Guild Wars 2

SoulTaker.2093:

Im glad you saw the truth about condi dmg, to be honest, you cant really 111 everything if you are going condi, Ive been using sword/torch for quite some time, it has more speed and you dont need the zeal trait, you need meditations and his effects, like cleanse condis on healing, but by using mace you need to trait it, and going zeal/radiance/virtues youre loosing medi utilities, you could swap virtues for valor instead, you only loose voj procs, but you are doing burns on symbols, and blocks.
I have tried mace too, and it is a more staking weapon, but if the mob moves around youre screwed, and only have a tiny block on mace 3, but with sword you have blinds, teleport and proyectiles, sword auto attack, procs voj faster so you dont loose that much dps, you could try radiance/valor/virtues with sword, besides you only have 2 symbols gs4 and mace 2, and if you lay your light field in someone elses fire field youre screwing might and condi capabilities, light symbols and gs2 gives cleansing bolts, gs3 gives light aura.
And for the Support of the mace itself only heals a little, and we only have 12k of hp, so no heal in that area could save us from beign 1 shot if we miss a dodge. Mace its good for cc and dungeons, Ive been runing dungeons with condi build for a while, with others full zerker, and mace can do it safer, but only if you trait it.

Sword is less damage. I looked into it every step of the way and bumped the numbers against mace and scepter for trash and bosses. Sword 2 is a dps loss and other classes do blinds better. The teleport is really the only good thing about it but if its open world then you can most likely fit in judge’s intervention in anyway for that. Sword 3 is identical dps and you could potential break up chains or interrupt attacks and it would be come less at least for mobs in that case. Light fields shouldn’t matter anymore since ps warriors are good and you can prestack might before fights. Stuff doesn’t really run away from you in pve much. Sword just isn’t good for pve anymore.

Valor is a loss in damage and wouldn’t be worth going into since the only meditation worthwhile would be judge’s for this and it would probably be just for open world mainly. Two slots is a lot to give up in dungeons/fractals and purge would take priority. It’s just not that great of a line for pve.

You will want to eventually get to this. I don’t know how they changed leveling and unlocking stuff but I’d just say go into zeal and radiance first then virtues. Get retreat, wall of reflection, and feel my wrath as soon as you can. Get power, precision, ferocity gear.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.gw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FvVAQNAR5flsAhShYvQwZIQQEHxDVOFbxqwuBvwjWDgGoeB-TxRBABXt%2Fo8DPdP59EAe4AKAwFLgS1fMTJYAgDgf%2FNf7bf%2F93ff%2B5nf%2B5n3v%2Fe%2Bvn%2FbpAiYYF-e

Raziel.8072:

obal.3218:

Raziel.8072:

Besides being a better condi weapon than raw dps, it’s also a proccing monster, so if you have proc sigils in your build, this thing almost guarantees a proc on every cd. Just something to consider.

It’s worse as a condi weapon also for pve. Mace/Torch + GS would be better for trash and Scepter/Torch + GS for bosses.

False, for trash maybe because it lacks the aoe, but on bosses it would be better due to single target procs. But hey, meta says I’m wrong so I must be wrong right? All bow to the omniscient meta

I ran numbers for condi guard for many combos. I did sword, mace, hammer, gs, and scepter. The maths says it and it has nothing to with meta, zerkers, or my opinion.

https://youtu.be/JvZ9Jeb9UGI?t=52s

Jerus.4350:

Obtena.7952:

It makes sense that some people might be crusty that burning is a thing now. Hats don’t taste good.

Much more of being annoyed with the anti zerker stuff than complaining about condi. IIRC Colesy was the guy promoting warrior condi builds for soloing Arah (or at least some bosses).

Not to derail the thread, this looks like fun, another take on Guard. My concern is the use of utilities, it’s pretty nice having 2 free utilities in power guard to support (bane signet being the third) but with this you have purging and JI playing a role leaving you less wiggle room. But, ohh well, still looks fun, going to have to try it at some point. Loving the condi changes.

