7 replies to this topic

[RizeJodo]

Hey everybody this is my current WvW set-up I changed a few things in order to get a little more sustainability but sacrificed some hitting power. Any suggestions would be amazing. I tend to run in smaller groups of 5-20 individuals.

http://gw2skills.net...WUiNTiVZLiGLA-w


On a side note I'm a little confused on accessories. I have some yellows that give me +59 power which if I toss in a crest of the soldier give me another +20 power as well as other things. I have recently come into some ascended items that give +43 power which if I throw an infusion into it only gives another +5 power. What is the benefit of these ascended items?

[Grav]

All infusions give only +5 or thereabouts to something, think of them as useful for further tweaking your stats but no more than that.

As for loot colour, for trinkets best to last it goes pink (ascended) - orange (exotic) - yellow (rare) - green (masterwork) - blue (fine) - white.  A trinket with the same stats combination (for example soldiers = power/tough/vit) will always have a higher base value the better the colour.

With ascended it gets slightly confusing because the base stats are merged with the stats of the matching upgrade, and then the infusions come on top of that.  So if your ascended item has less power than your yellow one, then it will be much better in other areas since it's not actually the same stat combo as your yellow.

For a full list of ascended trinkets and their stats, check this wiki page.

[Slein Jinn]

A look at what you posted first...

Skills:
Get rid of Save Yourselves for sure.  If you're very experienced, you might be able to pull off using it, but it's very dangerous, and the upside isn't enough to justify using it over other options.  Hold the Line and Stand Your Ground are obvious choices, and for the third slot you're mostly choosing between Signet of Judgement and Purging Flames.  Judge's Intervention, Contemplation of Purity, Wall of Reflection, Hallowed Ground, and Retreat may all see situational use, but the aforementioned two are generally the strongest choices.  

I would definitely run Shelter over the healing signet, too.  The signet is nice when you're getting plenty of healing from Shout Warriors, other Guardians' Empowers, and, above all else, blasting water fields.  That works in coordinated groups, but your WvW experience on a server like EBay isn't likely to include that level of coordination, at least not consistently.  

And there's no question you don't want to run Tome of Wrath.  Tome of Courage can be very powerful, but the standard option is Renewed Focus, and you really can't go wrong with that, especially if you use the trait build I recommend (since your virtues become so much more powerful through the traits).  

Gear:
You've got Staff and Greatsword slotted, which is perfectly fine.  But you've described yourself as a "Greatsword Guardian", and you've got GS as the primary; realise that regardless of whether you run GS or Hammer, that's going to be a niche weapon you use situationally, and you're going be swinging your Staff well over 50% of the time.  Every single skill on the Guardian Staff is well suited to large-scale WvW.  

The gear tab on the build you linked is incomplete, but going from what is there, stay away from Dire and anything Condition based entirely.  Cleric can be viable, but I would avoid it at least until you're more experienced.  The standard rule of thumb is as follows: Use as much Soldier gear as you need to in order to survive.  Use as much Berserker gear as you can survive using.  You really don't need to look beyond those two stat combinations for the most part.  You can mix in Knight's and Valkyrie gear to achieve the exact balance desired, but for now, I would suggest you keep it simple.  I'd aim for around 2800 Toughness, give or take a hundred or so as a starting point, but err on the side of too tanky rather than too glassy.  Look at Soldier gear like training wheels; it'll keep you from killing yourself while you get better.  Start by wearing as much as you need in order to feel safe and secure, and then gradually you can swap pieces over either to something more offensive or to more Cleric gear for support.  

Traits:
There are three decent options for a guardian right now, and from currently available information, I'm not really expecting this to change with Tuesday's patch.

0/0/10/30/30
This is what I run, and it's what I would personally recommend to anyone on EBay.  It's not the current meta in the higher tier servers (more on that later), but because of the limitations that come with a smaller, more PuG-driven server, I think it meets our needs better than the alternatives.  The main thing this build offers is copious on-demand group condition removal.  You've also got a lot of very powerful boons, which again, you're sharing with the group.  Generally, in the lower tiers, enemies don't have well-organised boon stripping, and we won't be able to rely on coordination to maintain a high uptime on Purging Flames, so these strengths are just what the doctor ordered.  You've got two sources of stability, two sources of protection, and 3-4 big condi clears.  Your personal survivability is solid, and you bring a lot to the people around you.  Protection and Stability are the most important boons around, and with this build, you've got more of them than anyone else, plus your condition removal is second to none, and your healing output isn't too shabby, either.  

0/5/30/30/5 or 0/0/30/30/10
Tankier, more selfish, less flexible than the other options.  Certainly viable, but not really ideal.  

0/0/30/20/20
This is the current meta at the high end, and there are good reasons for that.  It's got most of the boon sharing of the first build and most of the tankiness of the second.  What it lacks, however, is on-demand condition removal.  The core concept here is that you're using Melandru runes and Lemongrass Poultry Soup in conjunction with a very high uptime on Purging Flames (guardian-heavy raid composition, with every single guardian running PF) to handle conditions passively.  It definitely works; all that negative condition duration adds up to -98%, meaning many conditions just melt away almost instantly, although be aware that enemy condition duration extension works additively with your condition duration reduction.  The reason I don't recommend it is that it requires the zerg to have lots of guardians, and all of them to be working together, and that just doesn't consistently happen at this level of play.  It's also quite dependent upon a rather expensive food, which will put a lot of folks off.  

