Guild Wars 2

- Armor of Earth is situational at best, you don’t need stability or protection in most situation. It shouldn’t be on your standard skill bar.

- Spell Slinger : That’s bad. You only have 1 cantrip and you shouldn’t even have it in the first place. It’s a waste.
- Fire Embrace : Why? That’s such a bad trait. There is persisting flame right next to it and it’s the most powerful trait for a staff ele. No PvE staff ele should play without persisting flame.
- Inscription : I don’t get it. You have 1 glyph with 60sec cooldown. You waste a trait for 1 boon each 60sec?
- Elemental Attunement : Thats not a bad trait, but not that good either for a staff. On most other weapons, you gonna swap a lot, making Elemental Attunement more worth it. But with staff, you gonna mostly camp fire, making that trait not that great.

I prefer how the system work now, except for two thing.

- Instability are kind of random. Level 34, 42, 44, etc are fare more punishing than level 50 for exemple. And if some instability really bring something new to the experience like the Mosman in level 31, the explosion in level 39, the targets in level 41, etc. The Majority of the instability is just a small nerf to your boons, condition, damage or survivability. It only make the fractal longer, without adding anything new to the fractal itself. The level of the fractal is suppose to make stuff harder by making mobs hit harder and resist more, the instability should bring something else. My opinion is that instability should be like gambits from the Crown Pavilion. Remove the majority of boring instability and keep like 5-10 of the coolest of them. At the beginning of the fractal you can choose a couple of instability to make the run harder, but this give you more reward when you finish it.

- The second thing that I dislike about the system is way more important for me. When we got fractal for the first time Agony Resistance was view differently. At level 30+ or 40+ (can’t remember exactly) you couldn’t have enough AR to make any difference. You could have the maximum amount of AR or zero it wouldn’t make any difference. AR was just a way to make low level fractal easier when you wanted to farm them or for casual. At level 30/40+ with no AR to protect you, a lot of the Agony attack would kill you. You were not down, but dead. Each arrow of the shaman, each axe of the Mosman, each AoE from Bloomhunger, etc. We were on our toes for the whole fight, with each mistake potentially fatal. And it’s not like those attack were stupid either. Most of them were easily dodgable. They were telegraphed, you could see them and you could dodge them. But with all that was going one, it was also easy to miss them or to run out of active defense. That was the only trully challenging content of GW2 with SAB tribulation mode, in my opinion.

You are totally right about PW and defiant stack. You need to be aware of that when you use it. I usually prefer S/P against group of mobs (which usually don’t have defiant) and D/D against boss (which usually have defiant), so the problem never really happen to me. But yes, if you want to keep S/P for the whole dungeon and there is a elementalist in your group you may want to coordinate with him for frostbow for the start of the fight.

I didn’t posted the numbers because they depend on what buff you have. I found it more interesting to see the difference in percentage. I don’t have the numbers for the D/D and S/P with me right now but here the numbers for D/P. That include fully ascended + mighty infusion + 25 stack of vulnerability + 25 stack of might + fury + Empowered Allies + Double banners + sigil of force + sigil of night + potion + buttersquash. No rangers. The rotation is around 30 second long and count 4 Black Powder + HS + Backstab and 9 auto-attack chain. I counted the first 2 HS with coefficient of 1, the 3rd HS with a coefficient of 1.5 and the last HS with a coefficient of 2. To simulate like if the thief was fighting a boss in 30sec. This can vary from one encounter to another. I had to make a choice.

That’s the contribution of each attack to the global dps.

AA : 6 473 dps (can hit up to 2 targets)
HS : 1 750 dps (can only hit one target)
Black Powder : 303 dps (can hit up to 5 targets)
Backstab : 3 212 dps (can only hit one target)

So for one target you add all 4 = 11 738 dps
2 targets you add twice the AA and BP, but only once the backstab and HS = 18 515 dps
For 3 targets and more the difference is marginal.

Bash.7291:

Carrion will be far better with this, with the crit chance we recieve from radiance, we wont really need anything else from celestial

I’m not so sure about that. Radiance + Celestial amulet won’t reach 100% critical chance so it won’t be wasted. At the same time you don’t want to put too much pts into condition since you will mostly be direct damage with only a bit of condition (you only have fire after all).

In the end, the reason to take celestial is to make a good build all around. A bit of power damage, a bit of condition damage and a bit of healing. If celestial don’t work with a Guardian, then there is just no reason to take carrion and we’ll stick to Berserker.

Ya, I’m pretty sure that Medi Guardian with Valor and Virtues will still be a thing. What will be the possibilities?

Valor/Virtues/Honor : This is mostly a more survivable version. We’ll see how stats will be distributed, but we may lose a couple of defensive stats since they will be transferred to our zerker amulet. This could be rebalanced with Honor and the big increase in endurance regen that this line will provide. I don’t think that Invigorated Bulwark + Mace will be a thing, but Writ of Persistence could be good for GS or Hammer.

Valor/Virtue/Radiance : That line is all about burning and critical chance. It also have a good looking burst option with Retribution + Unscathed Contender + Virtue of Retribution. That will give you a 30% damage modifier just by clicking F3 before a strike. With the amount and power of your burning with this line I wonder if a Celestial Guardian could be decent? Maybe, maybe not, we’ll see.

