Guild Wars 2

http://youtu.be/ZBzRhmV16qY

Here is a guide on what to choose and use as you level a guardian to better learn the class on your way to 80 and what you will want at 80. It will help prepare you for dungeons and fractals if you chose to do them when you get to 80. The guide covers builds, traits, skills, gear, dps rotations, and consumables while you level as well as when you get to 80.

Text Guide (for when level 80) – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE

DPS Comparisons – http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/12646847-guardian-dps-build-theory-by-obal-dekeyz

Apolo.5942:

J Eberle.9312:

Apolo.5942:

Look i play and 90% of the time (like here) using paladins. I love the concept but for the life of me, there is something in the class that fries games designers brains.

Honest advice, Guardian is the Cooler class, while warriors are the Better class.

Mind elaborating in detail, through traits and gear along with how the guardian works in a group of 5 to not be as ‘good’ as a warrior?

Raw damage build warrior is better, period. Support they can do this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQFARgMkittenGA4kmAA-TxBBABBp+DUK/A4BAIrSwi2foVzfzoDAA-e

which grants them 900 passive self healing, shout healing the party for 2500k on short cool downs, as well as gratting better buffs like Fury instead of 1 or 2 stacks of might. Keep a good amount of attack power and 40%crit through fury and you still have 5 traits to customize further. All while having a decent 2800 armor and 21k hp pool.

A guardian would do more damage in a group than the warrior you posted and are mid-high tier damage compared to all the other classes. Shout heals are terrible support and won’t prevent someone from getting 1-2 shotted. Blind spam, projectile defense, aegis, and group stability are a lot better support. You bring guardian for damage mitigation/reflects and warrior for damage buffs.

Is this for pve?

I would say slaying/night + force is best for the most part. Strength only over accuracy when slaying and night aren’t applicable but not to GS. Strength runes are not worth it. I’m not really sure about gear though and you would have to factor in reflects so it’s really hard to say. If your using a stacking sigil put it in the focus since you will be using that less than GS for fighting and can keep the stacks in case a scepter is better for the particular boss. For lupi though 6/6/0/0/2 scepter/focus – undead/force, gs – perception, energy, focus mastery over gs trait, 20% burn trait in radiance, and UC would be the optimal choice. We are working on group dps numbers atm for pretty much everything including mace which people seem to be interested in. If it’s not much effort I will see if she will add in solo numbers too.

It’s worth it for 3/5/0/4/2. It becomes less worthwhile for 5/5/0/4/0. Assuming you have to dodge while in hammer the gs burst is worth it. If not there’s really little point to swapping to it for 5/5/0/4/0 unless your starting out with a quick gs burst.

This thread…
The number of people on this tab alone that are no longer with us is greater than the heals you get from using clerics gear

Anyway in regards to the necro there are more than one build you would use in fractals now that you can change traits around on the fly to be optimal. Guardians provide passive support of blind spam, aegis, stability, condition removal, projectile defense, and perma prot if you run hammer. All of this support requires no special gear choices and costs barely any trait points and most spent are going into dps lines from that. DPS is also a form of support and it is stronger than small heals. It’s best to bring as much dps as you can and supplement survival with some knights/soldiers/celestial armor to go with the zerker trinkets if needed. Anything is viable in this game’s pve, but clerics gear is as ineffective as it gets (aside from the new tvh gear) and it just mostly wastes people’s time. DPS and damage mitigation are what you want for PVE and Guardian has plenty of both to offer.

Assuming your using the hammer build and running pvt armor + zerker trinkets it is about 11% loss assuming the typical group buffs. In fractals you will most likely get less buffs and even less if you pug so it would come in around 15% loss. This will be enough for you to take 1 hit instead of instantly dying in some parts and isn’t a bad option when starting out and then moving away from. Anymore defensive gear/traits isn’t worth it and would just hinder your group since it won’t save you from another hit. DPS is really important in fractals for rallying quickly on harder trash to prevent wipes and bosses take long as is. Now that you can retrait on the fly you should use a scepter build for big targets like bloomhunger/molten duo and gs/sword for bosses that are more of a joke or the prot is meaningless like dredge bosses. You can find all the builds in the link that j eberle posted or in my sig.

