Guild Wars 2

If it were to stay as a GM why not restore the trait to its original form (2% per boon) at the very least. Otherwise, it looks rather meh when compared to the Guard’s GM minor that does the same thing.

Also no one is forcing players to take water. We’re so used to dipping into trait lines for the best of the best that suddenly we’re frustrated that we have to commit to a Spec that focuses on healing/recovery support. Honestly though the flip-side of this argument is valid too. Why is it Ele’s that are choosing Water for healing have to put up with a DPS minor trait? The other Minor traits promote party support while major traits can be both selfish and selfless. For a Heal-bot Ele the water spec keeps them from having to choose from AB and cleansing Water which are both high heal support traits.

Personally if I’m hard traiting into water it’s because I want to keep my team alive; my cantrips and weapon skills are already doing enough for personal sustain so the AB would go largely unnoticed for myself. Otherwise, like everyone else, I take 2 points in water and move on with my damage buff.

I really don’t see what all the concern is about (unless a sarcasm font is lacking somewhere). A seasoned thief is already keeping track of his steal cooldown. The new F1/2 setup simply adds a visual and skips the extra step of manually having to discard an unwanted item.

Aquatic Benevolence makes more sense as a minor.

Adept – Unique regen-esque buff
Master – Heal on water attune
GrandMaster – Increase damaged per boon? Another healing minor fits in with the rest.

Bountiful Power would make more sense in Arcana where boon usage is promoted. With the new water Spec, “Water Ele’s” will have built in healing so the new minor would have natural synergy. The major traits still offer DPS orientated options. So if a player is taking water for damage the traits are still there. Personally, I was originally surprise when I started playing Ele that water wasn’t all based around healing or that Earth was all about defense. Each trait line has its theme, and the new Specs just helped to consolidate them.

Hold the right button and move your mouse. Your character will move forward relative to your camera so you just turn with your mouse.

Iris Ng.9845:

First LFG asked for a PS War, meta comp, etc etc…

Second LFG asked for Zerker, ping Helm, experienced know the kitten…

Pug standards are quite high lately, I’m afraid I’m not qualified anymore.

Phew, good thing I’m barely 13k. I guess I still got wiggle room for my TERRIBLE oranges.

Mesmers can be okay at support. Their mantras offer some boons and utility, and their reflect capabilities are no joke. However, they tend to fall short when it comes to a non-reflect heavy fight.

Guardians excel at distributing solid boons such as protection, stability, and their signature Aegis. They have various self and group blocking, and they deal well with projectiles be it by reflection or absorption. They also offer unique buffs to the team that increase armor, extend boon durations, and reduce durations of incoming conditions. Speaking of which they have various methods of cleansing/flipping conditions. Offensively speaking, they can be traited for high burst DPS while maintaining a respectable sustain-DPS without giving up their utility.

Mesmer do not offer as much of that same support and what’s worse is that some of their boons distribution can be kinda random. They excel at reflect battles and the meta even has them wearing Assassin gear for higher reflect DPS. Mantras offer reliable utility, but compared to a Guardian the stabilty duration is much shorter and the cleansing caps at 6 (assuming traited). On top of that channelling Mantras mid-battle is very awkward. Their high rate damage is very illusion dependant. Spike damage relies on key phantasms + timely shattering, and sustain DPS requires proper placement of phantasms.

So? Where does a Mesmer shine? Utility. Mesmer makes for excellent utility monkeys on a team. They offer boon high boon stripping (Guard can barely do that), quickness (Guard can manage a lesser version of this awkwardly), and their infamous portals. There’s a reason why we for Mesmers after a heated tug of war over a tower or such. It only takes one Mesmer to open up a back door to let the whole zerg back in. Mesmers also make for great lockdowns when facing enemies or when keeping track of defiant.

In PvP, Guards and Mesmers play different roles so comparing them would be odd.