I was debating on bothering to factor JI in since 2 slots is a lot to ask for in dungeons/fractals and it is a bit biased since I could just add bane and save yourselves to zerker to skew the numbers the other way so I just put up numbers with and without JI. Purge is something commonly run so I figured it be fine to include. I really only bothered to run JI for open world since you really don’t need much there except to get around faster and JI helps with that. It’s still pretty good without it.

Raziel.8072:

Besides being a better condi weapon than raw dps, it’s also a proccing monster, so if you have proc sigils in your build, this thing almost guarantees a proc on every cd. Just something to consider.

It’s worse as a condi weapon also for pve. Mace/Torch + GS would be better for trash and Scepter/Torch + GS for bosses.

It is in reference to how many targets affected by the heal. The actual attack only hits 1 target.

I’ve added it to the sticky and made a video. It turned out to be nearly as good for the zerker meta overall so it makes it a good alternative for those that don’t want to play the meta or want something different to play here and there.

https://youtu.be/y97b8Shknh4

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/page/1#post3205721

I just noticed the spreadsheet had absolute resolution instead of supreme justice for the virtues hammer build. I updated my post above with new amounts. It’s a bit better now. I gave the rest a once over and it looks ok.

She made a bunch of changes to calcs to improve them since the patch. EA was also not in the calcs and she added that now. Stuff went up from both those things. The ones in the link are old but still relevant to compare against. I’m looking into condi guard now and might put up a new sheet showing group and solo at 30s/15s/10s vs boss and vs mobs (3 targets).

Jerus.4350:

obal.3218:

Jerus.4350:

Ok, this one is purely if you find yourself bored and curious like me

But, AH build… I know I know, but with the stat changes and all that, it’s certainly a loss, but doesn’t seem like it’d be as much as it was previously. I was screwing around with that 5guard nonsense and had to give a friend a guard build, they were nervous so I suggested to just go AH… and well I forgot to swap it back out afterwards, that said it still seemed to do pretty well. So I’m curious what kind of loss the full ez-mode of guardian is now? Mace/focus + Hammer rotation w/ honor/valor/zeal.

I know it’s a silly question but I’m curious after seeing myself still do pretty well (granted I’m aware of the weird damage situation with Symbolic Avenger which certainly skewed my view seeing numbers).

Here are opinions generated by a condi guard. He hopes they are accurate! They all use focus 5 first then torch for the remainder for consistency.

Zeal/Radiance/Honor – 14748
Zeal/Honor/Virtues (50% UC) – 13742
Valor (AH)/Honor/Virtues (50% UC) – 10498

Thanks, that’s awesome.

If i wanted without UC it’s just taking 10% off? And are the Imgur values with 50% btw? Just thinking usually when I go virtues it’s more or less for MoC. So 9543 with the AH build and 12492 for the ZHVirt setup?

Really appreciate it, I know it’s silly but I was curious… still better than necro! :b Seems safe enough to suggest to a new player struggling with things as long as it’s not all one shots they’re dying to anyways. Better than wasting gold on gear they’ll swap out once they get the hang of it.

You have to divide the direct by 1.1 but the numbers I had were with condi added in so it wouldn’t be right.

Zeal/Radiance/Honor – 15120
Zeal/Honor/Virtues (50% UC) – 14491
Zeal/Honor/Virtues (No UC) – 13340
Valor (AH)/Honor/Virtues (50% UC) – 11016
Valor (AH)/Honor/Virtues (No UC) – 10114

GS + Mace/Torch (50% UC) – 15321
Scepter (50% UC and 16 hit smites) – 16977

Condi Guard – IT’S OVER 9000!!!!!

Jerus.4350:

Ok, this one is purely if you find yourself bored and curious like me

But, AH build… I know I know, but with the stat changes and all that, it’s certainly a loss, but doesn’t seem like it’d be as much as it was previously. I was screwing around with that 5guard nonsense and had to give a friend a guard build, they were nervous so I suggested to just go AH… and well I forgot to swap it back out afterwards, that said it still seemed to do pretty well. So I’m curious what kind of loss the full ez-mode of guardian is now? Mace/focus + Hammer rotation w/ honor/valor/zeal.

