Guild Wars 2

Horheristo.3607:

Feels like I’m the only Guardian who keeps changing Weapons and utilities on the go, depending on the situation.

Pretty sure that’s not the reality though. I think plenty of folks who have had sufficient amounts of experience with the game will be constantly switching weapons/utilities/armour sets/trinkets and traits on the fly depending on the situation.

I know, because I’m constantly getting frustrated by the combat lockout in WvW failing to clear, despite running halfway across to the otherside of the fort, and annoyed when dungeon groups don’t give me enough pause in between areas to switch things around. At least unlocked trait re-select can be done on the fly…

This thread is still on the guardian forum first page (at the time of writing):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/What-sigil-do-you-use-in-your-shield-pve

and should get you started ( unless you have some very specific synergies or traits you want to exploit )

Also you can’t go wrong reading through Brutaly’s guide for AH crit hammer:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-Hammer-and-Altruistic-Healing-gameplay/first#post532460

reminds me of Oozo’s death by cleavage video

Fox.3469:

If the boss trows a red circle on the floor on top of him and you can stay in it and heal yourself trough while dpsing, you always do more in the end.

you can pretty much do that with a glass cannon build too, at least until they nerf the crit lifesteal food

While I’ll echo what others have said about it being a fairly pointless comparison, with Warriors overtly being an aggressive damage class vs the guardian’s defensive buff design… I DO have much more fun running glass cannon builds in WvW than ones spec’d for toughness.

The guardian has the ability to unload a heck of a lot of area damage into the middle of a group of enemies, thanks to some high hitting skills like magic blow and whirling wrath coupled with containment skills like ring of warding and binding blade and teleport skills of flashing blade and judge’s intervention.

You throw in a few weapon quirks, like the insane damage shield of wrath does (6-7k from a shield?) and you can have a lot of fun bombing people, and we still have a pretty good amount of utility to keep protection and damage mitigation up enough to disengage again afterwards, despite being squishy.

You won’t stand long being focussed by a cohesive group, but in the chaos of WvW you can still demonstrate impressive survivability. ( you’ll definitely miss the lack of conditional removal and virtue boons though )

There are definitely better ways of playing the guardian, that fit the strengths of the class paradigm – but if you just want to have a bit of fun, whilst still providing some might and protection to your team mates then there’s nothing wrong with a beserker spec.

I keep a couple of shields in my inventory. One would be slotted with Sigil of Perception or Sigil of Bloodlust (depending on my build) to buff my accuracy or power at the start of a session.

Once I’ve achieved 25 stacks I can switch to my other shield for another effect, such as energy, damage or lifesteal ( I tend to use accuracy sigils on the mainhand ).
If I’m downed, or move to a different battleground I switch back and start again.

If you feel underpowered go for a damage buff – either something that increases your crit ( accuracy, perception ) or base dps ( bloodlust or sigil of air )

If you want to maximise AH, then you can either choose lifesteal or something that generates might on crit

If you find your opponents are getting away from you, then hydromancy is a good bet, to apply chill on swap.

nice work!

As I suspected, Shield of Wrath is one of our hardest single-hit skills. Can crit well over 6k with full beserker.

If it’s just for keeping up with roving groups, or moving across a map quickly, then buy a stack of “engineer” medi packs from Lionguard Harral karma npc for 77 karma each:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Medical_Pack
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drop_Stimulant
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lionguard_Haral

That’s 10 secs of swiftness every 20 seconds – and use SYS and/or Retreat in between.

You have to drop the pack before going into battle though, but it also gives 10 secs of fury, so it can be handy pre-boost.

Well it depends entirely on your build and play style.

Think of food as a way of supplementing certain stats which you may be lacking in, or providing a particular mechanic which boosts your traits.

So the first step is to identify weak areas in your arsenal and then find appropriate food to fill the gap.

This page is a good reference: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Food

As an example of using food to compliment traits/stats I tend to use omnomberry ghosts to steal life on crit ( because I have very high crit, and it can keep my health topped up in the middle of a zerg ).

If you are farming you’d probably want to choose a magic find booster ( Chocolate Omnomberry Cream gives +40% magic find and +20% boon duration ).

Plates of lemongrass poultry will boost your toughness and increase power when you are low on health.

Omnomberry loaf will give you a flat toughness and vitality boost.

It all depends… so keep a few different types in your inventory for different situations (if you have the room!)

Remember also that there are maintenance oils ( which increase precision ) and sharpening stones ( for power ) which can be applied too, and might affect your choices.

focus #5 is also a very offensive skill – it can crit for around 6k on a berserker build.

