Guild Wars 2

Find the exotic gear that works best for you first, and once you are happy then think about ascended – the amount of effort involved vs the marginal in-game stat benefit will most likely leave you disappointed unless you are 100% happy with your current build.

Jax.5261:

Greenfish.1270:

So with these most recent changes will you be updating your list at all? I really like looking at the builds you post I have learned a lot of new stuff for guardian because of them hope to see more from you!

I’ve been ‘busy’ with ‘stuff’ the last few days. But I will be updating the builds as soon as I’ve had maybe 20-30 hours testing with new traits.
The new heal looks absolutely terrible though, would only give you an advantage over DPS vs power DPS or burst.

aye – if you try using it sPvP I think you’ll be steam-rollered. I’ve only found a few situations where it “worked” in WvW thanks to superior damage and general player confusion.

Nick.6972:

Haven’t tested the skill yet, is it any good in WvW?

It is situationally good – it can give you 6 seconds of godmode if you can time it correctly, and the CD is refeshingly short – on a full DPS burst build it can easily refill you whole health bar + some.
On the other hand, if fail to land the DPS you are dead-meat.

Switch to it if you know you are about to wade into an enemy group and you have the opportunity to get a reliable cast in

On tankier builds you can use it as an additional sustain heal from Monks Focus – using stability helps maximise it’s effect.

For duelling/raiding stick to shelter or signet

I test duelled a couple of other roaming DPS guardians using it over the past couple of days ( with only 10 points in Valor ) and got my kitten handed to me on a plate because I couldn’t get reliable damage in, and really missed the block from shelter.

Kelnis.1829:

It isn’t much, but I redid a few pulls without hounds – best I could get was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0Qw-FwQ3V4 (7.5s~)

Very impressive. Nice vuln/might stacking in such a small space of time – it’s hard to see how you could improve on it ( I’m guessing triggering sword command towards the end would interrupt your AA flow too much to be worth it )

From a WvW perspective, things I like about it:

• In mid to large scale fights you get a huge amount of healing
• The CD is really really nice, most of the time the skill is ready before my burst rotation is – the duration is ok.
• In 1v1 you can use it to facetank some heavy melee classes whilst laying down alot of damage when before it would have been suicide. ( it enables some aggressive tactics )
• If you do run 30 in valor it’s a nice addition to your MF and sustain healing and fury ( even if you can’t get the main heal to work every time )
• It’s the ultimate speed-camp/tower capture utility

Things I don’t like about it:

• Cast time is a shade too long – I think instant cast might actually make it overpowered, but 33-50% reduction in cast time would be a good sweetspot.
• It doesn’t favour solo combat ( although you can work around it if your opponent has lots of clones/pets or likes to stand in one spot waving an axe around ), and is vulnerable to being CC’d or Kited.
• People are going to learn how to counter it very quickly at which point its usefulness will probably be at an end. ( lower cast time would help there )

Obal mentions it, but don’t forget that you can get some free extra burst by using binding blade when all the larvae adds appear – if you make sure you’re inside the giant’kittenbox then all the blades will hit him at once

passive is every three seconds – you can see it explained on the dev cast

joe ooga booga.4287:

The new guardian skill is honestly trash. lets say i somehow hit a 10k. which is rare even for a zerker. i only get 2k health once overy 30 sec… Healing signet heal for that every 7s…
It should last 20 s.

There are various levels of zerker and also group composition – if you are in a group that knows how to stack vuln and might then 10k is peanutes – multiply that by 5 AoE procs + other damage sources and I can easily see this refilling the health bar ( especially if you make sure you have your burns and blocks active ).

The real issue is reliability – if you can’t lay down damage on your target then it’s going to fail miserably. If it were insta-cast at least you could start your attack->ji and then trigger the heal if you see it’s got a good chance of landing.

Also the CD starts right away, so you’ll only have to wait 18 seconds between the buff ending and the next heal being available

Silven keeps the thread well updated.

