Guild Wars 2

Can’t stress getting 15 Radiance enough. It completely negates the attacks of many difficult Veteran enemies, making it possible to solo them with ease.

Guys… The pastebin file dates to December. It’s already three months out of date, if it’s even legit. Just because it’s on pastebin doesn’t make it a legit leak.

For leveling I would stay away from Healway and AH style builds. Those rely heavily on traits that you won’t have until level 60. They also won’t do much good at all against some of the veterans and champions you will encounter out in the open world and in your personal story, simply because they will hit you harder than you can possibly heal out of.

I leveled two guardians to 80. I had the most luck with Hammer as a main weapon. 5 Honor is a good first trait to pick up for the Vigor, which will let you dodge more frequently. Beyond that, there are a couple of routes you can go. For leveling, getting 15 Radiance and 5 Virtues opens up a very important Guardian trait synergy, allowing you to AoE blind with Virtue of Justice, which also gives you 3 stacks of Might, and recharges every time you kill something. Very good for survivability and increasing your damage.

Aside from that, Greatsword is also pretty good. Having Hammer/Greatsword on you means you can swap to the Greatsword for some crowd control from 5, AOE blind on 3, and then burst damage from 2, then swap to Hammer for its superior autoattack damage and constant Protection boon. Swapping back and forth gives you the best of both worlds.

It was posted in December. I really doubt it is current.

Short answer: start with a proven build, then retrofit with whatever burning you want.

Burning specific builds are generally terrible. Some of the better combinations are Permeating Wrath + AoE weapons like Hammer and Greatsword, and the 15 Radiance 5 Virtues synergy which allows for spammable Justice. Purging Flames is also excellent for burn uptime and is very AoE to boot.

Rule of thumb: unless you’re applying multiple damaging conditions (confuse, bleed, burn, torment, and poison) do not put condition damage into your build. Since Guardians only have one by default, it’s a bad idea. Runes and sigils which apply conditions don’t do so to a large enough degree to make it worth while either.

Signets are also really bad, except for Judgement for the stunbreak and Bane for the DPS boost – but those are only worth picking up as a last resort or if you straight up don’t need and of the actually good utilities.

Avoid Valor like the plague, it’s usefulness is very much in doubt as compared to Virtues, Honor, and Radiance.

Bring Zeal 10 → Fiery Wrath, basically always. It’s a giant damage boost.

A good burning build that I use regularly is 10/0/0/30/30 Hammer Symbols and Permeatjng Wrath. 100% Protection uptime makes it good party support, 100% AoE Burning uptime that bypasses cleave limits make it excellent at AoE as well. Not so good on bosses in dungeons but it demolishes open world events. For Dungeons I recommend not bothering with burn builds at all. If you insist though, one good option is 10/25/0/5/30 or if you don’t need the Vigor 15/25/0/0/30. Any weapon with good AoE for the former, Hammer for the latter.

spoj.9672:

foofad.5162:

spoj.9672:

Knights is better than soldier because you keep the crit chance. Crit is important. Btw when doing fractals you should either switch to 10/25/0/10/25 or the hammer build. Vigor will help with your survivability.

Well, no. Semantically I would pick a fight with you and say that it’s not better, just different – You trade a (very small) amount of effective power for additional effective hitpoints from HP, when you compare Knights to Soldiers.

But I am also disinclined to agree on the basis of efficiency, as well. If you compare the ratio of effective hitpoints to effective power, Soldiers has a rather marked advantage in that way. Also, being a power-primary stat loadout, you get a larger benefit from Fury than you otherwise would.

Comparing the following:

Knights
versus Soldiers

You see the initial gulf between the two is 215.21 Effective Power. With Fury, the gulf actually narrows to 185.37 Effective Power due to higher Power from Soldier. That in and of itself is interesting, but there is also that improvement in the conversion of Effective Power to EHP: You get 3.33 points of EHP per Power with Soldiers, and only 2.75 EHP per Power with Knights.

There is about an 11% difference in critical chance which will reduce your burst potential somewhat, but when you do crit, it will be harder due to the Power increase Soldier has over Knight. There’s also the matter of condition resilience, which is improved with Soldier gear due to the addition of Vitality.

