Guild Wars 2

Guys, he just started playing the game. I would suggest that it’s a little too early to start throwing builds, metabattle, and all those other optimization or end-game guides at him. The OP doesn’t even know where to get his traits yet let alone shoot for a build.

He’ll get there eventually, but for now OP is at level 4. If and when he’s ready to start looking into optimization then we can flood him with advice. Think about what would have been useful to you as a level 4 character whose very first character happens to be a Guardian.

Granted, if the OP is already wanting to receive advice for such end-game content then hit him at full blast with all our guardian awesomeness. As of yet, he hasn’t made mention of this interest though.

If anything I would encourge OP to look into finding a guild that has a good mentoring/new player program. That will benefit him much more on top of the advice we can give him on the forums.

Staff (and all other gear items) is aquired through drops, buying from vendors or Trading post, or crafted.

Yes, most definitely keep your gear up to date. You don’t have to go all out or be super picky as acquiring Fine quality (“blues”) are more than enough for leveling. Crafting gear comes in every 5 levels and will be the most common gear you can buy off of the post though you can find gear of all levels. While you can check at every level for gear there’s not a night/day difference from doing so. My recommendation is to stop at every 5 levels and check the Trading post for better gear and also slot out your gear if you happen to come across a drop that does you better. You’ll definitely start to notice a problem when you’re 10 levels behind and are trying to do content. There’s also level scaling that hits you pretty hard if you’re not appropriately geared, but that’s a mechanic to look into more detail later on. For now, just now that there’s no such thing as walking into a zone that you are too high leveled for; the game will dynamically adjust your level and gear so that your potential is scaled appropriately for that map.

Work on the basics first and get your most used weapons, all armor slots, and trinkets as they become available. Sigil and runes (gear upgrades) are neat, but I wouldn’t devote too much attention just yet. They become much more important at later levels as helping define what build of character you want to play.

By buying traits I mean in game gold. There are vendors in key cities that have a Book icon over their heads. They sell “books” that upon consuming them will unlock a trait. All traits can be unlocked otherwise by completion a certain event or goal of sort so purchasing is not at all mandatory. Keep in mind that trait points come to you pretty late so they’re not something to worry about quite yet.

By play style we generally mean what role do you want to play. Common terms are support, dps, control/lockdown. E.G. If you wanted to do dps I would recommend the Trait Fiery Wrath (Trait II in Zeal) as it gives you an additional 10% damage against burning targets. For support I would offer Strength in Numbers (Valor IV).

For a leveling Guardian I would advise you to have a staff in your inventory. The AutoAttack on the weapon tags up to 5 targets which makes it great to get credit in events. The 3 ability also helps for swiftness which is really desired if you’re doing map/story completion or Edge of the Mists (EotM). The Retreat Utility skill also helps with swiftness as does Save Yourselves (SY) to a lesser extent.

Thematically and mechanically, Greatsword is a good weapon to keep as it has great damage and showcases a bit of the Guard’s capabilities: Boon granting auto attack, blinds on 3, symbols on 4. Main hand sword also compliments the Guard quite well with additonal blinds and their version of Guard “shadow-step”. It’s a little awkward to use at first as it has some mechanic to it that may not be well understood until later levels.

Scepter is going to be your dedicated range weapon in case you need to poke at something from afar. Focus is also good to slot as it offers a panic button on the 5.

Signet of Resolve is probabaly the best heal to go with at first as the passive does minor condition cleansing, and the heal is straight forward. Shelter is the signature heal, but is another one of those awkward skills to use at first.

Spirit weapons, while untimately unused at higher levels, can act as temporary allies. Once you hit the Lornar’s Pass map there is an event that will reward you a trait that can extend the duration of your summons. Sword and Hammer are good for allies while Shield is used quite often at higher levels. Bow goes unused despite having one of the best animations, imo.

Once you hit your Elite I would recommend Renewed Focus as an additonal panic button. There’s more potential to the skill later as you gain more experience in the class, but panic buttons are always nice when leveling.

As far as minor traits go Radiance offers blinding upon activating F1, while Honor gets you a reliable source of vigor to get more dodges. Radiance overall is a safe traitline to invest into as its minor skills are mostly universal with your skills and weapons. The other trait lines will work, but generally are better suited specific builds.

Do you plan to obtain Major traits strictly through unlocking them upon “x” completion, or do you plan to buy traits if needed? If the latter is true I can recommend some Major traits that will work for leveling.

Gear wise, that’s up to you. As my answer falls under the “I’m going to recommend what’s optimal” vs I should be recommending “it’s his first toon let him play and enjoy the game”.

My overall advice to you is to have fun playing the game with your first toon. I encourage you to try all the skill, weapons, traits, everything and don’t be afraid to make mistakes; we were all noobs at some point. There will be a time where you will buckle down and start to take the class more seriously, and when that day comes we can point you in the right directions. But for now, just have fun with the class.

