GUILD WARS 2: The Guardian - Leveling Build Guide [Weapons / Armor / Skills / Traits]

[Music] hey guys rory flamingo here bringing you my guild wars 2 leveling build series which will feature a video for each of the nine classes the reason i'm doing this series is because the vast majority of build videos online seem to be solely focused on end game meta builds and i know from my engagement with the guild wars community that a lot of you out there want help with some of the more basic elements so this one is for you guys in these videos i'll be going through all of the information you need to make sure your character is as powerful as possible all the way from level 1 to 80. i'll be covering the best weapon types to use for your class as well as armor stats runes utility skills and specializations if you've not yet made up your mind which class you want to play check out the class guide playlist on my channel where i have a detailed guide on each of the classes to help you make that decision i'd like to thank you all for your fantastic support i've received on my channel so far and if you find this content useful please consider dropping a like and subscribing to be kept up to date on my latest content you can also follow me on twitter at heroic flamingo where i'll be posting regular updates as well as doing gem giveaways for you guys finally i just wanted to let you guys know that there are two links in the video description that might interest you the first one is to sign up for a free guild wars 2 account so if you haven't got an account yet do give that a click and the second one is a link to the guild wars 2 store page where you can purchase the path of fire expansion and get heart performed with it for no additional cost all of these things help support the channel and i thoroughly appreciate it without further ado let's get started all right guys so now it's time to have a look at the leveling build for the guardian and i'm really excited to bring this one to you because it's a really good build and the guardian is just a great class in general so i'm really excited to show this to you and the first one we're going to have a look at are the weapons so first up we've got the great sword this in my opinion is a must for this build and probably for the guardian in general i pretty much always run a great sword in my guardian builds um you know i'm not saying you have to use it but if you want to follow this build it's going to be pretty crucial damage is great um so to be honest i would definitely recommend this so let's have a quick look so your number one ability on this is a chain ability which is which is a pretty high damage to be fair as well you've got strike vengeful strike and raffle strike so you're gonna um it's it's from melee range so just bear in mind this is a melee weapon um it's not like the mesmer where the greatsword is a ranged weapon so from melee distance you can help to three targets of your first hit then you're gonna hit him again and then with the third one you're gonna do a powerful hit which is gonna hit up to three enemies and it's gonna apply might for each foe you strike so that you know if you're hitting three enemies then that's gonna be three uh stacks of might so that's effective um and you'll um see when we're going through this that one of the main things about this is sticking buffs on yourself it's really good for buffing yourself up and um that's one of the things that you draw your power from so you know don't ignore that um so if you are you know using this chain make sure you let it play out because the third skill is where you get most of the damage and then also the buff as well so try not to interrupt your chain as much as possible number two on the great sword right this is one of your highest damage abilities so pay attention to this this is whirling wrath and this is spin in place and swing your greatsword while hurling powerful projectiles so this one does have a range to it generally you do want to do it from quite close to an enemy um so you if you've got enemies around you preferably because it's going to shoot out in all directions this can do a good amount of damage um in a small radius around you as well as um you know shooting enemies from a bit further away as well so it's good because it will do a bit of damage to further away enemies but predominantly it's ones close to you that would get the um the bulk of the damage so as you can see really awesome as well everyone loves a um an ability when you spin around with a massive sword so it's got that nice wow factor to it but then it will do a bunch of damage so you want to uh utilize that as much as possible so obviously if you if you're just starting out um you know do bear in mind that you'll unlock these weapon skills as you go along so your first weapon skill you unlock at level one um so you have that from the start second one level two third one level four four four level six and by the time you get to level eight which won't take you very long you'll have all five of your weapon skills so you know maybe before looking at this get to level eight so you've got all your weapon skills so you can start utilizing them but like i say that won't take very long anyway so your third skill is leap of faith this is pretty good um pretty good for entering combat i do like to have an ability to end to combat rather than just sort of like struggling up to someone and hitting them um this one it's leap at your foe in and it inflicts blindness and heals you for each foe hit so as you can see um so you're gonna leap at them so i would suggest is use actu i mean to enter combat but possibly to to jump towards an enemy um if you're already in combat it's probably the best use of it to be honest because it does heal you as well so you know if you're fighting one enemy you've killed them use it to jump to the next because not only will you use it to get around quickly so you don't have to run around but you're also going to um heal yourself and inflict blindness on the enemy as well as you can see really awesome there nice animation so that's gonna be a pretty good one to use in combat as well so your number four skill this