Effectively, if I want to support a team and protect them so the run runs smoothly I’ll opt for Guardian over Mesmer. If I want to whip out shenanigans and make my enemy hate me I go with Mesmer hands down.

For Staff Ele there are four fields that can be generated by the weapon

Fire – Used for stacking might when blasted into
Water – Creates healing effects with all finisher types
Ice – Creates Frost Auras on leaps and blasts.
Static – Grant swiftness when blasting into it.

Earth 2, Arcane Brilliance, and Arcane Wave are an easy 3 blasts to set up with your fields.

Every other weapon set has more finishers though so for the most part as a staff ele your job is to generate fields. In organised groups it also helps to call out your fields so that your team mates appropriately respond (looking at you hammer Guardian).

The other gotcha being that the combo consideration is at the start of the cast rather than the end of it. So you want to start your healing while your still in the field but are free to walk away from it otherwise. On the other hand starting your heal prior to being in the field and then walking to end up in the field as it finishes casting will yield no combo.

The two benefits I can see from this is that a thief no longer has to worry about panick dropping their stolen item when they need the steal ability (disengaging, chasing, etc), and they now always have their cooldown listed rather than having to keep track of the cooldown that was hidden behind the stolen item.

Overall, nothing game-changing, but it will make things easier on lesser seasoned thieves. The average Guard will still hard counter the average thief; the F2 change won’t affect that.

Currently, Celestial armor on a Guard isn’t too great of an idea as Burning is the only condition we have regular access to (ignoring shenanigans), and it’s easily overshadowed by other professions that are popularly used (coughElecough). This may change later on with the Hunter Spec and the upcoming changes to Burn stacking, but there’s no concrete data yet for us to be able to make hard calls for. The other stats are okay be they feel too small to really make a difference on a Guard. Revnant seems to be more of a jack of all trades that could make use of Celestial, but again, still too much unknown to make a best decision. The loss of Power though is the real downer of the set.

As such, the two Stats I carry around on my Guard are Berserker+Scholar and Soldier+Hoelbrak. The first is my go-to for practically everything PvE the latter I keep around for WvW primarily and the odd too-many wipes situation: Armor and weapons are exotic while trinkets on both sets are Ascended.

Weapon-wise Greatsword and Hammer are very versatile weapons as in they fit many different builds. For PvE sword, scepter, focus, torch, and mace all have their place in one point or another. Staff is the infamous loot-stick in open world, but it has high value in WvW and has amazing synergy with AH builds. Shield is about the only item that never sees the light of day except for really really niche situations.

Overall, I second holding off on making multiple sets of ascended armor. Exotic is more than enough, and the minor stat/damage boost from exo → ascended isn’t worth the time and money especially if HoT may end up changing how we balance stats (looking at you Radiance Spec).

Personally, it was playing the class that made the most impact. Guides can be very informative, but I’m more of a hands-on learner. Thus, as I was reading a guide I would immediately go and practice what I just read.

To be honest it seems rather wasteful. Staff isn’t particular known for it’s might stacking capabilities. Sure, you can trait for virtually perma-uptime on your fire fields with staff, but you still need someone who’ll blast into it.

The other weapon set combinations will offer a lot more options for might stacking

1. Gear can be quite important, more-so for newer players who haven’t acquired the skills to not depend on equipment so much. With the way scaling works Gear as old kitten levels behind a character’s level really starts to impact them when working in downscaled areas. That’s why we generally advise visiting the Post every 5 levels or so to keep gear current. That’s not a strict habit as some players enjoy the challenge of working with what they get on their own vs bartering with other players.

2. Beyond the obvious locked out content (dungeons, Story instances, etc) the expansion will introduce the mastery system which players will not have access to unless they have a level 80 character. Thus it would be advantageous for a player to have a handful of toons that can be used to tackle the various mastery requirements. Even then, a fresh 80 vs a seasoned 80 (a player who’s had time to practice with his toon) may find it much easier to accomplish some of the achievements.