Each of your F1-F4 have their particular focus which is part of the learning curve. Other classes (with the exception of the Engineer) work with two weapon sets that fill their 1-5 skills on the skills bar. Elementalists only get one weapon set they can bring into a battle, but they can toggle through four different versions that weapon set.

Should you be switching between the various attunements throughout battle? Well, that’s really up to you. As you gain familiarity with the class and learn more about it you’ll find particular builds or focuses that you find work best for you. Also, note that this game promotes weapon and skill diversity so just because you find something that works now you may need to later change what you have slotted based on the content you’re going up against. E.G. Staff is a great weapon but has crippled use against bosses that reflect projectiles.

As a new player your task is to just learn as much as you can and don’t worry too much about making mistakes. I encourage you to try all the weapons, skills, traits, etc and from there decide what type of Ele you want to be. As someone who also started the game as an Ele I can vouch for the class seeming a little overwhleming at first until you have that light bulb moment when everything clicks. The tradeoff being that once you get over the initial learning curve fine tuning the Elementalist class doesn’t take much effort afterwards.

Feel free to reach out to me in-game if you have any questions!

Then I would say go for Warrior then. As mentioned before Warriors are the most forgiving class when it comes to mistakes and don’t have very high of an initial learning curve (I consider my warrior to be my EZmode toon in PvE). If by solo you mean map completion or story then Warrior is definitely your answer as they have superior mobility and can traverse maps very very easily (calm down thieves, I know how OP you are in that aspect).

As a Warrior in a dungeon team you will be expected to bring offesive buffs in the form of banners at the very least. If you play a build known as PS you’ll also be loved for bringing an extra “trait” buff as well as easily being able to maintain might boons. As far as defensive support your Battle Standard (War Banner) is a livesaver, literally, when it comes to picking up downed allies. It is rare to not be accepted in a group as a warrior.

Guards would be your counter part and be bringing defensive buffs to the team. While a warrior is mostly concerned with himself a Guard typically has the burden of watching out for his team and for good reason too. We have superior active defenses that keep the team alive. Granted we can also be an offensive traited without sacrifing our defensive capabilities. Nearly every organized group takes a Guard.

The two toons compliment each other but they tend to have opposite focuses. But yes, at the end of the day when all hell has broken loose it’s funny to see that both of those toons tend to still be alives.

Guard: “Man! I had to throw up blocks, blinds, dodges, and everything!”
War: “Really? I was just swinging my sword around…weird”

Here’s the question that will make a defining cut in which class you want. Are you looking for personal survivability, or do you like the challenge of looking out for you team?

I’m not trying to bait; I’m looking for an honest answer. Classes in the game tend to adhere more closely to one of the other.

For me personally, the initial comfort of playing the Guard class wasn’t as hard as say the Ele or Engi classes who have odd “weapon” and skill mechanics.

Feeling comfortable with the class, well, that’s on a case by case basis. For example I enjoy the idea of master of all four elements, but Ele took me a while because I had never come across a toon with that sort of attunement mechanic. But Guardian came to me more naturally because my playstyle is more support-oriented so my brain by default is always looking out for boons, buffs, and any way I can help my team. You may have picked up easier on thief because the assassin/rogue archetype may be your natural playstyle.

Mastery of the Guard class tends to become a contradiction because you come across concepts such as blocking anything except for that which is unblockable. But that’s a beast for another thread.

Without knowing what the goal of your build is it’ll be hard to offer advice so at best I can only advise on on your selections on an individual basis.

Weapons and utilities

• Greatsword is a solid choice
• Main hand sword is great, but shield is difficult and lacks a “good place to use”
• Good choices on utilities and heal though do consider learning all the skills so you know what best to slot in for “x” situation.

Traits
Radiance:

• Inner Fire: Unless you’re going up against a particular creature there’s not a reliable way to receive the benefit as it only triggers upon being inflicted with the burning condition.

Valor:

• Strength of the Fallen: Situtational to use and generally it’s best practice to prevent going into down state to begin with.
• Glacial Heart: Great trait, but you don’t have a hammer slotted
• Retributive Armor: Solid choice

Honor:

• Resolute Healer: Not very used in PvE due to the knockback issue.
• Two-Handed Mastery: Good choice though benefits even more when both your weapons are two-handed
• Force of Will: Extra health is never a bad thing, but in PvE you’ll want to focus damage mitigation over damage soaking. In PvP/WvW that changes a little.

Gear

• Weapons: Sigils are a much better option over gems in weapons.
• Armor: The Ogre rune is a little tricky as the summoned dog is AI and is prone to going off on its own
• Trinkets: Exotic grade trinkets can take exotic gems rather than the crests you have (exception being the backpiece).

(For specific necro questions you may want to visit the subforum for that class.)

