“Come on, hit me!”
Thank you for the information, I’ll try to elaborate on the common problem I have with shield vs focus:
I can take more hits and have more 1v1 potential, there’s been times where my team wiped and I was able to hold the enemies off until they re spawn and came back to help me The moment I am left alone or a team mate dies, I am almost instantly down due to no protection against high burst. I’ll be forced to pop shields and use shouts just to survive the long burst, but then that leaves me vulnerable with no utilities. The moment I am focused I am dead faster than I can react.
If my dps partner roaming with me is a read the wind ranger, would you still recommend they stay close to me?
In most cases of 1v1 (where the enemy isn’t extremely bursty) you should survive well enough without even using a heal skill. In 1v2 you should be able to hold your own (regardless of your offhand) for quite a while, again conditional on the enemies not being completely burst-focused.
You should probably learn to better identify which damage and conditions you can safely ignore and which you really need to block/avoid. (By the way, which sigils do you use on your weapons?) Things like your heal, your blocks and your elite skill should be kept for the really big bursts. Also, if the enemy team has a lot of ranged players (say, 3 professions that are likely to kite you: Engineer, Ranger, some Warriors) consider swapping out one Shout for Wall of Reflection. That helps a lot against ranged bursts.
Your partner should stay close to you, at least in range of your Shouts, but preferably also on your Symbols. You miss out on a lot of extra healing if your boons aren’t reaching them.
“Come on, hit me!”
Hotjoins will always be hit or miss. I’m really confident in my ability to stay alive against multiple opponents (even successfully defending mid against two players with the wrong traits…) but some hotjoin matches just can’t be helped. If the other team is randomly more organized than you are, there’s no way you’re going to win. And people in hotjoin occasionally run builds that are a lot burstier than what you would expect in sPvP.
If you play rated matches and you get focused, your team should attack the people focusing you down with everything they got. They need to force the opponent on the defensive. With an AH build, you should always have at least one ally with you to get the most out of your build.
Specific advice for using the Focus:
- I find the Blind to be too slow to reliably prevent specific attacks, so I just use it whenever or to cleanse a condition. This probably isn’t optimal in high level play, but at my level it still works.
- Try to use the Blind close to an enemy, that way it’ll probably bounce back to you.
- The Scepter’s shield can be used when stunned and it might be beneficial for you to use it for that.
- I also try to time that shield for when I’m standing in the Mace’s Symbol or have Regeneration or Virtue of Resolve ticking, to get a good deal of uninterrupted healing trickling in.
I find it really odd that you survive significantly longer with the Shield, since when I use it I do so despite it lowering my survivability. Could you describe (in rough terms) how a fight usually goes for you?.
“Come on, hit me!”
The Focus is generally considered a lot better and with some reason. It offers more survivability than the Shield does, which is what you’re looking for when playing an AH build. The Blinds and Blocks are generally more useful than anything the Shield has to offer. On top of that, Focus can help you with some extra burst damage.
That being said, I still quite like the Shield (more than most people here). I tend to run it when I’m playing with my guild group, where the healing, the ranged absorb and the knockdown become more useful (because my group can capitalize on it). That still lets you run the Shield for only one skill (seriously, the 4 skill is horrible).
Focus is 100% superior to shield.
The problem im having with the focus right now is im really squishy with it. When I bring focus in the big fights I tend to do A LOT, my health drops incredibly fast. I haven’t been having that problem with the sheild, but what is making the focus a better option?
That shouldn’t happen. The Focus just offers more in terms of survivability. The only thing the Shield really offers is the knockback with the healing, which can give you a bit of a breather. How do you use both weapons? And is this Solo Queue, Hot Join or Group Queue? It could just be that you get focused a lot and your group isn’t helping you survive that.
“Come on, hit me!”
Whenever people suggest completely reworking the Shield I feel the need to remind them that the knockback on the Shield is actually really good. The cooldown is just too long and the skill bugs out occasionally.
“Come on, hit me!”
I tend to play Support builds (mostly build around Altruistic Healing) and that means that 1v1 is pretty hard. The build just isn’t made for doing damage, and in 1v1 damage tends to win out.
But depending on the other player’s skill and build, I can win a lot of the time, or at least drag out the fight long enough that other play gives up or reinforcements arrive. Squishier players I can solo with some ease, if they’re not too skilled.
The thing you need to understand about defensive Guardians is that they don’t play to win. They play to not lose.