I know it’s a silly question but I’m curious after seeing myself still do pretty well (granted I’m aware of the weird damage situation with Symbolic Avenger which certainly skewed my view seeing numbers).

Here are opinions generated by a condi guard. He hopes they are accurate! They all use focus 5 first then torch for the remainder for consistency.

Zeal/Radiance/Honor – 14748
Zeal/Honor/Virtues (50% UC) – 13742
Valor (AH)/Honor/Virtues (50% UC) – 10498

Berserker for pve

For stuff you can hit multiple times like this use gs + mace. For normal stuff though like lupi, bloomhunger, molten duo, etc use scepter.

Girdie.7480:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

So do you get celestial armor in fractals? A friend of mine was telling me I should get celestial, but I’ve never done fractals.

You can get ascended weapon and armor boxes in fractals. You get to pick from a set of stats given the box type you get. You can now change them to what you want if you got something you didn’t through the mystic forge. The info given is wrong though. Berserker has the best stats for guardian for pve. Condi gear leads to lower dps. You only want to get celestial if you want something tankier at a loss of some dps.

The sticky is up to date. Also, mace is better than gs for hammer.

I was using the shout and tried to use it around when I did a smite.

Try zealous scepter + fried golden dumplings for solo. I was getting consistently faster times against lupicus than before in phase 1 for the bs wall thing. Group dps for scepter is still better than gs and better than before. I’d imagine the same would apply solo. The trait allocation for zeal is pretty lame though. Virtues is understandable.

I had Dekeyz add Hammer+GS numbers for virtues and radiance builds. They are not very good. Adding retribution in probably would have helped the radiance one but it would still be a fair amount worse.

It’s worse if you can’t get all 14 hits from whirling wrath which you can’t do against trash and won’t always get off against bosses.

Yes. It’s still worse than mace like before the patch.

It would probably be the same setup as zerker meta since that picks up all the condi traits. At that point it’s just a matter of swapping gear to sinister and being lower dps for no real reason other than being different.

DarkSnowman.8527:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Zerker armor can work.

Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.

I got now a question on the part, “till you get celestial” – why celestial?

These gears are all worse than berserker for pve. We tried sinister vs berserker and it was 14% less dps without unscathed and only gets worse with that applied. Burning isn’t worth gearing for. It is a nice added bonus though.

Jerus.4350:

Ok, this one is purely if you find yourself bored and curious like me

But, AH build… I know I know, but with the stat changes and all that, it’s certainly a loss, but doesn’t seem like it’d be as much as it was previously. I was screwing around with that 5guard nonsense and had to give a friend a guard build, they were nervous so I suggested to just go AH… and well I forgot to swap it back out afterwards, that said it still seemed to do pretty well. So I’m curious what kind of loss the full ez-mode of guardian is now? Mace/focus + Hammer rotation w/ honor/valor/zeal.

I know it’s a silly question but I’m curious after seeing myself still do pretty well (granted I’m aware of the weird damage situation with Symbolic Avenger which certainly skewed my view seeing numbers).

Ask Strife!

I changed my recommendation for the hammer utility build and updated the guide. I feel that it’s worth the damage loss. I went over comparisons for that, sword, and condi gear here since I don’t feel like typing it all out https://youtu.be/dFUoX8Yg324 . Keep in mind it’s group buffed numbers and the %s will go up when solo.

Kelnis.1829:

So, had a chance to use the GS+Mace/Torch and it is definitely strong. Which is unfortunate because I literally just made Bolt a few weeks ago! Torch is great, but it is going to take awhile to really train myself that it is such a good weapon (it was meta before, but the margin wasn’t very large.) I’m glad mace got some love (even if inadvertent), I used it in my builds after launch before the meta really got established. It’s a great weapon. Established rotation aside, I’m assuming it is best to use mace 3 in situations where both all of the following are true: a) an attack will be blocked near instantly, and b) the autoattack chain had just ended c) you don’t have Aegis up (since you’re going to lose UC.)?