Fall of Abaddon

3/3/0/4/4 hammer camping is probably less than 1k dps difference than staff camping so I don’t see 3/0/0/6/5 being much or any better. Your also missing blind spam which is important. Your losing out on vuln as well.

It’s without unscathed. We never looked into mace but it would seem less but comparable to sword. We might look into later. I still find sword utility of more blind, vuln, projectile defense is more useful though.

5/5/0/4/0-Hammer Camping– 10013

You should add a few more guardian pve builds which can be found here

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

Dahkeus.8243:

Trice.4598:

Charak.9761:

maha.7902:

Sword dps is actually almost equal to staff

Also same as mace :P, it’s mostly due to the fact it doesn’t have any burst. Greatsword burst isn’t as great as Warrior but it’s there.

…really? People are comparing sword DPS to mace and staff?

@ Charak: My thoughts exactly.

5/5/0/4/0-GS-Hammer – 11029
6/6/0/0/2-GS-Scepter – 10871
4/6/2/0/2-GS-Sword – 10797
4/5/0/0/5-GS-Sword – 10515
3/5/0/4/2-GS-Hammer – 10146
5/5/2/0/2-GS Camping – 9417
3/5/0/4/2-Hammer Camping– 9338
4/6/2/0/2-Sword/Focus Camping – 7530
3/5/0/6/0-Staff Camping – 7391

Hattoni.8597:

Why noone mentioned hammer? I heared that guardian with hammer is a ‘must-have’ in every team and if there is one then you can take sword/focus setup.

Dungeons – GS/Sword+Focus
Swap sword out for scepter against medium or large hitbox bosses that don’t move much

Fractals – Hammer/GS
Swap to sword/focus for more blocks against hard bosses like mossman and archdiviner and Staff for pulling mobs to los spots and cc with line the swap to hammer at places like ascalon fractal

Use greatsword to burst. Long fights do 2,4,3,5,2 swap and short fights do 2-5 swap. For fractals you want to camp hammer for harder fights. Don’t interrupt hammer chains.

I just use this 6/6/0/0/2 with energy sigils when I do it like your asking except for the no reflects part. It sounds painful without it since it saves you dodges and blocks. I guess you can try 4/6/0/2/2 instead and see if that works.

There are 3 builds to run given the situation and they differ in what you want to have and not really by much. Precise helps if you don’t have RHS and power if so. Dekeyz did the optimal choice of gear and infusions which makes it hard to tell if you just use full berserker but you can see you would would want assassin pieces for builds without rh strength so precise would be better for those if you have full zerk. For times you have RHS and are in pugs it’s probably not going to hurt you either. Even if you get 100 with RHS it will be with just sword and a lot of your time is spent in GS and everything else you do focus burst, reflects, etc aren’t affected by RHS.

You can see below why it’s hard to give a definitive answer to this. I’d just go with berserker + mix of infusions. The difference in dps for infusion choices is so little as well. I have full zerk and 5 precise infusions. If I make more I would get power to finish it out.

With Party Buffs; Without Stacks, Spotter, or UC
Traits Equip Sigil1 Sigil2 Food Util Infu EP DPS
6/6/2/0/0 *GS Sc F Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 20303 10908
6/6/2/0/0 GS Sw F AW Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 20303 10809
6/6/0/0/2 GS Sc F Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Prec 19423 10452
5/5/0/4/0 GS Ham Sin-Sch Night Force CB Potion Pow 18221 10444
4/6/2/0/2 GS Sw F Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 19770 10411
5/5/2/0/2 GS Sw F Sin-Sch Night Force CB Potion Pow 19119 10217
4/5/0/0/5 GS Sw F Mix-Sch Night Force CB Potion Pow 17806 9957
5/5/2/0/2 GS Ham Sin-Sch Night Force CB Potion Pow 19119 9901
4/5/0/0/5 *GS Sc F Mix-Sch Night Force CB Potion Pow 16997 9808
3/5/0/4/2 GS Ham Sin-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Prec 15338 9598
4/5/0/0/5 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force CB Potion Pow 16997 9546