First off you’ll want to decide what aspect of the game you want to focus on initially. From the sounds of it you’re wanting to do dungeons. Second thing to consider is whether you’re wanting to play optimally (as defined by the community), or do you prefer on doing things your own way. There are sites we can point you to if you’d rather work with what the community has developed otherwise there are plenty of theory crafters on the forums if you want help working out your own style. If you could provide a bit more information as to what you’re wanting to do in the game we can point you in a direction.

Leveling wise I would say Guard is a bit more straight forward. Your weapons make more sense and the use of skills are more straight forward. Long-range, grab a scepter. Projectiles, grab a wall. Etc.

Ele, on the other hand, can be a bit more difficult to understand at first. For one, it took me a while to grasp the concept of a dagger being a range weapon (ele was my first toon). The idea of having 20 weapon skills plus more if you conjure is a little overwhelming at first. That, and some of our skills/traits are attunement dependant (much like weapon dependant on other classes) so while dodging in fire creates a fire blast of sort dodging in water makes a cleansing splash (this was me having an epiphany upon reaching level 60 back in the day)?

So the initial grasping of the character I would argue tends to be faster on a Guard over the Ele.

Excelling/optimizing the two classes tends to be turn the tables around. Guards have quite a few weapons, and nearly each of them will see their use on the playing field (sorry shield). Traits also have a better synergy on a Guard as well. E.G. Deal more damage to foes with conditions. Burning is a condition. F1 Burns. F1 renews at each kill. F1 grants might and retaliation. F1 can be traited to blind. Blinds can be traited to cause vulnerability.

That’s one of the more extended examples. Other traits tend to be wepon specfic, and Guards should be switching out based on the content that are facing. Skills and traits also tend to rollover to your team as well so while we’re looking out to Save Ourselves (heh, get it) we shouldn’t be selfish with our capabilities to defend others. While there are rotations for Guard they are generally the ones expected to break their rotatations in the case that they can mitigate it. This will require a bit of research on other classes to know what they can and cannot do to if you want effectively help them. E.G. A warrior without endurance doen’t necessarily mean he can’t evade an attack.

With an Ele, overcoming the inital learning curve is the most difficult part. Beyond that it’s a matter of choosing the right weapon set for the job and bringing the right utilities/conjures to the group. Nearly every ele on the group is going to be tasked with keeping uptime on fury and might (might responsibility slowly transitioning out with the influx of PS Warriors). Rotations are a bit stricter but can generally go uninterrupted unless you need to dodge or pop a particular utility. Traits are more straight forward and are generally bound to a particular attunement or skill/action activation.

Granted when I play my Ele it’s because I want to see big damage numbers. When built correctly they have amazing spike damage and as equal sustained damage. Guards on the other hand have decent sustained damage but can deliver a boom every now and then.

In DnD terms are you looking to play more of the Paladin or the Blaster Wizard?

Classes aren’t necessarily “bad” by themselves it’s just that there’s no one around to spread the love to. What I mean by that is both Ele’s and Guards have great access to boons so by not being a group of some sort that’s wasted potential say over a necro who’s funcionality is more self-supporting. However, both classes excel perfectly fine on their own.

Ele’s are often the “resources” of a group being able to conjure weapons and summon elementals while Guards bring a lot of defensive support. Granted it’s all about the build and gear you slot in.

An Ele that focuses Fire and Air is going to be an offensive threat while focusing Water and Arcana shifts their potential to a more heal and defensive support based character (I’m generalizing).

Guards traiting into virtues, Valor, and Honor make for great defenders, but moving into Zeal and Radiance makes that Guard a high threat by boosting their overall strength and being able to nearly spam blinds and stack vulnerability (again, I’m generalizing).

Look over the class skills and see what is more likely to meet your play style. Ele’s require more skill on the player by being able to better manage cooldowns and know what skills to bring to boost the party’s potential. Guards require a bit more knowledge on the fights overall as they tend to automatically get the burden of “guarding” the team.

Nonetheless, it’s a game. If you feel like breaking the stereotypes go for it I say! Play the game the way you want to!

While Power is a critical stat in certain builds it really depends what your goal is and what aspect of the game you are playing to be able to answer your question accurately

For PvE DPS is king so much that Berserker has been deemed the go-to gear set. There are a few instances such as Tequatl where Berserker stats are wasted, but for the most part that one gear set can be used universally in all content of that aspect. In this case focusing Power while being mindful of attribute caps and dimishing returns is very important as most groups espect a player to be contributing DPS directly. All classes have access to attacks that scale dramitically with Power so something as small as missing 100 power will be noticable.

PvP and WvW are different. In these game modes there is a mixture of builds that are both offensive and defensive. While Power can still be a valuable stat it may not be the primary concern of someone who, for example, is focusing on bunkering where a mixture of Vitality, toughness, and/or Healing Power is more important.

For Ele’s Power scales wonderfully with some of our weapons and conjured, and precision and ferocity make us a deadly offensive threat. Though at the same time Healing Power also scales well with a lot of our water traits and skills. We’re squishy so Vitality and Toughness are welcomed.

