Pendragon

Primary DPS GS + Axe/Mace Warrior for Organized Groups
Update 5/17:
If you've visited the Guardian forums at all, you may have seen my thread which explains the guardian build I use for all my dungeon runs:
http://www.guildwars...guardian-build/
and now my mesmer build as well:
http://www.guildwars...dungeon-groups/

I have been asked quite a bit what the primary warrior in my group runs though, so today I bring you the warrior build that we currently use for dungeons. This build provides huge dps for both the group and as a primary dps class. Due to the recent patch making Axe 5 much less effective for burst healing and constantly proccing for life steal damage, GS + Axe/Mace gives you higher damage potential and the same survivability as my old Axe/Mace + Axe/Axe build. This allows me to utilize the best burst and rotation for various bosses and mobs depending on if I can get 100B + WW off or I need the auto attack + interrupt on Axe/Mace, or a combination of both.

The video guide can be found as follows:


Also you can find this build in action on my youtube page with various dungeons from guardian, mesmer, and/or warrior perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/strife025

Overview:
This build has been tweaked quite a few times to get to something that my group feels is the best DPS build for dungeons, based on patch and balance changes. This is a build specific for dungeons, not for WvW or PvP, so I would not refer to this for those instances. It provides huge amounts of sustained damage over the course of boss fights, provides damage benefits to your entire group, and gives you very good micro-level mobility and a way to interrupt and remove defiant stacks. While I do prefer the Axe/Mace playstyle a bit more, I do realize that a combination of both weapons gives you the flexibility and overall dps benefit by using optimal rotations. This allows you to get the superior skill damage rotation from GS with 100B+WW, and the superior auto attack dps and added utility from vuln stacking and a knockdown with A/M.

Build and Equipment:
http://gw2buildcraft...y.69.6j.61.6m|e
If you are running a longbow with Axe/Mace for some fights, you also have the ability to switch Slashing Power to Dual Wielding.

This build is focused on dps, and rightly so, warrior has some of the highest sustained damage in the game while not being made of "glass". While this game has been designed to allow a mix of various classes capable of completing dungeons, it is quite clear that a pseudo-trinity still exists and certain group comps make dungeon runs quick and painless (as proved by my various dungeon videos). One of these parts is a dps class that not only provides good direct damage by themselves, but also contributes to overall group damage while not constantly being downed and taking away total dps, by both losing your own dps, and causing someone else to res you. This is the part that this warrior build provides.

As far as gear goes, a balanced build between knights and berserker is based on the below stat comparison on what you lose per 1% of crit damage.
The tradeoff for 1% of crit damage is equal to:

• 5 stat points - upgrade slot of trinkets and backpack
  
• 7 points - Ascended Back Piece
  
• 8.5 stat points - Ascended Rings
  
• 8.7 stat points - Ascended Earrings
  
• 9.4 stat points - Ascended Amulet
  
• 10 stat points- traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
  
• 12 stat points - glove, shoulder and boots
  
• 12.8 stat points - 1H weapons and amulet
  
• 13.33 stat points - Earring
  
• 14 stat points - Backpack (rare version from guild armorsmith)
  
• 14.22 stat points - 2H weapons
  
• 14.4 stat points - Coat (Chest)
  
• 16 stat points - Ring, helm and legging

This stat breakdown will let you maximize your % crit while balancing for survivability with Knight's pieces. How much toughness you need depends on the group and player. I currently have everything berserker now that I am comfortable with dungeons, the groups I run with, and my own skill level. When I first started playing warrior, I did have the Chest, Helm, and Legs in knights for some added toughness, but slowly switched off of it. You do want to be careful and not wear too much toughness though, because this will cause you to pull agro more which will ultimately make you take even more damage.

For armor sockets, I now use 6 scholar runes, you need about 25% uptime on 90%+ health to make them better then ruby orbs. The cheaper alternative of course is 6 ruby orbs. Yes I used to use 2x Monk runes just for some extra boon duration, but for maximizing your dungeon speed clears for some of the videos I make it's better to go pure dps since you don't really need the boon duration in groups, it's more beneficial for soloing.