is an important one so this is a symbol skill so symbol of resolution so pierce the ground the mystic symbol that damages foes while granting resolution to allies so what this does is it sticks if you you know if you're not familiar with the uh mechanics for the guardian quickly show you so this sticks a symbol down as you can see it's got this radius here nice and view you can see that and that's going to buff you um so that's going to damage those and it's also going to buff you so it's give you resolution um so your incoming condition damage is decreased um as you can see um it does a decent amount of damage as well up to five targets in the area so as soon as you get into combat so if you've jumped to an enemy using your number three you want to stick down your symbol uh so you're damaging all the enemies in there as well as buffing yourself and then maybe whacking your number two so you might want to uh like i said jump towards an enemy stick down the cymbal and then spin the hell and even just by doing that you'll be surprised with this build that you've just done a ton of damage to enemy just by doing that your fifth and final skill on the great sword is binding blade so throw blades at your foes causing damage over time bound foes can be pulled to you and the effect ends when a move when a foe moves out of range so this one isn't one of your most highest damage abilities and there's no need to be spamming this one all the time and your other ones to be honest are more effective you want to be using your number four and your number two as well as um letting your chain play out as well so uh but you know still got his uses as well um in terms of bit of crowd control and and pulling enemies towards you so you can use maybe a number two um so let's just demonstrate so you spin around and shoot blades at enemies and um basically it sticks blades in enemies and uh does damage over time but a good use of it is if you press the you know if you've damaged an enemy if you press your number five again it's gonna pull those enemies to you so anyone so if they're sort of you know spread out a little bit around you use that to stick the blades in and press it again to bring them towards you and then you can you know put your cymbal down because you want to bring them within your civil range and then maybe spin around to them there's just a couple of things to uh ways to link up your skills there and but overall it's a really great weapon it's got um a good couple of abilities there that are going to be doing a like sort of the bulk of your damage so definitely don't ignore the greatsword and it's definitely something you want to use for this build so if your second weapon set um i would definitely recommend going one one hand sword so main hand sword um off hand focus like this so sword and focus so you know there is this is the melee option um because obviously from your swords can be a melee uh weapon you can use a scepter as a ranged option here so if you are looking at going fully um sort of well well you want to range weapons obviously if you're using the greatsword for your other weapons that you're already melee so if you want to get a ranged option i would say go with the scepter but personally i would definitely go with the sword so i'm not going to show off the scepter here but just so you know like it is a valid ranged option if you do want a ranged option i would say scepter with still the focus because the focus got some good abilities here which i'll show you sorry about that i just got booted out of that area because of an event was going on so sorry yeah so scepter and focus for ranged option but i'm gonna go sword focus definitely for maximum dps i don't think you're gonna need a ranged option necessarily but um i'll let that be your choice so the sword so your options here you've got your number one which is another chain skill so sword of wrath sword arc and sword wave so slash your foe so bear in mind once again it's similar to the chain on the uh great sword it's melee range hits up to three enemies so hits them once hits them again and then the third one sends out a wave of attacks and strikes multiple targets so once again if you do use this chain do let it play out because the third here is going to do the majority of the damage your number two here on the sword is symbol of blades so teleport to your target and blind nearby foes create a symbol at your feet that damages nearby enemies and benefits allies so this is a good ability here this is good for entering combat so as i said with the on the great sword your number three ability that's good for jumping into combat but predominantly because it's got a hill to it predominantly if you're already in combat you want to use it to jump to enemies this one's maybe good for entering combat because you're going to um blind the enemies so you can get some attacks in and obviously their next attack's going to miss which is useful but it also creates a symbol at their feet and damages nearby enemies so it's nice to have a little teleport ability you can see so teleport to the enemy um and yeah it will do damage but it will also yeah stick that symbol on the ground so that's a really good ability to use there and then your third ability on the sword it's a pretty cool one so zealots defense so block ranged attacks while casting magical projectiles so this can be used as a defensive ability but also has good offensive qualities as well so you block for three seconds um which stops missiles from hitting you but it does a decent amount of damage as well and it's got a range of 600 so you don't have to be right up to the enemy you can use it from mid range if the enemy's just over here and they're using projectiles on you i'll just show you now as you can see you'll be blocking those projectiles but your sword hits sends waves towards the enemies and does a little bit of range damage there um so that's a really effective skill as well especially if you know you're getting clobbered from range and you need that little bit of protection as well so the focus off hand you've got ray of judgment and this is infuse your foe with the light of judgment inflicting damage each