Still only hearing occasional “random” phrases on my male asura. Today I used Hold the Line 30 odd times and it only said something once: “Head to the surface!” ( this was above ground ).

I love placing SoA right ontop of a boss which does long duration area projectile attacks ( like old tom in fractals ). You get a solid bubble of shimmering energy that completely projects your whole party for half a minute. So it can be pretty “cool” too.

Remember if you just want swiftness for keeping up with a roving group, then you can buy the engineer’s medipack consumable from a karma vendor for a very small price. ( means you can keep throwing speed tonics down indefinitely, although uptime isn’t 100% )

I tend to keep a stack handy, as it saves me from having to re-arrange my skills or weapons, especially if we land into an unexpected battle.

Exedore.6320:

Sword’s main problem is lack of AoE on something intended more as a damage weapon (as opposed to a defense weapon) … Maybe a small arc on the #1.

Sword actually has a small arc on #1, chain 3… it is very small however.

Barnabus Stinson.1409:

Wave of Light (Downed 2) Often fails push back, either if enemy is standing on you, or in the middle of a finisher.

If the enemy has stability, then they won’t be affected by any push back skills.

If it’s fast map negotiation you want then nothing beats the medipack consumable from a karma vendor:

http://www.gw2db.com/items/53856-medical-pack

It gives you about 70% uptime of 33% speed and fury.

I wouldn’t risk it in a fight though ( it replaces your weapon skills ), although perhaps you could use it for a fast escape.

Since the last patch, the GS Leap of Faith’s vulnerability stack is multiplied by the number of enemies it hits. So if you manage to catch a whole group, you apply 18 stacks of vulnerability to them all in one hit.

I can’t imagine that doesn’t get changed at some point though.

Tarsius.3170:

Grumwulf.9602:

When using Leap of Faith combined with the trait Blind Exposure into a group of mobs so that all are blinded you will get vulnerability stacks equal to 3 * the number of mobs blinded on each mob. This means that blinding a group of 4 mobs will get you 12 stacks of vuln on each one. This doesn’t work with the blind from VoJ. I haven’t tested it with the sword.

Oh, that’s a nice bug. Bet that gets a fix quickly. Will have to test with flashing blade tonight

Confirmed the multi-mob vulnerability stacking effect on Leap of Faith.

However the effect is not present on the blind aoe from flashing blade ( and VoJ as previously noted ).

Brilliance is also not dependant on the number of surrounding mobs and hits for 3 stacks + 1 stack per tick

While not an AoE skill, I’ll add for completeness that Ray of Judgement also has the expected behaviour, applying 3 stacks of vulnerability per ray bounce

Kyzen.7452:

Symbols
Symbols are now auras, auras are cast at the feet of the guardian

I first read that as:

“Symbols are now asuras, asuras are cast at the feet of the guardian”

THAT would have been an interesting mechanic…

Grumwulf.9602:

When using Leap of Faith combined with the trait Blind Exposure into a group of mobs so that all are blinded you will get vulnerability stacks equal to 3 * the number of mobs blinded on each mob. This means that blinding a group of 4 mobs will get you 12 stacks of vuln on each one. This doesn’t work with the blind from VoJ. I haven’t tested it with the sword.

Oh, that’s a nice bug. Bet that gets a fix quickly. Will have to test with flashing blade tonight

1 – They are both viable, so my best advice would be to test each one for a period to see what works best for your play style

2 – If you like running with avenger slotted, but run into melee foes, then you cast it and immediately destroy it for 6 seconds of weakness.

3 – Personally the bow’s healing is pretty poor and hard to target if you’re trying to heal allies, and the condition removal is too slow and random ( I’d prefer if they swapped the command with the passive effect ).

Avenger is often underrated, but pretty awesome against ranged foes, especially in dungeons where you can save your team from 90% of ranged attacks – especially if you have traited for extended spirit weapon duration.

Potential exploit ( or arguably a cool feature of the skill ):
Judge’s Intervention: If there is a nearby mob, you can cast Judge’s Intervention the moment you hit the deck from a fall of any height and be teleported to the enemy receiving no fall damage ( provided it’s in range, target selection is not required ) – timing must be fairly precise.

note: I ticketed this a couple of months ago, but since no patch has been forthcoming, I’ll post it here

No way ground targeting would work – you’d be able to use to reach inaccessible map areas – even flashing blade and JI won’t allow that.

• Area of effect heals and boons now prioritize players over minions and NPCs.

is welcome, even through it probably doesn’t affect Merciful Intervention

I’m still not convinced it’s right for guardian to have any kind of ranged weapon, none of current ranged options feels right against the profession’s style.
It would have to be something new, like a spirit crossbow ( literally a “Constantine” style cross ) or secondary weapon like an Ankh symbol which shoots beams of light.