Overall, levelling multiple toons to 80 gets very tiresome after the first one or two.

All hail the mighty Thaddeus!

In all seriousness, he pretty summed up the right builds and tactics. My two copper on the whole matter is knowing the right tool for the right job. As a Guard we get the burden/responsibility of keeping the team alive (comes with the profession, I’m afraid). So with that we need to know when to take DPS builds to take down out enemies fast vs knowing when to slot utility builds for mitigation.

1. You can get ascended Sinister trinkets as rewards for doing the Living Story Achievements (Episode 2 ones, iirc).

2. No such backpiece yet even from wildcard backpieces that let you choose their stats.

3. That one is up to you. From a min-max perspective you might want to keep that set around in cases where you run into Attribute/Stat capping if you plan to run Sinister gear in zones that downscale you.

It’s actually very acceptable. The community is the one that is pushing for the optimal builds: DPS in PvE, Medi in PvP, Frontliner in WvW. If a player wants to go with an optimal build that’s the player’s choice.

The other builds that have been rejected by the community are those that do not yield the best results, but there’s no hard punishment for using those builds, Anet forbid they stop us from having fun with the game. Ever run a 5 man dungeon with a members running Spirit Guards? Wanna roast your opponent with Burn builds? Aegis builds that have more blocks than should legally be allowed? All of those are potential builds that Guards are capable of. Are they optimal? The community has decided no. Do they have a place in the game? Absolutely.

For me I run optimal builds in PvE because I aim for fast times. Though “fun” runs where members purposely run terrible, yet amusing, builds are quite amusing. Heck, we’re even doing an event in my guild where we’re having teams use builds from guildwars2bravery.com and pinning them up against each other in PvP.

Zeal
-Symbols Add Vulnerability
-Symbols have a chance to burn and do more damage
-Deal more damage to foes standing on symbols

Honor
-Symbols are larger, last longer, and heal

Slot hammer, drop all my new symbol utilities and elite…..Mom, I think I just broke the game.

On a more serious note. The point to Elite Specs is to offer a new mechanic to the core profession. Giving the hunter more symbols would give players more incentive to slot Symbol traits because the a higher percent of their available skills is focused around symbols.

Ascended vs Exo was brought up because of the minor boosts in stats, Weapon Power, and Defense could potentially influence your stat choice.

My personal issue being with Attribute caps. If you’re already capped out in a stat it would be pointless to go with an armor that just adds more to that stat. E.G. In AC Power caps just shy of 2400. So if you already have 2400 or more in your current setup and decide to go for Berserker or Soldier’s the increase in Power from that Ascended gear would do nothing for you. In that case it would be beneficial to take another gear stat that doesn’t focus so much on power and instead could be shuffled out elsewhere. In situations like that you could swap Berserker armor for Assassin armor. Less focus on power to keep you below the cap and you are instead moving those points into a stat that will benefit from it. Again, this is my personal min-maxng advice.

There’s also stat combinations that exist in Ascended that are not obtainable in in Exo form. The fact that you already have [and I assume] decided on your Weapon and Trinkets being berserker stats also plays a factor is what armor would be best for catch-all type play. Had you said you had Exo Trinkets the discussion (or at least my 2 copper) would have been different.

Other than the odd Sunspot (which others have addressed) the Fire Spec looks very well consolidated and look coherent both mechanically and thematically. Adding more blinds or blind synergy would make less sense for the Fire Spec as it’s supposed to be focused on damage, burning, and conjures.

Though the Air Spec looks very odd in its current preview. In regards to this thread, Air does promote CC so I can see blinding maybe moved into this line. My current grief with Air is Bolt to the Heart not matching its thresholds with similar traits from other professions. If it was deemed too powerful for Adept I’d argue it’s not is the same ballpark as a GM. Let’s move it to Masters?