There is a balance patch coming on 10th Dec which may change things ( + a new healing skill ) but we’ll just have to wait and see whether that significantly changes anything,

BTW – 4 meditation build should be able to generate 38 seconds of fury a minute without boon duration bonuses ( +60% boon duration would be necessary to have perma-fury )

Go with a Norn character.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/races/norn/Norn-Space-Marine-Armor/first

There is also a guild back banner:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elegant_Guild_Back_Banner_Skin

or a “Jump pack” http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decorative_Molten_Jetpack

Alternatively if you go with a Warrior instead of a Guardian you get lots of nice battle standards

For a Chaos Marine, it’s probably a case of mixing a few sets, eg the Armageddon Karma set: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armageddon_armor/Heavy

Brutaly.6257:

Seriously if any one that is honestly concerned about the profession, from a holistic perspective, thinks this is the right way to go i ask you to take a second look what it does with the balance of the trait lines/profession

I quite like the skill in itself, but I definitely think it’s a mistake that it puts the focus on Valor yet again. A consecration heal would also have made much more sense as a Guardian. It could have been all players who stand in the Litany of Flame consecration will get healed for a % of the damage they do.

I also wonder how the skills for other professions will effect guardian balance.

The only one that seems truly OP is the engineer one (as if they weren’t tough enough), which seems to be shelter on steroids ( I hope there’s some way to interrupt it )

Ezrael.6859:

No, the 80 appears to be the level 1 number.

Shelter is 75 and Resolve 150 in the same database.

So Litany will probably heal for around 5k base at level 80 with 0 Healing Power.

The 5s Healing effect is % of damage inflicted on enemies based, we don’t currently know the %.

Ah right, that makes sense. Unfortunately it probably means the % modifier is going to be very small – Zealous Blade II

Hunter.4783:

Keep in mind you should add +(healing from Monks focus x healing power modifier). I wouldn’t be surprised if this heal outshined all others in a MF medi DPS build.l

Good point, MF adds 4900 healing per minute assuming you have 0 healing power

( this skill is going to be hell to add to my healing spreadsheet )

Rouven.7409:

Hunter.4783:

(…)
With 24 sec cooldown, another source of fury and INSTANT CAST, you are looking at possibly one of the strongest skills in our kitten nal

“Repertoire”

Lol, love the filter sometimes.

I ran into the “arsenal” one too last week – and writing “as 5” will trigger it aswell

Ludus Rex.1562:

I’m really bothered at the 30s CD. I just want one short CD heal to trigger certain rune sets. Ah well..

Well, with a medi build you will probably have 10 points in Valor at least, so it’ll be 24 secs.

I was kind of hoping for a heal that would ease the need for points in valor, but Litany seems like yet another cattle-prod to put all 30 points in there.

I’m guessing the “80” is the base heal per hit while active and then the damage percentage is added on to it. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for more than a 0.2 modifier

Say your whirling wrath conservatively hits for 10k ( all 14 strikes ) – you’ll be hitting for an average of 714 per strike ( ignoring the difference in projectile co-efficients ).

Our heal would be 80 + ( 714 * 0.1 ) = 151.4 or a total of 2119.6 (5299 per minute)
with a 0.2 co-efficient it would be 3119.2 (7798 per minute) and 0.5 would net you 6118 ( 15295 per minute )

So how charitable will Anet be given though our other skills come in between about 9.5k and 17k of healing per minute with 1000 healing power?

In PvE where you can do 40k+ Whirling Wraths with the right group, this would equate to 9.1k per cast of healing with a 0.2 coefficient and a 21k of healing per cast with a 0.5 coefficient

If the .dat mined info is more or less correct then it will be a case of:

a) what’s the damage-to-heal percentage vs skill duration
b) what’s the cooldown

Either it lasts a long time and trickle heals like AH/Zealous Blade or it last a few seconds and allows for a burst heal if you precast it on whirling wrath/smite or zealot’s defense.

I think I’d prefer something that has a short cooldown – say 16-20 secs, lasts for 4 seconds and heals for at least 50% of damage done in that period. I’ve been roaming alot recently with only a handful of points in Valor, so I’d be really grateful for any healing I can get beyond virtue regen and shield bubbles

It’s going to be hard to find a balance between PvE and PvP though – I’m guessing they’ll do more of a trickle style heal over a longer period since in PvE you can spin up 50k of damage in 4 seconds, whilst it’s just a fraction of that figure in sPvP. That will synergise ok with Zealous Blade, but will be lacking for other weapons ( unless they’re also going changing ZB to work with all weapons – wishful thinking )

fadeaway.2807:

Symbolic power is a rather poor grandmaster minor trait.

