Guild Wars 2

Khairos.3890:

Thanks so much! That looks like what I was looking for. What utilities would you recommend? If I’m leaving behind Altruistic Healing and Soldier Runes, then I should go with other utilities right?

Shouts are still great utilities regardless of your build. But utilities aren’t meant to be set in stone. That is why we can and should hot-swap them as needed. I love Save Yourselves!, Wall of Reflection and Stand Your Ground, but I switch my utilities per fight because each provide their own benefit.

haviz.1340:

Either go 10/30/0/30/0 for pure of voice or just 20/30/0/20/0. If you’re not going to use 1h weapon drop 5 from radiance for something else like virtues 5 minor.

Either of these builds will work as well. The most important part is hitting the two +10% damage bonus traits in Radiance and Zeal.

Not really from what I could find. The best thing I could find is sylvari gear from the dungeon and cultural set. If you mixed those in the right way they may look “robe-ish”. The tier 3 human armor has a tabard. You could also consider rolling a hunter, since they can use a GS.

In term of general feel, I think the sword is hard press to outperfom the GS. The GS has 5 abilities that work great together and can all be used to increase your DPS. While the sword on the other hand is basically just an auto-attack machine similar to the hammer. The teleport on the sword is nice, but much more suited for PVP. The 3rd skill is terrible and barely outperforms the swords normal auto attacks. The shield is not to helpful, except for an emergency knockback. I personally like the focus better even in terms of damage since it provides 3 blocks, large burst potential, and (assuming you’re 30 radiance), a nice blind/vulnerability combo.

DeathPanel.8362:

There are NO other builds that outperform AH in support.

Really? 30 Valor gives almost no direct support abilities at all. Logically speaking, how can you justify this as the best support build when half your trait allocation goes to nothing but personal survivability . A 30 Honor/ 30 Virtues is a much better trait allocation for support. Even 30 Radiance arguably provides more support than 30 Valor.

Khairos.3890:

Indure.5410:

What’s your current trait build OP?

0/0/30/30/10

I use mostly Knight’s so I’m using Retributive Armor, Two Handed Mastery (Cause I use Greatsword primarily), Altrustic Healing, -20% on Shouts, and Empowering Might.

Soldier runes on armor to remove conditions on shout.

I like Empowering Might and Two Handed Mastery.. and the whole shouting thing to control conditions. Is it a good idea to continue this build, except using Zerker gear?

I’ve use zerker gear with your build and it works fine, but you are still building your traits like a tank and expecting high damage numbers. Go with a 20/25/0/25/0 build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQBYiwmBBBYli4dPcGYE+A

and you will notice a substantially higher damage output. Sure you will be a glass cannon, but in PVE if you know how to dodge it is very doable. To save some money throw ruby orbs on your gear since they give the highest damage output and they are cheap.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not claiming this is the highest damage output build, but if you try it out, the damage difference will be like night and day to what you have now (so will the survivability LOL). To help with survivability use omnomberry pies for the lifesteal. With high crit chance they give a lot of regen.

I thought it was common knowledge that warriors had better passive defensive and offensive stats when compared to Guardians, but Guardians make up for it with our giant arsenal of active skills.

DeathPanel.8362:

kenzuro.1073:

If you stop relying on Altruistic Healing, a slew of new builds will open for you =].

A slew of new less effective builds you mean.

An AH build is the best hybrid build for a guardian because it has strong defense, decent support, and average damage. There are a lot of builds that are pure builds that out perform AH in either support or damage.

What’s your current trait build OP?

Clumsy.6257:

ok anyone here who said that guardians and wars have similar dps is either blind or ignorant… full berserker trinkets/armor on both with gs my guardian does about 4-5k/sec, while my war (use axe because gs blows for sustained damage) does anywhere from 10-25k/second

edit: forgot to add that in open world pve warrior is king because survivability doesnt matter when you kill everything so fast

Do you understand how much damage 25k per second is? That would literally mean any class that the warrior caught would be killed in less than a second.