interval if they're initially struck so this is a um this is a good uh damage ability you definitely want to use this um so what you'll do is you can use it for quite far away so you can use this when you're entering combat so as long as um as you can see um as long as it hits them it will be inflict damage each interval so six second duration and every three quarters of a second is going to do damage so you use that and it will basically yeah it puts a ray adjustment on the enemy does damage over time so you can stick that on the enemy and then you can use all your other abilities to damage them but it will continuously damage them over that period so it's pretty good to use on the enemy sort of as you're entering combat and because there's no point using it when they're about to die because then you've sort of wasted um that to be fair so your number five ability here so your second one on the offhand focus is shield of wrath so create a shield to block the next three attacks if the shield's not destroyed it explodes and damages nearby foes so this is a really good defensive ability i'd recommend using this as well sort of when you're entering combat um because you're gonna yeah you're gonna block the next three attacks and if the shield's not destroyed it explodes damages nearby foes you can see so stick that on you and you've got the shield around you so bear in mind this isn't one of those ones you have to like channel um you know like obviously you have a couple in other classes where you channel and then you counter that one you can use all your abilities while it's active so when as you enter combat when they start to hit you um you know smack that button you'll block a couple of attacks and if you don't um so if the shield isn't destroyed if you don't block him it is gonna explode and do damage anyway which means you pro you know the more effective thing is that you use it to block damage so that's the priority use it when you're taking damage so just as you're entering combat because quite often enemies might use quite a powerful attack as their like their first attack so just as you outgrow the enemy use that use a shield you know bang out all your other abilities and you see the whole time you're using that that's going to be blocking the attacks so it's a really good way of staying alive um because i'll go into it a bit more but you actually have a really low base health with the guardian which maybe is a bit weird because you think of it more as a tankier profession but as you can see i i'm not scaled down i'm level 80 and i've only got 11 and a half thousand health when i get to the stats i'll show you what i'm doing with that because i've not got a lot of vitality because so you could up that but yeah i mean you really need to focus on your defensive abilities they are important so don't ignore that it's got crazy damage this build but you do need to make sure you're using your buffs and your defensive abilities to stay alive okay so that is everything on the weapon so you've got the great sword and then the sword focus as your second set so when you start off the game um i'd say main the great sword use that it'll be decent damage for when you're just leveling leveling to start with and then once you get to level 10 and you unlock your weapon swap you're definitely going to want to go with sword and focus as your second set like i said there is an alternative scepter in focus if you really want a ranged option but i definitely recommend this for maximizing your damage just make sure you use your defensive skills and you shouldn't have too much of a problem staying alive okay so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to have a look at the healing utility and elite skills okay so now it's time to look at the healing utility and elite skills for the leveling build so first up you've got your healing skill you'll have a healing skill straight away from level one um so you know you'll be able to use that straight away and when you can use your um skill points to purchase this one so you've got litany of wrath so this is a meditation skill so this is heal yourself and for a brief time heal yourself based on a percentage of damage dealt to enemies this is an interesting one so you can see um you get a you get a base hill which is okay it's not amazing but it's decent and then 33 of damage dealt is returned to you as healing so you kind of want to time this right with one of your big damage abilities and so what i would recommend is you know if you particularly need a big heal what you want to do is you want to use um listening of wrath to heal yourself so you get that initial hill and then you straight away want to use whirling wrath which is a great sword spinning ability so if you've you know for example you've got your cymbal down which is doing some damage you can use your healing skill and then spin so um you'll get your initial heel but also all the damage you're doing from that which is your highest damage ability uh 33 of that is going to be coming back to your health as well as you'll also be doing um passive damage with your symbol resolution as well and that will be giving you health as well and that lasts for six seconds which is quite a long time so you could still with that maybe swap over to here and use a couple of your abilities as well um a decent damage for example if you had ray of judgment on that be doing damage over time so that could help give you a nice little hill over a few seconds as well so just bear that in mind don't just smack this to heal yourself and just forget about it make sure you time it right obviously if you need to heal you need to heal don't get me wrong but a little bit of time i wouldn't go and miss to make sure you maximize the amount you can heal yourself so that's why i've gone with that ability because you've got massively high damage output and this is based on a percentage of damage so the higher your damage and the higher your healing is going to be so that's really good way like i said um in the last part uh you know your your health is relatively low so you do have to think about these things especially if you're going with the same build as me