In short, Power may or may not be an important stat. As an Ele we can take advantage of any stat given to us whether or not it’s a “wasted” stat all depends on what we’re trying to do.

Ideally, berserker’s gear is what you should aim for. If you’re not comfortable with the gear or find yourself dying a lot I recommend you pay attention to the following:

-Nourishment: There’s high sustaining food such as heal on crit that make a big difference
-Utility Food: Stones and oils work for most things but be sure to take advantage of potions based on the mobs/bosses you’re fighting.
-Build: Know what build to bring to the fight. Hammer builds are very high sustain as well as keeping up with DPS. Know when to bring walls, stability, or other utilities.
-Mitigations: Dodges, Blinds, Aegis, Protection, Invulnerability, etc. You are squishy and will require active defenses to mitigate overwhelming damage. Don’ be too selfish though as being a Guard means you bring supreme support to the rest of the team.
-Team Comp: Who are your team-mates? Are they running optimal builds? Are any of them named Leroy? Comminication is one of the best things you can bring to a run to make sure that everyone is covering and contributing appropriately.

For the most part, those guidelines will make it to where you can run Berserker for most content of fractals. If your team is less than ideal I would recommend you switch out a few traits or pieces of gear to help out. While faster kills lead to smoother runs the opposite is true of the players in that dead dps is no dps.

I think the biggest question to ask is what do you want to do with the game?

WvW: Are you wanting to fight against other servers and defend landmarks?
PvP: Do you want to compete against other players in small teams
PvE: Are you interested in going up against the content/story developers have created to challenge players?

You’re not locked into one aspecter of the game and can bounce between the three. There is Guild only content within the game, but the grand majority of the game can be played without one. The advantage of a guild is really to help a player progress/grow and to aid them in like minded goals. Looking for Speed running? Are you into roleplaying? Needing a mentor to teach you the basics? Those are just a few examples of what guilds offer.

Once you decide what you are after we can give you better guidance on what you should be pursuing. E.G. Ascended gear is awesome, but it may not be worthwhile unless you plan to run fractals. Right now, as a new-ish player, your job is just to enjoy the game and find what’s most fun for you.

Saw your post in the frac/Dung forums. Welcome to Guards!

(Following up with the post in his other thread that made mention to MB and high dps zerk builds).

What you’ll notice is that sites such as metabattle will offer builds that work the majority of the time based on the content you’re playing in PvE (PvP and WvW, the builds will remain fairly static). In PvE, excelling in the class will require knowledge of your different traits and skills to come up with various builds to tackle game content.

That being said, in PvE the more favored builds are those that bring more damage as the meta-concept being that if the party can kill the mobs faster there’s less to worry about. Though, this is very true both in theory and in application the hard part is learning to stay alive.

What I challenge you with is to lean the fights. Some fights are as easy as slotting in Bane signet, and you’re good to go with weapon skills rotations. Other fights get a bit more complicated requiring specific weapons, skills, and even traits to get the timing right. Learn the mob mechanics. Do they apply conditions, do they have cc, do they have a “kill shot”, etc and slot a build accordingly.

To answer your question about your build viability I would have to ask in return “what is your goal”. If your goal is to stay alive I would recommend hammer builds or taking the Honor GrandMaster trait Altruistic healing. If your goal is DPS then I would suggest you take a look at the metabuild site. Though I would recommend the utility variation (45005) as you seem to prefer dishing out boons.

As far as an Intro to Guards I would recommend running hammer builds. While not necessarily the best DPS on its own, you can trait the weapon to where it hits like a truck. Your off-hand in that case will supplement your current need (Staff, GS, M/F being common pairs). For the most part you’ll camp the Hammer auto attack which not only is your main/reliable source of DPS on that weapon, but it also offers perma-protection. When you first start out you can set your 1 to auto-cast while you focus your attention on the fights. Here, you can learn the tales and see what your other mates are doing and intervene as necessary. Afterwards, you can start slowly shuffling in other weapons and learn their uses as well as introduce rotations to maximise your Guardiness.

Ah crusaders…reminds me of my DnD character…and why I’m no longer allowed to play paladins in DnD (broke the game, hehe). For those curious I whipped out the RKV and mixed in a bit of Shadow Clone madness. Good times…good times…

Serious face, back on topic:

Guardians have A LOT of potential and require a decent amount of discipline in regards to staying current by reading up on the class and patches. Regardless of your build Guards will always be able to defend one way or another.

While the title gears towards DPS the following thread has a great overview of the class itself towards the second half on the OP’s post. The first half goes into specific builds which you shouldn’t be concerned about quite yet. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Ah, there’s the problem then. Not only is it you who is unfamiliar with the dungeon, but it looks like your group as a who needs more experience.