“Come on, hit me!”
I am using Signet build, it is hard fight in more than 2v2 due to the lack of only one stunbreak.
IMO, keep the knockdown to 2sec but make it Stunbreak like Nec’s Well of Power.
I’m actually pretty interested in this. Would you mind sharing your build? (Maybe in another thread?)
Changing the name of Retreat! has been discussed since Beta. it’s funny how cyclical this forum is :-)
“Come on, hit me!”
You can use Save Yourselves! for even more Swiftness. Too bad I just finished exploring the world, a higher Swiftness upkeep would have done great things.
“Come on, hit me!”
The Bane Signet change is nice, but I can’t see it this increasing the number of people using Signets. (I still wonder how many people actually use Signet builds. I have this weird idea that a lot of players use them, but they’re not the sort of player that hangs around on forums.)
Retreat! is a good change. It helps the Guardian with their open-world mobility, which is great for PvE and WvW. It also brings Retreat! in-line with the power-level of the other Shouts. It wasn’t quite good enough to justify the long cooldown.
In PvP it doesn’t become more useful than any of the other Shouts.
“Come on, hit me!”
I’m not sure if I agree that roaming Guardians are useless and hopeless. They have a few drawbacks (slow as hell), but they can still contribute a lot. Granting boons and removing conditions is never not useful, neither is stacking Might, offering Swiftness and Stability or dealing good damage. (I’m not saying a single build can accomplish all those things).
You are thinking more in the “N vs N” small skirmish component of the term “roaming”, in which Guardians is ok. I was thinking more in the “solo roaming”, which means being able to cut down dolyaks, take camps and also to kill lone players without assist.
Fair point. I’ve done this on occasion and doing this is extremely annoying/difficult for Guardians.
That being said, I don’t think this is the sort of content you should balance the game about. If this is the only thing that Guardians aren’t as good at as other professions, I’d say Guardians are in a pretty good spot.
(And since I only really play Guardian, I can’t really guess at how hard this solo-roaming is for other professions.)
“Come on, hit me!”
I’m not sure if I agree that roaming Guardians are useless and hopeless. They have a few drawbacks (slow as hell), but they can still contribute a lot. Granting boons and removing conditions is never not useful, neither is stacking Might, offering Swiftness and Stability or dealing good damage. (I’m not saying a single build can accomplish all those things).
Is a Guardian required for roaming? No. But that doesn’t make them useless. Ideally, no profession should be mandatory for anything.
And, well, when roaming, you take the players you can get. You work and exploit the strengths your group does have to offer, not lament the things you can’t offer.
“Come on, hit me!”
In WvW Guardians are very wanted. They offer everything a group could possibly want: Swiftness, Stability, Condition Removal, Damage Prevention… A WvW group (no matter how big or small) will never turn down a Guardian. Even a bad or mediocre Guardian can be extremely useful.
In PvP Guardians feel more or less balanced (in my opinion and I don’t play other professions often). There are some issues with the profession, but other professions also have their own issues. The biggest problem a Guardian has in PvP is that a few other professions can fill the roles a Guardian can play and do so as effective as a Guardian for slightly less effort.
“Come on, hit me!”
It’s not horrible, but it’s worse than the other options. Either you’re giving up Mace/Shield and/or Scepter/Focus, which means taking a pretty big hit in survivability, or else you’re losing the Staff which is a pretty big source of healing and other type of support (and Line of Warding is more useful than Ring of Warding).
Other things holding it back:
- The last auto-attack hit is much too slow to use reliably.
- Banish isn’t something you want to do all that often. A lot of professions can switch to a better ranged weapon than you can. You’d have to do some pretty careful positioning to make it work properly.
- The Hammer trait that gives Chill on crits isn’t going to be reliable enough
“Come on, hit me!”
Booms means that the best teams (in North America) don’t bring Guardians anymore.
That guide is a good start if you want to play a very defensive Guardian with excellent support.
If you have specific questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
“Come on, hit me!”
I’ll try to keep my responses short.
Spirit Weapons: Whatever change you propose doesn’t change a basic fact: Spirit Weapons tend to be clunky to use. Preferably, you want them active before a fight starts, but timing them can be obnoxious (especially in PvP). Removing their cast-time would help so they’re easier to activate at the start of a fight. I’ve also seen a suggestion of modifying the Spirit Bow so it can become a proper heal skill, which I think should be worth considering.