here with the same weapons you're going to be fully melee so fully melee with low health means you really have to think about staying alive so just bear that in mind when using this healing ability so for your utilities first up i've got sword of justice so this is spirit weapon ability and it's will the sword of justice to appear beside your enemy and attack nearby foes so this is pretty cool here as you can see it cripples the enemy puts vulnerability on him hits up to five enemies there's also an ammo skill so you can cast it a few times and the count recharges 20 seconds you can use it from far away in its ground target ability so you stick it on top of the enemy or enemies predominantly and it's going to be a little spinny attack there which is going to damage all those enemies as you can see stick some conditions on them as well it's not one of your highest damage abilities but it's quite easy to just sort of like drop that on on a group of enemies like that like i said uh you can use multiple charges so you can drop a few of those on the enemy's heads and that's going to do a little bit of extra damage you can just use it to sort of um supplement your damage as well you're hitting them it's going to be doing some damage and and like i said it can hit up to five targets that can be pretty good for attacking a group of enemies and if it's sticking on i'm just going to slow them down and then also vulnerability which means you're already doing loads of damage but you can do that a little bit more as well so that's that's probably not a must but i do find it a really useful ability just sort of that little bit of extra damage so i would recommend having that as one of your utilities next up i've got stand your ground which is a shout ability and this is grant stability to yourself and allies so stability um means you can't be knocked down or pushed back or pulled or stunned or any of that stuff and also as you can see that gives you resolution as well so incoming condition damage is decreased as you can see you know it's good in a group situation as well because it buffs your allies but it's quite good to use when you go into battle so when you're first entering combat as it's going to mean that you know you're not going to be um knocked down stuff like that as there's quite a lot of people quite a lot of enemies might use that skill straight away as you can see it also breaks down as well so you can use it if you're already stunned so it's pretty good ability there like i said it's nice defensive buff ability so you use that when you're coming into combat so that you can't be knocked down and decreases the damage on you as well like i said you've got to pay attention to those defensive abilities so it's just a good addition i definitely recommend keeping that on your bar here uh next up we've got bain signet so the passive on this signal so just by having it on your bar you're gonna have improved power as you can see just the the passive um on our bar here improves the power obviously this is a this is a power build we want to do as much damage as possible uh so it's good to have that there and just giving you just a a natural buff to your damage the active on it is that you knock down enemy uh knock down your enemy and damage them to be honest i wouldn't really be using that this is here for the passive um only really if you're desperate and you need to knock down an enemy would i recommend doing that so yeah you don't really need to worry about the the active on that you just want to uh keep the passive and just improve your power at all times i mean if if you need a different thing you could go with a different signet um that reduces incoming damage that one grants increased condition damage uh which you definitely won't want and that one improves concentration so may need that one to reduce incoming damage signal of judgement if you really um you know struggling with staying alive but you know with this build being predominantly about damage and to be fair you should be killing most things before they can do too much damage to you i definitely recommend having that to buff your damage which is cool um obviously there's a couple other options here you've got other spirit weapons that you can use along here but i definitely think the sword of justice is your best bet and there's a couple of different shouts which give you different buffs so just um have a look at those if there's a if there's a buff you're particularly interested in you might like to use that instead but i've i've found that these three are the best um ones to use for the build and i definitely recommend going with all three of them so last up we got the elite skill and so i've got phil my wrath which is another shout ability so this is nice because it's only got a 30 second cooldown so you can use this quite a lot and it grants fury and quickness to nearby allies the duration of the quickness you grant yourself is doubled so as you can see quickness for a few seconds so skills and actions are faster and the fury means you've got increased critical chance uh you know good in a group situation as well because it's going to be buffing your allies but just predominantly focusing on yourself for a leveling build it's a really good buff which you can use um semi-regularly so 10 seconds of 20 crit uh increase chance so that's really good and then your skills and actions are quicker so i definitely recommend going with this so you can use that and you can see you can cast all your skills quicker um so i mean you may think is casting your skills quicker that important but when you think about it quicker skills just means more damage especially with these weapon skills so to be honest it is really important and if you use it like sort of as you're entering combat um you're gonna just do a ton of damage to enemies before they even have a chance to uh hit back so i definitely recommend that so uh there's a couple of alternatives you could use but to be honest um like yeah there is this one as well so renewed focus so making yourself invulnerable and recharging your virtues so once again that's the defensive option but just going all out damage i'd really