Ascended Weapon quality does not exist until level 80. So if you go into a zone that down scales you you lose the benefit of that weapon category. E.G a 79 zone will adjust your weapon to Exotic quality and use according stats when calculating damage output. Go down to a zone as low as 1 and your weapon is only counted Fine at best.

Trinket-wise the stat difference between Exotic and Ascended is very noticeable. On Armor and weapons, not so much unless your min-maxing and trying to squeeze out every last point; however, you run into the Attribute cap issue to where in downscaled zones stats above certain values are effectively “lost” as the game will set a hard cap on stats. So unless you do 80 only content some of your ascended (even Exotic) stats get chopped off if your not familiar with the caps.

Evasive arcana has a 10sec ICD per attunement spell, and Healing Rain lasts only 6 seconds. Thus, you will only ever be able to get off one blast with this particular combo by yourself (ignoring that others can also take advantage of the water field).

The “3 blasts” from the skill you see is nothing more than the animation generated from the combo, it is still only one blast despite the visual.

Regardless of the radius of the either combo component the resulting water/healing effect will generate a radius of 360 and heal allies in that for 1320 (coefficient listed as .2-ish).

On paper Celestial will give you the most total number of stats added up all together when compared to getting a full set of anything else by far, but you run into an issue of jack of all master of none.

Particularly for the type of content you regularly play you’ll want to focus on Power. Going with Full Cel over say Berserker/Solider mix you’re losing nearly 600 Power (I need to re-lookup the exact number but it was between 580-590) which is the equivalent of 19-20 stacks of might. Specifically you’ll be losing out on damage against Teq and attacking enemy siege since you have no crit to modify your damage.

I have a full Celestial set that I ran with in both PvE (for funzies) and WvW, but after a while I noticed that my damage output seriously suffered, and the extra stats I got wasn’t really worthwhile as the vit/toughness didn’t really get me that much more survivability while my extra healing power made almost no different due to being overshadowed by coordinated water blasting from the zerg. Healing Power was more noticeable at the personal level as Ele skills have generous healing ratios, but it didn’t feel high enough for “heal-botting” at the group level. Condi damage? Burns and bleeds…yay.

So while I’m a proponent of multiple sets, for the sake of your request, I would recommend a mixture of soldier/berserker. Something like this is versatile to work in both WvW and PvE. The only swapping you would need to do is on your traits and skills to accommodate for your situation (note that I only have the gear page filled out).

There are plenty of build opportunities it’s just that some builds are more optimal than others.

PvE revolves around maximum DPS so the go-to builds revolve around picking up traits that offer the most damage. There are utility variants for cases where extra boons or utility skills (such as HG, WoR, Shield, etc) are needed.

PvP and WvW use both Striker and Frontliner/bunker builds with slight variants to each. E.G. Striker can choose to focus more damage over survivability while the frontliner can choose more sustain over more utility.

The issue has more to do with the versatility of some traits. There are a handful of core traits that every build can make use of in their game aspect. The rest get slotted in based on the build you are making for the type of content you are facing.

Personally, I find the my Guard to be the class that I most change up traits for during the runs themselves especially in fractals.

Jaxom.7310:

savacli.8172:

Jumping off cliffs for the falling damage symbol. Add the Writ and Avenger traits, boom, Honor Guards will be the new meta.

ah! there’s the synergy. genius

You gotta do an evading jump though. Make use of them minor traits.

Jumping off cliffs for the falling damage symbol. Add the Writ and Avenger traits, boom, Honor Guards will be the new meta.

It’s pretty easy to spot the filthy elitists based on how they make their LFG post But yeah, the noisier ones are giving us a bad reputation.

Pitchforks unite!!

Jaxom.7310:

its been said those adept honor traits are weak (fall dmg redux & rez traits) and could be combined, opening a spot for evasive power

+1

Bulwark is about as good as it gets but is dependant on having a mace. Even then healing is more on the “meh” side vs its current counterpart that gives a constant +250.