Fortus.6175:

Im mostly an ele and mesmer player, but originally my to-be profession was guardians. I didnt go through with it because i couldnt do much (any) damage with them. Is there a way to be a DPS thread? Or are guardians pretty much tanks and out-lasters?

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/79899-the-ultimate-guardian-build/

This is a one hand sword DPS build for Guardian that for the most part is identical for the GS as well. There’s a great video on page 6 of it in use in a speed run. The comment a couple post above mine is accurate about a Guardian needing some of the DPS boons other classes give, but even without them they can put out incredibly high amounts of damage. In the vid the user has 25 might/25 vulnerability stacks and is putting out a constant 3.5k damage per sword attack with a 6.5K attack on 3rd chain attack.

JJBigs.8456:

Having Low HP Is a benefit, not a detriment. Would you guys rather try to heal 30k HP that drops with a pindrop? Or heal 12k that barley ticks, goes down slowly, doesnt take burst hits etc..

Id say with the guardians healing abilities, you would take the 12k pool. Something you can refill to maximum easily.

This is a unfair choice, why can’t you have both? you can easily have ~20k health, 3k armor and a ridiculous amount of healing.

Really doubt that will happen. It may be get a cooldown or uptime adjustment, but there’s little reason to change it.

Exedore.6320:

I wouldn’t do Rune of Strength on a guardian. We have few sources of might, so extending it isn’t worth it. Rune of the Pack has a decent stat boost, but you’d be better served by 6x Exquisite Ruby Jewel if you were looking for damage.

I’d say to stick with 5xEarth + 1xDivinity or Exquisite Ruby Jewel or 6x Forge and pick up damage stats elsewhere. None of the power or precision runes are very good for a guardian. If you do PvE dungeons, just make sure you group with a profession that can put up burning or drops a fire field often and you won’t have to worry about burning duration.

I personally think Forge is superior to Earth, but I would still strongly suggest you consider using an offensive rune set.

To the above post, a AH+EM Guardian is going to produce constant stacks of Might. I agree that condition duration is unimportant, but not because a Guardian needs to group with other professions that provide burning, but because a Guardian can provide almost constant burning by himself.

Irena.1062:

the 1h sword unfortunately deals less damage than the mace, and the skills it comes with suck atm. They deal less damage while making you more vulnerable to recieving damage by rooting you in place. The skill that teleports you deals less than normal damage, and even autoattack deals less damage than mace. But if you want to make your game harder, then go for it.

I believe the sword out DPS the mace by a considerable margin. True each mace attack hits for more damage, but the sword attacks much faster. The sword attacks 4 times to the mace’s every 3 and the swords 3rd attack is guaranteed to attack three times even on single targets which means on single target bosses it actually attacks 6 times for every 3 mace attacks. Although I do agree the swords alternative skills are lacking in a PVE environment.

Tarsius.3170:

Let’s just call it a nice feature….

Just tested – still works.

Here is the original discussion:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Bugs-compilation/page/7#post1031487

TY for the info. Good to know and abuse until they fix it.

IMO, I think they can kill incredibly fast in WvW, but are a little bit harder to get burst on in sPVP mainly due to the gear restrictions.

I know your question was in regard to burst damage specifically, but one of the additional nice things about Guardians IMO is if they miss their burst skills, the cooldowns are fairly quick and a Guardian’s consistent DPS is one of the highest in the game. Meaning they can provide constant pressure until their burst is back up. As oppose to a Thief or Warrior that will need to act defensively until they have the cooldowns to burst again.

Tarsius.3170:

Indure.5410:

Tarsius.3170:

purpleskies.3274:

Dristig.9678:

yLoon.5289:

Solo without warrior =((

What is your build? How did you get 12 stacks of vulnerability solo?

I would assume the blind causing 3 vulnerability trait (blind exposure). Sword2, focus 4 (bounces so you can get 6 if the mob attacks fast), blind on virtue of justice, and sword 3 <- 12-15 vulnerability.