For weapons, I use Sigil of Force on Axe and Greatsword (or specific dungeon sigil if you prefer), Sigil of Bloodlust for power stacks on mace, and then a backup mace with Sigil of Battle and Sigil of Night when I have 25 bloodlust stacks or I'm doing a dungeon like CoF1 where I won't really have the chance to build bloodlust. It seems that Accuracy and Force now stack together, so Accuracy on mace for when you already have 25 bloodlust stacks and aren't in a nighttime dungeon is probably better then battle when you can already reach 25 might with a 1guard/3war/1mes group.

As far as other weapons go, they all pretty much have Force on them since I don't use them much and Force is a pretty cheap, generic, all around good sigil. You do want a shield with Sigil of Energy though, for both the extra dodges when running through trash when you would equip a shield for Invuln time, and also for any instances you find where you need more dodges. Your go-to ranged weapon is going to be Longbow, which offers higher direct damage then Rifle at the cost of 300 range untraited.

As far as crit chance goes:
Your base crit chance (full ascended/scholar) is going to be 51%
20% from Fury bumps that to 71%
9% from heightened focus goes to 80%
170 precision from banner pushes it to 87%
70 precision from Omnomberry Pies/Ghosts pushes it to 90% (or more from butternut squash soup).

So as far as food goes, Omnom Pies/Ghosts are still the best regen/life steal food in a high crit build. It does have a 1s internal cooldown now, but offers more life gain then any regen food assuming you are actually doing damage and critting. If you do not need the lifesteal, then something like Curry Butternut Squash Soup will offer more dps overall now that there is a cooldown on proccing lifesteal which also does damage. So food is more situational on what you are doing now.

Skills:
Skills which you will be using a majority of the time:

• Healing Surge is much better then Healing Signet in this build, since you usually have 3 bars of adrenaline and you no longer have signet cooldown like in my older builds
  
• For Great Justice is one of the best skills for dungeons, increasing the damage of your entire party with 100% uptime on at least 3 stacks of might with 0 cast time to take away from your direct damage
  
• Every class should always have at least 1 stun break and a way to remove conditions, Shake it Off provides that for warrior for heavy condition fights, or Frenzy for fights where you don't need condition removal. Further condition removal comes from teammates (i.e. Guardian), because dungeons are a teamwork based activity.
  
• Banners are huge benefits to the group, it has near 100% uptime with the trait, provides swiftness for running through trash mobs, and provides overall damage and survivability to your group.
  
• Signet of Rage should be obvious. Along with For Great Justice, you always have Fury up which is one of the most important boons for a dps role.

These skills are not set in stone though, many of the stances are situational as well.

For a few bosses where you need stability, as well as the Harpy Fractal, I will take Balanced Stance instead of a banner or Shake it Off.
If you know you won't really need condition removal, you can also take Frenzy instead of Shake it Off to really maximize your dps. Also to maximize dps, we usually run OMM instead of Banner of Tactics now.
Finally in a few of the fractals at 30+, you will probably want to take Endure Pain instead of a Banner so you are able to burst down some of the harder groups without getting downed.

Switching to the appropriate skills for a given situation will just come with experience, knowing what you can get away with, and what will provide the overall best dps in consideration with being interrupted or downed.

Mechanics:
This is where I get into the usefulness of GS and Axe/Mace and the proper rotations you should be using.

GS has superior dps with the 100B and Whirlwind rotation. The downside is obviously that you are rooted for 3.5s while using 100B, and the auto attack dps of GS outside of this combo is inferior to Axe. When running in an organized group with an anchor, alot of the downside to the root is mitigated, while you still may need to "break" the animation of 100B to dodge sometimes, you can still get the full rotation off most of the time outside of some instances in high level fractals. If a mob is against a wall, WW offers by far the highest dps out of all your skills while evading at the same time.

Now the benefit of Axe/Mace is that it has superior auto attack dps with Axe, especially when you don't need the vulnerability that comes with the GS auto attack, the ability to front load 8 stacks of vulnerability with Axe 2/Mace 4, and the knockdown which is especially useful for bursting down packs of silver mobs.