The symbols things is a little odd, but then again there are a lot of traits that based around Symbols. It’d be quite the massive sump to put every single trait related to symbols in one line. That, and a lot of appropriate traits would need to be awkwardly shuffled elsewhere.

Zeal seems to based around applying more damage which is reflected in the symbol traits: wrath (retal) symbol at threshold, vulnerability, and additional 10%. The Zeal spec still preserves this theme by adding additional damage potential through symbols: symbols burn, additional 20% against those standing in symbols.

Honor focuses a lot more on defensive capabilities and boon granting. Same thing here with the symbols. Though longer and larger symbol add to more damage those traits still fit with the theme of boon granting: longer symbols have more boon pulses while larger symbols allow for more coverage for allies to get the boons. For the most part we’ve been using it as an additional damage modifier, but thematically it still fits. The healing symbol fits very well in honor as well.

Build-wise, things are going to be more concrete. Oddly enough I find traditional MMO’s being the better example of when you choose a “specialization” you are pretty well committed to it to where in this game we effectively are picking the best of the best.

Personally, I find it fair that the catch-all Two Handed Mastery was shuffled out to the various other trait lines. Of the top of my head I don’t know of any other class that has that strong of a cooldown reduction in a single trait. That trait alone reduces the cooldowns of skills from GS, Hammer, Staff, Spear, Trident, and would have also reduced Longbow skills as well. From a single trait? That’s a bit much in my tome. I like the alternative of reduce cd by 20% of [weapon] and [get additional feature for that weapon].

Traits overall though I feel like are in a good place. As already mentioned the goal of the new spec system is to do away with the trait line dipping. so things like 46202 or 35042 won’t work any more. Is that going to make for hard decision making. Absolutely. Trait consolidation such as Writ of Persistence Indomitable Courage is wonderful as well (combining three current traits into one).

Each attribute gain is independent of the rest. So you would get +8, then +12, and finally an additional +16 for a total of + 36.

I second the whole “not suggesting meta-berserker” as the OP stated that was not what he was after. Whether he’s asking this because he’s anti-meta or does not have proficiency in the high DPS builds is more or less irrelevant.

While I enjoy a timely clear in casual runs I would more expect people to be able to hold their own ground. We’ve seen plenty of speed runs of players being able to trio, duo, even solo content so the number of bodies on a team don’t make/break a run but rather help to shave off time. Thus, I’d rather take someone who can do low-moderate who can stay up rather than someone who is constantly going down/dead. Personally, nothing is more frustrating than carrying someone who is constantly going down.

Though for me, that’s just in casual/LFG runs. If I’m running with a casual group, unless otherwise told in the LFG description, I’m going in with the expectation that no one is optimized and that players are focusing on completion rather than time.

First and foremost: Welcome to GW2!
Second: Welcome fellow Guardian!

More on point to your post though,

For levelling you’ll want to have a staff packed for the switftness (speed) symbol as well as the auto-attack is very handy for tagging mobs in events. I’d encourage you as a new player to try the different weapons so that you kinda get a feel for how they work. You’ll also want a scepter for long range fights. Focus is handy to have for its “panic” button on the 5.

Gear wise you’ll want to aim for stats combinations of Power, Precision, and Ferocity. In GW2 healing is not as great as it is in traditional MMO’s. In this game you’ll want to mitigate/avoid damage altogether. As a Guard you’ll want to throw out blocks, protection, and similar buff to shave off damage upfront. Toughness and vitality and “crutch” stats but are not considered to be optimal. In PvE, the community aims for max DPS using proactive utilities and skills to keep the team alive.

If you’re in NA, I’d be more that happy to help you out in game or invite you to the guild I work with that offers player mentors for these sorts of things.

The odd part about both variants is that you are taking LH but do not have the Conjure (Fire II) Trait. Survivability-wise I highly recommend going with Renewing Stamina (Arcana II). The extra dodges go a long way. Aquatic Benevolence is more on the “meh” side of things as healing in this game isn’t as productive as proactive defense/mitigation.