Don’t forget that when traited with Blind Exposure, Leap of Faith ( GS #3 ) will apply 3 stacks of vulnerability multiplied by the number of targets affected by the AoE blind. So five hits = 15 vulnerability

I believe it is just 3 stacks per target, not 15 to all targets.

Not unless they fixed it in the march patch, and I didn’t notice.

Note this is only a peculiarity of GS#3, other AoE blinds do not have this behaviour.

Wow can anyone else confirm this because that is a pretty bad bug.

Tarsius.3170:

purpleskies.3274:

Dristig.9678:

yLoon.5289:

Solo without warrior =((

What is your build? How did you get 12 stacks of vulnerability solo?

I would assume the blind causing 3 vulnerability trait (blind exposure). Sword2, focus 4 (bounces so you can get 6 if the mob attacks fast), blind on virtue of justice, and sword 3 <- 12-15 vulnerability.

Don’t forget that when traited with Blind Exposure, Leap of Faith ( GS #3 ) will apply 3 stacks of vulnerability multiplied by the number of targets affected by the AoE blind. So five hits = 15 vulnerability

I believe it is just 3 stacks per target, not 15 to all targets.

My only concern is that the OP said a warrior is slow to level up. Whether or not end-game Warrior is better than a Guardian is irrelevant IMO, Warriors tear apart low level content and from what I heard basically face-rolls over it. If you think the warrior is slow to level, then you may not want to drop him since he is the quickest content clearer in the game.

Nice, I’ve gotten 9k a couple times with Whirling Wrath in WvW. 8k with hammer and 10k with Shield of Wrath.

I’m kinda confused? You stated that you’re running an AH build (highest guardian survivability) and want to increase your damage … why choose 2 runes that don’t increase your damage at all? And the internal cooldowns on those things are awful.

You could consider Lyssa, Eagle, Scholar, or Pack.

What exactly are you trading out in your build that is causing you to lose power for crit chance? Gear? Traits?

I have no trouble at all against camps. Pretty much same strategy as everyone else, except for Shield of the Avenger works extremely well combined with WoR. If you have traited consecrations you can use WoR (once it goes down) > SotA (once it goes down) > WoR. I can take down any camps even if they have the neutral NPCs protecting as well.

Just to add to the list:

Guardians have a couple of immobilizes that weren’t mentioned as well as the Hammer’s ring. Don’t forget the power of cleanses as well … disengaging on a guardian is hard enough, but I guarantee you can’t with a cripple on you.

A minor point if you are already out of battle is that a blocked attack does not put you in combat, so Aegis and Focus’ Shield of Wrath can be helpful for maintaining your speed.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Pyroatheist.9031:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Indure.5410:

It would be a lot better if that person wasn’t an elementalists every time and no matter how many times they get downed they just spirit form back to their base.

Then use Ring of Warding and keep them out again.
They can’t cross a Ward even with the invulnerability.

That’s not true, hate to burst your bubble.

Uhh… actually it is. I do it all the time.

Ring of warding has no effect against players with any form of invulnerability or stability. The only thing a ward does is a knockdown when players hit the threshold. Players that are immune to knockdowns can easily walk through it. It is also the reason a properly timed dodge negates the knockdown and why player’s that hit the wall fast enough suffer from a knockdown but actual leave the ring.

I’ll just reinforce what other people are saying from my own experiences. Mace is definitely not a good weapon in general for WvW and really bad 1v1. Switching to a hammer should help quite a bit. Using Judges Intervention is also incredibly important. Keep in mind that JI is instant cast and doesn’t break channel times, meaning you can use it in the middle of an attack and the attack will still land. I.E. Ring of Warding + JI to teleport and instantly trap other players.

Overall your damage is going to be pretty low compared to other classes so you might want to consider adding some berserker gear into the mix. Gives you some more burst damage which IMO is important for guardians since they are melee centric and don’t have many skills to keep people in melee range for very long.

