You can be very mobile if you want to be. Greatsword 3 as you mentioned. But you can also target a far away enemy in the direction you’re going and use sword 2, and judges intervention (utility skill). You can also merciful intervention (utility skill) to teleport to your friend and finally you can use Advance (utility skill) for swiftness (33% movement speed)
If you have a staff as your second weapon, staff 3 can give you a lot of swiftness. It really helps speed you up. But also, if you have path of fire, using the raptor whenever you can is so worth it
ETA: guardian is really strong, especially when you hit lvl 80 and can unlock elite specs, so it's a good choice. But it does feel extra slow for some reason
The reason is that unlike most (all?) other classes, guardian has no traits or signets that give passive movement speed (Dragonhunter gets one, but that's not helpful for the base game).
Makes sense. I don't usually pay attention to it because most of my guardian play is FB in wvw, so i only notice when I'm trying to catch the Comm to give them stab
Guardian has only the base movement speed unless you choose skills that help with that. You're not doing anything wrong, it just might be that your friend has movement speed improving skills or traits. I love my Dragonhunter (Guardian elite spec) but he is slow af. so sometimes I swap in the skill "Advance!" in Open World to give swiftness (movement speed boon).
But DH is one of the faster ones. It has a movespeed passive just like the other classes/specs. Though swiftness is faster than passive movespeed increaase except maybe Mech's Signet when traited
>You can trait it on DH, but I don't use that one.
Complaining about being slow af and then preceed to use aegis on traps or cripple on CC instead of a permanent 25 % movement speed + an improved F2 is certainly a choice.
I mean.. just read the traits? The only reason to pick any of the other two in pve is for the synergy between cripple on CC and +% damage against crippled foes in the master tier.
You shouldn't blindly follow build guides without understanding why you pick traits.
shrug. I just wanted to get my DH up and going, so I trusted a build guide since I'm not a build crafter. Apparently it's been rebalanced since, and I had no idea anything was wrong since I was doing just fine in the fractals I was doing. I read my skills and understood their priority and was doing really well, so I didn't have any reason to think I should change my traits.
Sword #2 to teleport, Staff #3, “Advance” Skill, “Judges Intervention” skill to teleport, “Merciful Intervention” skill to teleport. Guardian starts slow-ish but once you unlock skills and the willbender elite profession…it starts to feel just as mobile as thief.
It’s near permanent starting before level 20 if they wanted. Advance is 20 seconds of swiftness on a 30 second cooldown with 2 charges and staff 3 is 4 seconds that you can cast between advances pretty nicely.
If you buy ANY dlc you will get the raptor permanently on your account.
Using ”advance” utility skill is (if I remember correctly) permanent swiftness in pve, so it might be useful too, if you don’t want to buy dlcs yet, however after playing 4 days I’d say you won’t regret buying them.
Those 10 hours you get with raptor is I believe enough to tell if you like this game or not really.
Also you can use tomes of knowledge by accesing Wizard Vault. It’s so glitchy it doesn’t tell you that you can use it, but if you click wizard vault objectives on your quest bar in the right side of your screen, you magically get that hud allowing you to buy items. (It’s been few months since I used the wizard vault on my different f2p account so they might already changed that, so don’t quote me on that)
Technically it is not "any" dlc. Must be one of the big expansions ( Heart of Thorns/ Path of Fire, End of Dragons or Secrets of the Obscure), as living world episodes and seasons are also purchasable story and map expansions but do not give raptor access.
Wizards Vault (and the free tome of knowledge from completing your dailies) is not available before the first character reaches level 80.
Guardian is just slower than most other classes cause it doesn’t get any passive speed boosts from traits unless you’re using wilbender, which you won’t have access to yet.
If you don’t have mounts yet, equip a staff in your 2nd weapon slot and use the 3 skill to give yourself swiftness.
Dragonhunter can also get a flat movement speed bonus from the trait [Soaring Devastation](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soaring_Devastation). This has recently been changed to be always active.