Runes are also awkward as the Rock Dog’s AI tend to do some very strange things at times. Scholar’s is going to be the best bet. Though if you find yourself often going beneath the threshold you may want to invent in Strength runes (Great synergy with fire fields + Hammer auto), or you could go for something like Flame Legion Runes that is a better fit for players’ budgets.

For your gear I would try to keep your trinkets berserker if you can handle it. Your power stat will definitely go through the roof though with the gear, food, and stacks (close to 3k pre-might). The big issue you’ll be running into is that lower level’d zones/dungeons will have a stat cap that’s well below what you have. E.G. You have full Blood stacks and using the 2nd variant putting you at ~3k Power; however, the zone capped you at 2500 so that extra 500 is wasted and is not factored into your down-scale stat.

If I had to choose between the two I would go with variant 2 just because it has the persisting flames trait that is highly valued in groups.

With the new 3rd virtue it depends how it works, really. If it’s more of less like a group version of Shelter I can see that being a very strong skill. Though, the awkward cone range could prove problematic at first.

More Hype!

Adding my two copper to the post above:

2. Other than aesthetic the only “advantage” would be their size. For jumping puzzles and such Asurans work really well since they are small and easier to look around. Norns and Charr, even the small ones, tend to be on the bulky side and may impair your visual in the smaller spaced puzzles. Humans and Sylvari vary depending on how tall/small and thin/bulky you make ’em. Professions/classes are what are considered to be easier or harder depending on your play style.

3. If you have small fortune laying around crafting can get you up to 80 in a matter of hours. Realistically, as mentioned above, Edge of the Mists (EotM) is going to be your most reliable way to level up while still giving you practice with your chosen class. If you’re looking to do anything in PvE, I too recommend working on completing maps. If your focus is PvP or WvW map completion isn’t as important.

Here’s two links that you’ll find useful. The Returning guide covers mostly patch notes and Spark Notes the Living Story timeline. The new player guide is more core reads such as game mechanics, tutorials, and general suggestions for game play.

New Player
Returning Player

If you’re on an NA server the guild I work with offers mentors that help new/returning players. If you’re interested and would like more info feel free to shoot me a note on here or in-game.

Hunter Hype!

I am excited to see this spec come into play, and the new traits/virtues are the real selling point for me. Though, I’m glad to see that the Hunter will play radically different than the typical Guard making it a true spec rather than just an enhancement.

Servers within regions can join each others’ instances, but you can’t zone into the same instance if you’re not from the same region. You can join parties and communicate across regions though, but that’s about it.

First and foremost: Welcome to the game and congrats on your 80!
Second: This Link has a compiled list of links for new players.

Now, specifically to your question:

There’s a lot of ways to obtain goal: dungeon running, map farming, trade post flipping, etc. It really just depends on your level of patience and the amount of time you have on an average night to make gold. The mentor in me though is curious what you’re wanting to use gold for. A lot of items can be purchased outside of gold if you’re aiming for it mechanically (E.G. needing a good set of gear). If you’re after skins then, for the most part, you’ll be stuck having to collect gold or some other specific currency.

SoR: Sanctum of Rall

The EU/NA question is to find out what servers you play on; they are split in that EU players cannot instance in NA instances (same the other way around).

If you’re interested my guild has members that are set aside specifically for mentoring players. We’re on SoR in case you have interest in WvW. Feel free to respond here or reach out to me in-game if you have any questions.

Having mained a Guardian I would argue that they work well in just about any content with the exception of PvE map clearing: they require a certain set-up for perma swiftness and don’t have a sigil/trait for free movement speed. For Rangers, their pets are still they downfalls. With the exception of the Spotter trait and Spirits, Rangers can be replaced utility wise in a team setting. Solo content they excel well in.

This link from Reddit has a compiled list of URL’s that have been found useful to returning players.

Taury.7108:

Guys, who wants to be the one to tell them?