Also in WvW switch your major traits around for more damage, i.e. two-hand mastery and retributive armor.

It would be a lot better if that person wasn’t an elementalists every time and no matter how many times they get downed they just spirit form back to their base.

Obtena.7952:

Well, then what is everyone talking about? You’re telling me glass cannons hit tank Guardians for LAWL damage, there is another guy telling us he’s going down in 3-4 hits … it’s not both. Someone is exaggerating (or everyone is). Usually when I see two extreme positions on the same topic, the reality is something in the middle of those two.

It actually can be both when you consider there’s a big difference between active and passive defenses. Guardian’s have bad passive defense. Our armor doesn’t give us that much damage mitigation and we have the lowest health in the game. If you get jumped by a thief (glass cannon variety) and just depend on your passive defenses for protection, you will be destroyed in 3-5 seconds. Which if you are not prepared for, will be too fast for the average player to respond to. On the other hand, Guardian’s have tremendous active defenses and if you are skillfully using your active abilities you become very hard to kill, even for burst classes.

Feel free to use any utility you want. I threw WoR in because I thought it would be good at range for preserving your aegis and it works great in large zerg fights.

It’s hard to say on the gear or runes, because the traits will make you a complete glass cannon. I think it’s safe to use berserker for the accessories because with jewels they provide higher damage output, but for armor you have a couple of options. You could continue with berserker gear and just be a back-line glass cannon. Or you could use soldier gear to give you some durability and with proper dodges/aegis/elite be able to survive dives into enemy zergs much better. Or you could chose Knight or Valkyrie to mix offense and defense. Keep in mind with accessories and traits you will already have a 50% crit chance, so although Knight is the common way to go, you may be better off with the Power increase from either Valkyrie or Soldier.

Overall it’s really what personal survivability you feel comfortable with.

You should really consider changing to 30 in Valor for AH since it increase your survivability a lot. Upping your crit to the 40% mark (minimum) will really help with your survivability with EM or if you plan on using sigil or food procs.

Maybe something like this, with full damage gear. :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNArdSlYg6CHHSJEf4ESWhC06BARQ+T1j4Bf0HA

This would be more of a back-mid line fighter. With strong damage and the ability to stack 5 invulnerability per immobilize (which you have three). It would also give you +40% damage if an enemy is burning and you can keep Aegis up.

If you needed to dive the enemy line to create havoc, you can pop Shield of Wrath (wait 2s) + Ring of Warding → Judges Intervention + Mighty Blow = ~15K instant burst damage and the ring to trap survivors.

Your damage will be terrible, so staff as an alternative for support would be recommended. The hammer is a great all around defensive weapon, but the mace+shield is quite powerful and should give you an edge with aggro. IMO healing power is not that great and has terrible skill coefficients. I assume you are going to run an AH build, but even if you aren’t you should seriously consider upping your crit chances. Higher crit chances are incredibly important for sigil/food procs and can substantially increase your survivability.

Kryptonite.7580:

you are right the hammer is fantastic but i guess im going to have to say this again its not the tool that is the issue its the user

I’m not sure how it is a user problem and not a tool problem. In PVE, every single attack on the GS is universal enough to be use during every fight, and almost all of them increase your damage output. While the hammer on the other hand, reaches optimal damage output (combo fields aside) with just its auto attack. Its 3-5 abilities have very little use in general PVE content. Of course, they are situationally helpful, but for 90% of content, CC abilities aren’t really needed or mobs are immune to them.

Adding small secondary effects to the abilities would give reason to cast them in PVE.

I agree that the hammer is fantastic, but it could use some slight changes especially in terms of PVE so that it encourages the use of more than just 2 skills. It would be nice if Zealot’s Embrace would either add a blind, a small stack of vulnerability, or a small duration swiftness boon

I personally think that 25 is too high of a limit, since an organize 10 man team can very quickly destroy towers and keeps. But overall, I like the change. I didn’t find the swords all that helpful since most of the fighting happened in very predictable spots and zergs often followed predictable patterns. If you lost a supply camp near a tower, expect the tower to quickly be attacked as well. Plus, if they did a surprise attack on one of our interior towers and manage to flip it, it wasn’t really a big deal since we could just treb it to death from nearby towers. I find that with the constant flipping of supply camps and need for resupplying you will always have scouts moving through areas, especially on the edges of your territory.