Valor/Virtue/Zeal : That’s all about the symbol here. That will be a very high risk, very high reward kind or build. GS #4 will put a symbol, add some burning and UC and you got almost a 60% damage modifier for your whirlwind. If you can hit, the guy will probably be dead, if you miss, you are kind of in trouble. Not enough burst outside of your symbol and not enough sustain to keep yourself alive. It might be popular in low level match, but against good pvp player, I don’t think it’s gonna work.

Valor/Virtues/Dragon Hunter : I’m not sure, but I guess Big Game Hunter will be a big part of it. A 15% damage modifier + vulnerability against a single target will be powerful if you can keep close to your target. Everybody will know which one is the guardian’s target at least lol.

Here the comparison of the DPS of D/P, S/P and D/D. Keep in mind that I didn’t took into account the use of Smokescreen or Blinding Powder, which could increase the dps on D/D and D/P for a initiative free backstab (BP) or 2 backstab that only cost 3 initiative (Smokescreen).

Single Target
D/D : 100%
S/P : 75%
D/P : 70%

Two Targets
D/D : 100%
S/P : 100%
D/P : 74%

3+ Targets
S/P : 150%
D/D : 100%
D/P : 38%

If you look at the dps only, there is NO reason whatsoever to take D/P. We could argue that you may need the defiance management capability of Headshot or the blind from Black Powder, but then S/P can do the same with a better dps. Still, like I said. Since I didn’t took into account Blinding Power or Smokescreen, the actual DPS or D/P vs S/P against a single target should be pretty close and D/P may even be better.

In the end, there is only one type of situation where D/P is worth using. A single boss where Headshot (defiance management) or Black Powder (AoE Blind) is important to the fight.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Thaddeus.4891:

Sir Vincent III

You can spam PW, but not with the best dps build. Anyway, you can still do 2 PW, then alternate between PW and Auto-attack to keep your initiative higher than 6 all the time.

If that’s how you define spamming, then sure why not.

No no. I’m saying two thing here. First it is spammable but for that you need a special build, which won’t be optimal in dps. It’s doable, but not a good idea.

Second, with the meta build using S/P the best rotation would be 2 PW, then alternate between auto-attack and PW.

I had the same question when I first stop using AH build a long time ago. Basically, yes it’s mostly active defense. But it’s not that hard really. You have so much active defense on a guardian that it’s easy to have a high uptime.

Blind : F1 recharge on kill, GS #3, Focus 4, Sword 2.
Aegis : F2, Retreat
Reflection : Wall of Reflection, Sword #2
Block : Focus 5, Shelter
Invulnerability : Renewed Focus

With all that, you should be able to block most attack coming your way. Of course knowing when to use them will increase drastically your survivability, but for normal fight you should be able to survive just by using those skills. If you have some problem while you learn how to use your active defense you can put 1 pts in honor for some vigor and/or a sigil of energy. If that’s not enough try the hammer build for perma protection, that should do more than enough. Alternatively you could take 1-3 pieces of defensive gear like soldier and knight so you have a little room for error while you practice.

But seriously it’s mostly mental. You gonna get use to it and then you won’t be able to get back to AH. I use to wonder how survive without AH, now I wonder how can I survive with AH since you lose so much active defense.

Sir Vincent III

You can spam PW, but not with the best dps build. Anyway, you can still do 2 PW, then alternate between PW and Auto-attack to keep your initiative higher than 6 all the time.

A Sword/Pistol thief alternating between AA and PW will do around 75% of the damage of a D/D thief against a single target. That’s significantly less and in those situation, D/D is always better. But only the auto-attack cleave on a D/D on only on 2 targets. So against 2 targets, a S/P thief will do around the same damage total than a D/D. Against 3 targets? The S/P thief will do 150% the dps of a D/D Thief.

Now it’s clear that a D/D is better against single target and S/P is better against group of mobs. Ideally, you should switch around weapons between fight with S/P for the dungeon and D/D against bosses. But we rarely do that, we usually stick to one build in one dungeon (depending on the person). At this point, both are equally good in the run of a complete dungeon.

Well you can come up with a rotation of your own if you want, but the community worked on that for a fairly long time so the chance is that we come up with better rotation already just by the time and number of people that already worked on it.

Ideally, you could check for a tested rotation and then adapt it to your gameplay, skills, trait, etc

You are not playing it wrong, but you are not playing it as effectively as you could. For PvE, a good rotation will optimize your damage. Look at it as the best way to play when everything go perfectly. Of course, not everything go as planned. When you solo, or you play with bad to decent party you can’t always use to optimal rotation. Sometime you gonna need to use that healing rain, magnetic aura, immobilize, etc even if they are not part of the rotation.

Should you learn a rotation? Probably. It’s not like you need to stick to it 100%. But it doesn’t hurt to know the most optimal way to do damage when everything go according to plan. It also push you to notice when and why sometime you need to deviate from the rotation. That way you can try to change how you approach stuff so you don’t need to deviate from it.

Like every profession (with some exception) the best gear for the Guardian will be Zerker. It’s intimidating at first (especially if you come from warrior) because guardian have a very low hp. But the Guardian have SO MUCH active defense that it still easy to survive on a guardian. But for that you need to know how to play the profession, you can take a couple of soldier or knight pieces of gear while you get used to the guardian.