With fast hands, you get the benefit of both the GS and Axe/Mace strengths, while mitigating their weaknesses. Fast hands will allow you to get the 100B+WW combo off which takes ~5s which has the highest dps potential out of all your skills, then instantly swap to Axe/Mace to get the superior auto attack dps and utility while 100B+WW is on cooldown. Once your 5s weapon swap is off cooldown again, you can switch back to GS and repeat the rotation all over again.

If you are in a PuG and find yourself needing more range, you can still take Longbow for your swap. First it has more direct damage then Rifle which benefits from a crit/damage build and it has some nice AoE burst with the 3rd skill. The tradeoff is that you have 300 less range which I don't really find a problem most of the time and you do have the option to trait it if needed. I will also use A/M + Longbow in a few instances at high level fractals, specifically for bosses like Mossman, the last Shaman Fractal boss, and the last boss of Dredge Fractal. In these instances, I find that Axe/Mace will allow me to burst in and melee better then GS, because alot of the times you won't have the opportunity to be rooted for the entire 3.5s to get the full benefit of GS. As mentioned earlier, this is where you would swap Slashing Power for Dual Wielding in the Strength line.

Conclusion:
Hopefully this guide helps to show what a Warrior can bring to a dungeon group. Their sustained damage, high damage traits, and offensive boons is a huge benefit for the ability of a group to quickly and efficiently clear dungeons. They are basically the direct counterpart to what a Guardian can bring for group survivability. Don't let the lack of a pure trinity and uneducated dungeon runners let you think that classes and roles don't exist. If you want to run dungeons easily and efficiently there are still optimal classes and roles just like any MMO. The pseudo trinity is still tank/dps/support as it currently stands, and this warrior build is the prime example of the dps role in a group. It provides both excellent direct damage and damage for your entire group without sacrificing cast-times to give this group support. This trinity is much looser then most other MMOs, but it still exists in GW2 if you want to be optimal. If you think otherwise, you probably haven't run dungeons in an efficient, team-work based group before.

Thanks for reading, and good luck out there.

Old Guides:

I don't really understand why you would spend all that time and resources for such an expensive skin without even checking what it looks like first...

jthamind, on 13 January 2013 - 12:50 AM, said:

Gw1 took a loooooooooooong time to get all the stuff people say is 'awesome endgame'.

GW2 is insanely better as a launch title. As in, stupidly better.

In the spirit of mutual learning and for easy reference, I would like to take the liberty of compiling some of the most talked about Guardian Builds in this forum. I'll just pitch in my two cents regarding their use and my experimenting in trying to use them or trying to come close to using them. (I hope the original posters don't butcher me, as I truly appreciate the effort they made in coming up with their own guides.)

I have yet to make up my mind which among them (or a combination of their individual points) that I will mark as my personal guardian build. Each is a great read for those who are looking for a build to use for their own Guardians.

Strife's Build: This is a variation of Altruistic Healing Build. Pumping both Valor and Honor to 30 for extreme survival. It makes use of a combination of Power/Toughness/Vitality and Power/Precision/Toughness Gears to really make your Guardian a rock. In my experience, there are a lot of Altruistic Healing builds, and generally they have notable offense, and have the capacity to support the party through boons and just practically being a survivor.

Ultramatum's Build: This one caught my eye due to the fact that it moved away from using Valor  as one of its Trait lines. It was pretty different as well as it used the Staff as its main weapon. (Not say that it can't be used for the other Two-Handed Weapons) This build, while I haven't fully geared it deals critical damage in spades. There's no trouble of targeting since any five targets in front of you gets slapped with 1K - 2.5K damage from #1 and #2 Staff Skills. It makes use of Power/Precision/Critical Damage and Power/Vitality/Critical Damage gears to really pack a kick without sacrificing Support or Survival.

Ultramatum's Support Build: This one is all about making those boons last. With a focus in Honor and Virtues, this read is one of my favorite support builds in terms of being that ultimate party player. It's a really tough build having 20K HP and all the healing and utility to buy your party the time to last all those encounters. It uses Power/Toughness/Vitality and Power/Vitality/Critical Damage gears. While focuses more on support, it doesn't lag behind in the damage department either. It has a similar Trait distribution as Dreyan's Build, but made use of Cleric's Gear. Just goes to show how Guardian's can play a bit differently in the hands of different players.