With Party Buffs and Spotter but not Stacks nor UC
Traits Equip Sigil1 Sigil2 Food Util Infu EP DPS
6/6/2/0/0 *GS Sc F Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 20460 11194
6/6/2/0/0 GS Sw F AW Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 20460 11096
5/5/0/4/0 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Prec 18992 10876
6/6/0/0/2 GS Sc F Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 19712 10776
6/6/0/0/2 GS Sw F AW Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 19712 10688
4/6/2/0/2 GS Sw F Zerk-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 19770 10685
5/5/2/0/2 GS Sw F Mix-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Prec 19930 10639
4/5/0/0/5 GS Sw F Sin-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 18566 10368
5/5/2/0/2 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Prec 19930 10310
4/5/0/0/5 *GS Sc F Sin-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 17722 10212
3/5/0/4/2 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 15997 9999
4/5/0/0/5 GS Ham Sin-Sch Night Force SnS Potion Pow 17722 9938

For pve?

Why do you want sword/shield with hammer? GS burst would be better damage. The only point in using sword for hammer builds would be to utilize shield of wrath as an additional block for tougher bosses that attack a lot like archdiviner. Focus offers better dps and utility all around as well.

For pve the usual builds are these

Max Utility = 3/5/0/4/2

• Best for Fractals
• Best for beginners, people that or struggling, or people that want pve to be even more faceroll
• You can take 10 out of Radiance and put it to Valor for Strength in Numbers for more survival or Virtues for Absolute Resolution for condition heavy content

Max Damage = 5/5/0/4/0

• Best for some Fractal bosses where utility is worthless but prot is still good (Lornarr, Ashym, first Archdiviner fight)
• Best for dungeons if you feel the need for the prot but where you don’t need much/any utility like AC, CoF, CoE

I’m not really sure what your going for when you say gs/staff then say you switch back to gs/sword for actually fighting.

Having points 4 and 5 in zeal would be purely for damage and putting those 2 points into radiance would give more. There’s not much of a point in putting 30 points in virtues since you don’t need stability and removal at the same time and can just swap the trait around for the few times you need more stability. If you plan on using staff for might then strength runes would be worth thinking about. If you plan on sticking with gs/staff only and camping gs then 5/5/2/0/2 seems to be the optimal setup when you don’t need more support and is about 1k dps less than 4/6/2/0/2 gs/sword rotations with group buffs so it’s not so bad if you want some variety.

This is the old anchor build. The build helps you keep yourself alive better at the cost of support for your group and dps. Running a full dps build provides more support to your group than this and much better dps. The reason for this is your missing blind spam, perma prot for fractals, vuln spam, and all the damage multipliers. The goal of a guardian is damage mitigation through blinds, blocks, hammer perma prot if needed, and projectile defense. All these benefit your group and not just you. I’d suggest trying 3/5/0/4/2 hammer gs build. It will give you perma prot, decent hp, vigor, shout cd, blind spam, vuln spam, master of consecrations, the 2 10% modifiers, and good dps.

Your gear choice is fine other than runes and sigils. Use the runes if you really feel the need though a good cheap dps oriented set would be flame legion and for sigils you will want night/force for night time and force/accuracy for day. Having the knights set and points in honor will save you from being one shotted by most things and anymore than that is really a waste.

You will also not want to run 3 shouts at a time. Run wall/shield of avenger when there are projectiles, purging flames when there are conditions to remove, retreat pretty much everywhere, stand your ground when stability is needed, and bane signet if you have a free slot. Wall/shield/retreat should be your bar for most of fractals and wall/retreat/purge should be your bar for most of dungeons. This will mitigate a lot more damage than spamming shouts to remove conditons and give a small heal to yourself rather than use them when actually needed. Shelter is a better heal as well since doing block rotations are better than trying to outheal damage. Signet is only better if you fight things that are unblockable like old tom, mai trin, and elemental source.