GS – S/F : That’s the best weapon combo. GS is the burst and Sword is the auto-attack.
6/6/0/0/2 is the highest dps but it vary a lot because it depend on your Aegis uptime.
6/6/2/0/0 is slightly less dps, but its a lot less variable.
4/5/0/0/5 is about 5-11% less dps than to other 2 build, but it give you access to more support/survivability. It’s a good general purpose build for new guardian.
4/5/0/1/4 is a custom build. If someone still have problem running the 4/5/0/0/5 build, this one will give him more vigor to help.

GS – M/F : It’s a little bit less dps than GS Sw/F and you lose 1 blind, but you gain some sustain healing.
6/6/2/0/0 : is the dps build.
2/5/0/5/2 : is about 2-3% less dps but give you more surviability/support

GS – Scepter/F: For people that can’t stay in melee for all the fight, a scepter can do the job.
6/6/0/0/2 or 6/6/2/0/0 : are both top dps like for the GS – Sw/F.

For all those, you can swap Focus to torch if you want. Torch is better for fight longer than 30sec, Focus is better for shorter fight and give you more defense.

That’s your opinion. Here is mine.

Part 1

1) Race are purely cosmetic. It’s not a problem it’s a design choice and I like it. When you give special advantage to different race you push people into using certain race with certain class. Everybody want to be an human as a mage because it have a special magic bonus, everybody want to be a Orc as a warrior because of the strength bonus, etc. You end up with everybody have the same class/race combo and everybody that doesn’t is at a disadvantage. Both choice have some strength and weakness. GW2 give us more liberty for witch profession we want, while the ’’usual’’ system give more immersion since it make more sense to be a bad warrior when you are a tiny ball of fur.

2) Yes because everytime there is a problem the whole word come together and stop fighting in real life right? World hunger, climate change, WW2, Cold War. We always see the big danger, acknowledge it and then band together to fix it. Human nature is nice like that. For the second part of this point, it’s a video game and it come with weakness that you need to work around that can force you make illogical story telling. You need to make your game replayable, especially since it’s a mmo. You gonna defend that merchant several times, you gonna kill that boss several times, you gonna do that dungeon several times. Do you really think that GW2 is the first game that make you do stuff several times over for replayability?

3) I agree that they could have keep the max level to 80. Hell, they could have put zero level, I would be fine with it. Be the scaling system is far better than the usual MMO system. AC is one of the most popular dungeon and it would be long forgotten if there was no scaling system. It allow content to not become obsolete, which is a big deal.

Part 2

1) I don’t see that as a problem, at least not a big problem. It would be a nice addition to the current game for sure. I would love to see that, but it’s not a problem right now.

2) I kind of agree with that. I see too much bad players using zerker because they gonna rally in the fight anyway. But again the game was marketed from the start as a casual game for casual. I want to have a hard time in a game and the almost 3 years old content of GW2 is pretty easy for me and lot of people. But I also know a lot of people that have a hard time with the game and if failure was more dramatic, they would probably quit the game. Remember that hardcore game are niche game that sell rarely several millions copies. I would prefer if Anet took a more challenging path, but I can understand why they made the game more casual.

Yep. The problem with this method is that you need to do it several time to make an average and you need to pick the right place to do it. Usually ppl are doing this against a giant in Orr so you are not downscaled and the fight is long enough to have some decent data.

It’s pretty good to compare dps for yourself. But when you want to compare your information against others, that isn’t so great. You probably gonna have a lower dps with that because people compare max dps to make sure everybody is compare apple and apple. You probably won’t have banners, EA, 25 stack of might, fury, full ascended, max infusion, the best food, the right utility, etc Not all of those will be in your dps numbers from your log.

So again. It’s the best method to compare dps numbers for yourself since you can control different variable. But it’s bad to compare to others since you won’t have the same variable as them and the standard is to max everything so that everybody compare on a similar ground.

The only way to compare dps is to calculate it. You can take a video of your rotation (usually around 30sec). That give you a list of all the skills that you can use in that 30sec. You just need to have the skill coefficient for each skill and then calculate your total dps.

People are kind of stupid with this. They said the exact same thing when the nerfed ferocity before and a lot of people were thinking that it was about to allow other gear to be optimal. And didn’t and any nerf to zerker will NEVER remove it from the meta.

It’s the concept of zerker that make it the most optimal gear set. It’s meta because it’s a power glass canon gear. By fixing condition they can make optimal a condition glass canon gear (sinister), but that’s it. Glass canon, whatever nerf they want to do will always be the meta in PvE. If they really need to change that they have a limited amount of choice.
1) They need to put obligatory role. Defensive of healing gear will never be meta unless we need them to complete content, which mean getting back to Trinity or something similar to trinity. Which mean waiting for a cleric guy to complete your dungeon.
2) Removing the current active defense. We can play in full zerker because active defense is so powerful. If they remove it then we gonna need some defensive gear to survive. That just dumb down the game. Alternatively they can nerf to the ground active defense and make a stats that improve it. So now the new meta will be whatever offensive gear that have just enough of that stats. Not really an improvement.
3) Limiting gear to 2 offensive stats will force diversity into gear. There will still be one meta gear per profession, but that meta could change from one profession to another. A PS warrior would choose Power, Precision, Boon Duration, but a Engineer meta would be Power, Precision, Condition Duration. It would also limit the difference in dps from from exemple Power, Precision, Healing Power versus a Power, Precision, Boon Duration or Power, Precision, Toughness. As long as you take Power and Precision you have good dps, then even if the 3rd stats you take isn’t the meta the difference isn’t that noticeable. But that idea still have a lot of problem. That mean a mega nerf to dps or complete reworking of ferocity. That mean that the 3 years of balance for PvP is scrap and Anet need to start all over. And it doesn’t really fix anything since there will be only 1 meta gear per profession.