I think the only people really hurt by the change are the top servers per tier that quickly capture all of Eternal Battlegrounds and then manage to hold it for the entire match-up with heavy defensive siege equipment, the single entry choke-point, and coordination with the combat swords to quickly shut-down any resistance outside of the choke point.

Personally, I would like to see a buff implemented at night for defending NPC’s. Something like “Night Watch” which buffs their damage/HP, increases the number of guards defending keeps, lets them use player created siege weapons, and lets them automatically repair gates/walls until supplies are emptied.

That way you can help slow down enemy advances at night by setting up siege and supply during the day. This would also increase the difficultly for night guilds and actually give them a decent WvW experience.

Towers in WvW is one of the only things I can’t figure out how to do well as a Guardian. Like Syktek mention, I’ve done staff and it can help contribute to tower defense, but I personally found that the best thing I can do is arm a siege weapon. I haven’t played a high level elementalist or engineer, but they seem to do a better job at keep defenses because they can actually cause a lot of AOE damage as well as provide good support from afar.

Saw an interesting WvW vid with a glass-cannon Guardian using Hammer+sword/focus to bomb enemy zergs. Seemed really effective. Start with Shield of Wrath and wait until it was about to explode>Flashing Blade >Hammer>MB.

Both the MB and SoW would pop for 6-8k damage for a nice 12-16k burst and he could easily AOE down any one still standing.

I think it comes down to a lot of people believing that if you are not the best class at something then you’re worthless. In a trinity game they would be correct, but in a game where everyone is a hybrid being the best at a specific thing isn’t as great.

Alarox.4590:

Every thread like this is either:

1.) Guardians are awesome, Warriors suck.

2.) Warriors are awesome, Guardians suck.

Both are awesome but they also really suck

I would love to see the trait changes to gain fury while within burning fields.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Indure.5410:

…but for how broken our class is in many aspects we still perform well and above other classes.

That’s very debatable and situational.

We have strong damage, strong survivability, and strong support, when specced appropriately. With some powerful unique skills to boot.

Half the classes in the game can’t say the same.

I agree that the Guardian class seems to be one of the least focus classes in getting improvements and we still have some glaring problems, but for how broken our class is in many aspects we still perform well and above other classes.

Blissified.8369:

Drgori.5724:

Meditation for solo play, Shouts for group

Please refrain from posting general statements like this,

We all know that shouts work better in groups but its not as night and day as this.

Because a lot of the time even when im in a huge wvw group with a party, im too far away for them to benefit from shouts

It actually is pretty much as night and day as drgori stated. Meditations (with the exception of Merciful Intervention, which most guardians don’t use) provide no benefit what so ever to your party members and Monk’s Focus doesn’t provide as much survivability as AH when in a 5 man party. When solo, AH gets weaker and MF outperforms it in survivability. The only point of difference is that shouts are still very viable outside of parties because they still provide good boons, although there boons aren’t that game altering.

Instant meditations for the most part are not worth it and is a left over trait from beta where all meditations had cast times. Currently 2 meditations are already instant and the other two have quick cast times anyways. As for using interventions over shouts in an AH build, I would say go for it if you find them more helpful. Shouts give your group boons, but besides stability the boons aren’t that unique or hard for other classes to maintain. Also shouts only contribute a small portion to AH healing. Weapon skills and EM procs will give you lot more healing.

Great post. I understand that to a Guardian, retaliation is basically a boring passive mechanic that promotes poor gameplay, but to other classes attacking a Guardian, doesn’t it promote more skillful gameplay and more important discourage mass AOE nuking in WvW. I almost killed myself last night while defending a tower in WvW because I was spamming my staff auto attack through the door, only to hit 5 guys all with retaliation.