Signet of Resolve: With the low native healthpool, Guardians need all the condition cleansing they can get. Even with Pure of Voice, three Shouts and Purity conditions can still be a problem if the opponent can apply Poison and/or Bleeding fast enough. I think Resolve is probably the only Signet that doesn’t need changing.
Shield: I like that you’re not making suggestions that get rid of Shield of Absorption. That skill is what makes a Shield worth using.
Mace: Protector’s Strike already hits for enough that skilled opponents won’t attack while you’re using it. I’m not sure it needs improvement.
If I haven’t commented on a skill, it’s either because I didn’t have anything to say or because I liked your suggestion. I didn’t comment on the traits because I don’t want to get into trait balance discussions.
“Come on, hit me!”
The problem with AH builds is that they only work well if your tem is around. In soloq where everyone runs off and leaves you at mid by yourself you are better off going with a medi build.
I find my solo-survivability pretty decent (except when being focused by two players with a combination of either Rangers and/or Thieves). Long enough for even randoms in the solo-queue to come to my assistance. I haven’t had too many bad experiences with it. YMMV, of course.
“Come on, hit me!”
I think Dondagora already defended the existence of meta-builds well enough, so I won’t repeat that.
A bad player won’t become good because of a meta-build. They’ll probably become better, since they have a more coherent build, but a build alone isn’t enough. You need to know much more, have much more skill than just mapping out the correct traits. And creating a build is a different skillset from playing properly, so I don’t see it as a big problem that people can easily find effective builds.
And the existence of meta-builds is kinda hard to overcome. There are only so many skill and trait combinations you can make effective, which is narrowed down by the fact that some skills, weapons and traits are just plain useless. If you add a weapon for each profession, or rework the bad traits, the builds will adapt and you’ll see the meta changing. But you’ll still end up with a meta of two or three builds per profession. You see the same with Magic: The Gathering: When new cards are added to Standard, you briefly see a lot of people trying out new decks, but relatively quickly you’ll see meta-decks pop into existence.
“Come on, hit me!”
How are you measuring this?
I mean, Shouts and Meditation fill completely different niches, making direct comparisons in their effectiveness kinda hard.
“Come on, hit me!”
I mostly play PvP and WvW, so this reply is from those perspectives:
I’ve always enjoyed being a support class: I played Holy Priest in WoW, a Cleric in D&D, a Medic in Team Fortress 2… so a Guardian was a natural pick for me.
I never really enjoyed dealing damage and I like reactive playstyles. A Shout-based bunker build fills this niche for me. I need to hold off on certain skills, save them for the most opportune time. I’m maybe not constantly pushing buttons, but my mind is always planning ahead, trying to predict what I should do next.
In WvW I enjoy that I am supporting my team, making them live longer, stacking Might to increase their damage, using Swiftness to help all our mobility…
I also get a lot of satisfaction from trapping people with Line and Ring of Warding and kicking them away with Banish.
“Come on, hit me!”
It really depends on what you want to accomplish. Shouts are great for defending a point, while Meditations are great for blowing people up. I don’t know the meta well enough to say what’s currently better.
“Come on, hit me!”
This is a great suggestion (and additional thanks for the 360 degree protection tip). I tried it out today and the Rangers didn’t know what hit them.
I did feel it lowered my survivability a bit when fighting other professions, but trade-offs need to be made.
“Come on, hit me!”
I haven’’t quite figured this out myself, but I’ve had small successes by running of the point out of their range, forcing them into melee combat.
“Come on, hit me!”
I’ve tried running the Hammer, but it made me way squishier than I’m comfortable with.
“Come on, hit me!”
For WvW I use Staff and Hammer in my support build. Greatsword is also an option. I don’t like the one-handers in WvW, but they might work.
“Come on, hit me!”
Staff is the premier support weapon, so you’ll probably want that.
Most Guardian weapons (apart from the Scepter) offer some support, so you can choose which weapon suits you best.
What sort of content are you looking at?
“Come on, hit me!”
A pretty basic Altruistic Healing build. I guess the major chance to the standard is that I prefer the Shield. It doesn’t do a lot of damage but can take quite a beating and helps your allies kill someone. I mostly do point-defense on my own, so this is perfect.
“Come on, hit me!”