I am really looking forward to what DH does to our options. It seems likely that we’ll be going Longbow + Scepter/Torch, though that’s just ballparking a min-max on modifiers.

I agree with your comment on mace 3. That’s what I do. When dragonhunter comes out it will most likely replace virtues. Longbow will be good with scepter torch.

Jerus.4350:

\o/ I just threw together what looked good upon logging in, I come here to find it’s meta.

Thanks for the work as always Obal/Dekeys.

If it’s not too much trouble, I’m curious about an Honor/Zeal/Virtue Hammer build is, mainly because it looks so stupidly good for a PUG carry build.

Honor was worse than Radiance based on the calcs. She only put up optimal stuff given the amount of work needed with this patch.

Fermi.2409:

obal.3218:

Sword is bad now. It was at most 2% better. If you went 6 into zeal it was nearly identical to Mace. Sword lost the 10% dps multiplier. Mace gained 10% more damage for most of it’s duration. It also would apply to offhands used with it while in the symbol. It is better given all that.

Have you calculated the % difference at all? As good as it is I’m just really not liking mace, so for average pugs I might be tempted to just swap out to Sword even though it’s worse.

Also, I got Zap as a drop a while ago so I’ve been wanting Bolt…

We only looked at optimal stuff. Dekeyz had a lot on her plate with this patch so I didn’t want to bug her. It’s probably around 10% overall in a rotation.

GonzoNeo.4965:

Thx for the update Obal , interest the new combo with the combo using torch and Radiant Fire trait to use a 2x Zealot Flame, is a shame that the sword is useless now compared with mace.

I found that feel much more comfortable using Absolute Resolution instead Supreme Justice almost always, i dont know if is a important lose of dps.

You should be spamming F1 for trash anyway. It just becomes good with bosses. The only place time where it would really tank your damage is with soloing using scepter.

hennrick.4623:

Hey obal, thanks fro the guide.
I tried a build on my own with with gs/sword-focus, you know the classic, without zeal since that looks like a waste of traits for symbols, but looks like mace right now can do what sword is able to do with symbols on it. Can you elaborate?

I did not tought that mace could do so much damage, and i always tought that if you had to go symbols hammer / gs was a better option if you wanted to go zeal. did you try something like this?

Sword is bad now. It was at most 2% better. If you went 6 into zeal it was nearly identical to Mace. Sword lost the 10% dps multiplier. Mace gained 10% more damage for most of it’s duration. It also would apply to offhands used with it while in the symbol. It is better given all that. Hammer GS was always worse then Hammer Mace. I think it was even more so now since you can use a torch and get a lot of torch4s off with radiant fire.

Trice.4598:

Hello, I was wondering if any calculation were made concerning the honor trait line over radiance, a part from loosing the blinds from trash mobs, honor looks really good to me.

Better symbol uptime (more vuln, fire procs) you also get your symbolic avenger bonus 100%, you get extra healing to keep the scholar bonus.

Also the extra damage you get from symbol doesnt require you to use an extra skill ( casting time + aftercast of zealot flame ) I guess for fight that takes less than 10 seconds radiance is still a better choice, but for longer fight honor looks great.

Dekeyz ran zeal/honor/virtues for gs and hammer. The symbolic avenger nerf hurt it and the way radiant fire work makes radiance that much better. It’s worse so we didn’t bother to show it. I didn’t want to overload her since this patch was a total rework and she had a lot on her plate so I just had her put up what is relevant.

No. You still want to gear for full direct dps. The only condi thing that would help is the food but only for hammer and scepter and over prolonged fights.

I updated the guide for the 6/23 patch.

I updated the pve build guide sticky.

If you want mid level stuff just get exotic while you work toward ascended. Get berserker gear. Scholar runes are best but flame legion are a good cheap alternative. Night and force for sigils if you want 1 set to start. Get gs, mace, focus, and torch. Scepter is good for niche things so get that last. Get a hammer if you want more survival and use it instead of gs but you will lose out on some damage. Do armor and weapon crafts if anything.