recommend this set up here i'm pretty happy with it and if you're just looking to do as much damage as possible do that but the only alternative sudden make is maybe use a more defensive option if you really are struggling with staying alive but i'll leave that up to you guys so that's all of the healing utility and elite skills uh so the next thing i'm gonna have a look at are the weapon and armor stats okay so now it's time to have a look at the weapon and armor stats for the guardian okay so it won't surprise you to hear that it is a predominantly power build so power is going to be our priority as normal so that means when you start leveling um obviously after a little bit uh some of the gear will start to have one stat on it that one stat should always be power don't bother going with anything else to start with you know if you want to start leveling quicker you want to be doing more damage so power will always be your priority there when you start to get a second um stat on the gear you can sort of go where you want to like if you feel like you need more health go vitality more armor go toughness or you can you know you can go precision and start up in that crit chance but it doesn't matter too much at that stage just go with what you feel comfortable with when you start getting to the higher levels and you've got um free stats on your gear that's when you have to start making a decision so obviously the ultimate damage uh stats as always are power precision ferocity with power being the biggest stat so that's the berserker stats so that's obviously going to give you maximum power which increases your base damage precision which is increases your critical hit chance and ferocity which increases your critical hit damage so that's going to just mean that you do the maximum amount of damage but obviously there are other things you need to take into account like survivability um and health and stuff like that um so let's just have a little think about that so overall i have actually got power precision frosty i believe on absolutely everything yep absolutely everything so i've gone full power um uh with this one with full crit chance and everything like that um obviously there is an option uh to add in some vitality add in some toughness if you feel like you're dying quicker it's sort of a personal preference with that um what i'm showing you here is just the maximum amount of damage but obviously if you keep dying really quickly then damage is worthless however if you make yourself really tanky and hard to kill but you don't do a lot of damage then that's also kind of pointless and that's really going to slow down your leveling so for leveling it's definitely quicker to do more damage but also you don't want to be dying all the time so i would recommend potentially adding some vitality maybe by going with a different one on your accessories here uh you could stick vitality on here and maybe still go power precision ferocity on your um armor and weapons um so that could be a good option to give yourself a bit of health and like i say your base health is low overall the reason why i've gone with power precision ferocity um with the guardian despite the low health is because there are a lot of really good defensive skills there are some good defensive passive bonuses which i'll go into like with the virtues and stuff like that which help you stay alive you've also got heavy armor naturally so you have a bit better armor than if you're using a light or medium armor profession so overall i don't find myself to be that squishy um so if you're comfortable enough with that then go power precision frosty and you will just absolutely slap everything and it will just die so quickly that's the that's the dream you know that's what you want to aim for but maybe if you're getting used to it you know you're not quite as comfortable with it yet you might want to um you know add some vitality or toughness in there and i totally get that and it's totally legit but just try not to do too much because then you will start to uh lose some of that damage and your leveling will slow down um so like i said power precision frosty for most of it add in a bit vitality if you need it um for the roon if you you know if you're leveling you don't have to worry too much about this because you'll be getting new arm all the time but when you get to higher levels i've got superior rune of strength which is power and mic duration um which is obviously just maxing the amount of damage that i can do um you could also go superior rune of the um scholar or superior wounded eagle because they're good for damage and quick chance as well um or superior rune of the pack those are all good options just just standard ones for a power bill to be perfectly honest um anything that's going to just make you do even more damage and on the weapons in terms of a sigil um i've gone superior sigil of strength and sigil force force just gives you base five percent extra damage it's pretty standard for a power build and strength is gain might for 10 seconds upon critically hitting a foe um so obviously that that plays in quite well with this which is increase your might duration and then on your second weapon sit here i've gone force on the sword so just increasing my base damage but on the off hand i've actually gone blood lust so gain a charge of plus 10 power each time you kill a foe and that can stack up to 25 times so if you're killing enemies that's going to be stacking the amount of power once again everything here i'm just trying to up as much as possible you can see the base power there it's really high so you do a ton of damage when you fight enemies on this so if you can master the defensive side of the guardian then to be honest i'd recommend going all in with the power and just absolutely destroying everything so that is the weapon and armor stats so the next thing we want to have a look at are the specializations and traits okay so now it's time for the specializations and traits for the guardian [Music] so let's have a look so um obviously you've got five specializations to choose from and you've got three slots don't worry if you don't have all these right now because