Guild Wars 2

Guardian is also my main, but I’ve been playing my neglected ranger a lot more lately. Rangers became extremely powerful a few patches ago for pvp. They are also solid WvW roamers and can be a huge asset to dungeon groups if built properly. A lot of attention has come to the traited frost spirit, which adds 7% group damage. The 1h sword has always been tough to manage but people are starting to learn it better and see that it is very solid dps. Off-hand axe has also seen some great changes that make it a very powerful option. Longbow changes are overall nice in my opinion. Don’t listen to what everyone says. Ranger is fine; it’s just that so many who play ranger get trapped in the bad habit of “sit behind my tanky pet and shoot my bow with a random assortment of traits.”

I’ve always thought a trait like “All skills that restore life force also restore endurance” would be a nice addition.

I agree that it’s counterintuitive for Anet to expect us to use our class mechanic of swapping attunements but then complain about the lack of build diversity when investing in arcane is so important for swapping. I don’t agree with your suggestion though. I don’t have a solution but I believe traits like Fresh Air are a good start. 15 second base recharge seems incredibly high but I’m not sure reducing the base is the best solution.

This might also be related to party members that are fully dead showing that some of their health had been restored until you actually start to res them at which point it shoots back down to zero.

I use s/d in PvE almost exclusively. Comboing is insanely easy and the cast times are very fast compared to staff. And I believe that swapping attunements synergizes best with s/d. Once of my favorite mobos is to start churning earth, swap to air and cast 32 and #3 which are instant, and then swap to water for the heal, all before the channel finishes so there really isn’t any wasted time, which is not the ase for d/d. There are many other good rotations that I never felt I had with d/d. Not to mention that the water heal skill on scepter > heal skill on dagger mh.

I’ve noticed those (( )) on several skill tooltips across all classes. Seems like someone messed something up at the last patch :P

I’m leveling a warrior currently as well (my eighth and final class to get to 80). I had a hard time for a while dying a lot with GS and A/A but recently switched to axe/mace. Mace 5 is a 2 sec AoE knockdown with 1200 range with a fairly short cd… and 2 seconds is plenty of time to burst something down as a warrior, especially if you have two other friends helping out. I use sword/horn as my offhand for the mobility and swap to longbow when I need range. I run the 5 signets with the precision trait and it’s insane. I’ve been downleveled in zones that make my crit chance > 100%. QQ Enjoy!

tim.1280:

Ele needs… some form of a weapon swap to be more versatile…

Ummm, attunement swapping is a form of weapon swapping, so we have 4 weapon sets.

And eles are fine in PvE. My ele is just as useful in dungeons as my guardian.

For me, the key to staying alive as an ele is constant movement. PvE mob attacks are usually slow and can be avoided just by kiting or circle strafing. At level 80, I usually play s/d but I actually leveled with d/d because of its high mobility. For contrast, I’m leveling a warrior atm which requires a lot of standing in place to get attacks off and I actually die a lot more than I did when leveling my ele. :P

Most of our survivability does come from traits in the water and arcana lines, so definitely invest in those asap. And don’t just swap to water for the heck of it; use it when you need the heal and swap out of it asap so you’ll be able to re-enter it sooner.

I mainly use knight’s. I put my dps in my trinkets (zerker). But yeah, the versatility of the guardian comes much more from traits, especially in the valor and honor lines which give you AH, vigor on crit, and group might on crit.

I agree. I rarely autoattack in fire because it slows down dps. The only time I actively use it is when I want to make sure my enemy is burning for my fire grab. I know all the scepter attacks are meant to be slow because they are huge burst, but this attack is incredibly weak aside from the burning condition that it hardly justifies staying in fire when the other skills are on cd.

Quarktastic.1027:

Kami.7369:

SchuMidas.4782:

if they dont want treb to be blocked, they should just fix treb projectile instead

This doesn’t even make sense.

I’m disappointed in the change to our projectile absorbing skills. Our reflects already didn’t work on unblockable projectiles. There are a lot of unblockable projectiles in PvE, and now there’s absolutely no reason to bring either wall of reflection OR shield of the avenger when facing these enemies.

We’re looking at you, Old Tom. This nerf (fix?) really changed how to manage several PvE encounters.

xDudisx.5914:

Yes if running shout or meditaion we have 2 stun breaker, but ele cantrips has 3 so I dont see a problem for our elite be another stunbreaker

We do have 3: “Stand Your Ground,” “Save Yourselves,” and Judge’s Intervention…. I actually almost always have SYG and JI on my bar in WvW but I freaking hate SY because you rarely ever actually draw any conditions so I just feel incredibly selfish when I hit it. But yeah, guardians are supposed to have a frontline staying power that requires stunbreaks. And thematically, I’d think renewing my focus feels more like a stun breaker than just yelling three words.