Yes, you will do more damage with Knights. I’m not saying you won’t. But in terms of efficiency and maximizing your gain for your investment of damage, Soldiers is in my opinion a far better choice.

Im aware of the maths in terms of effective power. But crit chance is important for things like vigor procs and so on. Also its probably better to get used to guard with low hp and decent toughness than to go overboard and full faceroll it.

This build doesn’t have Honor 5. If it did, 38% crit chance would be more than enough to proc it on cooldown.

As far as the l2p issue goes, I don’t see any reason to intentionally make an inefficient gear choice just to handicap yourself and force yourself to play better.

spoj.9672:

Knights is better than soldier because you keep the crit chance. Crit is important. Btw when doing fractals you should either switch to 10/25/0/10/25 or the hammer build. Vigor will help with your survivability.

Well, no. Semantically I would pick a fight with you and say that it’s not better, just different – You trade a (very small) amount of effective power for additional effective hitpoints from HP, when you compare Knights to Soldiers.

But I am also disinclined to agree on the basis of efficiency, as well. If you compare the ratio of effective hitpoints to effective power, Soldiers has a rather marked advantage in that way. Also, being a power-primary stat loadout, you get a larger benefit from Fury than you otherwise would.

Comparing the following:

Knights
versus Soldiers

You see the initial gulf between the two is 215.21 Effective Power. With Fury, the gulf actually narrows to 185.37 Effective Power due to higher Power from Soldier. That in and of itself is interesting, but there is also that improvement in the conversion of Effective Power to EHP: You get 3.33 points of EHP per Power with Soldiers, and only 2.75 EHP per Power with Knights.

There is about an 11% difference in critical chance which will reduce your burst potential somewhat, but when you do crit, it will be harder due to the Power increase Soldier has over Knight. There’s also the matter of condition resilience, which is improved with Soldier gear due to the addition of Vitality.

Yes, you will do more damage with Knights. I’m not saying you won’t. But in terms of efficiency and maximizing your gain for your investment of damage, Soldiers is in my opinion a far better choice.

Soldiers armor is fine. I prefer it to Knights actually. You get more Power from Sharpening Stones than Knights does, which means you lose less damage than you think.

I’d keep the traits the same though. RHS will only help you with the sword, where as the Virtue trait improves your damage regardless. Plus, the way multipliers work, the more the merrier.

There are several two-tone dyes out there that may be able to simulate that effect. Most are in the brown and red families. I’m thinking of Maple, Heirloom, things like that. Experiment – you can look up the dye list on the wiki, and search on the TP, and preview them from there.

Same deal with Protector’s Strike. Aegis always comes off first, regardless of the block used. Very annoying.

Perfect Inscriptions is terrible, as is Signet of Wrath. I’d replace that ASAP.

Keep Purging Flames, it’s excellent condi removal.

Consider bringing additional conditions through Sigils. Geomancy would be a good one to put on both of your sets rather than more duration.

I also question your rune choices. You would be better served, I think, by getting a set that gives Poison on hit, or perhaps taking 4 Perplexity and then getting some jewels for the last two. With that much condition damage Perplexity would hit pretty hard.

Awe, thanks =] 2.0 is done, doing a proofing pass and re-checking numbers and then I’ll update it.

Scryed.9423:

I know it’s all personal preference and stuff but I figured I’d share because not everyone dislikes it! I actually think it helps the looks on some shields. The lovestruck one is a bummer, and after buying one I split it off and put it in the bank, I think its one of the few ones that doesn’t work well with it.
I do agree with some reworking of the skills but that might be for another topic thread thing.

Not only does it clip with the wolf’s head in Braham’s Shield, it isn’t even centered properly.

Aegis is the devil. I wish you could turn it off.

This thread pops up every couple of weeks. I feel your pain.

Perfect Inscriptions is horrible. Generally speaking you want to avoid signets, but even besides that, PI is just a waste. Drop it for 5 more points in Virtues.

Also you have Master of Consecrations and no consecrations. Switch the signets for Purging Flames and WoR as needed, otherwise your 3rd slot is a wildcard.