The number 3 might be possible good option, but i’m fine with the current system. No need to ’’fix’’ something that isn’t broken. Every single gear set is viable, there is only 1 that can be optimal and it will always be like that. Whatever anet do.

They are both good now. But still some improve could be done.

- Your S/F build miss one important thing. Lighting Hammer. Without that your build is bad. S/F have a good burst and might stacking capability, but after that, it have a super bad auto-attack and you need Lighting Hammer to take care of that weakness.
- Sigil of Fire is a burst damage sigil. That’s perfect for PvP, but not as much in PvE. Sigil of Force would be superior.
- There is no reason to take Fresh Air in any of those two build. You shouldn’t play much in Air, if at all. Staff should mostly play in fire and S/F + LH build rotation between Fire/Water/Earth for blasting.
- Piercing Shard can be good with a S/F + LH build. You can finish your blast sequence in water and stay there while using your LH for a good damage modifier. But for staff it’s a useless trait since you will almost never fight in water.
- Staff build really really need 6pts in fire to get persisting flames. In a staff build your main source of damage is lava front and the trait persisting flames had 50% more damage to that attack. It also give fury to the team while blasting into that laval front, allowing you to almost give perma fury to your team.

They are cummulative.

If you couldn’t even bother to level up one character to level 80 in 3 years I don’t think we can help you at all.

If you think that staff isn’t really fun, you have several options. Here 3

1) Staff can be a bit more fun and efficient if you want, especially for short fight. My rotation is usually like this. Earth 2 – Fire 2 – Arcane Brilliance – Arcane Wave – Swap to Air – Glyph of Storm – Icebow 5 – Icebow 4 – Icebow 3 – Earth 2 – Fire 2 – Meteor Shower. You pack a good amount of fury and burst damage early one and it’s a lot more fun than camping fire. You also want to stay at close range (less than 300) to share buff with your team.

2) D/F is quite nice to play. It’s the most fun build right now with an interesting rotation. It’s also quite decent in term of dps. It’s 9-10% less dps than a LH build or 16-17% less than a staff build, but that’s still a better dps than a ranger/guardian/warrior. It’s also easier to surfice on a D/F, especially on high level fractal. Unfortunately, it seem that it will be nerfed with the new traits. We’ll see if it’s still worth it later.

3) LH like you tried is also a good option, but you got your numbers wrong. A blast give 20second of might and Rune of Strength give 45% more duration so 29 seconds. That’s more than often for most fight in a decent team.

Weapons
GS, Hammer, Sword, Focus, Torch and Mace are all good choice.
Scepter is decent if you need a range.
Staff is bad for combat, but it’s good for tagging mobs in big event with a lot of ppl. It’s also good for running around.

Gear
Zerker : Power, Precision, Ferocity is your best possible choice. It will be hard to play at first, but it’s worth the pratice if you want to be good in the game. Your active defense is far superior than defensive stats.

Zealot : Power, Precision, Healing Power could be a decent choice if you want to heal your friend. Keep in mind that healing itself isn’t that great. Active defense are far superior than healing on purpose, but need a bit more skillz and knowledge to use properly. You also need to know that Guardian isn’t good at all to heal allies. You need to spec a lot into it to make it worth (compare to ele and warrior that can heal by a good amount with only small investment). Guardian strength is defensive support and you get that from trait and utilities, not gear.

A Guardian that can protect his team with a Wall of Reflection, aegis, condition removal and blind is far superior than a guardian that try to heal.

Crafting

Crafting isn’t really good to get your gear as your level and reach level 80. It’s more for some special items, end game gear, leveling alts, etc. You should wait a bit and don’t waste your gold now into that. It will be easier to level crafting up latter and you won’t miss anything.

nathan goossen.9546:

ahm oki

so gs/hammer and scpeter focus and a staff would be a good base to start with

thx for the info

Scepter is a situationnal weapon. It’s the best choice only for a couple of specific large, slow bosses. Otherwise there are always a better choice. Even if it’s not the best choice for high level fractal, in pugs it can be hard to melee so a lot of ppl are using scepter anyway, just in case they need to get out of melee range for some bosses.

Staff is useless. You should never ever use it in combat. The only place where you could use it is in TA to remove the blossom. Personnally, I prefer when the thief do it because taking a staff even in secondary is still limiting my dps as a Guardian.

Vespero, there is only 5 place in a party so some choice need to be made. Ranger isn’t one of the top profession, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be in speed run. Seriously the difference between 2 Ele, 1 PS Warrior, 1 Guardian and 1 Thief is really small. At this point, if people really don’t want you to bring your Ranger, either they had bad experience with them or they are just ignorant.

Also, the Guardian isn’t that useful in several dungeon where you don’t need the defensive ability to keep the party alive and efficient. In dungeon like CoF 2 Ele, 1 Warr, 1 Thief and 1 Ranger will be more useful.