Having a mix of assassin and berserker is good for hammer. For RHS builds pure berserker is the way to go and with gs/sword builds without RHS it was nearly the same from what I remember which is why I favor berserker gear since that’s mostly what you should be running. If you are running hammer mostly you might want to look into the mix though. If you want to be overwhelmed then check out the link

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/12646847-guardian-dps-build-theory-by-obal-dekeyz

Jerus.4350:

obal.3218:

Here are some dps comparison numbers. Hammer has the potential to be highest but breaking up hammer chains from dodging or messing up means you will lose a fair amount of damage since a lot of the dps comes from the symbol and it will less than non hammer builds which don’t suffer that issue. Camping hammer leads to like 10% or less dps than doing rotations with GS which isn’t bad. Use 5/5/0/4/0 when there isn’t much/any thing to reflect and use 3/5/0/4/2 when reflects are needed.

5/5/0/4/0-GS-Hammer – 11029
6/6/0/0/2-GS-Scepter – 10871
4/6/2/0/2-GS-Sword – 10797
4/5/0/0/5-GS-Sword – 10515
3/5/0/4/2-GS-Hammer – 10146
5/5/2/0/2-GS Camping – 9417
3/5/0/4/2-Hammer Camping– 9338
4/6/2/0/2-Sword/Focus Camping – 7530
3/5/0/6/0-Staff Camping – 7391

Out of curiosity, do you have the numbers for 33044 hammer camping? I figure it’s a little over 10% loss as you lose the 10% modifier. So, little under 8.5k?

Those were some older numbers I had just to give a general comparison. Here are newer ones with just hammer. You would lose 3-10% dps across hammer builds by camping hammer if you have writ (5 in zeal would be very little given the symbol trait). You can see that 3/3/0/4/4 really isn’t worth running. It was ok for a few dungeon paths where conditions were actually a problem before the purging flame buff. After the purging flame buff it became obsolete. It’s pretty close to staff if you camp hammer.

No stacks, Spotter, or UC
Traits Equip Sigil1 Sigil2 Food Util EP DPS
5/5/0/4/0 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force CB Potion 18018 10331
5/5/0/4/0 Ham Mix-Sch Night Force CB Potion 18018 10016
5/5/2/0/2 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force CB Potion 18905 9794
3/5/0/4/2 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force TS Potion 15165 9493
4/5/0/0/5 GS Ham Mix-Sch Night Force CB Potion 16805 9442
3/3/0/4/4 GS Ham Sin-Sch Night Force TS Potion 13404 8452

Here are some dps comparison numbers. Hammer has the potential to be highest but breaking up hammer chains from dodging or messing up means you will lose a fair amount of damage since a lot of the dps comes from the symbol and it will less than non hammer builds which don’t suffer that issue. Camping hammer leads to like 10% or less dps than doing rotations with GS which isn’t bad. Use 5/5/0/4/0 when there isn’t much/any thing to reflect and use 3/5/0/4/2 when reflects are needed.

5/5/0/4/0-GS-Hammer – 11029
6/6/0/0/2-GS-Scepter – 10871
4/6/2/0/2-GS-Sword – 10797
4/5/0/0/5-GS-Sword – 10515
3/5/0/4/2-GS-Hammer – 10146
5/5/2/0/2-GS Camping – 9417
3/5/0/4/2-Hammer Camping– 9338
4/6/2/0/2-Sword/Focus Camping – 7530
3/5/0/6/0-Staff Camping – 7391

This is the best a staff camper can do. Take 2 out of honor for master of consecrations when needed. You can see why it’s not good below.

3/5/0/6/0

5/5/0/4/0-GS-Hammer – 11029
6/6/0/0/2-GS-Scepter – 10871
4/6/2/0/2-GS-Sword – 10797
4/5/0/0/5-GS-Sword – 10515
3/5/0/4/2-GS-Hammer – 10146
5/5/2/0/2-GS Camping – 9417
3/5/0/4/2-Hammer Camping– 9338
4/6/2/0/2-Sword/Focus Camping – 7530
3/5/0/6/0-Staff Camping – 7391

Lodius.5392:

obal.3218
I have to disagree with 2 things in your post.
1) “Healing power is a wasted stat since it scales so poorly.”
-Healing Power is one of the only stats in the game that scales linear with the amount of points placed within the stat. I run full Cleric gear (focusing on healing) and notice a strong difference in the group survivability rate than when I run a different class.

