Guardians are insanely versatile, even for a GW2 class. A staff-wielding guardian can support a group with some really nice healing magic. Add an alternate weapon set that utilizes shields and you get one hell of a support character for your dungeon group. Or spec into those fun, floaty, ethereal weapons! With the right traits they last twice as long, won't be destroyed upon firing off their special abilities and they cannot be harmed in wvw. And you don't know real fun until you get chased around the battlefield by a ghostly sword, hammer and shield, which cut you up, knock you down and inflict vulnerability on you, respectively. Because a guardian can summon three of those suckers all at the same time!
But I'm not gonna teach you how to protect a bunch of pussies or how to make invulnerable pets do all the dirty work for you. I'm gonna teach you how to fight like a
You might remember my guide on manly rangers, so for the sake of continuity I'm gonna demonstrate a few minutes of quick Orr solo farming, Grenth area:
This is how my build works. If you disagree with the play style, the abilities or anything else on there, move along. If you like the general idea of this build, feel free to copy, customize and match your personal preference and style. All gear, runes, sigils etc. are visible at the beginning of the video, you might wanna pause in order to see each individual item if you care for that sort of thing. This guide will explain what I'm using and how and why I'm doing so.
At level 80 and in full exotic berserker gear, this build has a pretty small ~11k health pool. That's all a good player needs, since you get an aegis, regeneration and a powerful self-heal to keep you alive. Contrary to what a bunch of self-proclaimed pros might say, this is also a viable build for dungeons. Check my youtube channel for zero death dungeon footage.
You will need to learn when to back the fuck off and switch to ranged combat, how to predict and evade the more powerful enemy attacks and to generally stay away from those red circles. Heck, you should know these things when playing
any class, but screwing up with a small health pool is just that much more punishing. You've been warned.
This build utilizes greatswords, sceptres and shields.
Pros
+ High AoE damage
+ 1200 range on sceptre attacks (as opposed to 900 range axe attacks on rangers etc.)
+ Sceptre root attack and shield punt for crowd control
+ Rooting, punting and teleporting allows you to be a major dick in pvp
+ For some fucked up reason, every dungeon group wants guardians and warriors
+ Super easy melee mob-tagging
Cons
- Your health pool is shit
- Small, easy battles can all be won just by mashing '2'
- Groups expect you to call targets. Which isn't a big deal, but if you hate it... well, sucks to be you.
- Sceptres are gay. Like,
really gay. Sir Elton John gay.
Dem Traits - This is how you spec
 |
| This is where your trait points go. Why? Read on! |
Zeal gets maxed out all the way. This is
the law! Not only are we going for maximum power, but there are three nice traits we want from this thing:
1. Fiery Wrath: Ideally, our enemies will be burning at all times, so 10% extra damage to burning baddies is a huge plus.
2. Greatsword Power: 5% more greatsword damage may not sound like much, but with fiery wrath that's already 15% extra against burning foes.
3. Zealous Blade: Our health pool is shit, zealous blade alleviates that to some extent by granting a healing effect to all our greatsword attacks. Must-have!
The Zeal traitline also buffs our symbol of wrath a bit (no. 4 on greatsword), which isn't too shabby, but nothing insanely great, either.
Next trait line to max out is Radiance. One weakness of our full berserker spec is the lower crit rate you get when compared to a rampager build. The 300 extra precision from Radiance boosts our crit chance to an acceptable 51% at level 80. Traits:
1. Searing Flames. Removing a boon whenever you inflict burning to an enemy is more useful in wvw, but all the alternatives are worse. Shimmering Defense is alright for pve.
2. Inscribed Removal: Poison and burning can be a real bitch on a low health pool. This build uses two signets, giving us two buttons to remove such nasty conditions. Take it!
3. Perfect Inscriptions: We wanna get as much power as possible out of our Bane Signet, so this is a must.
This trait line allows us to spam Virtue of Justice, as it automatically renews itself whenever we kill a baddie. It also blinds foes around us now and we'll deal extra damage to enemies suffering from conditions. SO much extra damage!
The final ten points go to Valor. Why? Extra crit damage. Meditation Mastery is an okay trait, which allows us to teleport towards foes a little faster. The aegies renewal on 50% health is a nice addition.
So, why don't we put 30 points into Valor for max crit damage? Mostly, because the rest of the trait line is shit. They all involve shields, maces, hammers and other stuff, which is completely irrelevant to our fighting style. Some extra crit damage alone won't do if we don't have the traits to support our fighting style. 30 points on Virtues is out of the question, as it centers around activating all your damn virtues over and over again, meaning you have to manage and monitor three more abilities. Bleh!
30 points on Honor is a valid possibility in order to raise our rather lousy health cap and get the 20% cooldown bonus for two-handed attacks. This trait line also allows us to increase the size and duration of Signet of Wrath.
That said, I never felt that I really *needed* a 20% cooldown reduction on my greatsword attacks, where the most powerful move can be used every ten seconds anyway. A 2 seconds speedup isn't a whole lot and freebies such as "heal allies at the end of a dodge roll" isn't all that great. And extra damage on low energy rather than extra damage vs enemies with conditions? WAY too complicated. If you spec into this, you'll either lose all your other greatsword buffs or you'll royally gimp your Virtue of Justice. And not being able to remove boons is a bad thing in dungeons.