I get that not everybody is good enough to play full zerker, but do you really need to take one of the most tanky gear AND some defensive trait? If zerker meta is at one extreme, you are the other extreme on the defensive side.

There is plenty of active defense that will improve your survivability a bit more, while sacrificing less dps.
- D/F build is easier to survive at a small sacrifice in term of dps. You can stay at 300 range and have a better access to swirlings wind and obsidian flesh. It also liberate the LH utility slot for either Frostbow or a cantrip. It also punish you less if you go down. With the LH build your dps drop a lot when you go down and lose your LH.
- Like Savacli said, Renewing Stamina is a huge defensive trait at a very low cost.

For your sigils, bloodlust is not that good in fractal since you won’t get the 25 stack by the end of most fractal and each time you down you lost it all. Force should be your main sigil. Fraily or Accuracy are both good choice. If you need more defense, sigil of energy is a good choice.

The old meta was to use sigil of battle and rune of hoelbrak to keep a good amount of might. After all, you are always changing kit. But with the last nerf to both the sigil of battle and might, this option isn’t as valuable as it used to be.

The main appeal of rune of vampire is both the leeching and the mist form. As a brawler you are suppose to stay alive a bit longer in team fight and the leeching help a bit. You usually want to rotate through your defensive ability to keep you alive and they are all relatively low cooldown, that mist form is usually just enough to keep you alive for your need heal, blast or tool kit block to come out of cd.

Btw. It’s one of the most difficult build to play early one. Don’t give up. You have several kits and rotation to learn and even healing you can be hard to master. But the versatility that it give you is amazing. Once you master your different kits, you will see that you have always a skill for the situation and it’s an amazing feeling

Like most ppl already said. It’s not that Warrior is a better bunker, it’s not. It’s bunker themselves that fade out of the meta and replaced by brawler.

Brawler are more versatile than Bunker. Brawler include all three celestial build for Ele, Warrior and Engineer. They usually resist a little less than a bunker, but their versatility are the key. A bunker Guardian have good support and resistance, but can’t do much else. The game is all about time and you lose time if you need to wait for the bunker to get back at mid or if the bunker walk by home useless at doing anything if the enemy capped it, he don’t have the mobility to decap far efficiently, you can’t leave him alone to cap a point or someone could get back into the point and nullified all the bunker job that can’t do anything against him. The only way a bunker help is on a point that you already have. Noboby can do that better than a bunker, but a team need a lot more than that to win and that’s why brawler pushed bunker out of the meta.

Like Saiyan said, in solo situation condition isn’t bad at all, but compare to a direct damage build in group, you gonna only have less than half the dps. The problem is how condition work for now. We’ll see how it will perform with HoT.

Now for your build specifically.

1) If you have a torch on both set you already gonna have perma burning with the F1. No need for judge intervention at all.
2) Your gear is super defensive. No problem if you need some training wheels, but that’s not a good choice if you want some performance out of your build. Sinister will be far superior or at least Carrion.
3) Runes of Baltahzar. Again you already have perma burning no need for more. Rune of the Undead could be better for you, especially if the additional toughness allow you to use Sinister gear. Alternatively you could take keep Runes of Baltahzar and remove some burning ability from your trait instead. Another option could to take a rune that give general condition duration or bleeding duration and use a sigil to give you more variety with your condition. Burning alone is a huge limiting factor.
4) Sigil of bursting is a good choice, but it’s expensive for a unoptimized build, while the sigil of burning is something you could remove with the quantity of buring you already have. Sigil of Agony + Sigil of Earth could make some better use of your condition damage. Sigil of Corruption is also a good choice for open world pve.

You over did it on the burning. Once you reach perma burning (which is the easiest thing to do with a guardian), each burning duration, trait, sigil or rune is a complete waste. You need to balance thing out to reach just perma burning with a little breathing room, but not more. The rest can go to either direct damage or other condition. You also have a terribly tanky build that handicap your already weak dps. It’s ok if you like playing like that, it will be easier, but also far longer.

TTS is another group that do triple wurm on a regular schedule.

gw2metabattle.com is a good start

You want to use grenade as your main kit. After that you have 2 others kit choose to give you burst damage skill and utilities skills between those :

- Bomb : Best for utilities (might and stealth), but also decent burst damage skill
- Elixir Gun : Best burst damage skill (but can be hard to master) and good defensive skills (heal and condi removal)
- Flamethrower : Good burst damage skill with some utilities
- Tool kit : Lowest burst damage skill, but good defensive skills

Usually people either go Elixir Gun/Bomb or Elixir Gun/Flamethrower. Bomb/Flamethrower is also a decent choice is you can’t use Acid bomb properly. And finally, people take tool kit sometime when they solo.

Like for the hundreds of exact same thread before, the end-game is what you choose in this game.

You can form a dungeon team to speed run or even record run dungeon or fractal
You can solo dungeon
You can go after achivement, legendary, gear, etc
You can go into a WvW team and do zerg bursting
You can invest your time in WvW as a lone roamer, a commander, a small roaming group, etc
You can invest your time in PvP, alone or in a team

Or you can dislike all that and spot playing and it’s ok too.