If you’re looking for group oriented classes you’ll find it difficult to meet that need with your necro. Your warrior, however, can easily meet that need. Warriors excel at support in the form of their banners and shouts. Their banners and traits provide unique buffs that stack alongside benefits gained from traditional boons as well. Warriors can also be spec’d for a more healing role (regen banners or healing/cleansing shouts), but I would discourage speccing into something like this for PvE as Warriors tend to be more reactive than proactive.

The link you have their for Guards is date way back, I’m afraid. I recommend http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/class-guides-gw2/ for your best source of reading up on classes. They may be a bit dated, but the overall guides are still very solid.

Guards offer a lot of proactive defense even when fully DPS spec’d/gear and seemed to be more geared towards your play style. If you’re looking to pursue that class I can point you to a few other guides.

As a necro, Dungeons are difficult to use as your traits and skills are naturally selfish (sorry for the bluntness). You can spec for more group support, but there’s noticible trade-offs when attempting to do so. Their roles are also less clearly defined in a group and suffer from the, “someone else can do it better”.

For Mesmer specific questions you may want to peek at the Profession forums. Overall though I would suggest the site: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki to learn what the “go-to” builds are for classes. They’re very cookie-cut builds that work right out of the starting gate, but I would recommend reading the various builds and learning to customize them.

Laurels are the safe bet, and there’s quite a few useful items from the vendor.

The legendary and asecended rewards are kinda meh due to the variety of things you can get (Hello RNG!)

Tomes are the least worthwhile as there are plenty of opportunities to get those pretty quick.

No, just no. Let’s take this appart.
Tokens
Dungeon armor, full set costs 1,380 tokens just for the armor. Let’s assume 10 minutes per dungeon run with daily bonus (meaning this will take a minimum of 8 days instead of 1 with really fast dungeon runs) :

1,380/60 * 10 = 230 Minutes = 3.8 hours. 3.8 hours of farming Gold will get you around 15-25 gold. More then enough to buy your armor of choice.

On top of that, those tokens (if from high enough dungeon) could have been used for buying rares (rares above 68) to salvage and sell ectos(30 tokens = 1 rare).

Tokens/rare cost = total rare * ecto conversion = total ectos * current ecto TP price = gold
1,380/30 = 46 * 0.9 = 41,4 * 32s = 1324,8s = 13,24 Gold + some crafting mats

Not counting any loot or dungeon drops during those runs.

Badges of Honor

All I can say here, spending (wasting) badges of honor to get a slight discount of a couple of silver per item is very meh. Especially with new legendarys and HoT on the horizon.

Karma

Edit Note: since I had the wrong numer for Karma items. Corrected.
At 42,000 Karma per item you are facing a Karma conversion of about 6 copper per Karma (at a price of 2,5g for the item). There is better Karma conversion out there (unless you want the skin). Farming 42,000 Karma takes longer than farming 2,5g.

Again not the smartest approach with HoT and new legendarys comming out.

Farming: The OP has only been playing for a month so I would not think he has sat down to look at farming strategies nor found good farming spots. I agree that much can definitely lead to a great source of income depending on the time/location. Though, there’s a general opinion of “my soul feels like it’s dying” after so many hours of farming.

Tokens: That one is trickier as, yes, salvaging can lead to more gold than purchasing the armor directly through tokens, but ultimately it’s RNG. Even with the yellow kits and the suggested 90% ecto rate there’s still TP “tax” when selling items. So, the profit from that is around 11-12g. Again, that’s highly variable and could drastically be less or more. For the more common gear prefixes (Berserker’s, knight’s, soldier’s) the cost to buy the gear generally will cost you more than if you spent tokens depending on bid pricing (and if the OP is patient enough, hehe). Lesser used prefixes are much cheaper with some pieces being less than 1g a piece buy or bid.

Badges and Karma: Mentioned as an option. He shouldn’t go out of his way to grind for these but eventually as he plays he’ll build up a reserve. Later down the road he’ll end up with resources in excess of these and can use it to [re]gear his toons.

Anyways, I digress from the original topic. The berserker gear OP has is fine!

Crafting your own gear is probably the worst thing you can do cost wise. The three most common alternatives for obtaining gear are
-Dungeon tokens (my preferred)
-Badges of Honor
-Karma vendors

Keep in mind though that outside of dungeon gear and crafting you’ll need to check if the item can be salvaged as slotting an expensive sigil/rune will turn out to be expensive to recover.

Exotic armor is what an organized team will shoot for though you can get by with greens and yellows as you build up your sets. For the most part you’ll want two sets of gear: offensive and defensive with different runes/sigil to achieve their respective goals. Ascended gear is not at all required unless you plan to reach higher scales in fractals. Even then just slotting ascended trinkets will get you pretty far, and they are relatively cheap and easy to acquire.

I agree with sticking to the toons you have now. Warriors are excellent and fairly easy to grasp. The skill cap on the class is quite high due to their overall versatility in all aspects of the game, but for Dungeons and Fractals they are fairly straight forward.

