Guild Wars 2

In pve guardians are great, high damage, high support and high sustain.

I still love playing my guard in pve 2000+ hrs and still not bored, good damage good support, always feel useful and active as a guardian. I recommend you try the DPS meta guardian build, it is great, check the top of the forums for Obal’s guide on it. AH is very poor for pve as it lacks damage and support. You cannot be a viable healer in pve and a viable tank, that is something you need to adapt your play style to

Lets start off here by saying clerics gear in dungeons/fractals is awful and anyone using it is playing wrong.

Now, my honest recommendation here is to just throw yourself in by using full zerker and improve over time, but if you are reluctant to do that then a soldier/zerker mix would be good for some sustain. The valor trait is weak and there is no reason to use it, AH is a terrible trait as it is selfish and requires 30 pts in valor.

Healing power is currently weak and you can’t tank very many things in the game so full zerker is the optimal way forward https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/page/4#post3699718

I think making it scale with power would make the skill great, it would at least make it more useful in pve

30,30,0,0,10 dagger focus

I run with 20-25-0-0-25 zerker meta build which is stickied. With practice full zerker is the best option for dungeons/fractals and soloing, but if you are relatively new to the game mechanics then you will struggle in full zerker

Stop liking staff and use this build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQNAR8dlsApUoNDxXI8DNhkzQkQQbGA0BVpIeuHA-zwBBYfERzkfBiKAOzsIasFXFRjVXDT5iIqGA-e The damage on staff is really bad and it should only be used for stuff like kiting mobs in ac, trash mobs in coe or ta flower busting.

The rotation and details are on the DPS guardian guide

Guard > mesmer in pve

Higher damage, higher support

Obtena.7952:

Painbow.6059:

Why don’t people just accept the fact that healing isn’t needed so full zerker is better.

Same reason that why people don’t just accept the fact that this game is designed to allow people to play how they want and succeed.

The range on this new trait is a joke. Why does it need a range at all? Just give all team members an Aegis.

You can succeed using clerics gear if you don’t mind being a waste of space

Why don’t people just accept the fact that healing isn’t needed so full zerker is better. Buffing support characters would still make support characters useless as they would just slow down runs. They need to buff pve in order to fix the problem. Personally I want support characters to remain useless because I don’t want dedicated roles in this game

The trait itself is good but the valor line is trash. If it were in honor or virtues it would be better

about as good as your average warrior pug

After the patch 20,25,0,0,25 Berserker with scholar runes, that is the best trait lay out of current as you don’t need vigor and assassin’s gear is getting nerfed. I say scholar runes but all runes are getting changed so who knows

From a purely PVE perspective, the trait is trash

You will learn after a while as you become a more experienced player than vitality or toughness hold very little value in PVE and in most scenario’s make it worse and not better for your team since they don’t get any bonus from it, its hard to hold aggro, and stuff dies slower. It’s sad but the most useful way to build in this game is full berserker. Whether you die too much just depends on your playing ability

linuxotaku.4731:

obal.3218:

Casmurro.9046:

Bash.7291:

Illegal tactics such as turning off options that Anet gives you to use or not use? …. wha?

Yeah, he commented about that 50k WW that obal did with his guardian, he said that was possible because of an exploit, where you turn off your melee atack assist so you can enter in the mob’kittenbox and do that crazy damage, he used the same argument for the fiery gs against a wall.

You don’t need to turn it off to do this. I play with it on unless I’m doing a hard trash skip where a leap would be good without flying to a random target and putting me in combat. I don’t really see how it’s an exploit. You would just be wasting the projectiles if your not doing that. They have already said fgs is working as intended also.

He thinks just normal stacking is an exploit as well playing the game with any kind of strategy so I’m not really sure how anyone can take him seriously. Stacking doesn’t just magically work and he did it in his video at the cliffside seal. People kept going down since they weren’t doing what needed to be done. He has no blinds. He has no GS to pull the guys that range. He doesn’t use wall when the guy is standing there ranging them for a minute while he talks about how he is carrying the group. He has no hammer on for perma prot. He doesn’t activate a virtue. He is not really helping the team. The warriors are not doing CCs. There are 2 warriors and 1 necro and there is no weakness on the enemies. The other guardian isn’t using his virtues, doesn’t have hammer, isn’t blinding anything, isn’t using pulls, isn’t using walls. We do all these things in my cliffside guardian guide video and you can see the difference it makes. He talks about how the zerker meta is ruining the game but no one in this group seems to be even running it but he doesn’t seem to understand it or many other things.

I’m tempted to make a “tank” build video now just to give people some middle ground between full zerker and stuff like this. The build I had in mind is already in my text guide.

The tankier build is the knight’s / hammer version?