Generally, Staff isn’t particularly useful in groups with Warriors or anyone else that can stack might; they can do it easier than you, and without tanking their DPS by switching to the Staff, which is awful for damage. You’d be better off switching Staff to something else, like Sword/Focus, to make use of another blind with your Blind Exposure.

If you drop Signet of Resolve for Shelter, you can use Shelter proactively to block incoming hits which, combined with the healing, will often provide enough combined damage healed and mitigated to outheal Resolve. That will open up another Radiance trait – which will allow you to keep Blind Exposure, but also pick up Powerful Blades. With Powerful Blades and a Sword, you’ll have a solid Autoattack DPS weapon for swapping to while your Greatsword WW is on cooldown.

No. You’re probably confusing Mighty Blow with Banish, is all I can figure.

Well, don’t throw them away – whenever that balance patch happens they’ll probably get just as significant a reworking as everything else.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Basically this. Use Soldier gear as a substitute for Berserker as needed until you get comfortable with the class. Remember that people like you in dungeons because of what you bring to the party, though – that means great reflection (Wall of Reflection), great condition clearing (Purging Flames, Absolute Resolution) and access to Stability (Stand Your Ground). All of that, plus damage, makes you very valuable in dungeons.

There’s no such thing as a tank in this game. You can’t control agro. You can bring just as much support with DPS gear as you can with non-DPS gear.

All of that said though, there is room for variation in almost every scenario, even high end Fractals. There are promising things happening with Zealot’s gear, and Celestial gear is possibly going to get a slight buff in the next major balance patch. The main thing to remember is that the goal is to kill the dungeon boss, and as such you should always make sure that you’re contributing to your party’s damage. But a lot of parties don’t really care what you bring, and the ones that do will advertise as such. So you do have some wiggle room.

Have you isolated what causes you to get the 5 stack procs yet?

By the way, according to the wiki the duration bonuses on the runes are broken. I don’t know if that makes a difference to you or not.

If you’re looking for more interrupts I would consider a Greatsword over Staff. Binding Blade is a lot easier to land than the often easily avoided Line. About the best you can hope for with Line is catching zergs as they run through breaches. It’s not very useful in duels unless you get really lucky or you’re fighting someone pretty new.

You’ll keep some mobility, gain a blind, retain a symbol for healing, and an easily controllable interrupt.

You can always keep a hammer in your inventory to swap to when you don’t need to move much.

If you aren’t going to bring any interrupts, there’s really no reason to bring the 6 slot bonus with Perplexity. Go ahead and drop that. You can probably come up with something better for the 5 slot too, even though you’d lose some condition damage.

Normally I don’t like giving up Power for Condi, but this is a neat build. Try it out.

eta: I really dislike Purity and it’s pretty unnecessary if you carry both PF and AR. Consider replacing it with Strength in Numbers, or since you’re running Shelter, even Defender’s Flame.

Crapgame.6519:

foofad.5162:

Amins.3710:

^^ Not really, but ok. =]

I mean, not everyone plays the same way as you. That really is okay.

Which is just as well, because as far as I can tell all you do anymore is be negative on the forums.

I wouldn’t say that. You can tell by his videos and builds he has several. My guess is that any class he is rolling with at the moment has multiple. The game sort of forces us all to anyway. It isn’t like we can just park our character in a set of traits and gear and expect it to always work the same. It just doesn’t.

Now, I can see the argument of having another Guardian or whatever class you play to save time. It just isn’t something I’d do but I’m not going to bash someone over it.

Personally I have a character that I experiment on and use for everything, and another that Just Works when it comes to dungeons. When I just need to run a dungeon, I hop on the latter. The former is for funsies.

Amins.3710:

^^ Not really, but ok. =]

I mean, not everyone plays the same way as you. That really is okay.

Which is just as well, because as far as I can tell all you do anymore is be negative on the forums.

Amins.3710:

foofad.5162:

LetoII.3782:

jihm.2315:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Question: Does having 2 Guardians make you better/more experienced than someone who has 1 Guardian only? If yes, how?