One person to far is often a good idea actually
A Ranger as example, can still pressure a point when it is off-point while it draws people to chase it off-point, when they aren’t able to maintain pressure on-point
It can be a strong tactic in the opening of a match to easily/quickly take mid and keep them from rushing home
Solo far-rush isn’t really about taking far, it’s more about the pressure
Just know when to disengage and head back to mid
True, but it requires a level of coordination and cooperation you can’t expect when playing with strangers.
“Come on, hit me!”
At first glance, it seems good…unless you’ve actually been in an 8v8. It’s basically Mini WvW. And that’s a bad thing.
I remain confident that 8v8 can be a lot of fun. Smaller group combat in WvW is also pretty fun (probably the most fun I have in WvW).
It’s just that the maps aren’t very suited for this sort of combat.
“Come on, hit me!”
Metas do shift. It’s an important part of metas.
Although I feel that the shifting is pretty slow. In tPvP at least.
“Come on, hit me!”
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but my time exclusively doing hotjoin gave me a lot of skills that transferred when starting tPvP. (Anecdotal evidence, I know.)
And I stand by what I said: The maps we have are unsuited for 8v8. Points like the Graveyard are alright in size, but the smaller points became a cluster of particle effects that makes it near impossible to play at melee range. It heavily favors ranged builds.
I’d love to see 8v8 and I’m okay with it being an option. But with the current selections of maps I probably won’t play it often.
“Come on, hit me!”
Yep 8v8 was way more fun and you had be much more situationally aware than the tedium of 3 capping points and 5 players to watch (sometimes 4 players). Hmmm really hard to learn. Dudes goes here so you go there. When 2 dudes go there you go here. Tricky stuff.
Yeah, sure, let’s pretend that’s all you need to know as a beginning player.
A Bunker needs to learn how to defend against two (or three) players, which is unlikely to happen in 8v8. A mobile player needs to learn to escape from just a couple of players which, again, is unlikely to happen in 8v8. The amount of CC is just bigger.
8v8 requires a different skillset (and different builds) than 5v5 (even when playing on the same maps). We can’t pretend this isn’t the case.
I’m not against a game-mode that focuses more on team fights. Team fights are fun. But I don’t think that game-mode should happen at the cost of the 5v5 hotjoin games.
“Come on, hit me!”
In my experience, the maps didn’t work all that well with 8v8. Maybe with dedicated 8v8 maps it could work.
What Steb points out is also important: Currently hotjoins can be sorta used to learn your role and profession in an arena that is rather similar to tPvP. And since tPvP is 5v5, you need a more casual environment where you can also play 5v5.
“Come on, hit me!”
I haven’t encountered a lot of Turret Engis, so I gave them a quick try. Not enough to master it or anything, but just enough to get a feel of what they are capable and how they played. So this isn’t me pretending I know everything, just sharing what I noticed.
First observation: I personally find it pretty boring to play. Part of it is probably because I didn’t play very in-depth and didn’t have time to learn all the intricacies that are going on, but another part is definitely because once your turrets are down, you don’t have to do all that much.
Second observation: You exaggerated having the worst mobility in the game. I normally play a Bunker Guardian and my mobility is definitely worse. The trade-off is that while playing Engi I needed to manage my health and dodges a lot better. It is true that if you move away from a fight, you can’t do a whole lot because it means leaving your turrets behind. But you have some options for closing in on an enemy or putting some distance between them.
Third observation: I didn’t deserve to win that fight. I promise I went in with an open mind. As I said, I hardly had any experiences with Turret Engi’s so I didn’t know what to expect. Still, I won a couple of fights that I definitely didn’t deserve. Where I messed up completely because I don’t know all the skills yet. And still I won. The other player probably also didn’t know what they were doing, I guess.
Fourth Observation: So this is what a decent Elite skill looks like :-D
I do agree with Epidemix Revenge that there’s more to it than just plopping down your turrets and auto-attacking. I’m convinced that there’s skills to learn, such as knowing when to use a turret and when to keep the utility, knowing where to best place each turret (although I’m not sure how much this matters), getting a feel for the location of each turret so you can time their explosion, some degree of crowd control…
That being said, it did definitely feel like I had to put in less effort to come to similar results as on my Guardian. It’s a lot less active and you have more options for keeping an enemy of a point and discouraging them to come back. And you mentioned being able to reliably kill both people when fighting 1v2. I don’t think that the proper reward compared to how well you can hold a point. Again, I’m coming at this from a Guardian perspective, where I’m generally unable to kill someone if I properly want to control a point.