Dem Skillz - Picking the right shit for epic hurtage
- Healing: Signet of Resolve. Auto-curing conditions every ten seconds is insanely helpful, and so is healing over 8k out of 11k health. The 40s cooldown might sound harsh, but if your virtues and dodging abilities can't keep you alive for that long, then this build isn't for you, anyway.
- 1st utility: Judge's Intervention. AoE burning is good. Removes boons, allows us to deal 10% extra damage, allows us to teleport an insane distance right in front of an enemy. Try it against fleeing players in wvw, it's hilarious!
- 2nd utility: Bane Signet. We want maximum damage, therefore we want power, bane signet grants power and requires no management at all. Can be used for CC if necessary (knockdown). In this spec, triggering bane signet also removes nasty conditions like bleeding, poison, burning etc.
- 3rd utility: "Save Yourselves!" An excellent oshi-button. Provides absolutely every boon there is, breaks stun, lets you run away, heals you a little bit... it's the one thing to keep you alive when shit goes sideways and your signet of resolve isn't ready. If you're feeling super badass and you don't believe in skills for additional survivability, replace with a signet of choice for more passive damage bonuses.
- Elite: Mistfire Wolf. I'm not even fucking kidding. Frankly, all guardian elite skills are shit from a DPS perspective. The special attacks on that tome leave much to be desired, you don't want supportive elite spells and temporary invulnerability may be nice, but it doesn't usually last long enough to do you any good. To me, the wolf is vastly underrated and provides for some nice extra damage. Alternatively, fill with a racial elite you like or pick one of the guardian class elites if you disagree with me.
Dat Gear - Wearing the right shtoof to bring the pain
We're going for maximum damage here, so berserker in absolutely every slot is the way to go. Maximum crit damage. If you're a cheap bastard, you can go for rampager stuff and boost your crit rate to something around the high sixties, but the added condition damage won't help you much. Burning is nice and all, but you're not stacking 20+ bleeds and poison, so this stat is mostly wasted on you.
If you desire greater survivability, you'll want Valkyrie gear, but that's not in the spirit of this build. If played right, full berserker can survive dungeons just fine.
For runes, you can go with just about anything that raises your power and crit damage. In the example video, I'm going with Baelfire stuff, because the flame nova and added burning duration go well with the guardian's abilities. If you can't be bothered to farm tokens, it's perfectly fine to get superior runes off the TP, which complement this build (burning, crit damage, power, you get the idea). Divinity Runes aren't worth it unless you're shitting gold. 12% extra crit damage as opposed to the 9% from other rune sets are barely noticeable and the +60 to all stats isn't really all that useful.
As for weapon sigils, you'll want a Superior Sigil of Strength on your greatsword. Your basic greatsword attack grants you might on every third strike, which stacks nicely with the Strength Rune procs and can quickly result in 10+ might stacks when fighting multiple enemies.
Your sceptre gets Superior Sigil of Flame. A 30% chance for an extra flame AoE attack on each crit is nice to have, looks cool and procs a whole lot.
The shield gets upgraded with a Superior Sigil of Bloodlust. Try and get the 25 ranged kills out of the way ASAP to benefit from 250 extra points of power. The power bonus persists even when you switch back to your sword, resulting in over 3850 attack power, not counting possible might stacks.
Play Style - PvE
For quick and easy tagging of large mob groups and hogging of foes, use your teleport ability (Judge's Intervention) to reach baddies halfway across the map within the blink of an eye. Be sure you can fucking handle them! Spam Virtue of Justice for greater flame damage and AoE blindness - killing an enemy instantly resets its CD, anyway! Your greatsword attacks are self-explanatory. If you need help on how to spam those, go back to Barbie Horse Adventures!
In case of trouble, try to get away using "Save Yourselves!". It'll provide a light HoT and get you out of most hairy situations. Judge's Intervention can also be used as an escape mechanism when used at a weaker, far away baddie. Save your healing signet until the last possible moment. Wasting at 60% health can mean a quick death, whilst waiting for the 40s cooldown to pass.
When melee doesn't seem safe, use your sceptre. You can cc enemies and bind them, followed directly by your ground-targeted ranged AoE for large amounts of damage. The AI is incredibly lousy at countering basic circle-strafing, so keep running circles around the masses, spam your special attacks and take them down one at a time. This also works well against veteran baddies and most bosses. Most weaker bosses can barely out-DPS your regeneration, so attacking them in melee is often the lazier, easier option. Just dodge those stomps, club attacks and other predictable, nasty shit! You can easily melee large bosses like Gronk if you time your dodge moves right.
Play Style - WvW
1200 range sceptre attacks and ranged AoEs for racking up lame, easy zerg kills, no surprises there. 1on1 melee situations are usually cake. Close in with your leap, start whirling around like the fucking morons most guardians are anyway, "Save Yourselves" to break CC, trigger Bane Signet to remove conditions and to CC your opponent some more, switch to your sceptre to root the fucker when he runs off and use Judge's Intervention to teleport after him if he gets away. An average player won't be able to handle you - including most other guardians, because they tend to suck.
You have enough CC, gap closers and condition-removing abilities to handle casters and rangers. Use your brain, maintain your cool, keep those fuckers burning and rooted and teleport after them if it needs be. If all else fails, a talented guardian's sceptre is deadlier than a crappy ranger player's bow.
-Cat