Not targeting anyone in particular here, but I honestly think someone who has clocked 3000 hours into playing Guardian is more experienced at playing one than someone who has clocked in 150 hours on each of their 2 Guardians. This is just my opinion though. I just dont get how having 10 different lvl80 Guardians is a measure of you having more experience than others at playing Guardian.

changing sets is costy i have two different guardians with different playstyle thats all

6s to retrait?
I have 3 20slot boxes of gear for my guardian, I change builds to match my group comp. not sure what you mean by “costy”.
do plz elaborate

You basically just explained it yourself. Why buy a ton of gear when you can just swap characters to one that is ready to go?

lol – what?

You still have to buy the gear.

And the amount of time it takes to level up a character…. vs the 6s to respec…. you could have just (now, i’m not saying this, but..) pve’d to pay for your respecs for a year, inthe same amount of time.

the ONLY reason to make a second guardian (class) is because you don’t like the race.

I have 5 guardians.

I have 1 guardian w/ 5 sets of gear.

lol

The person I was clarifying for has two guardians because swapping sets and specs costs money and time. It makes sense to have a Guardian that you WvW with basically the same spec every time and a Guardian who uses various PvE specs that you might change around from time to time but largely remains the same. It’s a playstyle thing.

Perfect Inscriptions is never worth it. Switch to RHS to make your Scepter into more of a DPS tool. You’re also neglecting one of the core synergies of the Guardian class – you’ve got full Radiance but don’t have 5 in Virtues to make use of spammable VoJ.

Other than that, you suffer from the same problem all condi builds do for Guardians: No utility at all, and very poor condition removal. Consider dropping JI or SoR for Purging Flames, or something.

My Norn female floats in the air while casting it. It’s pretty epic as balls.

LetoII.3782:

jihm.2315:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Question: Does having 2 Guardians make you better/more experienced than someone who has 1 Guardian only? If yes, how?

Not targeting anyone in particular here, but I honestly think someone who has clocked 3000 hours into playing Guardian is more experienced at playing one than someone who has clocked in 150 hours on each of their 2 Guardians. This is just my opinion though. I just dont get how having 10 different lvl80 Guardians is a measure of you having more experience than others at playing Guardian.

changing sets is costy i have two different guardians with different playstyle thats all

6s to retrait?
I have 3 20slot boxes of gear for my guardian, I change builds to match my group comp. not sure what you mean by “costy”.
do plz elaborate

You basically just explained it yourself. Why buy a ton of gear when you can just swap characters to one that is ready to go?

DeathPanel.8362:

foofad.5162:

DeathPanel.8362:

It would only be possible if the next patch changes on crit condition sigils to be 100% chance to proc condition on crit. Innate condition effects from guardians are terrible compared to other classes.

It’s the ICD that renders those sigils (and runes) uninteresting, not the crit chance requirement.

It’s one of the things but not the main thing. 33% chance on each crit for example means your chances of proccing it is low even if you focus your build on crit chance especially if you are in a pvp situation where most of your attacks end up getting evaded or blocked anyway. It just so happens that having ICD as well further nerfs it into uselessness.

No, it’s the ICD. If you run another sigil with a longer cool down, such as an on-swap, then for the entire duration of that cooldown your on-crit sigil will not function no matter how high the proc rate. In other words if you want to run it at all you have to make sure it’s the only sigil with a cooldown you use. That’s crippling.

If you have 33% chance to apply on crit, and use an attack with multiple hits like Whirling Wrath (7) you are often going to get two procs off on each target. Or you would, if it weren’t for the cool down. They suffer the most from the ICD, more so than auto attacking.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Question: Does having 2 Guardians make you better/more experienced than someone who has 1 Guardian only? If yes, how?

Not targeting anyone in particular here, but I honestly think someone who has clocked 3000 hours into playing Guardian is more experienced at playing one than someone who has clocked in 150 hours on each of their 2 Guardians. This is just my opinion though. I just dont get how having 10 different lvl80 Guardians is a measure of you having more experience than others at playing Guardian.

It means you enjoy the class enough to level it more than once. It’s less about credibility through experience and more about credibility through passion. But if it makes you feel any better I have 1500 hours on my Guardians too.

Untarget him and fire them in a different direction. Despite the animation’s appearance, the projectile absorb from ZD is omnidirectional.