you do unlock them as you progress so you unlock your first specialization at level 21 your second one at level 45 and your third one you won't actually unlock until you're level 71 so there may still be a way to go but it's still important that you you know pay attention to see what you want to prioritize here you know don't just get these and just stick them wherever because it really does make a difference when fine-tuning your build when you when you're talking about doing as much damage as possible leveling as quickly as possible traits really do make a difference and you want to make sure your traits complement the skills that you have along here so um obviously do pay attention and i'm not saying there isn't one way of doing it you know you can use different traits um but also i'm just going to give you a guide here of the ones that i use and maybe you can use it as a basis and obviously if there's ones you prefer then feel free to switch that out so first of all we've got zeal so i would definitely recommend this to be the first one that you choose when you get to uh level 21. uh go with zeal to start with as your passives on that are zealots resolution which cast lesser symbol of resolution when you are struck well below the health threshold health threshold is only 75 so that means you're going to be casting resolution quite a lot which is a good um buff that you're going to want on you so it just helps you stay buff at all times you've got symbolic exposure which is symbols inflict vulnerability on foes still increase strike damage to vulnerable foes so obviously that just adds an extra condition to all of your symbols which we've got a couple of as you saw and then obviously more damage to vulnerable foes that's always good and then symbolic power which is simple steel increased strike damage so once again buffing the cymbals like our number four here and also our number two on the sword as well puts the symbol down so there's a couple of skills that's going to affect in terms of the choices i've gone middle middle bottom so that gives us fiery wrath which is deal increased strike damage to burning foes we haven't really seen it yet but when i get into the professional mechanics next i'll be showing you how um setting enemies are light and using uh burning is actually quite a uh important part of this build so you'll notice that quite a lot of the traits i'm going with here we'll be buffing that so just bear with me so yeah damage increases seven percent against burning foes uh zealous blade so your power is increased gain additional power while wouldn't a great sword your great sword skills have reduced recharge shouldn't have to explain this one to you more bass power happy days extra bass power while building a greatsword which we will be the vast majority of the time and then recharge reduction on those great sword skills as well so this is a must one of the reasons why you're going with this seal tree here is because you want that zealous blade um one there which is excellent and last up here you've got symbolic avenger your strike damage is increased whenever your cymbals hits a foe so two percent damage stacks up to five times that can give you um 10 damage there if you're obviously using your symbols so once again it makes it even better so for your second one um i go with radiance this just to clarify well real quick here so virtues is more of a defensive one so what i would recommend is if you're having trouble with survivability and dying a lot and you know the changes you're making to your stats aren't really helping that much perhaps consider going with virtues as your second one at level 45 but if you're not and if you're able to make adjustments to your stats into your skills to help with survivability i definitely recommend going with radiance as your second um specialization tree here to maximize your damage so the passives on this we've got justices blind blind just gain a light aura and blind nearby foes when you activate virtual uh virtue skill one and we'll go into the virtues in a little bit when we do the uh professional mechanics but um yeah it just means you're gonna um have reducing uh incoming condition damage and blinding enemies which just makes your virtues even better the second one is renewed justice which is virtue skill one is renewed when you kill a foe this is super important which i'll show in the next part but that's a really important passive and it's definitely why i'd recommend when at all possible making this your second tree and radiant power so attacks against burning foes have an increased chance to critically hit and your ferocity is increased so base ferocity crit damage is higher not going to say no and then increase critical chance as well against burning foes which we'll go into will be quite common as well so that's a really good option so this tree is really important from a damage point of view in terms of the choices we've gone top bottom bottom that gives us inner fire which is gain fury when you strike a foe that has burning stacks over the threshold um threshold is free so quite often they'll have that and it just means you have 20 extra crit chance and you can see we've had a few things of extra extra crit chance here that's all going to add up which means you're me critting constantly which is going to be excellent because you're going to be doing loads of damage here we've got retribution which is strike damage dell is increased while you have resolution um so 10 damage increase and obviously we've had a couple of things which give us a resolution buff so that should be up a lot of the time giving us a nice base 10 damage increase definitely not going to say no to that and then here you've got righteous instincts which is resolution increases your chances to critically strike and grants my each interval so there you go so um buff in your resolution because resolution gives you critical chance increase by 25 which is ridiculous and minor intervals so you go with this um and what it means is you want resolution up as much as possible which we saw with some of our um skills they give you that so just make sure you have a look at your skills to check