2) “…so a full shout bar and pure of voice is a waste.”
-I focus on altruistic healing (which provides healing to myself each time I cast a shout)… I load 3 shouts “Stand your Ground” , “Hold the Line” , and “Retreat”.
Hold the Line Regeneration to the entire team which is bolstered by the increased healing power. Stand your Ground for stability as well as “block the next incoming attack”… Retreat for the speed boost and I also think it blocks the next incoming attack.

Shield Healing / Staff Healing / the Virtue Healing … this build allows me to run as close of a true “healing class” in GW2.

Running the right utilities for the occasion and keeping blinds and blocks up means that you shouldn’t need to spam weak heals if your doing your job. The goal of a guardian is to bring the right utilities for the right occasion to mitigate damage rather than watch your group get slaughtered by attacks that could have been nullified. You don’t have to completely kitten your damage to do that either. Just spamming hammer auto and giving 33% reduction while running a dps build behind a wall of reflection and spamming F1 will do much more support than doing barely any dps and trying to get someone back up by 33% with weak heals which could probably have been avoided from using your utilities. There are no healers in guild wars 2.

Full shout builds are awful. Hold the line is a bad shout. Stand your ground is only good if stability is needed. Retreat is pretty much always good. That leaves 1-2 free slots for better utilities. Wall of reflection is one of the most useful utilities there is in the game. Conditions in this game aren’t really a problem for most of the content and you can just run purging flames + absolute resolution when they are and still have room for more useful things to use strategically like retreat, wall, shield, stand your ground, etc or bane signet if nothing is needed. If your spamming shouts to cleanse conditions it’s not good and if your spamming them to keep yourself alive from AH then that isn’t good for your group either.

For pve you can find all the latest dps builds for all classes here http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewforum/4280860

or you can look at the sticky or click the link in my sig. Run the gs/sword build for dungeons and hammer build for fractals.

Healing power is a wasted stat since it scales so poorly. People usually run a mix of tank armor like knight/soldier/celestial and berserker trinkets to get a decent balance of survival and damage. Running a hammer build will make you tanky since will get permanent protection and you will be bring something beneficial to the group. Here is a common build though you can take 2 points out of radiance for strength in numbers or absolute resolution http://intothemists.com/guides/3793-max_utility_dps_hammer_guardian

The support a guardian brings is to mitigate damage dealt to your group by using wall of reflection and shield of the avenger when there are projectiles, stand your ground when stability is needed (hallowed ground or indomitable courage as well if need be), ageis from your virtue and retreat, and spam virtue of justice to keep up blinds. Weak party heals won’t do nearly as much or save someone from getting one shotted like using the right utility will. Hammer will add even more damage mitigation from the protection it gives. You will want to use purging flames or absolute resolution for condition removal. You usually should only have 1 shout on your bar depending what you are doing which is mostly just retreat or stand your ground when stability is needed so a full shout bar and pure of voice is a waste.

They are pretty similar. The point of the weapon though is to work it into rotations. The symbol won’t be up at swap for a second use and you will have to camp it longer to get another off so it loses out a bit more. I find the option of a blind and projectile destruction while wall/shield is on cd are more worthwhile. It still doesn’t do as much damage as sword and has worse support than hammer, but you can swap it in for sword and not lose out a whole lot if you do rotations. There are also cases where scepter will be better than sword for rotations as well. If your camping it then it isn’t really a viable option. Below is why.

Assuming buffs but no stacks/spotter/uc

5/5/0/4/0 GS+Hammer – 10331
4/6/2/0/2 GS+Sword/Focus – 10302
5/5/0/4/0 Hammer Camping – 10013
4/5/0/0/5 GS+Sword/Focus – 9849
3/5/0/4/2 GS+Hammer – 9493
5/5/2/0/2 GS Camping – 9417
4/6/2/0/2 Sword/Focus Camping – 7349
3/5/0/6/0 Staff Camping – 6909

It’s nearly the same compared to staff camping without the OP cleave…

3/5/0/4/2

Here are some number porns on mage crusher. The numbers could be higher on diff bosses but this has some consistency. There’s a 3.2mil in there somewhere.