I have two 80 Guards and two 80 Warriors. The warriors are more fun and easier to play, for sure. Guardian is a little hard to love these days, but I still main it over the warrior. They play very differently, and Guardian scratches an itch Warriors don’t. So meh. Not very helpful, I know.

If you like defensive, reactive play then Guardians are good for you. If you prefer more proactive offensive play then you’ll probably prefer Warrior. The way that Guardians can deal with condition cleansing is more entertaining. The way that Warriors can stack up offensive buffs and beat the tar out of things is more entertaining. Guardian bursts can be hard to set up. Warriors have an actual class mechanic called Burst. Yadda yadda.

DeathPanel.8362:

It would only be possible if the next patch changes on crit condition sigils to be 100% chance to proc condition on crit. Innate condition effects from guardians are terrible compared to other classes.

It’s the ICD that renders those sigils (and runes) uninteresting, not the crit chance requirement.

Female Sylvari, Male Human, or Female Norn. Those are the best. Charr guardians can be neat though, especially since they have Fury on a racial.

Do not, under any circumstances, use Condition Damage gear. It’s just terrible for a Guardian. The rate of return on it is abysmal for us. There are a few reasons, but the most important of which is that we simply can’t saturate an enemy with enough conditions to actually make the amount of damage you lose from not having Power less than the amount of damage you gain by using Condition Damage. Not with Burning, not with Runes and Sigils. It’s a sad state of affairs.

makiface.3286:

Thanks all! Though in a group setting, it doesn’t seem like burning and conditions in general would be that effective.

Not everyone brings burning, and not everyone can AOE it like you can. It’s not as big a deal as a it might seem, though if you’re doing planned groups it’s probably best to leave it out.

Anthony.7219:

Purging flames, even untraited and without condition damage investment, can be a good skill to use for aoe damage. Its confusing to understand, but they changed it a while back.

As I understand it at the moment, it casts 5s of fire damage on cast to everyone in the area of effect. The enemy doesn’t have to stay in the ring. In fact, as they leave the ring (walk over the fire) they get an additional 5s. If they’re dumb and keep going in/out it’ll keep adding 5s each time.

Much better than (I think) it used to be at 1s of damage each second they’re in the area.

It also removes 1 condition on cast, and lowers incoming conditions by 33% if you stay in the ring.

You’re mixing up the new and old effects.

Currently it removes 3 conditions to everyone in the AOE instantly on use, and applies burning once instantly on use. The only sustained effect is the 33% condition duration reduction on allies in the AOE.

25 Zeal is worthless, it’s a very tiny overall damage boost. 10% to symbols only. Don’t dip past 20 if you’re using a Greatsword, and if you’re swapping between GS and Hammer you’re probably not even really going to want 20 in Zeal at all.

Somthing like 15/0/0/30/25 would be good, as you’d have access to powerful support, an extra straight damage modifier, and still have your main symbol traits. You could also do 10/0/0/30/30 Permeating Wrath and have essentially infinite AOE burning.

This has been an issue basically since day one. It gets attention every couple of weeks on the forums, so you aren’t alone, but so far there has been no concerted effort from the developers on making anything happen to fix them.

While Shield does have some pretty decent utility in range-heavy fights in PvE, it never compares with Wall of Reflection. Hammer is irritating because it knocks enemies away from you. Bow is completely useless.

Sword on the other hand, as a straight damage ability, isn’t terrible. In my experience, you’re actually far better off not traiting for them at all. Instead, Sword works pretty well in any build that has a decent amount of AOE healing, such as Mace/Hammer Writ of the Merciful. In most dungeons you can keep it alive almost indefinitely with that alone. But it isn’t so good as to warrant wasting trait slots on it. Ultimately though it’s never worth sacrificing a required utility for, like Wall of Reflection or Purging Flames.

We’ve complained about it. A lot, in fact. I’m sure the developers are aware of it, I’m just not sure they’ve decided what to do yet.

redslion.9675:

foofad.5162:

redslion.9675:

Bombsaway.7198:

I feel like the OP is poking fun at me for being old. I didn’t know that the hammer was not a walking cane too.

Plenty of classes and playstyles requiring very active play. Try an engineer or elementalist. You do want some classes being new to MMO player friendly.