what gives you resolution because you want to try and keep that up as much as possible so with our third and final specialization i'm going with virtues because it's going to help us a bit defensively so i definitely recommend going with this um you won't unlock your third one to level 71 but you see when you're getting those higher levels you're going to be fighting some hard enemies so i think virtues will definitely help you here so your passives on this are inspired virtue which is virtues apply boons to allies when activated and deal increased strike damage for each boon on you so as you can see that's a good couple of boons there um so each of your different virtues gives you a different boon and it just makes your virtues even better so you're definitely going to want that next you've got virtual resolution which is gain resolution when you activate a virtue resolutions you grant have increased duration so the last even longer and um this is one of the key things that links in with this as well they were talking about resolution gain resolution when you act at a virtue you're going to be activating virtues a lot um let me just link this back to one other thing as well uh where was it yeah so virtual skill one is renewed when you kill a foe um and you'll be killing foes a lot with this damage which means you'll be able to use your f1 ability a lot uh which means you'll be able to keep resolution on you pretty much at all times so that is a fantastic option there especially because we buffed resolution here with the crit chance increase so you can see how it's all starting to come together here as well and then finally power of the virtuous so gain condition damage based on your vitality virtues gain reduce recharge so the first bit sort of irrelevant you're not too bothered about condition damage and your vitality is probably pretty crap as well um but virtues gain reduced recharge which is nice 15 which means you'll be able to use them even quicker so with our choices we've gone middle top bottom which is resolute subconscious gain resolution and ages when disabled um so as you can see uh if someone puts stun days knocked back on you you're going to get ages which you can block the next income attack and resolution so once again another way of getting resolution on yourself that's what we've got with that and then here inspiring virtue strike damage dealt is increased after activating a virtue so for six seconds after using the virtue you have plus 10 damage and that's going to be up pretty much all the time which is excellent and finally we've got indomitable courage which is the active effect of virtue skill free breaks stun and grant stability to nearby allies his passive effect gains a shorter interval so that makes your f3 even better you gain ages periodically with this and this reduces the interval between them so that's really good this is when obviously it just helps you stay alive and then using it has some extra buffs as well so it just means that's a bit of a good button for getting out of trouble okay so that is all of the specializations hopefully you can see how um that's sort of starting to build our class to make it more powerful and it really is important with the guardian here you could see when i was going through that how each of those things actually made you really powerful so the key is you want to keep resolution up and there's lots of things that we use to do that uh one of them is virtues which are going to have a look at now because that is everything for the skill for the traits and specializations and now we're going to move on to the profession mechanics okay so now we're going to have a look at the professional mechanics for the guardian so this is the virtue system um obviously i've mentioned that quite a few times already without trying to go into too much detail your virtues are your f1 to f3 abilities here and they're a bit like signets in that they have a passive effect and then an active effect as well when you use them so let's have a quick look at the passive abilities here so do make sure you listen to this section as well because this is actually a really key part i'm not just showing you what they do this is really key to your build here and one of the reasons why you do so much damage so yeah first up with your passive effects you've got virtue of justice which is that you burn foes every few attacks um so that helps you inflict burning on your enemies your second one here virtual resolve it regenerates health continuously so this is one of the reasons why you know even though you've got low health you can have a decent amount of survivability because you've got these passives and then with the third one you've got virtue of courage which is to gain ages periodically uh which means you block the next incoming attack so another one there which is good for keeping you alive with regards to the active effects your main priority is going to be your first one here virtue of justice reason being is because the activate ability is that you and your allies inflict burning on the next attack which obviously basically instead of burning every few attacks you're guaranteed to inflict it on the next attack um obviously we looked at quite a few things and we've got a bunch of things in our uh traits that um buff us against burning enemies so effectively we want our enemies to be burning at all times right so there's a couple of ways we can do that so first of all obviously you want to activate stability and you want to do it whenever you possibly can um so basically yeah as soon as you get into combat when you fight an enemy f1 as you can see and then you'll be able to set them alight with your next attack um you can see because of all of the traits we've got there's a lot of buffs on there as well you've got might you've got blindness you've got resolution you've got light aura uh can hit up to five targets so that's going to be really effective so we buffed that quite a lot and obviously that took 17 seconds to come back which is quite a long time but if you remember uh one of our passive traits i think on the radiance line uh was that um whenever you kill an enemy um your virtue