Glob of Ectoplasm
1) Dungeon won’t give you much exotic and rare to salvage. But it will give you a lot of gold and token. Those token can be transfer into rare and exotic that you can salvage. You can also use the gold to buy more glob, but I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You gonna need a lot of gold later.
2) Silverwaste either by doing events or by doing chest farm will yield a impressive amount of rare to salvage. It will at the same time give you a high amount of crafting material that you can either use directly on your legendary or sold for gold.
3) Wold Boss train is also good for that. I’m not a fan since overall it give you a little less total reward, but it can fun, especially for a new/returning player, exploring the world and fight all the world boss at least a couple times.

Karma
1) Edge of the Mist karma train is the best way. It can be hard to find a good map, but once you have one karma will rain on you. It’s also a great way to get XP and WXP.
2) You don’t need karma if you cut the middle man and go strait for the obsidian shard. The chest farm in silverwaste will eventually full your collectible with obsidian shard, it’s even faster than Edge of the Mist if you want obsidian shard directly.
3) If you want to cut the middle man even more, sPvP give you Mystic Clover at the end of some reward track. This is not as fast as the other two method, but when you do sPvP anyway because you like it, it’s a great way to advance your legendary while doing something else than farming.

1) Thief is one of the best profession in both PvP and PvE. In PvE it have the best single target damage and their stealth allow some clean and easy skipping in some dungeon. For PvP, they are a hunter killer, using their dps and mobility to chase low hp enemies. It’s a top profession for both mode.

2) Ele is probably one of the best profession in every mode. It have the best AoE Damage and burst damage for PvE, while bringing some offensive buff for the group. It’s the single best profession for PvE, but it’s super squishy meaning that you will either be dead a lot while you train with it or you use defensive gear at first to learn how to play it. For PvP, it’s one a very powerful profession, but again it’s hard to play. It’s all about timing and rotation to keep you alive.

3) Ranger use to have bad dps, but it was fixed in september last year. Now it’s the 4th best dps for PvE. It’s not a top profession in both PvP and PvE, but it’s more than decent and it’s far easier to play at first than Thief or Elementalist. For PvP, you have a couple of great build that allow you some good result even if you don’t master the profession yet.

Black Truth was quoting a PvE build in a PvE tread. If he wanted to change from PvE to PvP he should have said so.

BlackTruth.6813:

Axe/mace is NOT meta atm because there’s only a few people who can even make it work. It is much stronger than GS though when you’re good at the class.

What?? GS Axe/Mace IS meta right now. It most probably won’t be after the trait change, but that’s another story.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Solo combat and combat is still combat.

?? I’m talking about solo and group combat. If you fight with a group, you don’t need the same stuff compare to when you fight alone.

Dirame.8521:

Thaddeus.4891:

6) So mostly gear. That’s my point, you gonna need sigil and runes to be able to use that trait efficiently. That’s bad design.

Hold up mate, you clearly acknowledged my version of Piercing light and I mentioned my version of Hunter’s Fortification. Which clearly shows Trait synergy is there but then I also mentioned if you wish to ignore trait synergy, you can use runes and sigils and yet you call it bad design? Come on now, if you’re going to criticize, do it properly.

The rest of the stuff you said, I can’t really argue with because it’s your opinion. No point talking that round a circle.

If your version of Piercing Light is an adept, weakened prey a master and Hunter’s Fortification is a grandmaster then yes. That’s why my original point was that it seem your version of PL and WP are both adept, and it would be better if you buff one of those two and put it as a master.

Iris Ng.9845:

Pre-stacking might before the fight will allow to stack up to 2 minutes of fury.

And how could you do that on your own? With 10sec of fury for each blast that mean 12 blast. I guess you can by swapping weapons, but i don’t think that count. People in party have 2min because it’s not only 1 S/X ele that blast might. If you have two S/X Ele then yes you can reach 2min. But by your own in one shot you can’t.

First of all. Just because metabattle put it in the meta category doesn’t mean that it’s consider as a meta by the community. How the website work is the build is voted on a particular category. So this build was voted as the best build for open world farming so the website put it as a meta build. But nobody would say it’s meta because there is really no meta for open world.

When you see discussion about double axe, they talk about combat. Double axe is useless in combat. But switch to solo combat and then the fury from offhand axe is worth something and then put that in a big event where tagging mob become important and tadam double axe is worth using. That doesn’t change the fact that double axe is useless in group combat. That didn’t change one bit in the last 2 years.

1) I didn’t saw the CC part of what you proposed. With that it could be a good alternative for Medi Guardian. But since we lose a lot of defensive point from trait as a medi guardian, we may be better with Valor/Honor/Virtue with a berserker amulet and not Radiance/Valor/Virtue.
2) Yes it’s a trait that give damage. (btw this increased dmg is not totally true. All damage number from recent video are higher. It’s not a buff, there were just made on a higher power character). It doesn’t matter if a dps spec will do more damage with it. There is way better source of damage than that for a dps spec so he won’t use it. My point is that right now shattered aegis don’t have any place in any good build. Buffing it won’t help anything, we need to find it a build where it work well.
3) Well we disagree 100% on that. When I run from point to point in sPvP i’m usually in combat during a good portion of it. As a melee killer (medi guardian) I want to keep up with my target and right now we have very limited amount of teleport. We usually have 1 or 2 gap close that’s all.
4) I don’t see it. It doesn’t make sense build wise. Just because they are about heal doesn’t mean they need to be merge.
5) My point stand. You use AH when you are in group not solo, people will want to use your trait in group too, but it’s only self might, not that useful compare to group might. I’m not saying it’s a bad trait, but it could be better.
6) So mostly gear. That’s my point, you gonna need sigil and runes to be able to use that trait efficiently. That’s bad design.