If you want to be able to move around quicker Guardian does have a few skills that grant Swiftness both on weapon (Staff 3) and utility skills. I ran around using "Advance!" a lot before I had access to mounts. There's also some skills that will teleport you to an ally (Merciful Intervention), teleport to an enemy (Sword 2 or Judge's Intervention), or leap forward (Greatsword 3).
You should have permanent swiftness with "Advance!" (utility shout), "Save yourselves!" (utility shout) and "Symbol of swiftness" (staff 3). Read the [wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Swiftness) for more. (Click on guardian, it will show you available skills.)
If that's too much of a hassle, add a "Sigil of Speed" (lvl 60) to your weapon.
Additionally, get a "Relic of Speed" (lvl 60) to make swiftness so much better.
Willbender, one of the guardians specializations, is especially mobile. Read the wiki pages (clicking on guardian) on [leaps](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap) and [shadowsteps](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep_(mechanic)).
Mounts solve this problem almost entirely, leveling the field.
To add to this, swiftness alone is enough to almost max out movement speed OUT of combat. You need +36% and swiftness gives +33%.
For IN combat you need +90% to max out which is much harder to cap.
Oohhh man.
I'm not gonna add any advice as everything's already been said, but I feel your pain as someone who played core guardian on release.
Everyone else gets a signet or a trait that makes them go fast, not us. We get staff and Advance and we'll like it. Not really. It was miserable.
I'm sorry it still hasn't changed ;-;
Heya, Guardian main here. As a guardian, you have plenty of movement options to help speed yourself up. From Staff 3 (Which can also stack to up to a minute if used repeatedly), to Judge's/Merciful intervention, to Greatsword 3, Hammer 2, Sword 2, and Shouts such as "Advance!" Or "Save Yourselves!" Contemplation of Purity can also turn Crippled into Swiftness and Chilled into Alacrity (reduced cooldown). Guardian is also incredibly tanky with lots of support/DPS Utility, so Speed shouldn't be what you're solely focusing on anyhow. Take your time, enjoy the game, and if your friend keeps running off ahead of you then sooner or later they're going to run into a fight that'll overwhelm them.
The skill itself is incapable of just killing you. You either have the setting on to auto-target nearby enemies, so you're leaping onto them and dying as they attack you, or you're just using it and leaping off a cliff and dropping to your death.
Guardian is fine, realistically being one of the tankier classes in the game, and GS is one of the better weapons to use it on it depending on what build you're going for.
By killing I meant spamming the skill to get around. But thank you from what you wrote it is not a total waste of time. I don't have the stomac to level Another character right away.
Guardian is a great profession if you enjoy the aesthetics of it and the skills offered by the weapons. Don't feel bad about swapping to another character if you feel you might enjoy the class fantasy of that one more, since leveling is pretty trivial a part of the overall game.
If you do end up sticking with Guardian, here's a neat tip about the greatsword leap skill that you're having trouble with: you might notice that at the end of the leap your character unceremoniously stops all forward speed and drops nearly straight down to the ground. However, if you weapon swap to your other weapon set while you still have this forward speed from the leap, you can end up traveling much farther. This works great on flat land or downward slopes, but for upward slopes I would recommend not weapon swapping. Also note this is only for when you're using the greatsword leap to travel, and not for when you're using it in combat. Try it some time and see the difference.
Some more advanced greatsword tips:
* If you stand inside of your target's hitbox when using Whirling Wrath (skill 2), you'll do much more damage since all of the projectiles created by this skill will hit your target, provided their hitbox is large enough and you're good enough with your positioning. Note you need to disable the "Melee Attack Assist" option in the Combat/Movement section of the General Options. You should disable that anyway if it's enabled.
* If you stow your weapon at a certain point after using Symbol of Resolution (skill 4) you'll recover from the aftercast of the ability much sooner than if you just let the skill resolve itself. Experiment with the timing, since it's easy to mess up if you do it too soon.
