multiple traits. Im not saying that the entire playstyle is faceroll, trust me I play with christos, i know how good he is, but the point still stands that most of the damage from this build came from a very easy to generate source. Necros should not have been in all honesty that much of an issue due to the amount of sources of retal we have, and also our capabilty to remove conditions and also flip them to boons. Thieves I cant talk about too much as I havent fought any after coming back for today.

Knighthonor.4061:

Shelter doesnt always block

Only against certain attacks which are considered unblockable. The only one that I believe is an issue is necro’s fear mark, which will interupt the skill.

Yes, I do, No build that stacks 2 defensive stats should be able to outkill people who stack offensive stats. I have no issue with the build being unkillable, but the fact that it was impossible to counter due to 100% retal uptime was insane.

As far as the old vigor nerf, yes, that did suck, because unlike the Healway build, my old build was still very killable, and in no way was it essentially immortal. Also, it specialized in 1v1 fights, where the healway could easily take 1v3 or even more. But I also got over that, and made my build even stronger. Also, Christos knew this was going to come eventually, we had talked about it before. We both knew how powerful it was, from his vantage point, and from mine from when we were on different servers.

As far as being more build restricted, I really have to argue that. Yes, the damage is scaled down, but the bunkerness of the build is still very much there, the survivability was untouched, it now just takes longer for someone to die from it, which means that people cant just faceroll retal buttons and have to actually do something. Also keep in mind Scepter AA finally got noticed by a Dev, which means with it eventually being fixed, could open up an entire new set of builds.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Shelter when running into the zerg block.

Signet for everything else.

I do have to argue that a well time shelter during a multi hit burst skill will completely change a 1v1/1v2 fight when you have at least 25 points in valor. Blocking a full WW from a guardian would often change the fight alone due to the might stacks you get from it. (assuming around 10 hits, its 350 added power and condition damage, which adds another 87.5 damage per tick to burning. for 15 seconds ) Its also great popping it during a 100b.

Potentially coming back after a break, This has to be some of the best news I have read so far for changes. I always warned Christos they were going to nerf it :P

AgentChaos.4932:

btw, how does the remove a condition every 10s work?
if a condition get applied to me. the countdown will start and after 10s the condition will be removed? if that is how it is i dont think it is that useful

It is a constant, always running timer, so you can only base it off the last time a condition was removed due to the signet. Otherwise It could take a full 10 seconds to remove a condition sometimes, or only a split second latter other times. It is literally a luck of the draw.

Clumsy.6257:

Squidlips.3817:

NerdyMike.2695:

Xystus.3241:

Shelter, hands down. ~2 seconds of blocking + a heal

It’s more about mitigating damage, rather than reacting too damage. That 2 seconds of blocking can do so much more for you than any of the other heals.

Agreed. I used to run the Signet of Resolve a lot, but learning how to utilize all of my utilities, plus the passive 10 sec. condition removal trait, Shelter is just very very good, especially if you’re running with high Healing Power.

What? The healing coefficient is the lowest of all 3 on Shelter. The more HP you run, the worse shelter gets comparatively.

For me personally Signet makes the most sense. As stated earlier, it really becomes a nobrainer with signet recharge traited.

even with the signet trait do the math on how much you can heal for every second of the recharge and signet still blows shelter out of the water, i dont understand how anyone could think shelter is better than signet

Signet is good for when you need the condition removal, or when you run a tankier build that you don’t have to worry about dying during the cast if you do get low.

Shelter is my personal choice as I run a low condition duration already, and the 2 seconds of blocking while in the middle of a zerg can easily mitigate more damage than you would get in healing from resolve, and also end you up with a huge amount of might stacks from Valor 25. It isn’t that hard to see why someone would take one over the other when you look at all the pros and cons of both skills. Each one just has their own place.

Yeah. It is the same thing with Renewed Focus. With both skills there are actually 2 effects happening. With shelter you are channeling a block, renewed focus you are channeling immunity, then when the channel ends you gain the heal or the virtue renew. Because there is an effect happening during that time, if it gets interrupted you are stuck with the full CD.

Wreknar.5076:

Whatdaya want a big neon sign hovering over him the size of Jormag’s claw that says, “Don’t hit me!!!! I’ll hit you back!!!!” Please, bleeds, protection, might, stability, vigor, etc. don’t have a physical cue either, so what’s your beef again? You can ID them all by targeting someone anyway, so I don’t see the problem. If you’re looking for cues, by sheer virtue of culling and the nature of the rendering system (i.e. priority meshes/textures first, particles and visual effects last) completely negate relying on them in a zerg.