Some notes about the above builds:
- You have three options for the 10-point trait in the Valour tree.  Strength in Numbers is the default, as it's powerful both for you and for your allies, but there will be times when your raid is saturated with this trait; you get no benefit from having multiple Guardians running this in the same party.  If you're finding yourself struggling for condi clears, Purity is always an option here.  Finally, Retributive Armour provides a pretty sizeable boost to crit chance, which is not just more damage, but also more chance to proc things like Vigorous Precision.  

- I've slotted Vengeful for the 10-point trait in Virtues in the two builds where I included Signet of Judgement.  If you opt to run Purging Flames over Signet of Judgement, it would be advisable to swap Vengeful for Master of Consecrations.  

- The gear here is not fine-tuned and is not what I run.  It's intended to give you a solid foundation upon which you can build your guardian.  It's solid, flexible, and relatively easy to acquire, which is just what you need.

- Force sigils are simple and reliable.  They'll generally do more damage than any of the nuke sigils, and they'll do that damage more consistently.  Other options here are Bloodlust (I haven't decided what I'm going to do with Bloodlust stacking in light of Tuesday's patch yet), Energy, and Restoration.

- I've used Omnomberry Compotes in the builds that don't completely depend upon Lemongrass.  It's not too expensive and it works well with the squishy karma training zergs we tend to run into at this tier.  Lemongrass (or the lower tier Poultry and Leek Soup) is still an excellent option for any of the builds, though, and is what I use any time it gets "serious".  Orrian Steak Frittes and Saffron Bread are also viable inexpensive options.

[RizeJodo]

Since I last posted here I have learned a lot about GW2 but am learning more and more every day about building a good toon. This toon isn't complete in game but it's what I'm working towards. I believe I'm using Occam's Claymore (Carrion stats) now and an exotic sword instead of an ascended one and a few other pieces are missing but before I complete it I was wondering what everybody thinks. I'm especially interested in the weapons. I chose assassin's because the build generally was low on precision but was wondering if it was worth making it up or if I should just do something else.


http://gw2skills.net...8m38m7MZAYGDA-w

[Slein Jinn]

What role is this build supposed to fill?  It's hard to comment too intelligently about the build itself without you saying more about that.  

I can say that the gear itself isn't well optimised, though.  Berserker is better damage than Assassin.  Runes of the Wurm are essentially garbage; Ferocity is generally the weakest of the offensive stats, and there are much better ways to add beef than the Vitality on Wurm runes.  I just threw THIS BUILD together to illustrate the point; it's still far from optimal, but I just wanted to quickly redistribute the offensive stats more in favour of Power whilst holding everything else constant.  

Just swapping the weapons for Berserker's nets a small gain in ePower, but changing the runes and reworking the rest of the gear to hold the other stats constant (as far as possible) results in a gain of 81 ePower, which is, for example, quite a bit more than the DPS gain from upgrading Exotic Berserker's armour to Ascended.  I'm not saying you should run the linked build, either, though--I don't claim for it to be optimal--it was just an easy way to illustrate the point.

[RizeJodo]

This build is supposed to function as either part of a small 5 man havoc squad or individual roaming. That was my question on the weapons. If the increased critical chance and damage were significant enough to warrant the use of assassin's gear over something else apparently it does not. I'm trying to balance durability and DPS so that the guardian can function alone.

As for the wurm runes. The main reason they are being used currently is that they run only 83 silver from the trading post. The Runes of the Pack were somewhere around 1g 88 silver today after reading your post. The runes will be replaced later as I get a bank again.

[Slein Jinn]

For cheap DPS runes in a roaming build, Runes of the Privateer are completely untouchable.  They're main stat Power, Might duration and Might stacking is never bad, they make you say "Yarr!" audibly, and the bird is borderline OP in 1v1's.

[Slein Jinn]

So I've been thinking about how best to address this question.  I don't think I've really got a satisfactory answer for you.  In a 5-man havoc, you'd be best served playing your Guardian more or less like an sPvP bunker--I do this myself, and I also really feel the absence of that support when I'm havocing on my Necromancer if someone else isn't running a Guardian.  Run the Virtues build, but probably with Staff + Mace/Shield since you're not going to have fields to blast.  Get the stomps and the revives, and keep your party vertical.  The problem, however, is that a Virtues Guardian is fairly useless without a group of at least three or four.  Support doesn't do much if there aren't allies around to be supported, and you don't have enough damage to be getting the downs yourself for you to stomp in the first place.  

A Meditations Guardian, on the other hand, is a reasonably effective solo roamer--they're a decent hard counter to gank thieves and some of the other garbage builds people roam on--but they're just not very effective in good team fights.  I can tell you that in Seek, we almost invariably focus Meditations Guardians first in team fights, both in havocs and in sPvP, not because we're afraid of them, but because we generally see them as a liability to be exploited in the enemy comp.  The build works fine for stomping bads, because it's got decent spike damage and multiple offensive gap closers, but it's an easy target for a skilled group that focuses fire.  You can try to compensate for that by going tankier in the gear--it looks like you've done a bit of this, as the build you linked is much tankier than most Meditations Guardians--but the problem then becomes that you're neutering your primary role of spike damage; a tanky Meditations Guardian doesn't offer much that a Virtues Guardian wouldn't, but the Virtues Guardian brings massively more support.  

Personally, I don't load my Guardian unless I'm going to be rolling with a decent party.  They're simply not great roamers compared to some other classes.  Guardians are sort of the opposite of Engineers in that respect.  When I solo roam, I bring my Dagger/Focus Necro, my Sword/Pistol or Sword/Dagger Thief (no gank garbage), or something else of that sort.