How to be a Tank: This is my recent favorite by paradiselight. Despite being convinced by Ultramatum's view on foregoing the use of Valor, I can't deny that I began as a Valor (Toughness) Junkie with this awesome awesome class. The prospect of controlling mobs is still a thing we have yet to grasp in this game since the traditional sense of tanking was thrown out the window. This actually made my head turn, as I was about the purchase T3 skins for my Berserker's Armor (Following Ultramatum's build) It is a actually a variation of an Altruistic Healing build, with max Radiance, as opposed to the conventional 0 - 15 points invested in that trait.

The Moral

As I've mentioned, these builds offer a lot of insights with how you could build a Guardian. They share some common points and in some occasions differ. More than just confusing me which armor set I should finally use my T3 on, what I want to drive at here is that trial and error should be an endeavor each of us has to undergo to get to that personal build. There's only so much reading could offer.

I'm currently sold between the trait distribution of Ultramatum's Build and Stacking Toughness as Suggested by the last build link.

There is no room for crafting because crafting is easily accessible by everyone. You're expecting to make much profit from crafting when anyone can spend a few gold and level the crafting discipline of their choice from 0-400? No.

And as usual, seems like people don't seem to understand that banning bots is going to make prices go higher. Less supply, same demand (unless you think bots were buying dyes on the market...all the ones I saw were wearing the exact same drab armor sets).

RNG everywhere? GW1 survived 7+ years when the majority of their drops were RNG based.

Your argument on wordwide economy vs. server economy also doesn't make much sense. The only thing this does is eliminate arbitrage (buying ectos on 1 server for cheap, switching servers and selling them at a higher cost). I'd much prefer eliminating that and having higher supply of items to choose from. Having a world economy is not why crafting isn't desireable, see above points.

Regarding dyes being character locked instead of account, I think the current system is probably the best. It's significantly better than GW1 (where you needed a dye for each armor per character). If dyes were account unlocked, it would quickly become a very boring drop. Prices would be insanely huge at the start, and then once everyone has unlocked the dye, it would quickly become worthless. It goes against what Anet originally said, but I think it is the right decision from an in-game economy perspective (and helps their cash shop a bit as well, which isn't an inherently bad thing).

Overall, too much paranoia, not enough understanding of how an in-game economy needs to be managed.

ScoutMATH, on 18 November 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

I got Eternity straight up. Didn't even need to kill the karka, it came up to me, rolled over and died.

Maybe you need more MF.

4gold and 75 silver is the cost of the skin.

InVizO, on 13 October 2012 - 04:01 PM, said:

WTF?

Conspiracy theory and admitted botter.  Ban plz?

Guardian "Anchor" Build through Altruistic Healing

Video Guide found below:


Speed runs of various dungeons can be found on my page so you can see the build in action, more are being added every week:
https://www.youtube.com/strife025

I have also received feedback on what builds we use for warriors and mesmers, my recent guide regarding this subject can be found in the respective subforum:
http://www.guildwars...-dungeon-build/
http://www.guildwars...dungeon-groups/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Updated 2/24/13:

Overview:
This guide should provide you a starting point for running Guardian in an organized dungeon group that focuses on speed runs. Because of the nature of both traits and utilities, Guardian is the best "tanky" class to use as an anchor in organized dungeon runs. What this means is that typically in speed runs, you want one class that has higher toughness then the other 4 classes, and is built to survive while holding agro without giving up too much dps. This is what this build allows you to do, while giving the other party members freedom to run full berserker to focus on DPS. In my personal groups, we run 1 guard/3 war/1 mesmer as seen from my other guides and dungeon walkthroughs, while in high level fractals where reflections are key, this can be changed to 2 guard/2 war/1 mes. Below I will explain the reasoning behind my choices, and you also have the option to watch my various dungeon guides from different class perspectives to see how it all works out in a real world setting.
______________________________________________________________________

Build & Equipment:
http://gw2buildcraft...d.17.16.19.1i|e

Thanks to gw2buildcraft, you can now see all my gear and traits in the link above. Instead of listing everything out, I will explain why I went knights armor, berserker ascended gear, and list my full weapon choices below.