My advice to you would bee to take careful look at your weapon skills and utilities. E.G. Your Greatsword comes with an evade, mace and off sword can block, etc. Switching toons won’t necessary help either as every class “requires” knowing how to dodge. In fact as a Warrior and Necro (your other main toon) you have the highest health pools before modifiers which means there’s you can soak in more mistakes. Guards, on the other hand, have about half the health a warrior does so they can be less forgiving in fights. Granted, they offset that vulnerability with boon and mitigation tactics, but that’s a new scope of skills to hone in order to excel at the class.

In short, Warriors and Necros may seem like they don’t get a whole lot of mitigation by default, but that’s because they have that high health pool to start.

Also, do realize that the game promotes proactive defense rather than the typical reactive recovery. Coming from trinity based games I felt like I could pick up a water ele and spend my time healing and recovering. Turns out despite my uber water spec I wasn’t really contributing that much. Flash forward to my Guard (no skill pun intended) and now I make a habit of making sure my team doesn’t get hurt to begin with.

The wolves in a dungeon called CoE are a good example. They initiate with a leap that does quite a heap of damage and also knocks you down. A reactive defense would be to stun break and to utilize a heal to recover the lost health. A proactive defense would be to dodge (anyone can do) or use a skill to mitigate avoid the effect (blinds, aegis, warding).

I wouldn’t go as far as saying ignore it as it’s agood middle ground. AH + symbols are enough to keep someone lazily alive. AH + Empower offers a heal that rivils your dedicated 6 slot. Though I would change the build up a bit to something like 2/0/6/4/2 as the one Virtue slot has a lot of versitility. The runes and sigils are a little odd as well, and I would recommend sticking to the meta.

I’ll repeat myself in saying do not spam aegis. As guards we have supierior access to that boon, but we are still limited in how often we can access it. Be smart about it, you’re aiming to block a killshot not just basic mob cleaves.

The build you posted resembles more of a WvW or PvP build where survivability is a consideration. Assuming you are looking for a PvE build, players generally look for max DPS in that environment as the best form of hard CC is death when it comes to monsters/mobs.

Renewing Stamina is about all you need in regards to defensive traits. Depending on your team comp you may need a few defensive utility here and there, but that depends on what instance/event you’re trying to complete.

The Meta Guard, though extremely powerful, is rather squishy if you’re new to the build. The idea behind the meta build being they aim for max DPS as being dead is the best form of hard CC against mobs (heh).

Surviving with any Meta build requires attention in three areas
-Know your enemy: As a guard Aegis is your best friend, but some mobs/bosses have unblockable attacks as such you’ll need to know to dodge those attacks rather than soak them. As far as dodging is concerned doing just mindlessly tap the button when you start to panic but instead discipline yourself in paying attention to your target to learn the tales. It’s all about the timing when going from ranging to up close melee.
-Nourishment: I cannot stress enough how important food is in the game. Food has effects such as heal on crit, more damage, and boon/condi extention/diminisher respectively. There are also potions that give you a whole 10% damage boost as well as reduces direct damage to you by 10% of a particular creature type. Beyond that bring Utilities such as stones or oils to make sure you are maximizing your potential.
-Flexibility: This is a matter of practice and comfort in knowing various builds as well as your skills “bring the right tool for the job”. Effectively don’t try to lock yourself into the Meta build but rather use that as a guide. Sure 4/6/2/0/2 and 4/5/0/0/5 are fantastic builds, but sometimes you need to switch to a Hammer build for support such as 3/5/0/4/2 or 5/5/0/4/0.

As a Guard we kinda have the burden of the party looking to us for support (since we do it so well!). So aim to be the last one down. Meta Guards overall require more attention as we don’t have ubber traits like AH to mindlessly keep us alive. For trash mobs blind them like crazy and remember that F1 blinds as well and recharges upon killing an enemy. You also have blinds on both you weapon sets so be sure you’re using those. Aegis, as I mentioned before, is your saving grace. By all means, don’t spam Aegis but use it when you need it. Eventually you’re goal should be to save virtue F2 and F3 for your allies rather than for yourself. You have blocks on other skills as well and can always slot in renewed focus for Invuln frames.

Finally, be sure you’re in a good team. As a ranger a bad team isn’t as noticible as you said you were ranging. In a melee group bad/moderate teams are more readily recognized.

I would recommend thief if you’re putting a focus on open world. They have insane mobility in regards to map completion, and their mechanic can make it to where they have no cooldown on their weapon skills (practice required, ofc). Their superior access to stealth also make a few puzzles easier on them in case they need to sneak past nasty mobs and such.

They have decent great DPS and superior focused DPS. They have a few rotations that reward the player for paying close attention to their target.

Dungeon wise thieves are highly accepted due to their near perma-blindness (depending on the monsters’ attack rate), and some paths make use of their stealth to brush past difficult content such as Arah paths, for example. They also bring projectile control in the form of Smokescreen and Dagger Storm.