Guardian (52k WW and others) – http://youtu.be/wpQP9FDvupw
Thief (52k backstab and others before patch) – http://youtu.be/NmGD6PnxnHM
Elementalist (various stuffs before patch) – http://youtu.be/rYmHaj9ONZg
Warrior (77K HB 39k Eviscrate) – http://youtu.be/e34poqOsWpk

I’d suggest going with the post above me.

Flame legion runes would be a decent and extremely cheap choice for runes. Dolyak would be a waste. Scholar is best.

For gs/sword builds you will want 2 in zeal for 10% damage, 5 in radiance for blind spam and another 10% damage, and 2 in virtues for master of consecrations when needed and flip to unscathed if you have just 2 there if not. Valor is more of a last resort line. You only put points there if you have points left over and it will lead to more damage then putting points elsewhere like 4/6/2/0/2 since that would be more dps than 6/6 etc or to go for strength in numbers if you really feel the need for more toughness and giving something beneficial to the group at the same time.

For utilities you will want wall of reflection whenever there are projectiles and shield of the avenger as well if there are a lot of projectiles and a long fight.

In a full zerk group it’s pretty easy to maintain aggro of the champ ettin in uncategorized and archdiviner in the last cliffside fight. It helps you hold aggro a bit for the svanir that spawn at the snowblind campfire to kite and cc them while the rest stab the fire. It’s also good for tanking old tom with tome of courage so the rest can melee behind you if you don’t have an ele to summon the elite earth ele. Soldiers offers the most survival. Knights offers slightly more dps. Celestial offers a decent amount more of dps and a little less survival. It would come down to preference and mine is knight for the most amount of toughness since that is what I use it for given the scenarios I listed.

Here are dps comparisons considering all buffs, stacks, and optimal setups (ignoring unscathed). It’s good for open world zerking and fractals at los spots to through down lines of warding as the run to the corner or for pugs that don’t stack might. It’s not good for attacking.

5/5/0/4/0-GS-Hammer – 11029
6/6/0/0/2-GS-Scepter – 10871
4/6/2/0/2-GS-Sword – 10797
4/5/0/0/5-GS-Sword – 10515
3/5/0/4/2-GS-Hammer – 10146
4/6/2/0/2-Sword – 7530
3/5/0/6/0-Staff – 7391

We did p3 like this, but there were some bearstacksploits.

http://youtu.be/VhQC5-Vjvb4

For pve you can run the hammer build. It let’s you be glassier since it gives you perma protection, a bit more hp, and blind spam along with all your blocks and projectile defenses. It’s best for fractals but it’s fine for dungeons too and helps keep pugs alive. It does comparable damage to gs+sword/focus so it’s not like your dps will tank in comparison.

3/5/0/4/2

spoj.9672:

Its a different one. :P

Anyway what about GS camping?

It’s only about a 10% loss. Hammer is the same. It’s really not that bad in comparison to others.

The calcs that were run assumed vuln, banners, spotter, ea, fury, might, and 4 boons. Frost spirit and unscathed weren’t used.

Assuming all buffs including spotter and full zerk, scholar runes, night/force sigils, power infusions, sweet and spicy butternut squash soup, and powerful potions.

5/5/0/4/0 GS+Hammer Rotation with Preception stacks EP = 20283 and DPS = 11606
4/6/2/0/2 GS+Sword/Focus Rotation with Bloodlust stacks EP = 21102 and DPS = 11359
4/5/0/0/5 GS+Sword/Focus Rotation with Preception stacks EP = 19835 and DPS = 11063
3/5/0/4/2 GS+Hammer Rotation with Preception stacks EP = 17095 and DPS = 10675
4/6/2/0/2 Sword/Focus Camping with Bloodlust stacks EP = 21102 and DPS = 8149
3/5/0/6/0 Staff Camping with Preception stacks EP = 17095 and DPS = 7778

People accepted sword camping as a great idea in the past. Some still do or are too lazy to do rotations. I guess those people mine as well have ran staff and cleaved better . Gandolf OP.