This has been discussed to death already, but I’m fairly certain that if we got a good ranged weapon we’d be seriously nerfed in other areas – otherwise we could just park ourselves somewhere with shields and regen up and blast away at things all day long.

It’s simply a mechanic to stop us being too powerful. Frankly we would be totally unstoppable with high base HP. Conditions and well timed burst attack are our achilles heal. The game would be boring if we didn’t have one.

But a lot of bosses can be. I run GS and sword/focus quite often, which is fine most of the time.

You WILL need to stay very mobile ( slotting for energy recovery is useful ) – and learn to watch out for some skills or attack patterns which can basically one-shot you.

Finally don’t be afraid to keep switching weapons in between bosses. There are definitely some bosses which have to be fought at range, so the simplest solution is to spend a few seconds between each boss equipping different weapons, changing utilities and if necessary tweaking traits. ( if you didn’t know you can change major traits you have unlocked whenever you like )

After a few runs in each dungeon you will learn what works best for you and your team.

Having been in such situations and surviving against 4 or 5 opponents for a couple of minutes, I would say that facing PUGs often works in our favour.

With my build I have a bucket load of ways to avoid damage, stay mobile and self heal, but have low HP. In 1v1 I can be DPSd down in a blink if my opponent knows what they are doing, but in an unorganised group a guardian can be very effective at causing confusion.
AoE knockbacks and pulls – numerous ways to break CC and maintain stability.
In such situations I leap and teleport between different foes, which can keep them on the back foot.
If you get knocked down you can explode instantly back in someone’s face with IJ. Or pop shields or invincibility at the right moment.
But actually killing anyone in such a fight is very unlikely, and I tend to die eventually unless I get backup or find some way to escape. I can be strung out for minutes though.

Unblockable skills were added in a recent patch specifically, I suspect, because champions were so easy to solo in with a guardian.

As previous posters have noted, champs often have some resistance to blind. Their biggest weakness, however, is how clearly they telegraph their attacks, making dodging your most powerful utility against them. ( you can use protection and reflection/absorbtion aswell depending on the type of mob you are facing )

If you’re referring to the rotation of Consecrated Ground trait to give you 2 independent cooldowns, then that exploit has been known for a while and is in the guardian bugs thread…

…if it’s something else then please keep it to yourself – even if you get no reaction from the devs

For sure the sword isn’t a particularly strong dps weapon – but it has a fair amount of utility.

If you trait into Radiance, you get the advantage of Right Hand Strength which gives +15% crit chance ( this applies to other one handed weapons too ). It has a good fast autoattack which helps stack the crits up, so slotting Sigils that take advantage of crits is a good idea ( eg ones that stack up Might ).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Right-Hand_Strength

Radiance also gives you Blind Exposure which applies Vulnerability on blind ( and Blind is what Flashing Blade gives you in addition to the gap closer ). Admittedly 1% damage increase isn’t a great deal, but Flashing Blade is an AoE skill and lasts for 5 seconds.

Skill #1’s auto attack gives a mini-AoE on the third swing ( although the range is short ).

Zealots Defense while a cool looking skill does have issues. You are rooted to the spot while you cast it, and it’s easy to evade. It does however block some projectiles that fly down it’s cone, so it can be situationally useful against some ranged attacks.

It has good synergy with focus, giving a lot of blind and blocking utility ( aswell as keeping you mobile ). Mobility is always good, and flashing blade teleports through obstacles and over different heights ( provided there’s a “route” to the opponent )

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

To be honest, after sleepwalking through the rest of the PvE content, I find the Karkan a refreshing challenge.
I have clerics gear though, so this is one of the few cases where a bit of extra healing helps to counter the condition damage.
Keep dodging, use weapons which supply good amounts of blind and block and slot skills for condition removal, break stun and stability. ( speccing into virtues helps )

- “Unblockable” skill facts have now been added to various skills.

Does that mean some skills have been buffed so they can’t be blocked? or skills that where previously unblockable now say so in their tooltip?…

BTW tested this today. ( auto-attack on shield#5 ).
While it’s true the bubble graphic persists for most of the duration of the skill CD ( it stops for about 8 seconds and then is refreshed by auto-attack firing ), it only allows combos in the 4 second window after the bubble appears each time.

Merciful Intervention now heals for 8000 and prioritises gatherables and bunnies?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Probably easier to list the things that don’t get reflected.

Although the useful information is actually how much damage the reflection does for different mobs, which I hadn’t really bothered to take note of before.

The only place I use sword and hammer are to make underwater combat less tiresome.