Agreed. It can be ok in GS burst build as it pushes Symbol of Wrath over the 2.5k crit per tick mark, but really you have to sacrifice too much for it to be worth it in general.

A skill that drops Symbol of Judgement would be a nice bit of variety and might actually be a useful alternative in some areas of the game: causes damage, 25% downed revival with at least 4k of healing ( and I’d like to see the same co-efficient/base heal for both the guard and allies too ) and be spammable every 20 secs

Most likely what we’ll actually get is something like 4k self heal, 2k ally heal (scales with Condition Damage), 45 second recharge – also causes AoE burning with an ICD of 96 seconds

Jon.1376:

is aegis suppose to be removed mid dodge? it seems to be happening to me. never noticed it before I started playing my guard

Supposed to? probably not, but it can happen. You will also find that Aegis will be broken even if you are using another block skill like Shield of Wrath, Protector’s Strike or Shelter

Guardians only have access to 1 reliable condition, and that doesn’t scale very well with condi damage so unless you’re planning on running a very very specific burning build ( check this forum’s stickies ) it’s best to avoid it entirely and put the stats somewhere else.

Yup – sigils apply their effect across both hands

you can completely block the end of the short tunnel under the gate-arch with it, so yeah I can imagine it’s very annoying for defenders if it’s getting perma-spammed

Try sigils of generosity instead of air against engineers

I just tested on the thief NPC using the Spirit Sword, and dropping purging flames just out of range when he started applying conditions.

The sword had 10 secs of blindness before, and also 10 seconds after I drew them to myself with SY! whilst standing in the ring. Shame, it would have been an interesting play

If you position the camera so you can look down under the arch behind the gate, you can drop a line a few feet beyond the gate

You can cast it at an angle and it will pass through the gates. Much like any other area skill.

I’ve not seen it placed full through though

One plus with the way it works at the moment, if you’ve had to hit renewed focus as a panic button, you get a couple of seconds to fire any Virtues that still have their active available so the recharge isn’t wasted.

On the other hand I certainly wouldn’t mind it if dodging was disabled while the skill was channelling.

FYI Runes of Perplexity got a silent (and long overdue) nerf in the form of an 8 sec ICD

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Perplexity-runes/page/9#post3264438

I’m not sure – the wrath+leap combo is a pretty good counter to thieves if you’re roaming in WvW ( especially since the symbol can also tick for 2.5k on some builds ).

I’d probably keep that one as a light field and change hammer, staff and mace fields instead.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

How did you get those stats?

He’s got a good balance of stats, but bear in mind the buffs and consumables:

+250 vitality from Applied Fortitude ( +2500 health )
+100 Power from Guard Leech
+6% of toughness/4% of vita given to Power or Precision ( Stones or Oil )
+180-216 power from Bane Signet
+30-60 power/precision/healing/toughness/vitality from Borderland Bloodlust
+250 Power from Sigil of Bloodlust
and maybe +70-100 power from food and assorted WvW bonuses

I blame copy and paste

occasionally in testing I’ve seen Zealot’s Embrace hit a target more than once ( possibly dependant on their/your direction of travel ). Perhaps you got multiple strikes on him ( although if that’s the case I would imagine it they would have individual combat log entries and not be totalled together.

I’d guess it’s the upleved/zerker/broken gear option and if there were other combatants maybe they were stacking vulnerability too.

Talking of OP hits, I love it when a single enemy takes all 5 strikes from binding blade, that’s some crazy damage right there.

Unless you are in a rush to get to 80 then pretty much all of the guardian weapons and many utilities are viable in different parts of the game, so levelling is good opportunity to experiment and get comfortable with using them.

The basic traits mentioned above are always a good idea, but be sure to mix things around every few levels to get an idea of how useful ( or useless ) some of the others are.

Anet are welcome to contract my game design services whenever they want to.

+ There’s your idea for a Sanctuary update so it moves with the guardian too

they should make it like perplexity – trigger aegis when aegis is broken, no cd

Norjena.5172:

Aggro is accountbound on creation.
Just a opinion.