“Come on, hit me!”
I prefer it, yes. As I said, it’s personal preference and a lot of people swear by the Focus.
“Come on, hit me!”
So i’I’ve been trying your version and I’m starting to like shelter now, I also switched the focus for the shield and im really enjoying the shield too for some reason. Perhaps its the bubble, but I find it really helps.
Shield instead of Focus is a personal preference. I started using Shield because I run Hammer when doing hotjoin and was really missing the knockback.
I’m glad it’s working out for you.
You use hammer and shield with this AH build?
Mace and Shield. The Hammer is only for hotjoin, where you don’t need as much survivability because the teams are less coordinated. The Hammer is fun, but it doesn’t offer enough for tPvP.
“Come on, hit me!”
I think a community can nurture a friendly atmosphere. It only takes a couple of people to set a good example and shun those that misbehave.
I recently came back to this game and after a couple of weeks of getting my moves back on in hotjoin I decided to do something more serious. Before the match I stated that I was still learning and wouldn’t mind if people gave me hints or told me what to do. Instead of constructive criticism, I was yelled down when I made a mistake. Now, I’ve played enough games over the years and my skin is thick enough so I can handle some name-calling, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s also a good way to scare away newer players, making the community stale and even more obnoxious.
And there’s a difference between trash talking and insulting. Trash talking is done out of some mutual respect and to play headgames. You should at least have some connections with the person you are trash talking to. If you’ve played a couple of games against the same opponent, and they’ve indicated they recognize you, it can be fun to diss them somewhat. But keep in mind that tone is hard to convey in text communication. Err on the side of caution.
If you’re talking down to a player on your team or to someone you have no connection to, that’s creeping closer to the line of verbal abuse and is more likely to hurt the other person than to improve their game.
One part of trash talking is that you’re also willing to tell the recipient they did a good job at the end of the match, or offer constructive criticism. If at the start of the match you’re all like: “You guys couldn’t even kill a pack dolyak,” but at the end of the match you’re like: “Thanks for the good fight.” I think that’s okay.
Err on the side of being too friendly, though. You’ve literally got nothing to lose by being nice or staying quiet.
“Come on, hit me!”
So i’I’ve been trying your version and I’m starting to like shelter now, I also switched the focus for the shield and im really enjoying the shield too for some reason. Perhaps its the bubble, but I find it really helps.
Shield instead of Focus is a personal preference. I started using Shield because I run Hammer when doing hotjoin and was really missing the knockback.
I’m glad it’s working out for you.
“Come on, hit me!”
The Torch isn’t absolutely terrible, but pretty much all the alternatives are better. It’s a shame really.
“Come on, hit me!”
Well, that’s my experience at least. I can get some bursty Thieves or Rangers down (if they have low Toughness), but most professions are unkillable by me.
Your main goal is indeed to stall a fight and keep others alive while they focus on the killing. You should definitely help with this by always doing something, even if it’s only auto-attacking.
Signet of Resolve does heal for a lot more, but the block from Shelter makes up for that discrepancy. If you time it right, you can block more damage than you could heal with the Signet. If the Signet works for you, by all means, use the Signet. But you mentioned things weren’t working that well, so give Shelter another chance.
“Come on, hit me!”
(contd.)
Other Skills:
Shelter: The appropriate use of Shelter can be hard to learn (I’m still learning it myself). Of course it’s a heal and you should probably use it to heal yourself, but sometimes the block is more valuable than the heal. Early in the fight you might use it even if you haven’t lost a lot of life to stop a significant amount of burst damage.
Hold the Line!: This is probably your main way to get rid of conditions. Of course, the regeneration and protection are still important, but since you’ll constantly be getting hit, they tend to be always relevant. Which leads to a word on removing conditions: Not all conditions are created equal. A burn from another bunker Guardian is generally safe to ignore. One to three stacks of bleeding as well. And generally speaking, movement impairment skills, such as cripple, can be ignored as well (you’re not very mobile anyway). Poison and Chill are pretty devastating, since they interfere with your ability to heal, but you need to wait for opportune times to remove them. Poison, for example, is best removed right before a heal, so the heal goes off without another poison being applied. Be sure to take note of what conditions you can generally shrug off and which need to be cleansed and when.