Don’t you dare!

I would recommend the Elementalist then. There’s an initial learning curve to grab your interest, and the class has quite the build versatility. There’s not really a “tank” role in the game so to say, but the class offers a support role to help keep himself and the team alive. They fill the Striker role very well with having arguably the strongest aoe damage potential, high burst damage, and high sustain based on builds. The majority of their high control comes from Staff, but the other weapons have a bit of cc too.

Overall, I find it a very fun class to play and a challenging one at that.

Would WoR-ing Lupi to death be categorized as bad design to me? I can’t imagine someone at Anet thought of, “Oh hey, I hope no one realizes that someone can just push Lupi up against a wall and have him self nuke himself”.

Is it an exploit? Not really. WoR is doing its job at reflecting while the trait is allowing for ground targetting. Should they have made the wall untargetable? That’s a whole new thread that needs to be started.

Is it frowned upon the community? Well, I guess that depends the community. Personally, I find it takes little skill to complete the boss this way and definitely takes the fun out of the “15th time’s the charm!” of having to fight Lupi. For speed running that’s more acceptable as the fun is in trying to see how fast you can get in and get out. Competitive Speed running? That’s up to the community to decide what’s allowed and what’s not.

Reddit has compiled a page of useful material for returning players. I encourage you to check it out!

The issue I can see with your suggestion is that it shifts the focus to needing Elemental Attunement to instead just need Lingering Elements; Arcana will still be perceived as a must have spec for the wrong reason.

I had a slightly different turn on the alternative solution but also made use Lingering Elements. Thematically, the Elementalist attunes to the various Elements to gain abilities that focuses around the elements’ strengths. Arcana is tricky because it seems like its theme is defined, but some of its traits kinda just fell in there as a catch-all.

Anyways, I digress…here’s how the trait(s) could be reworked.

Shuffle out the boons from Elemental Attunement and put them into their respective specializations line with a pulsing effect. That way something like Stone Flesh would read “Gain Toughness when attuning to Earth. Gain Protection every x seconds”. It would be similar with the other specializations as well. Elemental Attunement can still fall under Arcana but would instead copy the pulsing effect to party members. That way when you attune to Fire the whole party “attunes” to fire.

The balance there is that someone who wants to be tanky would invest in Earth, or someone who want more damage would take fire (though make it more than a single stack. Three, maybe?). Water could still retain Regen or be replaced with Vigor as Soothing Mist would then have redundant regen-esque abilities, and maybe take our swiftness on air for something like superspeed or quickness (in small bursts). The Lingering Elements would be of use as the 5 seconds of retaining your previous attunement could potentially proc the pulsing effect. Thus you could have a situation where Protection and Regen are landing their proc at the same time.

My annoyance with the current setup is that someone can, for example, heavily invest in Fire/Air for a Striker role focus and can take those 4 points in arcana to get huge defensive buffs. With this suggestion Elementalists would be rewarded for choosing particular specs rather than have one line that’s a catch-all. I fully realize that this may instead draw players to rely on Earth for their survivability, but thematically and mechanically that makes more sense to me as Earth does have the title of the Superior Defense attunement.

Human, master race!!…but that’s just my preference. Chargineers plays really well thematically as do Dragon Min- I mean Sylvari Rangers. Wardrobe clipping is the biggest issue I find. Class wise? I think that goes down to a matter of personal Preference.

I mainly run PvE and a tiny bit of WvW. That being said:

Guard, Ele, and Warrior are go-to classes for when I want to run content as they have high build versatility and are always wanted in a group for one reason or another. Guardian is my farming toon due to his “loot stick”.

Mesmer and Thief are my utility toons in the case that I am running portals or stealth missions, respectively.

Engineer is my grinding toon in case I’m running Silverwastes, EotM, or similar content as they have high offensive versatility, and I can switch their utility on the fly with kits alone rather than having to redo my traits as I do with my other toons.