Berserker guardian will do more damage after patch. This is assuming same gear stats now and without using feel my wrath so it will only go up once that is added. It’s looking to be a nice buff so far. You can look at the sticky build guide that’s in my sig for what to run now. If you don’t have a sword yet don’t bother. GS + Mace/Torch will probably be the way to go after patch. I will be updating it when the patch comes out and the dps calcs are finalized.

If you don’t need hammer then don’t bother just run gs + mace/focus if you want to do that. It’s like 1-2% worse then gs + sword/focus and can help keep scholars up. Mace/focus really shines in fractals because of the extra blocks against bosses and better cleave then sword.

Hammer and sword are about the same. After the gs burst it is worse then the other two. I’d just go with hammer as Jerus suggested. It would be worth throwing the staff symbol down at the start of a fight then swap to hammer for extra damage and hammer pull ahead. You can check the dps charts in my guide since it has nearly all the setups so you can see the difference in damage.

You can see the difference in dps in the link below. Hammer suffers a lot more then gs main if you need to dodge or do something else to interrupt attacking like putting up reflects as well as being lower dps. If you are going to go with hammer do hammer and mace/focus rotations. Hammer + GS isn’t the best combo since they are about the same if you can connect with all 14 hits of whirling wrath and a fair amount worse if not. The blocks are nice too. Hammer will most likely be more comparable when the trait changes come. For now it is subpar but not bad. If you play with a decent group or are doing open world content there isn’t much need for it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ou7qL2Dj2gytJeS0bl1FinoukKWGnTf_FLTEP4gkuUQ/edit?pli=1#gid=1548911428

Sword was about 1-2% stronger than mace in a gs + 1h/focus rotation with 4 in zeal. With 6 in zeal they are identical given the symbols do 10% more damage. Symbolic avenger is being added giving you 20% more damage while enemies are in your symbols. Your forced to go fully into the line so you will also will get the 10% symbol buff and it will also has a chance to apply burning after the patch. The majority of mace dps comes from the symbol so this is a very big buff. Powerful blades is being removed so sword will lose it’s 10% buff and gets lower cd on skills which don’t really add any damage. Honor will probably be worth traiting into to get writ of persistence which will add even more damage for mace. All of this makes mace really strong after the patch.

You need a secondary weapon too. Mace would be good to get. It’s the best secondary for hammer builds. It’s about as good as sword for GS builds for now. Sword will suck after the specialization patch though and mace will be really good. Honestly you can just cheap out on a staff and get a rare one or something unless you play ele as well. You don’t really use it to fight in dungeons.

I’m fine with that. Someone from the French forum did the same in the past.

Dragonhunter, zeal, and radiance seem pretty good together. Putting MoC and UC in the same virtues line really hurt the line. Right now traiting into virtues is like 5% of a loss to get a well rounded build. I think virtues would lead to too much of a loss in damage so that would probably go except for some fractals and stuff where you could use all the reflect uptime you could possibly get. Shield of avenger will last longer so that should help not having MoC as well. We will see what the almighty spreadsheets tell us. Zeal will be a staple in all builds regardless though.

Nice work. It should get a sticky.

GS + Mace/focus is looking good. Hammer became a lot stronger and would be good to swap to for some hard bosses and not really lose any dps. The rotations would change quite a bit given gs and mace cooldown traits and working in symbols. Sword is in dumpster either way. Scepter doesn’t really look appealing anymore with the trait changes except for solo.

Might be 6/0/0/6/6 or 6/6/0/0/6 and 6/6/0/6/0 when no support is needed. I’m not sure if radiance or honor would add more dps at this point. I’m guessing honor will. The 10% modifiers being removed kind of sucks especially for radiance which is a big part of why you invest in it.

Dekeyz is still working on her new calculator so it will be a bit longer before I can say with some certainty. Whatever they do with the gear will have an impact as well which is unknown. I’m assuming that the symbols will get nerfed since that just looks op.

