My Guard Build: Defense is the best Offences

[Cheshire Rabbid.7430]

I need someone to look thought on the builds I made for my character. I will be doing mostly PvE stuff in case you asked. I will also tell you a bit about the characters I like to think up for them, and I do need help thinking of names for them.____ The Hero: He sees himself as the great hero of all time. Jump headfirst into battle for glory and fame. He joins the Durmand Priory not instated in knowledge but hoping there would write him down as a great protector.I will say I don't know much about this class excited that it is like Paladins. So I decided to make it different than the others by making it tanky and able to heal himself great. After all, smash someone enough and there die. So here my Defense build where I have a list of three armor I can't decide to use for him.

[Aigleborgne.2981]

I wouldn't run this build anywhere.Your power is decent but you have 0 precision and no offensive traitline (zeal or radiance).If you want to stick with those, I would at least switch power to condi. But even then, I would still pick radiance or zeal for more burning.

For the record, I have tried something like this 8 years ago and it was really frustrating to take 30s to kill a simple mob.And it doesn't necessarily make you very tanky. When you will fight many mobs, they might cc, condi, and damage you. But since you don't kill fast enough, they will do this for a long time and you might eventually go down.

[Cheshire Rabbid.7430]

Ya I guess I can see that. I'm just having a troubled time make a build for this class. I mean I could go with a burning thing but I already have that with my warrior so I'm stump. I mean I would like him to be tanky and be able to take damage as it seems able to do that with its ability to heal and block attack already in there when you start out.

[Celestia.9128]

Really depends on where you want to play this, but

@Cheshire King.6970 said:So I decided to make it different than the others by making it tanky and able to heal himself great. After all, smash someone enough and there die.if this is your mindset, then just embrace full Minstrel (if with Firebrand is +++). Stuffs take forever to die, but your ability to tank and support your party is top notch. It is at least useful in WvW.

[Antycypator.9874]

I don't know... for PvE I wouldn't use this build. It's pure tank, but selfish. I like tank builds, but balanced between defense and ofense. For classes like elementalist, I run Trailblaizer/Apothecary. It's tanky, but at least pretty nice at dealing condition damage (enough to deal more than 2k dps).The problem is, you need power/precision/ferocity to deal damage. For condition damage just condition damage/expertise (power is optional). It's easy to make a tanky build that can deal some damage using toughness/vitality/condition damage/expertise.Tanking in GW2 doesn't work like in other games. Of course you can survive more. I never play class full-dps cannon builds outside raids; I always have some defense (like marauder's gear on my thief). What does it change? Less dps, but with my skills, I can solo many things and not worry about dying in one hit, because... for sure I will take damage. It's impossible to dodge literally everything. The core of my defense is often passive — like Alchemy traitline (holosmith), Devastation (herald/renegade), Invigorating Precision (deadeye/daredevil), Runes of Tormenting (mirage).For solo play you can do whatever you want, but in group content... well, you will be useless. At least you could support people with boons (needs more concentration) and healing.

[otto.5684]

I think there is a confusion. Guardian cannot tank. You can support or dps but tanking in GW2 relies on avoiding damage. If you want to do that in PvE play Mesmer or rev.

And if you are playing solo, stick to pure dps.

[Cheshire Rabbid.7430]

I think you all for your advice and I have reworked my Guardian build. I decided to try to build around aegis and realization, so that why I don't have to sacrifice power but still bit just a tiny bit tanky while foes hitting me would just be hitting themselves. and for that, I call my build "Stop hitting yourself"

[Aigleborgne.2981]

@"Cheshire King.6970" said:I think you all for your advice and I have reworked my Guardian build. I decided to try to build around aegis and realization, so that why I don't have to sacrifice power but still bit just a tiny bit tanky while foes hitting me would just be hitting themselves. and for that, I call my build "Stop hitting yourself"

Retaliation doesn't work in pve because mobs attack every 3 seconds or more, so it would take ages to kill them.