Hold the Line!: Stability is one of the most powerful abilities in PvP. It’s main use is to stomp someone without being interrupted, but it can also help to get an Empower off, revive an ally, help an ally (or yourself) pass a Line of Warding or shrug of an enemy that uses a lot of interrupts (such as certain Warriors or Engineers)…
Save Yourselves!: There’s a reason this has such a long cooldown. It breaks stuns, gives you a lot of extra boons and (in this build) removes two conditions as well. Try to hold it for when you really need it. Only in very dire situations should this be used just to cleanse some conditions.
Renewed Focus: First of all, make sure your Virtues are all on cooldown (and won’t come off cooldown right before you use this skill). Its main use is to stop burst skills. (Identifying burst is something you’ll learn over time.) Try not to use it if you’re already really low (like, less than 1000 hp) because that doesn’t work out too well all that often. Your Virtues are pretty powerful (if used right) and Renewed Focus can make a big difference.
Virtue of Justice: Mainly use this for the AoE blind. Can be useful for getting a stomp off.
Virtue of Resolve: The heal is pretty decent, but I tend to prefer the healing over time, so I only use this when I have no other options or right before I use Renewed Focus.
Virtue of Courage: I personally find this the hardest Virtue to use right. You should try to time it for hard-hitting skills that only hit once.
And in general: practice, practice, practice. And learn when you can’t win a fight. Some fights you won’t win, no matter what. Better to retreat and regroup or attack another point.
“Come on, hit me!”
I run a build similar to yours and I’m getting good results.
1vX is really just a matter of outlasting until your team comes to help you out. When I queue on my own I can get focused down really quick if the players are somewhat competent, but if I queue with a guildie who’s quick to help me out, things are widely better. So when you’re on your own, don’t expect to win a fight. The best you can do is not lose it.
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s move on to your build:
First of all use Shelter. There’s virtually no reason to use Signet of Resolve instead, in a Bunker build. Block incoming attacks during the cast time is just that good.
And maybe you’re using the Signet because you don’t have Purity, but I’d sooner drop Strength in Numbers than Purity. Picking up the extra damage and healing for the Mace isn’t a bad thing.
If you want inspiration, here is my build.
On to playstyle:
As I said above, your goal (when alone) is not to win fights, it’s to not lose them. In 1v1 this should be relatively easy (although some professions will still be able to give you a hard time) and 1v2 should be doable. Against players that aren’t too awesome 1v3 is manageable for a minute or so. In team fights, you should still focus on keeping yourself alive. Each ability you use for yourself will help the other members of your team, so if you’re just starting out don’t think too much about using your skills specifically to help them.
I’ll give a breakdown on how to use each skill in your build so you know how to use them (excluding auto-attacks because those are just filler).
Weapon Skills:
Symbol of Faith: Use this to generally increase your sustainability. The main use (for you) is the healing it gives. The damage is mostly incidental. It has a slow cast time, so try to only use it when you’re not being focuses down (yet) or to bait an interrupt.
Protector’s Strike: This is a pretty versatile skill, but most of the time you’re going to use it to block melee attacks. This does fair damage, so try to land the counterattack. I believe it does block ranged attacks, but try to use it to block big melee blows.
Ray of Judgment: Blinds are pretty powerful, but can be unreliable. Use it when you think your enemy is winding up a big attack. Try to be close to that enemy to get the most out of the effect (the cleanse and the regeneration). The tracking can be unreliable as well, so don’t count on anything but the blind and the cleanse.
Shield of Wrath: Most of the time you’re going to use it to block attacks. It’s especially useful if you want to do things that need to get through, such as stomping or ressing, or occasionally when you really need the heal of Empower.
Orb of Light: Pretty useless. You can use it to harass ranged enemies before they reach you or in a pinch you can explode for the heal or some burst. Be sure to have an enemy targeted when you use it, because it has a tendency to float towards the ground when you don’t have a target.
Symbol of Swiftness: The most important use of this Symbol is using it before the match starts. Try timing it so everyone on your team has the maximum duration. This will make a difference, especially if the other team can’t do it for whatever reason. Other uses are: tagging players running towards you so they start moving slower already, giving boons for Altruistic Healing, or incidental damage. My favorite use is probably to start stacking swiftness approximately 4 seconds before I cap a point if I know I have to move on to a different point right after the cap. (For example when capping Far but needing to go help at Mid asap.)
Empower: This skill is critical. Even when you’re on your own the heal is very meaningful and with allies near it becomes a whole lot better. It’s not as good a skill to use when you’re already low (you can die while channeling it) so try to use it when you’re about half your health. Empower is a key interrupt target. Sometimes you need to land it (because your other means of healing are on cooldown) and in those cases it might be worth casting Stand Your Ground before (or during) Empower.