Im actually pretty sure protection has a visual cue. Vigor doesn’t actually need one, as it doesn’t serve as a passive damage reduction or return or anything like that, stability would be nice, but most CC moves are meant for single target CC anyways. Don’t get why bleeds would need one in the first place… Also the point was that if you are targeting someone in a group you have no way to tell if the other people in the group are going to smoke you if you AoE them if the person you are targeting doesn’t have retaliation on.

Wreknar.5076:

Counters like retaliation don’t negate condition builds either, instead it becomes a risk/reward scenario especially, when you consider more than a few of the condition reliant classes can “eat” boons like retaliation.

2 classes can “eat” boons, However with as many sources of retaliation that we have even if it is removed, we can almost instantly put it back up. and unless the uptime of retaliation is changed, there is no risk/reward because at current there is no downtime for it. Also, Conditions last for a timer, and you cant just remove them yourself, so if you say put 10 stacks of bleed on someone that didnt have retal at the time, they could then apply it directly after and you have no choice than to take the damage, where as for direct damage abilities you can at least cancel out of them. Great example of this was the Ele with churning earth, you cast it off in a group of enemies, Guardian uses an AoE retaliation source, boom your instantly dead. Imagine taking 40 stacks worth of bleed ticks back as retaliation damage, regardless if it was only a % of the damage done.

1. Judges intervention
2. Binding Blades
3. Smite Condition

Judges Intervention: Will most likely never leave my bar, huge, instant cast gap closer, AoE fire blast with 3 seconds of burning, stun remover, and the capability to combo with any skill. (namely Ring of Warding, Zealots Defense, and Whirling Wrath) make it an over the top utility

Binding Blade: Great CC ability with a ton of added extra damage. Mine crits for over 2k per initial blade hit, plus the added damage over time. Also if there is an enemy within range stacked directly behind a closer target, you can actually hit the same target with multiple blades. Also the skill sets up for multiple combos into WW, weapon switch to Ring of warding, and also weapon switching to a Zealots defense.

Smite condition: Low CD, (20 seconds reg, 16 traited) Condition removal. Does great damage (2k plus crits with damage builds) and is also AoE, and can be traited to heal. It literally has everything you could want from a skill.

CMF.5461:

just tried burning, no damage. Multiple hit attacks like 100 blades will do retaliation damage, but conditions will not return damage. The attack which does the initial application will return damage and that is it.

Again, I think this is an oversight and should be adjusted somehow. But how do we get dev attention and agreement on this. =(

Ok, wait, do you realize how OP that would be? There would literally be no counter to retaliation in the game at all. Shortbow rangers would literally die within seconds, any condition spec that relies on bleed would do the same. If retaliation could only be kept up for like 5 seconds max then ok sounds fine, but considering we can keep it up 100% of the time, that would be even more OP than it already is.

Yeah it works, The amount of crits I get from switching between 1h sword and GS are very easy to see, even more so when comparing WW to ZD. It is just like sigil of accuracy that for some reason it just does not show on the character screen, but it has been proven to be working correctly.

As someone mentioned earlier, 10/30/30/0/0 is a great damage build for guardians who like to use the 1h weapons. for 2h weapons just drop 5 points out of radiance and put it into either virtues for buffs on virtue use, or honor for vigor on crit and some extra health. For gear I personally use a mix of Knights, valk, and zerker. Your general health is going to be pretty low but the trade off is that if you use enough knights + the 300 from valor you can pretty easily get to 3k armor, which really helps with the damage intake.

Roxtar.6487:

Also note boon duration runes can give you more effective power/damage (through might stacking) than power statted runes.

yeah….. no. Pack runes are your best for an offensive build, as they offer 165 power, 100 perc, and a chance when hit to give you, and allies around you, might swiftness and fury (of which fury is extremely hard for us to get since it only comes on one situational trait, and a long CD utility) even if you ran might stacking sigil and empowering might you can only upkeep maybe 7 stacks, (thats being nice, as the sigil has a 40% chance on a 2 sec ICD) depending on how much you can actually stay on your enemy. Thats only 245 power, which yes, is 80 more, but the chance for fury and 100 perc are far more worth it in my book.

Tarsius.3170:

Bakitten291 (Bash)

10/30/30/0/0 Hands down.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|c.1g.h2.d.1c.h19|1.1p.h19|1n.7c.1c.7c.1n.7c.1c.7c.1n.7c.1c.7c|1p.61.1n.67.1n.67.1i.67.1g.67.1c.61|a2.u6ab.u56c.0.0|54.1|w.1b.15.13.1i|e

How good do you find Sigil of Generosity? – it’s one of the few I haven’t experimented with yet.

I can see it might be handy for glassier builds which don’t have as much access to removals as other specs.