Well, I always think of my guardian as greatest in group settings because of out group boon capabilities. I don’t solo roam with mine very often but suppose I would run something like x/30/x/20/x. Radiance is a somewhat selfish traitline but also very good imo, so would be good for solo content. Going 30 into Radiance would give you your signet buff or a buff to one-handed weapons.

Again, though, for solo content, I think meditation builds are probably your best bet. The one inthis forum post seems pretty solid (greatsword, sword/focus and specced into improving meditation abilities): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/PvE-WvW-Roamer-Meditation-Build

Give it a shot.

Hmm, I would first advise against clerics gear. I’m not a fan of it, though some enjoy it when playing a support role in WvW… otherwise, it’s not very effective. I personally used pvt until I got comfortable with the class and now use a mix of knights and berserker. If you want to keep signets, then going 30 into the Radiance traitline is very nice for the trait that doubles the passive effect of all our signets. This is ok for soloing but also consider using meditations. Meditations are actually our most selfish skills but they are quite good. They won’t dispense boons to teammates but they will help you out a lot.

As far as leveling, putting 15 into radiance lets you hit Virtue of Justice (burning) every time you kill a foe. And when traited, VoJ gives 3 stacks of might and blinds nearby foes. It’s one of my favorite minor traits. I often run 0/15/30/20/5, which is a variation of the AH builds that centers a lot on VoJ. I love taking a group into a mass of mobs and spamming VoJ each time a mob dies, which, because of my traits, aoe blinds, stacks vulnerability, gives might to allies, and heals me.

It works well with GS because that’s our great aoe potential. Torch is cool but I find I don’t use it very much personally.

I’d love to see something more out of RF. I currently use it almost exclusively but it feels kind of underpowered for an elite. Virtue recharge is nice, but it’s mainly an “Oh kitten” button to help you extend a fight. I agree that a stun breaker would be nice, though we already have access to several in our utilities.

Hehe… yuss, I do this too. Personal pinball machine.

Yeah, this is not a roaming build by any means. Staff is pretty lackluster 1v1, but it really shines in larger-scale fights. Plus, most of your traits are meant for group support and aren’t nearly as rewarding when it’s just you. That’s kind of a guardian thing in general but is especially so when you go 0/0/30/30/10.

Yup, that’s a pretty standard gs/staff build with AH. That 10 in Virtues is nice because there are a few neat traits in the adept line, including reduced cd on consecrations (Wall of Reflection) or ground-targeted consecrations. This is good for running in an organized group. Most of the guardians in my guild run this or similar builds in WvW. I myself use hammer instead of staff but that’s just another option.

Yep, I definitely still noticed our crap downed health last night at the Fire Shaman fractal boss. It’s really annoying to have zero time to allow allies to res me because a piece of dust landed on me while I was downed.

What skill is this? never even heard of Symbol of Judgment.

It’s our downed #3 skill.

Also, from what Jon said about fixing scepter auto, I think it was more than simply a projectile speed fix. Adjusting speeds might not fix the lack of honing the tennis balls have. Also, you have to consider that they want to make sure that the fix is balanced since it is arguably the highest ranged dps in the game.

sorrow.2364:

In PvE, because he lacks the damage and the support any team need to run a dungeon.
Nobody is going to take a Necromancer over, let’s say, a Warrior, a Guardian, a Mesmer or an Elementalist.

Says who? Have you played one? A power/well build can keep on par with a zerker warrior’s dps. As an example, I have finished off the gate controller in CoF p1 faster then some decent warriors. We don’t have a 100b equivalent, so we can’t brag about a 30k hit from a single skill, except maybe the auto-attack in Lich Form, but that’s an elite skill. Our damaging wells can hit around 20k over their duration while stacking vulnerability and corrupting boons, which is on top of the other attacks we do while the well is active.

You also might assume that most of the vulnerability stacks and weakness debuffs come from the warriors or thieves when a good necro can continually apply these debuffs that improve group dps.

I’ve really had it with people complaining about necro because it’s an incredibly powerful and versatile class.

They did fix PoV a few patches ago, but I haven’t used it since well before then. I just read on the wiki that SY removes a condition before PoV converts one. Not sure how the runes will work with it though.

All allies affected by the shout will lose a condition. It’s essentially the same as having Pure of Voice. With both the runes and PoV, allies will lose 2 conditions.

That’s more of a hammer/staff or gs/staff build. And if you haven’t played since launch, SoJ (which I assume is sword of justice) and all other spirit weapons became crap with the exception of the shield in projectile-heavy situations.

Knight’s is usually the armor of choice, especially with an AH build. But yeah, 0/0/30/20/20 is popular for WvW especially.