Like “% chance to drop a precursor/exotics” I guess ;-)

guanlongwucaii.3162:

Nozdormu.4352:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

but if you’re highest DPS in a party as a guardian I feel sorry for you

Why?

because guardian isn’t amazingly high in the DPS charts, and if your DPS is that much higher than the rest of the party they are definitely doing something wrongly.

I’ll see your low dps and raise you a whole can of kickarse ;-)

(credit to obal)

obal.3218:

Here is another vid I made
http://youtu.be/U67QNskKYHs

awesome! – and thanks for confirming my Maths wasn’t too far out with the 50k theoretical max.
I made the calc before ascended weapons were introduced so you might be able to push higher with all-crits and possibly the 200 power on-kill food if there’s another handy mob nearby.
I didn’t now you could stack 2 frost spirits using the trait, nice

Zach.3264:

Zerole.7306:

Tarsius.3170:

Good luck!

lol @ that pic

I get the feeling that post was only created just to use that picture on something.
Just me?

hah, I wouldn’t be surprised by myself if that were the case – but it’s more likely I just hit the char limit once too often and “snapped” ( and I happened to have GIMP open ) ;-)

iirc If you were to have every buff + max damage stats in the game then you could theoretically pull about 50k damage per cast out of WW and Smite would be around 70k ( against 2.6k tougness opponent ).

But against multiple targets WW would do massively more dps and ideal scenarios are pretty much impossible to achieve in real play.

Farzo.8410:

Tarsius.3170:

4) Scepter’s immobilize is ineffective against alot of targets with defiance/stability

I don’t think defiance and stability work against immobolize. Chains of Light also applies vulnerability.

Sorry, I just mean that alot of mobs are completely resistant to immobilize ( but good point on the vulnerability )

the scepter has the highest single target dps. However:

1) Auto attack will often miss targets that are moving
2) Smite’s damage is divided amongst all targets within its range ( whereas Whirling Wrath the damage is more-or-less multiplied by the number of targets in range )
3) Smite’s damage area is static and mobs can move out of it
4) Scepter’s immobilize is ineffective against alot of targets with defiance/stability

If you know you are facing a stationary single mob with a large hitbox, then it’s a good choice

as K U T M says, the 1 hand sword has more reliable sustained dps than anything else in the guardian inventory

don’t get me wrong – Scepter is awesome when you can control the fight enough to make sure it lands everything.

The golem is a classic example of an enemy that doesn’t move, and has a large hit box

Smite is too buggy to land all of it’s strikes, often even on a single target ( unless it has a giant hit box ) – so it’ll never hit for it’s full potential.

It is the highest damage ranged weapon in the game, but it will lose out to reliability of the sword in most cases ( especially when facing more than one target )

Nozdormu.4352:

Nike.2631:

After looking at it a bit, I’d like to see Strength in Numbers and Honorable Shield swap tiers.

That would put Strength in Numbers in the master tier, similar to Spotter and Empower Allies, while making the off-hand weapon trait for shields more accessible.

Would break 50% guardian WvW builds.

Or would that be “would break 1 build that’s used by 50% of WvW guardians”?

akamon.2769:

haven’t played this build in a while, but was really fun again. especially when i switched back to the mace. lost a lot of mobility through swapping the sword out but added more instant burst with protector’s strike.

I’m definitely going to have to bite the bullet and invest in a traveller set. I find it very hard to run anything except sword and gs in a medi build purely because of the loss of mobility ( even just losing one is annoying ) – which is a shame because I like the mace and scepter combo.

Definitely rabbits

(provided they don’t see me coming)

Generally I find thief the easiest ( as well as other guards ), unless the are full glass cannon and get the drop on my before I can react.

It has a 20 second cooldown – but the kicker is that it’ll trigger on burn regardless of whether an opponent has a boon or not – so 95% of the time it will go on CD without triggering it’s intended effect

I don’t like to zerg run and I don’t have much in the way of laurels – I’m very bad at completing dailies – quite often I’ll quit for the night with 4/5 done and just 5% gathering left to do or something silly like that.

On the other hand, I’m in no rush either…