Guardian Skill Lines
Traits can modify some of the skills, like Consecrated Ground allows you to target your consecrations. When making your build, you’re going to want to focus on a few skill types, then build your traits up around them to boost them and make them more effective.
Chains, Shouts, and Signets
These are shared with other classes and work just like they do universally. Chains are simple, they’re part of the auto-attack cycle and are used by most weapons. Shouts on the other hand require some critical thinking as to the best time to use it. They’re best used at critical times to assist allies, although when solo, they can be used whenever. Signets require, again, some thought on when giving up the passive boost is beneficial.
Consecrations
These are a bit different than symbols because you can trait them to be ground targeted. They’re basically, for the most part, support skills that help you and your allies in combat when they run across them. They have a rather long duration, for the most part, between five and ten seconds, so they’re rather useful. Unlike symbols, they are all utility skills and not weapon skills.
Wall of Reflection is notable because it can really help defend certain areas from projectiles, specifically capture points and rams. It’s not a ward, but it blocks projectiles, which is enough to keep ranged attacks off of you.
Consecrated Ground makes them ground targetable, which means going 15 points into virtue a must have if you’re going to carry more than one consecration or use it as a critical part of your build.
Meditations
Teleporting is a neat concept and in the context of support or defense, absolutely amazing. Why? It can get you out of some rough spots AND put you in a position where you can heal or defend your allies. Not all meditations are teleports though, Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity involve condition removal. You’re going to want to use the teleports whenever a big AoE attack is incoming and you need to get out of the way, or if the third part of a chain attack is incoming. Judge’s Intervention is superior for defense, because it lets you get in someone’s way while Merciful Intervention is great for support because it takes you to the lowest health player nearby.
You’ll come across a wide array of skill types for the guardian in Guild Wars 2, each with their own unique mechanic. It’s important when playing a guardian to understand how each skill works and how they synergize with one another so that you can create your own builds to dominate in world vs. world, structured PvP, and of course PvE. We’ll look at the different skill types and their uses in this article and how they function in combat.
If you’re looking to know more about the guardian, check out our main guardian guide, your central hub to all of the information you’d want to know about the guardian.
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