Blueshield.6291:

I still don’t see specific mention of traits. I’m looking at the traits and trying to figure out how you’re coming up with this, and I’m not seeing a way to make it work.

If you’re unwilling to point out specific traits, can you at least indicate which trait lines you’re using?

And I reiterate – elite skills shouldn’t need a specific build to make them viable or comparable to other elite skills.

Specific traits:
Justice is Blind (5 minor Radiance)= Blind on Justice use.
Inspired Virtues: (5 minor Virtues)=5s Protection/Regeneration/Might
Virtue of Retribution (15 minor Virtues)=3s Ret. per virtue (thought it was 5 in my OP)
Indomitable Courage (20 major Virtues)=3s Stability on courage use
Absolute Resolution (20 major Virtues)=Removes 3 conditions on resolve use
Shielded Mind (30 major Virtues)= Stun breaker on courage use

*note: can’t have all 3 majors in Virtues, only 2 at a time.

I agree that an Elite shouldn’t need a specific build to work, but keep in mind that it is one of the few elites in the game that benefits from a large number of traits and because of this is balance accordingly.

Blueshield.6291:

Indure.5410:

If you’re a Virtue based Guardian though it’s huge and one of the most powerful elites in the game since it scales dramatically and is effected by 5-10 traits.

Which ones?

The only ones I specifically see are Inspired Virtue and Virtue of Retribution, both of which are in the Virtues line. Even by firing all virtues, using Renewed Focus, and firing all again, you’re only getting two stacks of might and a short duration regen and protection. You can easily do better with a little teamwork and some combo fields.

If a virtues-based build makes Renewed Focus viable, that’s excellent, but it doesn’t address the issue that in general it’s still a sub-par elite skill.

Depends on how you trait, but Renewed Focus can give you in addition to 3s immune, Virtues regular effects and Inspired Virtues effects: stability, blinds, blocks, Might, condition removal, stun breakers, and retaliation.

Not to mention from a survivability standpoint if you double up Virtue effects you can achieve (with 30 points into Virtues): 3s of immune, 2 blocks, 10s of Protection/Regeneration, ~4K instant healing, 6 stacks of Might, 6s of stability, 18s of retaliation, and 2 condition removers.

All on a fast cooldown of 60s. Combine with Lyssa runes and it is even more potent.

EDIT: 90s, don’t read tooltips enough.

Blueshield.6291:

Disastersaurus.3146:

Renewed Focus: I…really can’t justify this elite skill at all. Maybe some Guardians are making it work for them, but the invulnerability is really just neutral, since you’re stuck in place while casting, and the only effect is to refresh virtue cooldowns? Even if I pop all three virtues at once, then use Renewed Focus, it pales in comparison to the kind of power the tomes bring to the table.

If someone is genuinely impressed by Renewed Focus and what it does for them, I guess that’s great, but I’d be surprised.

I’ve tried very hard to make Renewed Focus worthwhile, and it’s just laughably underpowered for an elite skill.

I constantly find myself comparing it to a warrior’s Endure Pain (which doesn’t technically grant invulnerability, but instead grants immunity to damage – same ballpark). We get 3 seconds of invuln during which we can’t attack or do anything useful. Once complete, our virtues are recharged.

In contrast, warriors get 5! seconds (though the wiki says it’s bugged and only gives 3 – unsure about that) of no damage, which they can increase through a perk (and by the way, they have a second perk to automatically activate the skill at 25% health). They can still move and attack normally, and the skill breaks stun. Oh, and did I mention that this isn’t even an elite skill.

So, as far as I’m concerned, when an elite skill is inferior to a non-elite skill which does the same basic thing, something’s wrong.

If you’re a Virtue based Guardian though it’s huge and one of the most powerful elites in the game since it scales dramatically and is effected by 5-10 traits.