As far as gear goes, the reason you go for Berserker Ascended gear is because it has the highest crit damage ratios besides exquisite jewels, per below:

• 5 stat points - upgrade slot of trinkets and backpack
  
• 7 points - Ascended Back Piece
  
• 8.5 stat points - Ascended Rings
  
• 8.7 stat points - Ascended Earrings
  
• 9.4 stat points - Ascended Amulet
  
• 10 stat points- traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
  
• 12 stat points - glove, shoulder and boots
  
• 12.8 stat points - 1H weapons and amulet
  
• 13.33 stat points - Earring
  
• 14 stat points - Backpack (rare version from guild armorsmith)
  
• 14.22 stat points - 2H weapons
  
• 14.4 stat points - Coat
  
• 16 stat points - Ring, helm and legging

What this means is, you lose less minor stat points by going for berserker gear higher on the list if you are making a balanced build with knights/berserker pieces. With Knights weapons, I also have the ability to switch to ascended berserker earrings in the future when they are released, while still maintaining close to 3k armor and most likely having good berserker ratios still.

Soldier Runes are one of the best runes in my opinion, by having three AoE shouts which also remove conditions, it really frees up the utility slots of the other 4 members of your group. A big part of being a successful guardian, is watching that party window and knowing when to use shouts for both condition removal and also minimizing damage. These runes are also extremely valuable when running through trash of various dungeons, especially harder runs like in TA or Arah.

The following list are the weapons I use which are statted based on the situation/combination I use them in:
Greatsword with Power/Prec/Toughness and 5% crit chance sigil
Hammer with Power/Prec/Toughness and 5% crit chance
Staff with Prec/Vit/Healing and 50% energy on swap
Scepter with Power/Prec/Tough and 50% energy on swap
Focus with Power/Prec/Crit and 5% crit chance
Shield with Power/Tough/Vit and 5% crit chance
Sword with Power/Prec/Crit and Bloodlust +10 power stacks
Mace with Power/Tough/Vit and 30% chance to heal
I don't have/use a torch.

Knights gear (Power/Prec/Toughness) can be crafted or comes from SE and Arah dungeon tokens.
Berserker gear (Power/Prec/Crit Dmg) can be crafted or comes from CoF, CoE, and Arah dungeon tokens.

The reason I took the sigils I did in the weapons I did are because of the situations and combinations I use them in.

Greatsword and Hammer with 5% crit chance are their for both increased damage from criticals, and also because crit chance synergizes well with life steal food and AH.

Staff and Scepter with Energy Sigils are so I always have that extra dodge available when I need to get out of melee range. This allows me to instantly dodge + heal in any situation, sit back and stack might stacks with staff 4 (more heals) or range dps with scepter in the rare instance I need to get out of melee range because of low health.

By keeping the 5% crit chance runes on my offhand weapons, I will always have 5% crit with my 1-hand weapons.

Now this gear isn't set in stone for this build, this is just what I've found from play experience works for me and my group. Around 3k armor allows the Guardian to maintain agro from the 4 other berserker classes who have ~2100 armor (or less in the mesmer's case). The lower your armor value falls, the harder it is to maintain agro. 3k is a good balance with the current ascended gear that allows you to draw agro and still do respectable damage as the tanky anchor role.

If you need more survivability or don't have ascended gear, you can always go more knights jewelery. If you WvW alot, then arguably P/V/T gear is better then berserker as well, where more health is key and berserker gear on a guardian isn't really ideal. It just depends on your playstyle and what you enjoy doing.