Necro and Ranger as sadly my mule accounts as I have not found that niche for them. I will use my Ranger when I want to have fun in PvP (not serious match, unranked).

If you could give us an idea of what your playstyle is, preferred game aspect, or what role you’d like to fill in a team we can offer you more precise recommendations.

First and foremost: Welcome to the Guardian profession!

Second: This link will provide with good readups for new players such as mmo comparison, basic combat mechanics, and a bit of intro theory.

As a new player your biggest task is going to be learning the game alongside your toon. I encourage you to try out all the weapons, traits, utilities, and everything you can find. Mistakes will be made, but that’s part of the learning process! When you’re hitting higher levels and feel you’re ready to flesh out more concrete details we will be here to help!

Now for the meat of this post.

Here’s what a Guard offers are far as support

Boons

• Aegis – Block the entire effects of the next attack
• Protection – Shave off 33% damage from a direct attack
• Stability – Prevent your team from being shoved around

Buffs

• Extended boon durations
• Reduction on incoming conditions
• Strength in Numbers (Trait): Add extra armor to your team members

Conditions

• Blind – Next attack from the affected target will miss
• Immobilize – Hold your target(s) in place

Mechanics

• Blocks: Negates the effects of an attack (similar to Aegis boon).
• Condition Removal – Excellent access to removal of harmful conditions to the team
• Projectile control – “block” projectiles or even reflect them back for damage
• Wards – Lockdowns for mobs moving in/out of an area.

Now for the different game aspects

Pve
Dungeons, Fractals, “Open World”, and World Bosses fall under this category. With the exception of just a handful of PvE content the general rule for the rest is stacking offense. In this game mode there is little value in traditional tanking. As such most teams will gear up in favor of what dishes out the most damage. As you gain a higher level you’ll start to unlock gear with more stats on it; the most preferred stats are going to be a stat combination of Power/Precision/Ferocity in that order of priority. Your support will come through damage mitigation rather than soaking the hits to begin with. As crutch we recommend running a gear combination of Toughness/Power/Precision and slowly rotate that out as you get more comfortable with dodging and mitigation. The end goal is that you want to maximise your DPS output while understanding the instance you are in so that you can spec according to use your utilities to keep the team alive.

PvP/WvW
The other two game modes are similar in that you will be combating other players rather than the environments/scenarios the devs have crafted. In a generalized description there are two type of roles a Guardian will serve in these two modes: Striker and Bunker

Strikers (called Medi Guards due to the build theme) are used in Havoc and Roaming groups. Their primary jobs are to be mobile and deliver high amounts of burst damage. In WvW they are used for quick point captures or “camp flipping”. In PvP they fill the offensive role when trying to focus attention on bringing down called targets. This roles makes use of gear similar to PvE in that it favors raw damage though there will be times where Vitality and Toughness are introduced into some builds.

Bunkers fill the opposite role in that they are generally the ones that want to be the last ones standing. There are about the closest thing to your stereotypical Cleric/Healer from other games. In PvP, Bunkers will defend a point from being taken or, when overwhelmed, will do their best to hold on to the point until reinforcements arrive. Once they do arrive the bunkers’ roles are to offer support to boost their team mates’ potential and odds of surviving. In WvW, they are the front liners. Bunkers will be the first ones in and their priority is to keep their targets halted with crowd control techniques while being vigil and offering the appropriate supports boons/utilities to keep the team/blob alive. These roles favor use of Power, Toughness, Vitality, and Healing Power.

TL;DR
There’s not really a such thing as a “support” build. The best way to support your team is to understand what you are facing and spec accordingly.

Dragon Hugger as in someone who likes the name, or Dragon Hugger in the more literal sense?

As a Human Guardian I will gladly take up my bow in the fight as a Hunter to put an end to the dragons’ influences. I ain’t no red-eye leafy traitor.

Reedit’s put together a link library for returning players to catch up on what they have missed.