6 replies to this topic

[Zarffa]

After a few Beta Weekend Events and a 2 day Stress Test Fest I have come up with this build idea. I have not had a chance to fully experiment with all the traits and skills, however I am fairly confident that I have had enough sucessful experience to warrant sharring.

My objective in sharing this build is in two parts. 1) It is important to share what works and what doesn't in order to strengthen the community and increase the over all skill of everyone participating. And 2) because I am seeking constructive criticism. Hopefully you have noticed that constructive criticsm is in bold, italics and underlined. This is because I do not want arrogant and insulting comments. If you have suggestions, by all means share, but please back it up with some explanation. I am aware it is still too early for statistics, so anecdotes and logic will just have to suffice.

Without further ado, my build.

After experimenting with every weapon in the Guardian's arsenal I have found the sword and focus to be the most effective at sustaining damage per second (DPS). For a time I was torn between the sword and the greatsword. However, I found the sword to have a higher survivability rate. Naturally, this could be because of an ineffective playstyle, however, this build has been built around the use of the sword and focus.

Because I decided to remain true to the Guardian's "essence" I decided to focus heavily on virtues/boons (which coinscides nicely with using the focus). This build, hopefully, does two things well. It has high DPS due to a high precision (chance to critically strike) and effective self/team support given the number of frequent boons.

Healing Breeze: Between Shelter and Healing Breeze I decided on Healing Breeze for the obvious gain in healing allies. Shelter's block does make it a strong continder for a melee-centric buiid, however, I decided with the amount of blind available and Shield of Wrath's block Healing Breeze is just as effective.

Save Yourselves!: This skill was chosen for a couple of reasons. Drawing conditions from allies is a plus. But more importantly, the sheer number of boons synergizes well with Power of the Virtuous. This makes the Guardian have a superflous amount of boons and for about 10 seconds you do quite a bit of extra damage. I do have concerns that with virtues and the traits that there will already be more than enough boons to make Save Yourselves! negligible.

Hold the Line!: This skill was mostly just selected because I already had a shout and wanted another to make Superior Aria worth it and obviously is fits in with supporting allies. I can easly see this skill being replaced with another shout if it is effectively argued.

Sanctuary: This is what I consider the epitome or flagskill of the Guardian. I view it to be a pseudo-elite skill. I am not yet sure how effective or worth having it is though. But I figured it would be more supportive than a spirit weapon. Now why is it between the two? Well, in the Virtues trait line Tier:Adept needs a rune(?) and I only like Improved Spirit Weapon Duration and Master of Consecrations. I figure Sanctuary is more useful because the sword should do more than enough damage and a spirit weapon wouldn't be as useful. Nevertheless, if you little Guardians find you are not doing enough damage and more than enough support this trait/skill can easily be swapped.

Tome of Courage: I have had absolutely no experience with elite skills and have just read on the forums that Tome of Courage is the only elite worth having. Dunno.

Because this post has already surpassed excessive, I will be brief with the traits. Radiance has been maxed to make the sword super effective. Done.
Virtues has been maxed to enhance support and boons, and give a little boost to the sword's AoE DPS. And the remaining trait points were placed into Honor to enhance support healing as well as to synergize with the high crit chance and Vigorous Precision. And of course Superior Aria allows shouts to be used more frequently.

All right, dear Dwayna I did not mean for that to go on as long as it did... And to think, I have two builds for the Engineer I am posting next =/

Let me know what you guys think!

P.S Completely forgot about the staff. Oops. I chose it as the secondary weapon because of Symbol of Swiftness. Yeah, that's pretty much the only reason. I am definitely interested in what you guys have to say about the secondary weapons and their pros and cons.

tl;dr

Edited by iToasterHD, 11 August 2012 - 05:51 PM.

[Itharius]

You can use a greatsword or a scepter/shield as an offset and equip the staff out of combat for the swiftness symbol.

[Slicetank]

I like this build, I'm gonna switch out the staff for a greatsword. And mess around to see if I like a shield better than the focus or not. But very nice build. I think it will fit my play style.