Shield as noted can be situationally handy in WvW, but quite often I switch to it in dungeons ( along with WoR ) if I know I’m facing several ranged mobs, since you can gather them all up nice and cosy inside the bubble and basically not worry about them for 30 seconds.

You could try throwing 10 points into valor for:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retributive_Armor

Which lends 5% of your toughness into precision ( although if you are a glass cannon you may not have enough toughness to make it worthwhile: 2000 toughness = about +5% chance at level 80)

And then make sure you are well stocked up on:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Curry_Butternut_Squash_Soup

(+100 precision, +10% crit damage food = just below +5% crit chance at level 80 )

As other posters have noted, it’s not straightforward to tank, but it’s by no means impossible.

Whilst running dungeons I find in many cases I am able to draw the attention of multiple foes by dropping as much AoE on them as possible – the greatsword and staff are good for this – Binding blade can be used to pull mobs off your team mates and you can employ various area denial skills to keep them off for a while after – I suspect the DoT for binding blade also helps keep mobs interested.

While there are appears to be varying agro tables in the game, I noticed quite often mobs will go after players with low health or who drop a lot of group heals – this favours a healing spec’d guardian, since we naturally have lower health than anyone else ( if you slot for vitality you might find maintaining agro more difficult ).

For ranged mobs you can “tank” in a different way – with wall of reflection and various absorption shields.

The short answer: get in the thick of it, generate as much healing, damage mitigation and AoE as you can and quite often you will be the focus the party ( at which point you’ll have to concentrate on surviving )

I was trying to heal my friend’s turret with Merciful Intervention, but i got TPd to a player with low health…. Basically I wasted my kittening kittenlike heal on some kittenish idiot who was gonna die anyway…

I’m asura, my sanctuary and wall of reflection should be small and cute like me…

Make greatsword and hammer ranged weapons.

I’m traited to give maximum dps and protection in downed state

Anet doesn’t allow healing in this game, if you use your healing skills exploits to heal members of your team you might get banned.

“Tis but a scratch. The black knight always triumphs in defeat!”

/laugh
/cower ( watch the ears )

oh, and when they breath fire they lift both legs off the ground!

;-)

It might be nice is the aura radiated from the edge of the shield, a bit like the Flameseeker Prophecies legendary does ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Flameseeker_drawn.png )

I’d probably reserve judgement on calling this an exploit. Personally I quite like it when there are quirks in the game mechanic which you can explore and discover to make you more effective on the battlefield – it adds depth to the gameplay.

Obviously there is a line you can cross with anything like this, and I guess ultimately it’s up to Anet to decide what is/is not acceptable. ( It’s not like other MMOs don’t have animation cancelling quirks either )

Possibly he meant it was mediocre to “waste” JI just to get an effective cast of RoW. I love JI too, especially because it breaks altered states like knockdown and fear. ( ever been thwacked across the map by another hammer wielder only to explode instantly back in their face? )

Remember you can also use sanctuary to bump people off ledges or fort walls, that’s pretty much the only use I make of it ( aside from skill point communing when I was levelling )

yeah that was fixed I believe… and I’d rather not comment on “good greatsword guardians” which exploit a bug to move about the battlefield more quickly – although using it to get quickly between the crafting station and the trader is probably “ok”

Doing gap closers like the Leap + JI “Meteor Leap” combo is fine imho though, as it blows 2 skills into cooldown in the process.

I encountered another interesting effect of JI in the Mad King instance today – after being feared off a ledge to certain death, I hit JI just before impact on the ground and luckily teleported to a nearby candy mob completely unscathed. ( wasn’t able to repeat that on a second attempt, so I suspect timing is critical )

yup – leap of faith + judges intervention is up to 1800 range gap closer ( if timed right ) ending with blind, burn ( + retaliation and might if you chain the right skills ). If they have a sword too they can also throw in another 600 teleport & blind ( which works through obstacles )

btw in pve you can move across the map very quickly by ruthlessly killing rabbits

Mindvibe.4630:

why are you trying to convince me of everything ive already said?

also i dont have 5 points in radiance. its not mandatory for any build, including melee only.

I think that’s what the point of the trait system. If you don’t want to trait to take advantage of a low HP pool, then simply spec for high vitality instead.

Whatever works for you to be honest. ( how you play and what you play )

Personally I run just shy of 15k, and trait accordingly ( also runes/sigil to maximise energy recovery and equiped for blind and teleporting ), sometimes I feel godlike, and occasionally I get burnt down pretty fast if I’m not paying attention.

High vitality/low heal can be equally as effective given the right builds, but it’s not the way I roll/dodge.