Dirame.8521:

Which ones would those be?

Keep in mind that I’m going to keep editting that post to either add more or just make some traits more interesting.

- Zealous Scepter : There is no way to make keep this trait offensive while competing with Fiery Wrath. It need to become defensive or support or change place so it doesn’t compete with Fiery Wrath. Otherwise, Fiery Wrath will alway be better in an offensive role.

- Wrathful Spirit + Shattered Aegis : It will improve this trait, but which build will use that? It will be a bunker that would use a lot of Aegis. Either in WvW or sPvP. Trait that give aegis are found in Valor and Honor. Would you use a Valor/Honor/Zeal Bunker in sPvP? It will take mediation or shout? See, that particular trait isn’t the problem. Trait that improve aegis are all over the place and don’t work well together to form a cohesive build. You can do whatever you want with those trait, it won’t change a thing.

- Zealous Sprint : Who care about the running speed while out of combat? It’s nice when you run around the map or do map completion, but otherwise? The the in-combat speed that count, to get from point to point right after a combat in dungeon or spvp or to keep up with your target in pvp. Healing at the start of a fight his situational at best.

- Healer’s Retribution would be great on a bunker in spvp or in WvW Zerg for a tanky guys with retaliation. But nobody is using Radiance with this kind of build. It need to be in a better place like Honor. Buffing it won’t change anything on its own.

- Smiter’s Boon don’t need to be changed. It will be a super good trait for a medi guardian and don’t really have any competition in adept valor anyway. It’s perfect like it is now.

- Strength of the Altruistic : Self might is good for solo fight, either if you want a killer build (Medi guardian) or a PvE solo build. And valor is a good trait line for both these kind of build. But if you need ally to self might, that’s just useless. Group might for group fight, self might for solo fight.

- Trapped : Remove the immobilized foes cannot evade and I’m ok with that.

- Weakened Prey : Not enough source of bleed on the guardian. It would need to be in master so you can take both that trait and Piercing Light. But then Weakened Prey would need to be better if it’s a master trait. Or you can keep that trait as Adept and put Piercing Lights as a master. Then Piercing Lights should be better, like bleed on crits and from traps. Something like that.

- PvE Open world : It’s already solid there.
- PvE Dungeon : They are decent there. One thing they should have is a secondary weapon with burst skill that they can swap to during combat. A bit like the combo GS + Sw/X for the guardian. Ranger have that now with Longbow + Sw/X, but the Longbow is only worth it at the start of a fight, after it’s sword only. Sword is hard to master and it’s kind of boring. A rotation with a second bursty weapon would be nice, but I doubt staff will fill that space so let’s forget about that.
- WvW Zerg : A Druid that can support a zerg with a staff? That could be insteresting. Ranger are decent, but like the engineer it’s a second class profession for WvW zerg.
- WvW Roaming : A top melee roaming build would be nice. Ranger are backline roamer right now. They can do a great job supporting their friends with firepower, but in One vs One they are lacking.
- sPvP : They already have a hybrid Brawler, a power killer and a condition build. They are not perfect, but still decent. The only other role I could see would be a support brawler like the current Elementalist and Warrior. They have something similar with the Condition Survival build, but it doesn’t really support their team like an Elementalist or Warrior can.

So a support brawler that could work in sPvP and WvW Zerg (a bit like the Shoutbow warrior) would be my best choice and it would fit with the Staff Druid.

Dirame.8521:

You only had problems with 2 out of 17 suggestions? I guess I did pretty well!

I just pointed out the 2 that were outrageous. For the rest I didn’t saw big bad mistake that would break something. That doesn’t mean that I think these are good changes. Sorry

Some I totally agree, other I didn’t care or they would not really improve anything. Improving a bad trait doesn’t mean that it will have a use in any popular build.

Juba.8406:

Yeah but still i can see Necro GS rocking well in PvP, cant say the same for War GS.

War GS needs something extra there, like 5-target cleave on all skills minus skill #5, make it “the cleave” weapon, Mobility is great for WvW but not that good for conquest PvP.

Since War GS is lacking in sPvP, it need to cleave 5 target? Yup, all those time I can’t cleave 5 ppl bunch together in sPvP is why GS isn’t as popular, that should fix everything.

Not all weapon should be the best in all modes. War GS is already on the Top in WvW Roaming and PvE. The reason why it’s not as popular in sPvP is because it fight large. You swing around with GS #3 and 5 and that get you out of the point. You may win the fight but you will make your team lose. The same reason why D/D is decent in WvW, but not for sPvP. You can keep a point while fighting. There is no fixing that and it’s ok. There is nothing really to fix. Just different weapon, with different strength that fit different game mode.

pure.4329:

I do not agree i just test again the mace, it’s way too slow.

the #1 “faithful strike” you have a 1 second attack for few heal

the #2 this symbol have 1sec 1/4 of cast, so for the pvp mcm they have to take all the hit of the symbol to approach the damage of the sword, i mean, i like the symbol in general but this one and the hammer one are in slow motion or what ? why the GS symbol is 1/4sec and mace/hammer is 1sec+1/4sec that’s boring!!

the #3 this is the only counter of the guard and it is a failed counter, look at the other’s counter of the war/ranger or the mesmer. With a war/ranger, you can run blocking everything from the ranged and a nice counter when you’re in melee, with a mesmer you block only once BUT it is a range counter so that makes sense.