Engineers are great, but for some reason have left a bad taste in players’ mouths. Open world they have great mobility due to true perma-swiftness and having quite a few gap closers (about-face techniques are well for more gap closing cheese). They also excel at hybrid damage so you could go condi, berserker, and even Sin gear works excellent for the class.

Dungeon wise, be prepared to press a lot of buttons as well as bring a non-condi build. For the most part as an enginner you’ll be expected to bring a bomb/nade build for max DPS as well as vuln stacking. The rotations on an Engi are intimidating at first but will just require a bit of practice. Utlity wise, Engi bring various field (most importantly: fire, water, and smoke), have a large amount of blast finishers, AoE healing, projectile control, and a few other things as well.

Personally, Engi’s can be very overwhelming at first due to high versatility, but they excel in the right hands.

Rangers bring two unique buffs to the playing field: Spotter and Frost Spirit. Beyond those, they have a very short rotation that burns out rather quickly, and there’s always the issue of pet mamagement.

Going back to the OP’s question though there’s really not a perfect All Rounder. Guards, Ele’s, and Warriors probably have the highest versatility and demand in all aspects of the game. When built correctly they can dish out huge numbers but, just as readily, they can be built from superior team support.

In PvE Guards, Ele’s, Warriors, and Thieves are openly accepted as they have great dps, party utility, as well as multiple builds . Engineers are also welcomed, but their build selection is quite limited as far as what’s welcomed. Mesmers are excellent to bring for certain dungeons, but they generally get over-shadowed by other classes being able to do “x” better in most cases. Rangers are about “meh” and are okay to bring into groups with short fights; the longer the fight goes the less valuable they become. Necros still do not contribute anything worthwhile and are the ones most often kicked on the spot. Their builds tend to be selfish and self buffing which make them great as individual players, but they have limited party utility to return the favor.

WvW and PvP have less of a restriction. Though you any class can be made viable each server/team generally has a template that they recommend as far as team/zerg composition. I don’t have as much expertise here so this is more from personal observation.

It works solo as well. Luckily our Guard builds tend not to rely as much on other classes but are rather “enhanced” by key team members in a group. In a solo environment you generally would want more assassin pieces to make up where other party members would bring fury or precision (warrior banner, Ranger’s spotter, etc).

It’s also about adapting to the environment. I’ve seen builds as radical as 2/6/2/2/2 that offer high damage and utility (through shouts and consecrations). That’s why I mentioned the baseline of 2/5/0/0/2 (the 2 in Virtues having high variability). Based on the encounter you’ll want to invest your remaining points into what will best help you overcome the challenge. Food and nourishment also play a big part in extra lifesteal, damage, or whole lot of other effects. Utility nourishment for the most part help top off some stats that you’re missing, but the more expensive variations offer utility such as bonus boon duration (boons!). The following guide focuses DPS maximizing but also offers great advice in build diversity as well as detailed discussion regarding the various Guard mechs.

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

Yep, that build offers 100% crit chance (assuming fury) when using a main hand. You switch to GS for its burst attacks while topping off a little hp (passively through the zeal trait). High base power and high ferocity is offered through this build. Though there’s been some debate as to whether assassin pieces are worthwhile especially with a warrior in the group that throws down a discipline banner; that tends to screw with the numbers just a little.

Personally I say go full berserker as you’ll still float in the 90’s for crit chance and will have high power when it comes to attacking constructs and such (that are not critable). Though armor piece selection I leave for you to calculate as selection differs slightly due to variations in team comp, gear quality, and food selection.

I believe we have a case of wrong class for the wrong player that finally found the right class for his play style.

In all seriousness whether it be a Medi guard that’ll blink in for the burst or a bunker holding the point Guards tend to get targeted not so much become they are an easy pick off but because they can turn around a fight if not dealt with immediately.

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

Mostly discusses Maximizing DPS, but the overall article has great insight

You’re going to want to keep the base traits of 2/5/0/0/2. The 2 in virtues is a little tricky as the extra 20% work is only worthwhile if you can maintain Aegis uptime. Iirc, at 65, you have access to armor with three stats. If at all possible go with berserker or use knight’s if you feel a little squishy; trinkets should always remain berserker.

Pushing into Zeal works well with Greatsword, Scepter, and anything that makes use of Symbols.

Maxing Radiance promotes use of one handed weapons most notibly main hand sword

Valor can be ignored for the most part as it offer primarily defensive traits. The Retribution trait is another DPS booster. Oddly enough, Ferocity points come from this line.

Honor is a major Hammer buff with extended symbols as the Hammer AA synergies very well with the Writ traits.

Virtues promotes utility and boon uptime as well as offering extended durations of concecrations and spirit weapons (shield is the about the only one that we use). 5 point in this line offers a catch-all DPS buff for any build as you get +1% for each boon on you.