Edit: just noticed your username gets censored – wtf

Yeah… not sure why it does that exactly, and even more so since it looks like you could actually type my name next to it without getting censored lol

Anyways, It works very well, its always funny putting a bleed stack or even sometimes confusion back against someone because they obviously arent expecting it. It isn’t going to really save you ikittenerg, but in small group combat or duels it works very well.

I normally only use it if I am running lower amounts of condition removal though, which in the build i posted only relies on smite condition and the purity trait, and i like to have either 3 sources of condition removal, or run melandru runes with duration reduction food so they become an almost non issue.

Trafalgar.5247:

I go for 0/0/30/20/20

Bunker Meditation Build

Valor: Meditation Mastery, Focused Mind, Monk’s Focus
Honor: Wrathful Spirit, Superior Aria
Virtues: Vengeful, Absolute Resolution

Healing: Signet of Resolve

Utilities: Judge’s Intervetion, Smite Condition, Stand Your Ground
Elite: Renewed Focus

Weapons: Greatsword/Sword+Focus

In WvW I go with Soldier stats and Knights Jewelry + Runes of Earth
In sPVP I go with Cleric Amulet + Runes of the Dolyak

Who said you can’t kill anyone with x/x/30/30/x? In 1vs1 I have absolutely no problems, even 2vs1 and if the enemies are bad, even 3vs1. This build focus on stacking up Retaliation and being a super tank/bunker. Your damage output will be little, but the HP of your enemy will go down quite fast because of Retaliation+sustained burning.

Wisely use Smite Condition, which removes a condition every 16 secs and deals damage + heals you. If you have alot of conditions on you, use Virtue of Resolve, which removes 3 boons and heals quite a bit. Use Virtue of Courage to block massive attacks, and when in need, use Renewed Focus to reset the CD on your virtues, and so on.

I’m loving this build, I’ll never trade it for anything else.

As I said earlier, I personally think that retaliation spam is a cheap tactic, as there is literally no way to avoid it other than trying to strip the boon, of which only 2 classes can do with any success. It honestly kills the depth of combat in this game, since guardians can keep it up 100% with just 15 trait points.

As far as not being able to kill anyone with x/x/30/30/x, I didn’t say that, I said they lack in killing power. Meaning that they aren’t going to be as damage effective as a non bunker traited build. It is easier to last longer against this build, just because it doesn’t have the damage that a dps traited guardian is going to have. (take my build and switch the traits, it is literally over a 1000 effective power difference) Obviously as a trade off this build is going to last longer, which if that is your type of play style that’s fine.

Teamkiller.4315:

10% increased damage from burning is honestly not worth it at all. The only way you can get any respectable duration on the burn is through the active f1, or if you are using something like whirling wrath, which will stack at the very maximum (you have VoJ traited to every 4 attacks and you are just proccing on the first hit of WW) 3 burns, or 3 seconds of burns (30 in zeal would increase it to 4 seconds I guess, from condition duration increase). The damage increase is not worth having to invest in the zeal trait tree imo, which is honestly terrible.

Honestly, your most optimal trait lines if you want dps would be to invest heavily in radiance and in valor. 300 Power is really only like a 10% damage increase if you are stacking dps (I have 3000 power without it and I have power on almost all my gear, but 0 in zeal) whereas you get 300 toughness AND 30% crit damage. If you even have 33% critical chance, investing in the valor line already beats investing in the zeal line from a pure statwise standpoint.

And then there’s the issue of the Valor traits just being far better than the zeal traits.

P.S. If you are not dodging then you aren’t doing a duel right! :P. Good opponents should always force a dodge out of you, even if it’s early. In fact, even bad opponents that are upleveled I usually dodge because of my very high uptime on vigor I get from that adept minor trait.

See, I strongly argue the burning trait, but I do agree that going heavy into zeal generally isnt worth it. (though I do know of someone who does make good use of it) Skills like WW as you said, can proc Voj quickly, but also keep in mind that high radiance builds use 1h sword as well, which A) has ZD to help procing VoJ, and has the fastest hitting AA of all of our weapons. (and arguably the strongest when done right) Using VoJ at the correct time is just part of the learning curve that comes with using the II trait in zeal.

Also, Torch, which is the highest damage offhand (well debatable, if you can get focus #5 to last the hits and hit with the explosion it easily outdamages it) can cause aoe burn ticks from just activating #4, and also adds a 3 second burn when hitting with the ranged part of the ability) Add in Judges intervention, and even burn on block in valor, and you can keep burning up very easily for the trait to work very well.

The build i suggested is actually radiance/valor already though, the 10 in zeal is just extra icing on the cake.