I’m curious what you think about a celestial (armor)/zerker (trinkets) mix as a somewhat tankier middle ground. I find it makes most dungeons easy in PUGs. So far (not a huge sample size yet), I haven’t found that pure zerker makes things faster or easier for me — though that may be just because I’m not good enough to run it. <rueful smile>

I’d say just stick with zerker and improve, it does make things faster playing full zerker but not always easier. Pugging is also perfectly viable in full zerker as well. If you wanted to use a gear as training wheels celestial is a bad choice. The loss in power is too great to make it worth using over something like a knights/soldier zerker mix

gpassucc.5961:

Also, just had to throw this in there… to quote the OP himself on the usefulness of this build:

Painbow.6059:

Why you wouldn’t want to use zerker and knowingly be worse than others is beyond me… https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Gives all the support you need along with great dps, sustain comes from playing ability, and of course full zerker everything, healing power in dungeons just harms your team more than anything and people who use it are bad

Think you should take some pointers from yourself O.o

I am truly sorry that the sarcasm wasn’t so obvious

Go full zerker and if you can’t survive keep using full zerker and get better at dodging. Nothing else is as good in current pve

for pve zerker///////

Why you wouldn’t want to use zerker and knowingly be worse than others is beyond me… https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Gives all the support you need along with great dps, sustain comes from playing ability, and of course full zerker everything, healing power in dungeons just harms your team more than anything and people who use it are bad

no, no it’s not a thing. zerker is the way to go for pve

I’ve had 14k AP guardians using cleric gear in dungeon groups, AP means nothing and if people kick you for joining a group which is 5k+ they deserve a kick in the kitten

Lalangamena.3694:

the problem is that damage affect the mobs equally and scale with skills (power+ precision+ crit damage, condition damage+condition duration).

CC is very weak, due to defiant mechanics on bosses and very low duration’s on trash.
defensive traits have very little synergy and healing power scales poorly.

so you cant CC one mobs and focus the other.
you cant outheal mob damage even with full cleric.
all you can do is hit and dodge. who is the master of hit and dodge? yes, berzerker.

-it would be better if after implementing ferocity, they would double the base duration of all undamaging CC (cripple, immobilize, chill, stun)
introduce gear with condition duration as primary stat.

- make healing power affected by precision and crit just like damage.

- make all veteran mobs dodge occasionally and move out of AOE.
- make all veteran mobs use hard CC (knockdown, blowout etc) and soft CC ( cripple, immobilize, chill) and use more boons.
yes, that would make them annoying. but will make dungeons better.

I’d argue that CC is actually pretty effective. For example if you run a hammer guardian build you put a great sword on swap and you can pull mobs a lot more effectively

Shaogin.2679:

It has nothing to do with being comfortable with running full zerker, it’s mostly that I’m spoiled with full zerker on my necro and used to hitting 3-4k per hit with 100% crit chance all while generating Life Force extremely fast and using Death Shroud to supplement my already massive hp. It’s not easy, but shroud dancing properly allows me to decimate opponents with heavy attacks while surviving.

On a guardian though, even full zerk the damage isn’t that high, and comes at an even greater risk than playing my necro. All I’m trying to point out is that the risk to reward ratio isn’t as balanced as it is on other classes.

Not asking for help.

Do not need builds.

Don’t intend to play guardian, it was just for fun.

Was just making an observation.

You could have been more specific which game mode. Guards deal more damage have more sustain and more support than necros in pve. Yes on necro you can soak up damage to some extent but on guardian you can avoid it completely

Learn game mechanics and it will be fine. In pve it just depends on your playing ability

If you just spam your dodges you won’t have them when you need them. So yes, it is useless and spamming dodges is also a dps loss

Painbow.6059:

Obals build is better, it offers more damage because radiant power affects all damage you deal (reflects, other weapons), not just symbols and overall is a higher dps bonus than using 25 in zeal. Honor 25 (elusive power) is bad as you are never realistically upholding that many dodges. Your build doesn’t have 15 in radiance for spamming might/vuln and more important blinds. I would suggest just using Obal’s build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFASlUgiCXGyLEfIFRWBRazAgIs+Q8wUgRPC-jgBBYfAkfAZmFRjt4qIas6aYKXER1A-e
I use this build for fractals 49 and 40 which I do daily

By 40’s and 49’s I am referring to fractals of the mists

if people think that you rely on conjured weapons to be good as an elementalist you obviously haven’t ran 49 fractals with/as one

1, Dredge should be made shorter and easier + more viable for other classes except theif/mes (first bit)

2, Better reward system. For example getting much more gold, gold example it starts and 1 gold per level and you get 10 more silver per level

3, Less grindy places to put agony resistance

4, Higher levels

5, Fractal weapon chests!

A good ranger is a strong boost to parties. Frost spirit + spotter is a big DPS boost which if you are running with warriors already running banners and empower allies, will be more overall party wide dps, for example, 2 warriors and 1 ranger with 2(something) is more damage than 3 warriors 2 something(not ranger) providing the ranger and warriors are using the right builds.

Since the patch I have had no issues at all, all been running smooth and lagless. It would really help if anet could at least let us know they know that there is a problem

Don’t make this into a pve debate, (even though 15,25 is better), the question was WVW

My graphics card driver, Nvidia 334.89

Asumita.2174:

Full zerkers or gtfo, that is what people will tell you. And don’t worry about the change to crit damage because zerk will still be the meta unless anet completely changes the mechanics of this game, which will not happen. Going tanky will only pull the group behind.