Also for any high crit % class, Omnomberry Ghosts/Pies (or even lesser versions like Mixed Berry and Blackberry) are a key component to survival. <Edit> This food now has an internal cooldown of 1s, meaning you can only heal at most, once every second, which realistically, is probably more along the lines of ~1.5s on average. It is still the best food for getting back health in a high crit build though, so I still use it on all my classes for harder encounters. For pure damage, something like the 100 power/70 precision food will be better, or other pure damage foods when you don't need healing.
______________________________________________________________________

Basics:
First off, the actual build is a typical boon/shout build that heals. This is NOT a pure support build, it is a tanky DPS build whose primary focus is to deal moderate damage while relieving pressure from your party as the anchor. Many people don't seem to realize how valuable Altruistic Healing is in a group setting, while both allowing you to passively support through shouts, soak damage, and still deal significant amounts of damage yourself.

The first thing you want is enough health to survive conditions and large spikes, but not spec too much health where it dimishes your effective hp from healing. In PvE vitality on gear isn't required, because of the lower amount of conditions in most instances and the fact that most large damage moves can be avoided through dodging. The toughness from all gear slots really helps to increase your e-hp because of the huge amount of heals the guardian has making toughness more valuable once you get an adequate hp pool. In addition, you have a large amount of power for direct damage and retaliation damage, plus precision (and bonus from the major trait) to push your crit chance up to levels where you will apply might stacks and life steal procs from crit a good amount of the time.

As far as Greatsword vs Hammer is concerned, they are good for different reasons. If you know you won't need ranged weapons at all, then having both on swap is ideal. In high level fractals if you run 2 guardians, you always want one with Hammer and one with GS, with Scepter/Focus or Shield on your offhand.

Greatsword's strength comes from it's AoE pull, the blind/leap, and the burst heal from Whirling Wrath coupled with Life Steal food.
Hammer's strength comes from near 100% protection uptime, more sustained healing from the symbol ticking on a 5 melee group, and Ring of Warding for certain pulls to interrupt groups of mobs.

Learning when each weapon is valuable is just something that comes from playing Guardian and getting your own experience. I will say that I primarily use Greatsword, Hammer, Staff, and Scepter/Focus and don't really touch the other weapons that often.
______________________________________________________________________

Traits:
The main focus of this build is Altruistic Healing in the Valor Line. This coupled with the more crit based traits in the Honor line, and a high crit chance/toughness build, allows you to be the anchor for your group so that the other 4 members can focus on DPS.

With Altruistic healing your base heal per boon with this build is 72 for each boon per person (including yourself). In addition, all symbols which continuously proc 1 sec boons will heal at every tick and might stacks act as individual boons meaning 5 might stacks = 5x72.
Virtue of resolve = 102 per tick
Regeneration buff = 168 per tick
Dodge Roll Heal = 429 heal per roll in AoE

As you can see, we have a large amount of ways to keep sustained healing. If you are able to time your dodge rolls (also why I use superior sigil of energy on certain weapons) you can "tank" for a good portion of time, including protection boons.

The Honor line focuses more on cooldowns and utilizing crits through Empowering Might and Vigorous precision. You also have the option to run Pure of Voice which stacks with runes of the soldier in the rare case you need even more condition removal.

The main reason you put your last 10 points in virtues is for the excellent options that it gives you for reflects, which are key in a few named dungeons and a variety of fractals, especially at 30+. The added benefit is that all your virtues proc boons on your group, which is nice with AH as well.

Skills:
Shouts will be the primary utility skills that you will be using. They synergize with AH to give you heals, provide valuable defensive boons for the entire party, and remove conditions with Soldier Runes.

The two shouts you will have on most of the time are 'Hold the Line' and 'Stand Your Ground'. These are both low cooldown to utilize condition removal, and 'Stand Your Ground' especially is valuable for a variety of boss and trash run encounters to prevent yourself from being knocked down or stunned.

Your third utility slot will be situational with either reflects, or 'Retreat'/'Save Yourselves'. Retreat should be used for trash running and for any fight where an extra Aegis would be extremely useful, like the Destroyer in CoE 3. 'Save Yourselves' is great for taking multiple conditions from your party, as a 2nd stun breaker, or for any fights where you really don't need an extra Aegis for the group and you find yourself holding more agro where the boon uptime would be more beneficial.