of justice is going to automatically come back so you know with this build with the damage will be outputting you're going to be expecting to be killing enemies sort of every few seconds so that means your virtue of resolve is going to be coming back every few seconds and you can just spam that so literally use this whenever you kill an enemy and it comes back use it again because you can be setting your enemies alight um which is going to mean that you're doing more damage against them and then further on top of that you're getting these buffs including resolution which we buffed even further so your crit chance when you use that is going to go up massively which is really awesome so do bear that in mind so you're going to have to stick that f1 ability in as much as you possibly can so just make sure you do that access a really big part of the build uh with regards to your active abilities on your virtual resolve and virtue of courage to be honest they're here mainly you know for the passives uh the passives are good they're useful and they help you but obviously you do still have some effects and you can see um the activate abilities are buffed as well with some of our traits so just to show you the active ability f2 is heal yourself and nearby allies so it's a little bit of a chunk hill so if you're really desperate use that but most of the time we'll just sit there with the regenerate but it does help um you know cleanse some conditions as well and heal some allies so it can be useful if you're really in trouble your f3 here so virtue of courage the activator ability is you grant ages to yourself and nearby allies so rather than getting it periodically um it's a guaranteed aegis there for you and your allies and we actually buff this on the skill tree as well so that it gives us stability and resolution so using that every now and then when you really need some extra armor is advised you know it's a really powerful defensive ability you know if you're just doing loads of damage um you know you generally won't need it but it's another way that you can get resolution if you haven't got your f1 if you haven't got resolution on you you can use that to get it as well but you can also use your f2 so you should basically you should have resolution up pretty much all the time um but yeah so that's a really good defensive ability but obviously just by sitting on your bar there you're going to be getting ages every now and then anyway so that's really awesome so just remember yeah always use your f1 ability virtue of justice literally whenever you can uh because that is going to really help with doing as much damage as possible okay so that is everything on the profession mechanics so the next thing we're going to have to look at is just do a quick build summary before wrapping the video up all right so pretty much covered everything for our guardian leveling build i'm just going to do a quick build summary here just to go through what we've done so with the weapons we had our main one here which is the great sword which is a really good option your number two ability there being your most powerful attack and always put your symbol down as well for extra damage as well as buffs for the second weapon set we've got main hand sword off hand focus really good uh extra melee damage there and ray of judgment's good damage ability and shield of rafts good defensive ability if you really want a ranged option you can swap this out for the scepter um but you will lose a decent amount of damage so i wouldn't advise it unless you're really having trouble with survivability uh with your um healing utility and elite we've got this meditation skill here and obviously that heals you for an amount of damage as well so use that and then use your number two whirling wrath to maximize the amount of health you come back we've got our spirit weapon here that we can place down to do a little bit of extra damage we've got a good little self buff here with stand standard ground um this is a passive that gives you more power we generally don't use that active ability unless we're really desperate so that will just sit there and give you some bass power [Music] and then you've got your last um you've got your elite skill here which is another shout nice quick cool down on this and it gives you really good buffs so you do more critical chance and your skills and actions are faster for a few seconds um we've got the um skill trees here we've got zeal radiant and virtues and as you can see we've laid them out like this um our sec we've gone power precision ferocity on pretty much everything to be fair um like i said you can stick some vitality as always in or toughness to give yourself some more survivability but i've gone with this because we've got some good defensive abilities um and then with the professional mechanics these give you some good passive buffs f3 if you really need to stay alive good defensive buffs there but use your f1 all the time whenever you possibly can as that is going to burn foes and keep resolution up on yourself and because of our traits that is going to refresh every single time you kill an enemy so that's a really important part as well so that is everything um for our guardian leveling build i really do love this build um and it does a ton of damage so i hope you enjoy it i'm gonna leave you now with a combat demonstration just a brief one just to show you what it looks like when it all comes together but as always thanks for watching and i will see you guys later foreign [Music] uh rising so stand your ground oh

Channel: Heroic Flamingo

Views: 81,943

Keywords: guild wars 2 classes, guild wars 2 professions, class guide, profession guide, guild wars 2 elite specializations, guild wars 2 armor, guild wars 2 weapons, guild wars 2 2021, guild wars 2 beginners guide, guild wars 2 skills, guild wars 2 walkthrough, guild wars 2 combat, guild wars 2 all classes, which class should i play, what class should i play, guild wars 2 best class, guild wars 2 best profession, guild wars 2 classes 2020, guild wars 2 gameplay, end of dragons

Id: DSnAfc-cwOQ

Length: 49min 42sec (2982 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021