Hammer is the best support weapon a guardian has for pve. Other than that the best support they have is blind/vuln spam, consecrations, and aegis. Clerics is probably the worst gear there is and running all tank gear is generally a waste. Aggro in this game is based on a lot of different factors and not just toughness so running a mix of tank and zerk would be a better tradeoff of being able to stay alive and hit harder. As far as shouts go having a full shout bar won’t help the group as much as running the right utilites for the right occasion like retreat mostly, wall/shield when there are projectiles, stability when needed, purge when you need removal or a fire field for might stacking, and bane signet when nothing else is needed. Running the best utilities for the occasion usually means you end up with 1 shout most of the time. Shelter and renewed focus would also be better choices for survival. Something like this would be better support for you and your group http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApUo9CxZI8DVR8gk1Y7+UXAMfu9qYA-TxRBABXp8rS1foZ/B80BAwFAIvHAgZKBBA-e

Anything to do with healing is a waste for pve. For guardian your better off just spamming hammer auto with writ of persistence and that will far exceed the support the heals and all your healing gear do. Hammer is best for fractals as well. Add in blind/vuln spam, master of consecrations, and the right utilities for the occasion like wall/shield, purge, retreat pretty much always, and stability when needed and your good to go. You should really only have 1 shout on your bar at a time which is mostly retreat or stand your ground when it’s needed.

For GS/Sword it would be around 5% and Hammer it would be around 10%. For open world I just run the utility versions. I swap to damage for certain dungeons or fractal encounters. It’s worth it for that since you will go through a whole dungeon and not really need the extra utility.

I updated the guide with more builds and a new video.

I figured Trollbal’s video would get a mention in a thread like this

Running hammer would make you tanky enough to not have to use all that tanky gear. Strength runes would be needed for staff 4 to be worthwhile. For sigils you would want night/force/strength(if you have the runes too it would be good). You can have staff on swap and use it before fights and not miss out much if you are running hammer. Using only sword is bad dps. Even camping GS is better.

Dekeyz and I are still working on builds and numbers. There were differences depending on situations and they were all trivial. If your in a rush just go with precise.

http://intothemists.com/guides/3793-dps_hammer_guardian

Your tanky armor is fine but the rest is a waste go zerk other than armor. I’d change the runes too. I would suggest something more like the below for builds. It has a lot of info in it and some variations if you want them.

http://intothemists.com/guides/3793-dps_hammer_guardian

I was suprised with the results. Cleric meta OP!

http://youtu.be/i3JM-X3M5Ks

If your running hammer and you don’t have writ of persistence on your missing out on so much and mine as well run something else. That’s less damage, vuln, and less prot. It’s also less procs with your sigil of strength. Force would be better than accuracy. Meditations aren’t worthwhile in pve also. Consecrations are where it’s at.

I guess it’s a browser issue since it works for me. I just made them into tinyurls so they should work for you as well now.

Overall I’d just say bloodlust + precise infusions + curry soup would be the way to go. If you don’t stack then precise infusions + truffle steak. If your going for records or something and a lot of damage will come from reflection damage then going for more precision would be worthwhile but it is a rare case. If not the numbers are different given all the cases but the EP differences are pretty trivial. Sorry for the confusion about the infusions.

Kelnis.1829:

Sorry if I missed the dialogue about this, but what is the collective’s feelings regarding the Runes of Strength? Obviously, for PvE, Scholars is still king by a long shot. However, I’ve found myself without the time or the group for min/max’d dungeon/fractal runs and a need for some more casual PvE/WvW play (I’m gonna be playing Wildstar once that launches, so I won’t be spending as much time with GW2.) It will be a tangible loss in top-end potency, but it seems like it’d see higher uptime than scholars, at least in WvW. Of course, this is a PvE thread, but I figured you all might have some first hand anecdotes for me!

Testing the different weapons/builds you will need to keep up the scholar buff about 40% to outdps strength runes. However, this is assuming you have the strength buff 100% of the time. Strength runes are a good runner up set like ranger runes used to be. Adding strength sigils with force for daytime dungeons/fractals other than arah to sword/focus and hammer (not gs) would be beneficial with the runes as well. It’s a worthwhile choice.

Pretty much everything situation she ran for level 80 showed power being equal or better. The difference was so minimal except for unbuffed that it wouldn’t make a difference there. That’s a good point about lower level dungeoons though. I just planned on mixing in a few precision with power if I ever bother. Now I’m wondering if precision stacking would be better than bloodlust for lower levels.