As far as reflects go, your primary options are either Wall of Reflection or Shield of the Avenger (Spirit Shield). In general, you will be using Wall of Reflection most of the time, because it actually reflects damage and has a shorter cooldown. On a few fractals, you will want both wall and shield up, which is most prevalent in the Harpy fractal. 100% reflection uptime from 2 guardians makes fractals like the harpy and shaman fractal extremely easy, which is one huge benefit of guardians in your group. Because Spirit Shield can now take damage and be destroyed, you do need to be smarter in it's placement so it will still absorb projectiles but not be hit by melee attacks.

The dungeons where I generally use reflects include:
- CM dungeon
- Certain bosses in TA
- Certain bosses in SE
- Magg Defend in CoF
- Certain bosses in HotW
- Certain bosses in Arah
- All of Harpy Fractal
- All of Dredge Fractal
- Both bosses in Shaman Fractal
- Both bosses in Swamp Fractal
- Situationally in Ascalon Fractal
- At the Ice Elemental in Snow Fractal
- Situationally in Colossus Fractal

There could be some areas I'm forgetting, but for the most part, those are the key areas where reflects are valuable. Part of learning the Guardian class is just knowing when you will need to swap skills for certain situations, which really applies to all classes.
______________________________________________________________________

Conclusion:
This is obviously not the only way to play guardian, and for many people may not even be the "best." There are many other viable guardian builds based on a situation or playstyle. From my personal experience though, I believe this is the "best" build for me. It is highly flexible, does good damage, provides excellent support for a speed run group running 4 berserker classes, and can be used for a variety of settings.

Hopefully this will help some other guardians out, especially for running some of the harder dungeons in the game.

Good luck!

IMO, go with either Knight or Valkyrie armor and your accessories can be the opposite. It's a rather simple way to keep things relatively even.

Also, try out a 0/0/30/30/10 Consecration/Symbol build. It works nicely with Hammer since your Symbols heal everyone and anytime you buff someone (which is often), you get a heal. My runes are going to be 2 each of +15% boon duration, +15% boon duration and I think the last is +20% protection duration or something (talent calc website is down). I have the AoE fire and reflecting wall Consecrations with the -10% damage taken sigil.

I've seen many Guardians around PvE with bad builds, very poor trait choices and therefore terrible performance.
There is plenty of choice while building a Guardian (we'll see that later) but also some, well, "requirements to not suck and make your team angry".
So I decided to release a little guide on how to get your Guardian in shape without avoiding terrible mistakes; remember the Guardian is the heart of a team, the eyes are on you, you must perform well and lead your team to success.

To be a respectable Guardian you need to have some required traits.
Creativity starts after you have the mandatory stuff (and this applies to most classes).

The following are pretty much mandatory for any decent PvE Guardian, and also happen to be our best traits.
1) You'll always want at least 10 points in Virtues.
Minor is great, and T1 is needed because you can use it to either reduce CDs on Cons (which you'll use in all dungeons) and 50% longer-lasting spirit weapons (bow of truth AoE heal is huge).
2) 15 points in Radiance for signet CDs and especially Renewed justice (very important for dungeon DPS of your team, gives tons of might combined with Virtues minor) and Justice is Blind.
3) 5 points in Valor to get Aegis @ 50% health. A real wipe/life saver.
4) 10 points in Honor for shout CDs. You'll use shouts a lot in dungeons and solo; while consecrations are situational and don't work against all mobs and bosses, shouts are reliable in any situations.
Note that you also get 1s vigor on crit, this makes you much less likely to die and is very important.

> If you're lacking the above, you're a gimped Guardian.
You can neglect on one of these fundamental pillars only if the outcome is really worth it.

The last 30 points depend on your desired spec, playstyle and personal preference.
- If you use 2handers often, you'll want the 2h mastery in honor.
- If you want further condition removal, you'll want Absolute resolve in Virtues.
- If you are shield user, go deep into defense to get the CD reduction and AHealing.
- If you are a shout lover, go with 30 honor for Pure of Voice (converting is fun, vulnerability becomes... protection!).
- If you want to give a more offensive support or more damage solo, go with 30 honor and pick Empowered.
- If you want to focus on buff upkeep and virtue spamming get 30 virtues, but I can't recommend a T3 traits becuase honestly, they are all too situational / equally meh. I would end up getting Elite Focus, but get whatever you feel should fit the situation better.
- If you want to maximize damage on conditioned foes consider Fiery Wrath (10 zeal)+Radiant Power (25 Radiance).
- If you want to focus on one-handers, go deep into Radiance for RHStrength
- Meditation healing is not good for anything outside PvP; we get much better healing and protection from other specs (for instance, a protection uptime build negates a ton more damage while healing in similar amounts). Also this is completely useless to any team.