This is true, apart from the fact he is obviously a new player and playing full zerk as a new player isn’t going to be viable as he will spend the majority of his time on the floor

My issues started when the patch 2 weeks ago was released, after updating my driver and with the new release, i have had no lag problems at all, it is possible that the release 2 weeks ago just screwed BT users and now its fixed, will report back to this tomorrow if I have noticed anything turning for the worse

There are better builds out there, but if you are just getting used to the class this build will be useful to your party and very survivable, not optimal but good for new players,
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFASlUgiC3FyIEfYFRWBRafAg1HiHmCM6xrCJE-jwBBYgAkfAZmKrpmCi9BFRjVXDT5iIqWKgnGGB-e

Why is this not stickied? It is the most useful resource to guardians who want to do fractals

Oh my bad I see you merged it

Yup, issue is still present and bad, random lags and DC’s everywhere

Because it’s useful in most (if not all) dungeons and required in others

This is in terms of pve-

1, Necromancer
2, Engineer
3, Ranger

I would do the same. Clerics gear is dungeons is a waste of space

DeathPanel.8362:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

DeathPanel.8362:

Wrong. Shouts are the best group support skills a guard has.

The fact is AH is probably the most viable and consistent pve build out there for guards.

FOR PVE ONLY.

No No No! Consecrations are best group support that guardians have. Wall of Reflect and Purging Flames are amazing. With Wall of Reflect being the show stopper that alone makes consecrations the best.

I generally only have 1 shout on my bar, if any at all. For fractals WoR, SOA, PF, and retreat are what takes turns on my bar. With Hallowed ground and SYG being situationally swapped in.

A full shout guardian is almost as bad a full shout warrior in PVE. Take that shhht and put in on the bench.

Um I did say pve in my post. You just took the first part of my post out of context and ignored everything else.

Consecrations are situational and do not synergize with traits while shouts synergize with AH as well as for example soldier runes and has a wider range and do not require you to stack inside the circle.

WOR and SOA I slot in for various encounters but for 90% of the other fights full shouts work far better with AH.

Soldier runes are useless because usually only 1 shout is ran anyway. It also have 5 useless stats on it. AH is selfish and used as training wheels or for wvw play, experienced guards dropped AH a long, long time ago for pve, honestly, if you are a good guard in pve you really won’t need it. And to say shouts are better than consecrations is just pure madness. Wall of reflection is one of the most amazing utility skills in the game, and you need MoC to make it last longer. Also others are good for either might stacking/condi removal/stability. Yes shouts are good, but not always useful. Where as you will always have 1 consecration on your bar if just for a fire field to blast in

mPascoal.4258:

Painbow.6059:

I would honestly recommend sticking with the full zerker. As you improve and get used to the build you will survive perfectly well in full zerker, but at first you will die a lot. Baptism by fire, you will learn to play better in the long run

I hope you are right because today it was painfull. i might try Hammer and try get used to the 15/15/0/20/20 first and than move to the meta. It will also help with the weapon master archivements
It hurts a bit for me that I had to gave up the roaming build for now and I was so used to AH before but this change will help, I know it will. I will leave AH for WvW (since I will change traits when doing WvW I will go now with Healway) and I can focus on PvE. I never knew why I tend to focus in WvW builds but still play more PvE than WvW (kinda stupid)

Over time you will adapt, trust me, the first time I swapped from AH to DPS builds I got wrecked on by everything. Until eventually I ended up dying less anyway. If you think about it like this, the faster stuff dies the more effective aegis is as you negate the next hit, also dead dps = no dps. So in-fact you can get a lot of sustain out of spamming blinds/using aegis/reflects compared to stacking defensive stats.

I would honestly recommend sticking with the full zerker. As you improve and get used to the build you will survive perfectly well in full zerker, but at first you will die a lot. Baptism by fire, you will learn to play better in the long run

You are the only player which I agree with everything you say <3

To answer the original question, just use full zerker with a meta build 20-25-0-0-25 (gs-sf) or 15,25,0,20,10(hammer) for fractals. If you die just keep trying and you will eventually survive perfectly well. Don’t run AH as it is useless to your team and encourages bad play, however it is good if you are just learning to play the class

Lol at people who still use AH in pve

ODB.6891:

The only thing I would say about this set up is that light fields are bad in fractals/dungeons as they block more useful combo fields. Fire fields = might, water fields = healing, ice fields = frost aura, ethereal = chaos aura …compare that to light fields = retaliation. All those other fields are way more useful than light. Retaliation is very weak after ANET nerfed it. I hate seeing a guard with hammer or staff in fractals because I know they are going to block those other combo fields and prevent more optimal effects as a result. Its really annoying when you see that fire field and just before you can pop a blast finisher in it, there goes that light field and you get retaliation instead of might stacks. You see a water field and teammates are low on hp, you get ready to pop your blast finisher and get retaliation…

You are right about light fields being annoying but permanent team protection and high aoe damage is what makes the hammer the strongest weapon for fractals. To be honest your team should pre stack might or you could lay down a fire field prior to the battle

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

If you have trouble dying which you probably will at first it’s just a matter of get better

For pve that build is useless, you are getting out less than half the damage of some builds and less support as well, basically it’s only as useful as half a player