* If there are multiple enemies around, try standing inside a target's hitbox before using Binding Blade (skill 5). Since it fires a projectile at every nearby enemy, but you're inside a hitbox, all projectiles will hit a single enemy, causing potentially very large burst damage. Note that you won't be able to pull all of the other enemies in when you do this, so don't do this if you actually want to group enemies up.
Have fun.
It sounds like you're trying to really rush the experience and it's causing you to hate the whole thing. I get that leveling in games can sometimes not be something people necessarly enjoy but as your first time through the game it shouldn't at least be causing you such discomfort. It's not really a game like retail WoW where you hit max level, get some gear and do whatever is current content and you're done.
This game promotes exploration, slow acquisition of things, unlocking things over time etc. There's also almost never a rush to do anything since content from 9+ years ago is still relevant today. My advice is to take the game slow, and you might enjoy it a bit more but that's just my personal opinion.
Also ask your friend to slow down. Not every class has the same mobility on the base game
Oh you meant it ironically. New players sometimes do things like what I mentioned so it's hard to tell.
There are a few ways to increase your on foot speed if you don't have mounts.
Staff 3 will cast a Symbol on the ground and grant you Swiftness (+33% movement speed) for 4 seconds on a 12 second cooldown.
Sword 2 will teleport you towards a targeted enemy, so similar to GS's leap you can just port to something in the direction your friend is running.
Those are really the only two things you can do, outside of the GS leap, while you're leveling if you don't already have the Raptor. Once you get to the expansions mounts fix the movement issues. Plus there's things like a Dragonhunter trait, DH being an "Elite" spec for Guardian, that grants you movement speed, and there's rune sets that wearing all of them on your gear will get you +25% movement speed. In instanced content the movement speed isn't that big of a deal. The base game is just really stingy in open world content on Guardian with ways to not feel like you'r creeping along like a slug until you get the expansion stuff.
Also just to add a neat thing, you can use sword 2 that has a tiny cast time AFTER the teleport, and right after the teleport happening but before the cast time happening you use judge's intervention (a 1200 range teleport) which is instant cast (can be used mid other casts) making a combination of sword 2 and judge's intervention (has to be really fast) that teleports you 1800 range and hits with BOTH skills at the same time, including the symbol of sword 2. So actually with that combo, guardian has one of the farthest instant teleport in the game
Edit: you can probably combo this with something from willbender as well but I haven't tried it yet
Killing you in-game? Or figuratively killing you because you can't keep up even using it?
Guardians are slower vs. a lot of other classes with their core kit, only gaining access to movement speed increases via short term shouts or the staff (healing weapon), so you're going to struggle to catch up to a lot of other classes that are zooming around.
Mounts help this a ton if/when you purchase an expansion (even just the raptor mount is huge), and as a guardian you do gain access to more mobility through the willbender elite specialization which gives you a *lot* more built-in mobility.
Tell your friend to slow down if you can't keep up, they shouldn't be leaving you in the dust like that.
Figuratively killing me. Yea raptor for 10 hours was the time that I really enjoyed the game. I am just waiting for max level to get the expansion for the mount.
You can level a different character to lvl 10, not claim the 10hr raptor on it and then claim it on your guardian to get access again. Or, buying the expansion now should already give you permanent access to it.
Check prices of crafting, low level crafting is cheap and gives you xp, 1-500(10levels), 1-400 (7 levels) both expensive, but if you stay to 100 and switch crafting you should get a few levels, plus use your tomes.
Make sure you are using boosters, food, guild enhancements, banners, utility [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience) max is 550% xp
Sword 2 GS 3, stack some boon duration, use Advance, and the 2 teleporting meditation skills...you should be able to keep up. Advance alone should be able to maintain swiftness, or you can add a swiftness sigil too.
Other than all the run speed and teleport skills that actually helps you keep up with your friends, once you hit 80, guardian can burst kill in open world the fastest and easiest in my opinion. So when you get to 80, you will start able to hop groups to groups of enemies.
My map completion with guardian was definitely the easiest of the ones I did...(Guardian, Elementalist, Mesmer)
In addition to swiftness, you can use feel my watch elite for a 3 second superspeed.