Each weapon should have a place in some mode, not be good in all modes. Mace isn’t good for WvW or in a Medi build, but it’s good in PvE or as a Bunker in sPvP. With the new trait it will be the best choice in PvE and still decent with a bunker. Mace doesn’t need an increase attack speed. If sPvP was the only game mode, then yes I would agree, but that’s not the case.

pure.4329:

But i get your point that everything except damage is pretty useless

No my point is that the strength of the guardian is his active defense, not his tanking/healing capability.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Personally I’d love to see them rework it so that it counted as a true block (block everything for say 2 seconds & interact with block traits) , then the lower damage & being rooted in place would be worth it

Or imagine if they reworked it so that it blocked a single attack then teleported you to the attacker for a multi hit counter attack.

I don’t know about the first one. It look a lot like Sword #2 for Mesmer. Maybe block everything in front of you. This will give a defensive flavor to it.

Dirame.8521:

Blinding Light
Blind also dazes and confuses enemies. 5s CD
3 Stacks of confusion for 5s
Daze 3/4s

OP Much. A GS + Sw/Focus medi guardian would become a Lockdown guardian. The only limitation here is the 5s. Leap of Faith, Flashing Blade, Ray of Judgment, F1, Renewed Focus and another F1. The internal cooldown need to be between 10 and 20sec to be balanced.

Dirame.8521:

Perfect Inscriptions:
Signets have 100% improved passive effects. 100% improved effectiveness is not at all bad since its a GM trait. And it is “Perfect Inscriptions” not “Slightly Improved Inscriptions”.

360 Power from signet of Bane or -20% incoming damage are a bit too much. The problem with Perfect Inscription is not the trait, but the signet themselves. Some are nice (passive or active), but really the vast majority of the signet for the guardian are useless. The idea behind them are ok, but just doesn’t fit with any build. That’s why the trait seem bad, but that’s just not true. They need to fix the signets themselves not try to overpower the trait to balance them.

I like Zealot’s Defense principle. Like hundred blades it’s a high risk high reward skill, the problem is that they forget to give him a high reward. Right now with the sword auto-attack your dmg is 3.21 coefficient in 2.5sec for 1.24 coefficient per second.

If you take a look at Hundred Blades it’s 5.31 coefficient in 3.5/3.75 sec (not totally sure of the aftercast) for around 1.5/1.4 coefficient per second. So Zealot’s Defense should be at least equal.

Since Zealot’s Defense take 3.5 sec, it should have around 5 of coefficient about twice as much compare to the current 2.64.

That way it would be a high burst, but it roots you in place and protect you against projectile. If they add Projectile Finisher it would be perfect. At that point they could event put the Cooldown to 20sec. It would not affect PvE because of the rotation, but it could balance thing out in PvP.

What slayerSixx said. You hit so slow that Glacial Heart will almost always be ready when you start a fight with mighty blow. You are all about burst and a 40% increased dmg on mighty blow is better than 20% critical chance. Also you don’t want to start the fight with a meditation. You usually do mighty blow and judge intervention first, maybe smite condition after, but never before.

Also you lack so much mobility that the chill is precious to keep yourself on top of your target.

I don’t think he warrior lack any new role, but several build need some help.

- Condition : He’s one of the best at that for PvE, but he’s lacking a bit in PvP.

- Dungeon meta : He’s in a great place as usual. With the change to trait he will be even more powerful, but also more boring to play. Nothing the specialisation can do about that.

- In roaming, the warrior is good there with decent variety in build (about the same as most profession).

- In WvW everything is fine.

- sPvP is where it start to hurt. Warrior isn’t in a bad place. He have one great build with the shoutbow and have more different good build than other profession like thief and necro. Still Shoutbow, Axebow, Hammerbow… They are different, but still feel too similar. Ideally, i would want to see a good condition build (like Double Kit Engi or Terrormancer) or a good killer build (like Power ranger or medi guardian)

Really? I guess they are bad at thief to then.

pure.4329:

It doesn’t mean only heal/tank but also might (soon fury) and BURN !!!

What are you talking about heal/tank. It’s protect the team, healer and tanker are average to useless in this game.

For the might/fury. Guardian can do some, but he’s just bad at it compare to other profession. He can do a decent job at self buff (especially fury), but that’s it.

pure.4329:

The mace and the Shield need a serious rework because they’re only not bad to play as a healer and even here they’re not shining.

I agree with the Shield, but mace? It’s an amazing weapon. It’s not meta now because GS + M/F is 1-3% less dps than GS + S/F, but with the new trait setup it’s Mace will replace sword.

pure.4329:

Note: i totaly don’t understand the Mobility problem of the Guardian while i’m playing with swiftness nearly 100% of the time . Remember that this is my point of view

Yes you can reach 100% swiftness uptime. But you need to sacrifice too much for that. The problem is especially big in PvP/Roaming where Medi Guardian is the slowest thing alive. A bad thing if you are a Melee killer.