I ran RHS for a long time and liked it, but it just always felt wasted when I needed to use 2h weapons. I would switch RHS for Signet Mastery under certain occasions, but that still felt weak compared to some of our other traits. As much as I like RHS, I found it better to invest in precision on armor and trinkets to allow for more versatility in swapping around weapons.

I still run 15 in radiance for VoJ spamming because that’s an incredibly strong minor trait for WvW. And I still run RHS in sPvP because it’s an excellent 1v1 trait with 1h sword. I just feel as a guardian, building around one weapon set was a poor choice for me because in any given dungeon I will switch around my weapon set at least 3 or 4 times.

Agreed. We have tons of traits that synergize with critical hits but really cannot take advantage of condition damage because we can only apply one type of damaging condition.

This is honestly the most annoying thing about staff, which is a solid weapon. The pulsing field applying swiftness only when run through correctly is annoying and I’ve always assumed the minor amount of added swiftness was a bug.

None. You have to craft them, buy them off the TP, or get ascended trinkets with laurels, guild comms, or pristine fractal relics.

I wouldn’t say flush it, but healing power scales poorly with everything except, as Zackie stated, selfless daring. Honestly, I’d take 5 out of Virtues and put it into Honor. There are several traits in the master tier of Honor that are very useful and can be interchanged for various situations.

And… am I the only guardian who hates “Save Yourselves?” I feel it really does nothing, especially in a group setting where getting boons should never bee an issue. The only advantage I guess is being a stun breaker, but that can be accomplished using a meditation such as JI, which has a lower cd, is also instant-cast, and has better utility. I would only say that for a wvw guardian your build lacks some useful cc. You have shield 5 knockback and gs 5 pull, which are both on long cd. In small groups, cc is very important, so maybe think about carrying a hammer too (3 sources of cc!). But, as always, play what you enjoy and you’ll be a better player because you enjoy it.

I run 0/30/30/0/10 for dungeons. Right-hand strength is fantastic. Sword is arguably our highest dps weapon, scepter is great damage when you need to be ranged, and mace is a great facetanking tool. If you gear for damage, then traits are really about playstyle, but putting 30 into AH line gives you 30% bonus crit damage, which is awesome. The 10 in the virtues line is for the groups boons from VoJ spam (which comes from the radiance line) as for the ground targeting of consecrations. Being able to put WoR wherever you want is a fantastic utility.

@NerdyMike – Yup, Selfless Daring is the roll heal and does scale well. Empower is a great skill but not because of the group heal. I like the idea of a healer guardian, but it’s kind of awkward considering we are meant to be on the front line dealing damage while also soaking up damage. Guardians are most effective at self-healing and boon dispensing. I just feel that speccing into healing power adds a small amount of healing potential verses speccing into more damage.

The risky thing about speccing for condition damage as a guardian is that you really only have one reliable damaging condition. You won’t get a whole lot of extra damage out of those burns even if you have 100% uptime. Think about how much dps you will do with that burning over direct damage and critical hits. With high condition damage, you’ll maybe get an extra 200-300 damage per second from those burns, whereas each hit of your sword, when specced right, can hit for double or more its base damage.

Unfortunately, only one of our healing skill scales well with healing power, and that’s Selfless Daring. Otherwise, it’s definitely better to go with Knights for the better EM proc (assuming the traditional AH build). Honestly, our access to group heals is more limited than most people would imagine, so healing power is often a wasted stat – certainly if you only put a little into it rather than as much as possible. If you want to heal your group a lot, use hammer and blast every water field you see.

I suppose you want the highest mobility and dps? Some tips I’d share for improving these is to trait in Radiance for VoJ spammability and better crit chance (+15% with Right-hand Strength trait is amazing). GS and sword have probably the best mobility (leap and flashing blade) as well as being the highest dps weapons for us. Judges Intervention is a 1200 range gap closer. Perhaps use retreat for the swiftness, and maybe staff for swiftness. I don’t think there’s really any build that will give you a serious edge with map map completion other than simply improving your dps and keeping up swiftness when you can (I sometimes use superior sigil of swiftness on my offhand weapon while solo roaming for the bonus swiftness on kill – It;s super cheap too).

The great thing about guardian traits is that most of them are applicable to any weapon set. A good guardian will have each of his possible weapons in his inventory to use for different situations. A decent gs-based build is 30/0/30/20/0, but you’ll notice that the first line of traits (Zeal) is pretty lackluster. I currently run 0/30/30/0/10 and almost always have one two-handed weapon and x/focus as my swap.

As far as equipment, guardians do well with knight’s gear, tanky runes, and dps trinkets/weapons. Coming from your warrior and mesmer experience, I’m sure you’re versed in damage mitigation, so you can sacrifice defense for offense. Combine that with the amount of blocks and heals guardians have and you should be set! Guardian is a fun class! Enjoy!