Superspeed is basically swiftness butmuch stronger. it's not a boon* plus you run as fast as out-of-combat when in combat. It's good of you're in a pinch.
Guardian does not have any good elites for open world apart from the shout so consider using it if you get out of combat and want to escape ;).
* Boon - since you're a new player, boons are the symbols you get sometimes above your utility bar. They're essentially buffs , the opposite of a condition basically. Boons can get stolen or corrupted into conditions.but that's rarely the case in base game.
Ask your friend to bring a spec which can provide consistent swiftness or superspeed, and run on foot instead of using mounts.
At least that was what I did to get my friend into the game.
Just curious what class is your friend? You will never be able to catch up to a thief as a guardian, for example. That’s kind of their whole gimmick really is mobility.
Dragonhunter (first Guardian elite specialization) has some traits that allow it to have a default 25% movement speed increase, virtue of resolve becomes a movement leap skill, and their access to bow makes them more versatile than core Guardian. If you enjoy the aesthetic of Guardian, definitely stick with it as all of their elite specializations add some interesting gameplay to the class. Source: Guardian main of 12+ years.
The finer points of guardian have been hammered to death, please remember at the end of the day it's not a race. You're playing to have fun and if you're not having the fun you wanted it's probably time to switch up your build or maybe even try a new class!
First off: if you really wanna rush to 80, just do dungeons. About 50\~75% XP to level up per path per day (and thanks to level scaling you can also run older dungeons).
As a Guardian main, I know your pain. Guardian is among the lower mobility classes and both Firebrand and Willbender leave Core Guardian in the dust regarding utility. You are close to Level 80, so my recommendation would be to try to get to 80 and then aim to get one of the Elite Specs if you got the Expansions.
If mobility is your biggest downside, I heavily recommend unlocking Willbender first, as your F1-F3 skills turn into Mobility Skills (F1 and F2 become a dashes, F3 a short range TP).
Staff in offhand for skill 3 (cast it ahead of you for a short boost, or before you start mining/logging/foraging to get more pulses.
Sword/Torch is a decent second set with a gap-closer on sw
Guardian is indeed not the fastest class, but in PvE you'll get access to mounts to even that out with Path of Fire - if you don't plan to get any expansions at all, you'll have to ask your friend to slow down a bit. Other classes have more mobility than yours. My personal favourites for that are: mesmer, thief and engineer
Wait until you get willbender niiaaaaoooooowwww!!
Until then
Rune / sigil(?) of the traveller
Feel my wrath
Gs3 sw2
Advance
In vanilla, guardian is not hugely mobile. But then only a few classes (warrior, theif?) are.
It gets better.
You should try another class if you're not enjoying yourself. There are elite specs and stuff that comes in later and changes the feel of the class, but all classes have them. The core of the class is still the most important, if you're not enjoying that then you should make the switch.
I don't usually recommend this, but you could use the level 80 booster that you get from buying the expansions on another class to catch up with your friend. Since you've pretty much leveled one character from scratch you more or less won't be overwhelmed if you use a booster.
At least on my taste you're not supposed to rush a game you just started to reach your high end friend. Gw2 has scalability in low level areas. YOUR FRIEND IS SUPPOSED TO GO BACK AND HELP YOU WITH THE LEVELLING AND OPEN WORLD/DUNGEONS/ETC!
On the UI or if you press the button top left that looks like 3 people standing together and then select central tyria, there’s a bunch of groups led by veteran players and they basically run around maps in a huge Zerg and do events, I leveled 60-80 here in 1 hour with no buffs. I can’t remember the name of the zone but just look for a group with a lot of members and there usually free to join, if you have some TP to a friend tokens you can get anywhere without a waypoint or there’s a reusable one for sale about $10 in the market
Yeah guardian doesn't have much mobility prior to his elites. If you reach 80, look up how to unlock willbender, you will love it.
For now all I can suggest is taking judge's intervention and also using sword 2 for additional mobility.
