Core Guardian

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The following build is designed to guide you through your first playthrough, or to simply offer a decent and reliable Core build if you are on Free to Play account. Core builds are not advised to use later in game due to superiority of Elite Specializations.

While its name could suggest otherwise, Guardian is an extraordinary fighter, smiting opponents with fiery consecration and slicing with powerful and dynamic sword-wielding techniques.

This build focuses on dealing heavy direct damage enhanced with boons provided mostly by Guardian’s Symbols and gear upgrades. You gain access to nearly permanent Fury, almost 25 Might stacks with very decent Resolution, some Quickness, and a multitude of on-demand defensive boons.

Core Guardian shares many fundamental gameplay elements with the end-game Power Dragonhunter build, which could be your next build to unlock.

Power Dragonhunter

Damage

Select difficulty

Greatsword
Longbow

Build Fundamentals

This build relies on a lot of synergy between weapon skills, traits, boons, conditions, and multiple passive damage-increasing traits that are only active when you meet specific conditions. Your goal is to manage the uptime of these beneficial enhancements.

Having a high Critical Chance will increase your damage output dramatically. Even at a low level, you will be combining Fury from "Feel My Wrath!" with increased Critical Chance from Righteous Instincts whenever you gain Resolution. Radiant Power also increases Critical Chance against Burning foes while increasing your Ferocity.

That means that as long you have Fury and Resolution, and your target has Burning, you will have a 60% increased Critical Chance.

Your Symbols apply beneficial boons to you and your allies: Might from Symbol of Punishment and Resolution from Symbol of Resolution. Symbols also increase your damage thanks to Symbolic Power, which increases damage from Symbols, while Symbolic Avenger increases your damage overall.

That’s not all! You also gain increased damage from Retribution while under the effects of Resolution.

All this, and the fact that Resolution alone is a very powerful defensive boon, make this buff crucial for this build.

Your general strategy is to use the noted Engage Combo when possible. After this, keep using strong abilities off-cooldown, and use Weapon Swap to keep uptime on your high-damaging abilities across weapon sets.

Weapons

On both weapon sets, skills 2 and 4 are your strongest, that is Whirling Wrath and Symbol of Resolution on Greatsword, and Symbol of Punishment and Ray of Judgment on Scepter.

Shield of Wrath is a powerful defensive ability, but if shield is not destroyed, it explodes increasing your damage, you can also generate some additional Might if you use Shield of Wrath (which is Blast finisher)  inside the Fire field from Purging Flames.

Leap of Faith can be used as a mobility skill, and Binding Blade can pull enemies in, but both can be used for damage if needed. If you do so, don’t use Pull from Binding Blade, and let the damage tick.

While this build might look like it lack Condition Cleansing as your only obvious cleanse comes from Virtue of Resolve, you can utilize Light field from Symbol of Resolution and multiple finishers that will cleanse conditions from you and allies around you: Blast from Shield of Wrath for area cleanse, Leap from Leap of Faith for self-cleanse and Whirl from Whirling Wrath for cleansing bolts.

Virtues

Guardian’s profession mechanics are Virtues, a set of 3 additional, powerful passive skills with active ability bound to F1-3 by default. Virtue of Justice will passively apply Burning, Virtue of Resolve will heal you over time, and Virtue of Courage will periodically apply Aegis. Each of them will offer an enhanced effect when used at the cost of not providing passive effects when they are on cooldown.

Virtue of Resolve and Virtue of Courage are powerful defensive tools, and due to Indomitable Courage, Virtue of Courage is your only stun-break, allowing you to break from “hard” Crowd Control effects (for example knockback), and shortly preventing to be CC’d again thanks to Stability it applies.

Inspired Virtue further enhances your Virtues, with Might, Regeneration, and Protection.

In most cases, you’ll benefit more from not using your Virtues, but when forced, defensive ones can save you from difficult situations, or if you are not under much pressure, you can use them offensively to provide yourself with more Resolution for increased damage from traits synergy.

Virtue of Justice will provide you with some extra Fury via synergy with Inner Fire and will further increase Critical Chance via Radiant Power, depending on the situation you might or might not want to use its active component.

Since your goal is keeping the enemy Burning, during long fights with a single enemy, the most beneficial will be not using it, but when fighting with a group of mobs or when jumping from enemy to enemy, you want to make use of Renewed Justice that will refresh your Virtue of Justice.

Skills

Sword of Justice and Purging Flames are your strongest utility skills. Apart of dealing very good damage on their own, Vulnerability from Sword of Justice will increase your overall damage, as will Burning  from Purging Flames via trait synergy.

Purging Flames is another passive damage increase, but when needed, it deals very high Breakbar damage, which will be very useful against foes with the Defiance bar.

Your elite skill, "Feel My Wrath!" offers decent Fury uptime as well as some Quickness, it should be used when chaining multiple offensive skills together for best effect.

Alternatives

When mainly dealing with multiple enemies you will be generating Might when constantly activating Virtue of Justice which will be often reset by Renewed Justice. You can then use Superior Rune of the Scholar for most damage or Superior Rune of the Pack for some more Fury if you struggle upkeeping that boon.

If you don’t need Crowd Control, you can swap out Purging Flames for another ability best suit your current situation.

Crowd Control

• Purging Flames
• Chains of Light with Immobilize
• Binding BladePull

Gearing tips

Since this build is designed to be your entry point to Guild Wars 2 world, let’s start with the basics, if you haven’t checked the guides below, give them a read to make yourself familiar with game basics.

Game basics – first steps in Tyria

This short guide contains answers to the questions you might have on the first days of your adventure, such as where to look for tips, how to look for a group (LFG), what are the most important parts of the interface, and more!

Game systems and mechanics

Downstate, dodging, skills tied to weapon types, heart quests, and meta events, it all can be overwhelming for the new player. This guide attempts to answer all your questions, even those you don't yet know you have.

Gearing guide for PvE

This guide aims to teach you about the easiest, fastest, and most importantly, cheapest methods of acquiring your first entry-level equipment for instanced PvE content.

Introduction to the Guardian

Learn everything there is to know about the most devoted fighters in the game. Find out where their fighting capabilities come from and how to use their defensive potential.

Don’t try to invest in Runes and Sigils before you acquire proper level-80 Exotic gear with Berserker’s stats as transferring upgrades is not possible without destroying the item, and retrieving them during the process has a small chance with most salvage kits.

From drops, crafting and level-up rewards pick items with Power, and on later levels supplemented by Precision and Ferocity.

Unlocking skills

If you’re looking up this build as you’re leveling through the wide world of Tyria we recommend unlocking Sword of Justice and Purging Flames.

The first specialization at level 21 should be Radiance as it offers the most useful traits in early levels. At level 45 get Zeal and finally at level 71 unlock Virtues.