Well, always citing Dark Souls…

sometimes the hardest weapons to use are the slow ones.XD

In this game, they should be two different kinds of difficulty.

Chaos Zweihander would like to have a word with you. Easymode weapon, with the slowest attackspeed.

casul

redslion.9675:

Bombsaway.7198:

I feel like the OP is poking fun at me for being old. I didn’t know that the hammer was not a walking cane too.

Plenty of classes and playstyles requiring very active play. Try an engineer or elementalist. You do want some classes being new to MMO player friendly.

Well, always citing Dark Souls…

sometimes the hardest weapons to use are the slow ones.XD

In this game, they should be two different kinds of difficulty.

Chaos Zweihander would like to have a word with you. Easymode weapon, with the slowest attackspeed.

Zaxares.5419:

There’s actually a very logical reason why you don’t see fat Sylvari. They’re plants; plants don’t have fat cells.

/thread

I mean seriously; you want to feel a connection to your character by making it have a similar body shape, and yet you’re playing a plant person. If you want to play you in a video game, play a human.

I still don’t know if this thread is about autoattack speed or character movement speed potential.

If it’s the former, I don’t see the problem. If it’s the latter, guardian mobility is a systemic problem and can’t be blamed on a particular weapon. There is less mobility than sword/great sword but it is no slower than Mace or Scepter; at which point I’m forced to say that you need to broaden your claim to include them.

dace.8019:

That third AA attack with Sword is the worst thing about sword. Hate it. I guess it’s there to proc the passive VoJ but it needs to be changed to, uh, almost anything else that hits 3 times. Like, anything.

The only problem with it is that it’s a projectile attack and can be reflected.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

foofad.5162:

Well, not much will change in terms of tactics with this change alone. But I don’t think this is a tactics-changing… tactic. I think what Anet is doing is basically putting the brakes on blowing through encounters so quickly. It’s not a huge speedbump, but I think it will be a noticeable one. My guess is, it’s the first step in what will likely be a more comprehensive reworking of statistics and their value, coupled with dungeon and general PVE redesigns. They’ve redesigned dungeons and encounters before, and I think they’ve been dropping hints about redesigns for months, what with their rhetoric about the living story potentially changing dungeons and all that. We’ve seen them tip-toe into that kind of thing already with TA.

Anyway, long story short, I really don’t think that it’s all that obscure what’s going on. They’re slowing down the pace a bit, likely in preparation for other changes.

What this patch shows me, is that pugs are going to get that much worse. Crit damage nerf means, things like proper might stacking will become very important. And since pugs can’t be bothered to run good builds, good luck trying to coordinate nice stacking without a class who can keep high team might.

Actually I’m pretty sure that by definition it won’t hurt pugs with bad builds one bit, since they rarely run balls out damage builds to begin with – which are the only ones affected by this.

Well, not much will change in terms of tactics with this change alone. But I don’t think this is a tactics-changing… tactic. I think what Anet is doing is basically putting the brakes on blowing through encounters so quickly. It’s not a huge speedbump, but I think it will be a noticeable one. My guess is, it’s the first step in what will likely be a more comprehensive reworking of statistics and their value, coupled with dungeon and general PVE redesigns. They’ve redesigned dungeons and encounters before, and I think they’ve been dropping hints about redesigns for months, what with their rhetoric about the living story potentially changing dungeons and all that. We’ve seen them tip-toe into that kind of thing already with TA.

Anyway, long story short, I really don’t think that it’s all that obscure what’s going on. They’re slowing down the pace a bit, likely in preparation for other changes.

You hit a clone. He may have just summoned it and you didn’t notice. It’s also possible he was not max level, and as someone pointed out, his armor my have been broken.

If you’ll calm down and read what I said, I said that 1.5 seconds lost isn’t a big deal. If you don’t want to run boon duration, don’t. But now that choice is going to have a consequence with regards to vigor uptime. 50% uptime isn’t that tragic though, especially when a lot of people don’t even use it at all.

Unscathed benefits heavily from Retreat, which benefits from Shout cooldown reduction which you’re precluded from if you go the full 20 into Virtues. Not that it’s a terrible idea to use untraited Retreat, but it is kind of a pain.