I think I covered pretty much every possible efficient build for PvE and hopefully all playstyles.

Do a favor to yourself and your friends: don't be a mediocre Guardian.
Be a successful Guardian.

So there are people on this forum who say GW2 lacks content/is boring etc. Lets get the small one out of the way first. If you don't enjoy GW2, thats ok. If you are finding it boring, that's ok too. For all intensive discussion purposes, GW2 can be the worst game to ever exist, taking the crown from E.T.. That's ok.

But now, apparently, there is a lack of content. Remember, this is different to 'I don't find the content fun'. There is also the exclamations that there is no new content, when the game has neared the end of its first month.

So I ask you this first; what is your /age. How much did you pay for the game? I paid the full 60 USD. The last game I paid 60USD for which lasted me over 30 hours was Dark Souls. It took me 30 hours to complete the game for the first time, and considerably less on subsequent playthrus. I clocked about 90 hours total in the end.

At the time of writing this, I have spent 110 hours in GW2. None of which was in AFK. I considered all 110 hours of that time spent, fun. But fun, is beside the point in this topic, just to reiterate. What I find fun doesn't equate to what others find fun. But I'm completing content in the game, designed by the developers. My map completion is 31% and I've peppered some of that play time in with PvP and dungeon runs.

I paid 60USD for this. Not a cent more. Which other 60USD AAA game have you played recently that offered more than 30 hours of game time on your first play through. I say 30 because a skillful player, unaided by others, only doing PvE content, will probably have hit 80 and slayed the final boss. Why has it suddenly become expected of Arenanet to churn out new content like it is a subscription MMO?

Then there are those who say 'I'm going back to WoW' like it is a threat to Arenanet or the forum community. I don't care as much as the next guy. Why can't you play both games at once? Do you not have OTHER 60USD games installed on your computer? Does playing WoW delete those games from your hard drive?


TL;DR: This is a 60USD game, you can probably count with one hand how many other 60USD games that have constant content updates for free, with content that can last over 50hrs. Regardless of how fun you find this game or not, it is not lacking content.

I hear a lot of whining on the forums. Okay, fair enough, I expect that. However, these people that have problems with the game towards the point that they regret their purchase are beginning to think that they are part of the majority. They couldn't be more wrong.

I'd just like to take a moment here to say something for the silent majority.

We love this game.
We're having lots of fun.
Yeah, there are some bugs that suck, but for the most part, it's a great way to spend a few hours.

Sorry if you thought we didn't like it, but we do. Sorry if you thought ANet is losing customers left and right, but they aren't. They have us. So whine. Complain and threaten and troll and do whatever you wish. Just know that you are a minority, a hedge case, and just because you don't love this game, doesn't mean we don't.

I'm not saying this game is perfect. I'm saying that I agree with the design decisions and the direction. If you don't, please play something else, because you're going to ruin it for us.

**edit for clarity**

+1

Absolutely true. I love this game as well. I am a casual gamer and like to think that I represent a large number of people in the game. I am perfectly content with getting gear and weapons (including legendary) the old fashioned way outside of any help from an in-game store. I don't care how long it takes, because I am taking the time to enjoy the game and not rushing. I will be happier when the other people who didn't understand Anet's direction either move on or get a clue about what this game is about. They are not building a 'typical MMO'. I fear many people came into the game thinking they could do everything the same way as before.

Enjoy the game people, its not a race to high gear or any sort of end game.

Still I worry that the conditioning on the average gamer's part will be too hard to change after years of the same kind of MMO. This was evidenced more clearly by the first rush to lvl 80 a couple days in.

300+ hours means you were playing it for more than 11 hours a day.

The game wasn't designed with such insanity in mind.