Line of Warding: Very useful. Despite it being very visible, people still run into it all the time. At it worst, it forces the opponent to use Stability or some other movement skill and it best it knocks an enemy down and interrupts a skill. Before the fight begins, I use it to slow the approach of opponents. During the fight, I put it in the middle of the point (works best for small points). You can also place it on a player trying to ress someone so they get interrupted.
“Come on, hit me!”
As pointed out, your health is really low. In WvW you will end up dying a lot (I have a tendency to get focused), but 13k health will lead to you dying much more. I run Soldier gear which has worked well for me.
The Sigil that renews your endurance on weapon swap is pretty great, for a variety of reasons. The heal on dodge gets triggered more, you take less damage and it encourages you to switch weapons often (which is important because with the Staff you’ll generally end up just firing off all cooldowns and then switching back to your other weapon).
I also agree that Two-Handed Mastery is a better option. In general, it’s going to be a lot more relevant than the incidental healing from your Symbols. Same goes for Consecration Mastery.
In terms of Battle Presence vs Pure of Voice, I’d opt for Pure of Voice. This is a personal thing and if Battle Presence works best for you, play with that. I like the ability to pop of annoying conditions on the fly, but if you don’t mind being Chilled all that much, the extra healing could be nice.
“Come on, hit me!”
I know, but some builds can fill specific niches that can fill holes in your team, or they’re more fun to play for certain people, or sometimes you just want to play along a certain gimmick. I figured we could use a place to discuss those sort of builds.
“Come on, hit me!”
I’ve wanted to make a thread like this for a while, after testing out a bunch of silly gimmick decks. Since recent discussion touched on this subject, I’m gonna go ahead and create it without my notes. (Meaning I’ll post my builds later.)
This thread is for posting builds that might not be optimal, but set out to accomplish a specific goal. Maybe you’ve created a build for exploring all the maps, maybe you’ve created a build that’s intended to have as many interrupts as possible… This is the place to post your build, explain what you wanted to do with it and how well it works.
“Come on, hit me!”
Builds in this game aren’t exactly hard. After picking the role you want, most of the (actually viable) traits become useless.
We shouldn’t pretend building is hard or that it requires significant amounts of skill or that by using an established build you are bad.
Meta builds become meta for a reason: because they are consistently successful. Experimental builds generally work in more narrow situations or counter specific builds but are weak against others. The rare case they are actually better than a meta build, they become a meta build.
And if you have fun experimenting: by all means. I also enjoy some experimentation in sPvP and maybe we should have a post grouping that sort of builds. But please don’t imply people are bad or stupid because they don’t experiment.
“Come on, hit me!”
This post is virtually useless unless you’re going to share the build.
“Come on, hit me!”
Hammer/Greatsword is one of the best combinations a Guardian has to offer and is flexible enough to work with a lot of builds.
What sort of content are you looking at for this build?
“Come on, hit me!”
The trait isn’t necessarily useless so much as signets themselves are. Like spirit weapons, signet builds have never really found a place in any meta. Unlike spirit weapons, however, Anet still hasn’t taken notice of this and done anything about it.
I was wondering recently whether the metrics Anet has access to actually show Signets as underused by Guardians. I’m thinking that maybe during leveling or easier solo-content a (silent) majority of players might actually opt for Signets, since they don’t require a lot of upkeep to make work.
“Come on, hit me!”
I’ve experimented with Signets while building around “high annoyance” in sPvP. This trait is relatively uselss compared to other traits (especially at that level), but if you’re taking a lot of Signets (say 3), you forgo almost all reliable condition removal. This is a way to shore that up. It’s not uncommon (both here and in other games) to have a final trait to be something that tones down a weakness of that build.
“Come on, hit me!”
It’s a bit dependent on the gamemode you enjoy, but Shouts and Meditations are probably our best features. Spirit Weapons have gotten a recent buff, but early reports tend to emphasize their uselessness (although the Bow heals quite nicely now). Signets are still very meh. Consecrations are useful in their niches.
Weapons-wise, most options are viable (again, depending on what sort of game you prefer), but some only have niche uses or only shine in particular playstyle.
If you tell us what you’d like to play with, I’m sure we can help you out.
“Come on, hit me!”