Yes. Berserker gear, scholar runes, power infustions, truffle steaks, slaying potion/stones, and force + night/slaying/accuracy sigil would be best. Direct damage is better for pve over condi, especially for guardian.

Use this which has traits, gear, food, etc included and is optimized for GS camping. Don’t bother with condition gear.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQFARlsApUo9CxZI8DRR8gk1Yb/8q2ANu6IA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdA5dBAA4BAQp6PmpEMAwBwv/GAO/8zP/8z73f/93f/tUA6JsC-e

Swap master of consecrations to unscathed when not needed for extra dps.

For comparison to swapping weapons with similar setups:
This build dps 8965 (9383 with 25% unscathed up time)
GS + sword/focus 4/6/2/0/2 dps 10267 (10754 with 25% unscathed up time)

With retreat, virtue of courage, renewed focus, shelter, shield of wrath, and protectors strike you can block most bosses for a really long time without dodging most things. Get used to using them to “tank” damage along with dodging. Use wall of reflection -> shield of the avenger -> wall of reflection when there are projectiles. Spam F1 at trash. That is how to survive as guardian in fractals. Mace is pretty good in fractal over sword for the extra block against bosses as well as better cleaving.

It’s better when your not camping 1h weapons which you shouldn’t do anyway except for scepter.

Your build is fine with a few changes. You should always be moving even if it’s just strafing back and forth. You shouldn’t need spirit weapons last longer. Take absolute resolution instead. Retreat would be better than purging for more group blocks on the arrows which is what your having problems with. Staff is terrible here. Take either scepter, mace, or sword and focus for more blocks and damage. Try to keep an aegis up on yourself and just pay attention to if he is facing you and you should be able to anticipate an arrow based on the time he used it last. Also don’t drop fiery wrath. Drop zealous if anything for the spirit weapon cd.

As soon as you think the boss hp is at the point of bubble phasing get close and get ready to cast shield. Once it is broken fall back a bit and put up a wall and binding blades the adds to it and burst them down. Pay attention to when it is about to end and start to go away from it.

Night or slaying + force is the best where applicable for guard. The only weapon that Night or slaying + X where strength could beat force is scepter. For day you would run force + x. For gs, staff, mace (assuming not hitting crit cap) it would be accuracy since these are bursty weapons that have breaks between bursts where you attack slow and don’t get stacks quick enough. For sword, hammer, and scepter strength would be better than accuracy since they constantly hit fast enough to keep the stacks up. If you don’t need might since your group caps on it then frality if you hitting the crit chance cap with 1h weapons.

If you put points into virtues then you should have 2 or 5. Having 4 means you put points to something else that will do less dps. You should have 3-5 boons while in a group and the multiplier affects all your damage so it’s worth it.

As long as you have 25xx2 (when MoC is needed) then your build is fine. You would be better off going 2xxx5 instead of 3xxx4. You won’t get enough vuln for the group to make up for the loss in personal dps from power of the virtuous Force would be better than strength as well on your gs. Force is something you should always have on a weapon since it will do more than the rest other than night/slaying.

Since your not 80 yet and can’t put more than 4 points in a line yet focus on getting to 2/3/0/2/2 and spend more points in radiance for more dps or virtues for more support as you see fit. This will give you all the utility you will need and decent damage to build on. For open world at 80 I generally go 4/5/0/0/5 but if I spend more time running then fighting I’ll go 2/5/0/2/5. I ended up doing that for silverwastes since you should be running around tagging events instead of fighting for extended periods of time until the final event. The same goes for map completion and such. I wouldn’t bother with the teleport utility though that you have. It’s overkill if you have retreat, save yourselves, and superior aria along with leap of faith and flashing blades. Your better off running a supportive utility like wall or purge depending on the content.

So renewed justice/justice is blind, absolute resolution, indomitable courage, and aegis use isn’t situational?

It was only worthwhile for scarlet zerg fest events since stuff died in seconds or less, there was a lot of stuff scattered, and there were a ton of people so it was hard to tag things. The only thing I can think of now is the temple of grenth event where it’s worthwhile if there are a lot of people for the same reasons.