In order to maximize DPS you will need to weapon swap; however, if you want to just stick to one weapon you may be interested in a hammer build:

3/5/0/4/2 if you can maintain Aegis
5/5/0/4/0 if you cannot

This build is probably one of the laziest Guardian build as you can simply AA

Are you wanting a build that is tanky-ish, or are you wanting a build to maximize damage?

Aegis, protection, blinds are going to be your best friends when it comes to dungeons.

Justice is Blind + Blind Exposure (VI) + Renewed Justice in the Radiance line are a powerful combination that excels in multi mob fights. Combine that with sword/focus and maybe a greatsword, and you can time the blime for a near perma-effect. In the case that you can’t blind as readily that’s where Aegies and protection act as damage mitigaters. Aegis is harder to use, but you want to save that boon for those “kill-shot” attacks. Protection (from HtL or SY) is great to sound when you need a moment of damamge mitigation. Hammer (with traited smbols) offers competitive DPS as well as offering perma-protection by simply AA-ing.

As mentioned before AH is going to be the go-to trait for defense for dungeons overall. Combine that with symbols, a few shouts, and “boon” traits to maximize the effect.

The build I used to run would be 0/4/6/2/2 as far as a good balance of offense and defense. This will allow for Justice spamming which grants might (stacks heal the guard due to AH), blinds, applies vulnerablity. The 2 in Virtues can be used for Concecrations or Unscathed Contender for that superior 20% damage buff. Despite being fairly suvivable even in Berserker gear I would consider this build less optimal as it is reactive. A stronger build would be the Meta’s “Fractal Hammer” which focuses symbol DPS and allows for camping in Hammer AA (required swapping to GS for for higher DPS though).

Gear-wise, try to stick with Berserker if you can as that is the best stat for dungeons. If you feel you need to be tankier I would slot out your 6 armor pieces with either knight’s or Soldier’s but be sure to keep your trinkets Berserker.

P.S. Do you use the right food in dungeons to help survivability?

I was thinking more along the lines of when a team is hanging around as the boss/mobs are being lured/los’d. There’s not really anything you can do there other than wait til the targets are in place for engaging in combat. It’s that downtime where I’ve personally use my guard’s empower (since I’m not losing damage on that skill) but was wondering if burning the ele’s blasts were worth using or saving for their dps.

I run S/D so fire field comboing is definitely something I shoot for.

My question is when is the optimal time to start the combo? I’ve heard different opinions such as you stack right before you engage in combat and rush a mob so you can burn them down faster, while others say that the skills you use to stack the might would be better used to deal damage to the mobs instead of wasting them before the fight putting them on cooldown.

In other words, would the might you prepare ahead of time add more to the damage, or would the team be better off might stacking while already engaged in combat thus damaging them as you build up might?

Granted I realize that this doesn’t really make too terrible of a difference in the long run, but I’m one of those people that aims at efficiency. There’s also a lot of variability that would affect the answer to this: professions in the party, stats, trash vs pro mob, bosses, etc. so both answers could be right depending on the situation.

Anyways, looking for any data anyone might already have or discussion for this as well. Not limited to Ele’s, though personally, I’m usually on “might duty” when I roll my Ele as the offensive support on these guys are pretty amazing.

There’s a difference between skipping content and ignoring content. If a team is deliberately looking to skip content via exploit/glitching then yes, I’d agree that’s laziness. Though what the OP is looking for is a team that is a “get in, get out” type of group only clearing the necessary obstructions/mobs to progress the instance while ignoring the rest.

One of the best examples would be Arah where a team would stack an extra hour or two if they spent the time clearing each and every mob and event. The “elitist” factor of this being that some things are not easily ignored and an unseasoned team will drop in a heartbeat. Most teams run mostly zerker toons to speed up killing as well so team comp is definitely worth looking into before rushing in.

But I digress, OP just needs a team that will get him in and out of a dungeon as quickly as possible while looking to improve efficiently and team comp.

Check your mail c:

Guild Recruitment page

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/recruitment

At the time of creating this post there were 5 posts alone from just SoR guilds recruiting that offered what you are looking for. Posts from other servers offered similar attractions. If none of those catch your attention then I’m not sure what to tell you.

Personally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable inviting you to my SoR guild as we are strictly PvE with no serious involvement in WvW. Like Farva said though, one important piece of information would be when you plan to get on and frequency. That doesn’t matter so much for PvE, but any guild that’s serious in WvW generally needs to know their numbers for coordianting or if they run small squads rather than running with the Zerg.

That being said though, there are TONS of posts on SoR guilds if you pop over to the “Guild Recruiment” subforum. While there are plenty of scouts looking through this particular subforum you don’t always get to see all the options.

Check your mail :D

Hiya!

I’m part of a small guild with a PvE focus; dungeons and fractals are our specialty! We’ve recently started recruiting, and we’ve been getting mostly players completely new to the game (quite a few rangers too, hehe). We love showing the ropes to the new guys, and we’re regularly bashing on each other in guild chat (constructively of course).

If you’re interested or just want to hang out let me or my co-admin (Rxns) know!