[indure]

You really don't have any condition removal and if your going to be using Save Yourselves you need to be very careful in group battles because it is easy to kill yourself. Overall your going to have a lot of problems with conditions.

Also you'll get better advice if you complete the last page and link your planned runes, sigils and amulet sine they make a major difference in the build.

I'm not sure I agree with picking Healing Breeze when all your traits gear for damage. I understand you want to be able to help others, but you don't really have the support traits to back this heal. If your adamant about keeping the heal that's fine, but just keep in mind what you are losing. With Signet of Resolve and Signet mastery, you would almost literally double the amount of self-healing you could output.

Something else to consider, is that your build fits perfectly for a retaliation build. If your willing to change any of your majors in the virtue line for Vengeful, and one of your shouts for Stand Your Ground you would have 18 secs of retaliation every 24 (plus 5ish sec every time you activate a virtue). And if retaliation stays in its current form that may benefit you and your team much more then your build is currently accomplishing.

[Tomalak2]

indure, on 12 August 2012 - 04:49 PM, said:

You really don't have any condition removal and if your going to be using Save Yourselves you need to be very careful in group battles because it is easy to kill yourself. Overall your going to have a lot of problems with conditions.

Also you'll get better advice if you complete the last page and link your planned runes, sigils and amulet sine they make a major difference in the build.

If I'm not mistaken this is supposed to be a PvE build?

Keep in mind, when it comes to PvE, specific skills/major traits people choose are actually not important at all, since they'll be changing skills/major traits depending on the specific PvE fight. He can easily switch to signets and add conditions removal both active and passive (either by signets or skills). And he will be doing so, even in different fights in the same dungeon.

As far as I am concerned, when speaking about PvE builds, the ONLY important thing is the distribution of points between the trait lines. Everything else can be changed on the fly.

Edited by Tomalak2, 12 August 2012 - 07:05 PM.

[indure]

Tomalak2, on 12 August 2012 - 07:04 PM, said:

If I'm not mistaken this is supposed to be a PvE build?

Keep in mind, when it comes to PvE, specific skills/major traits people choose are actually not important at all, since they'll be changing skills/major traits depending on the specific PvE fight. He can easily switch to signets and add conditions removal both active and passive (either by signets or skills). And he will be doing so, even in different fights in the same dungeon.

As far as I am concerned, when speaking about PvE builds, the ONLY important thing is the distribution of points between the trait lines. Everything else can be changed on the fly.

Your correct, didn't see the PVE in the title and as you stated the only important part is how you allocate the trait points since everything else can be changed as needed.

[Zarffa]

Okay guys, here is the updated partial build. As you can see I am missing two utility skills and I have 10 spare trait points, suggestions?

I definitely want to stick with the sword, not sure about the offhand yet. I have had some issues with surviving so perhaps shield would be better. However, I have heard that the focus is actually a more effective defense than the shield. Since playing in the last stress test I do believe my secondary weapon should be AoE. I experimented with the hammer for a more defensive AoE weapon and was very disappointed. I do enjoy the greatsword, so I will bring that back as a backup weapon and see if it fares better.

So, last 10 trait points: Worth going into Virtues and getting Permeating Wrath? Or is there something better I can do with it?
Last two skill slots, my original goal was to support allies as passively as possible. That is why I went with the virtues line. That way I can just spam F1, F2 and F3 and I'm "helping" my team without having to really pay any attention to them. That being said, I don't want a glass cannon build either. I was hoping for more of a offensive orientated defensive build. So perhaps shouts will be what I am looking for.

I figure given my signet and shout recharge, one more signet and one more shout should be perfect. Suggestions? If I go the retaliation way would Signet of Judgement be better than Stand Your Gound!?

As a side note, I have not yet gotten far enough in game to know much about sigils, amulets and the like. So for now I am just focusing on mechanics, skills and traits and will worry about that stuff later. Once I have a solid build I am comfortable with I will figure out which modifiers best enhance that build.

Thanks for all the feedback!