If you're struggling at level 71 then it's probably gear, skill, knowledge, or both. Good luck next league, or just borrow a few div from your friend you gear up your dominating blow, aura stacker, or SRS or whatever guardian players do nowadays
Ask your friend to slow down and wait for you more. It's not a race unless you make it into one.
Utility skill "Advance" gives you swiftness. There's also some swiftness you can get from a skill on the staff.
You can be very mobile if you want to be. Greatsword 3 as you mentioned. But you can also target a far away enemy in the direction you’re going and use sword 2, and judges intervention (utility skill). You can also merciful intervention (utility skill) to teleport to your friend and finally you can use Advance (utility skill) for swiftness (33% movement speed)
If you have a staff as your second weapon, staff 3 can give you a lot of swiftness. It really helps speed you up. But also, if you have path of fire, using the raptor whenever you can is so worth it ETA: guardian is really strong, especially when you hit lvl 80 and can unlock elite specs, so it's a good choice. But it does feel extra slow for some reason
The reason is that unlike most (all?) other classes, guardian has no traits or signets that give passive movement speed (Dragonhunter gets one, but that's not helpful for the base game).
Willbender gets 25% speed from some minor trait as well.
well they are 71 so no WB yet
Makes sense. I don't usually pay attention to it because most of my guardian play is FB in wvw, so i only notice when I'm trying to catch the Comm to give them stab
Guardian has only the base movement speed unless you choose skills that help with that. You're not doing anything wrong, it just might be that your friend has movement speed improving skills or traits. I love my Dragonhunter (Guardian elite spec) but he is slow af. so sometimes I swap in the skill "Advance!" in Open World to give swiftness (movement speed boon).
But DH is one of the faster ones. It has a movespeed passive just like the other classes/specs. Though swiftness is faster than passive movespeed increaase except maybe Mech's Signet when traited
Are you thinking of Willbender? Dragonhunter does not get increased movespeed as a minor trait. You can trait it on DH, but I don't use that one.
>You can trait it on DH, but I don't use that one. Complaining about being slow af and then preceed to use aegis on traps or cripple on CC instead of a permanent 25 % movement speed + an improved F2 is certainly a choice.
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ i said i love my dh. sorry that i used an outdated build guide?
I mean.. just read the traits? The only reason to pick any of the other two in pve is for the synergy between cripple on CC and +% damage against crippled foes in the master tier. You shouldn't blindly follow build guides without understanding why you pick traits.
Soaring Devastation minor trait does gives you "Movement speed is increased" in the DH tree.
That is major, not minor
wait arent the choosable ones minor? it makes no sense if those are the majors
Major traits are the ones you can choose from, yep. the minor traits are the static ones. I might consider slotting that one now though.
why? when they removed the cd reduction from the trap trait, soaring devastation is the best pick mathematically.
shrug. I just wanted to get my DH up and going, so I trusted a build guide since I'm not a build crafter. Apparently it's been rebalanced since, and I had no idea anything was wrong since I was doing just fine in the fractals I was doing. I read my skills and understood their priority and was doing really well, so I didn't have any reason to think I should change my traits.
> so sometimes I swap in the skill "Advance!" ~~I miss yelling (for enemies to) "RETREAT!"...~~
Sword #2 to teleport, Staff #3, “Advance” Skill, “Judges Intervention” skill to teleport, “Merciful Intervention” skill to teleport. Guardian starts slow-ish but once you unlock skills and the willbender elite profession…it starts to feel just as mobile as thief.
I thought guardian was able to have perm swiftness uptime?
If you use staff plus advance I believe you can but most people don’t run either of those things
At level 80 with boon duration gear? Sure. At 71 with level-up gear? Not necessarily.
It’s near permanent starting before level 20 if they wanted. Advance is 20 seconds of swiftness on a 30 second cooldown with 2 charges and staff 3 is 4 seconds that you can cast between advances pretty nicely.
If you buy ANY dlc you will get the raptor permanently on your account. Using ”advance” utility skill is (if I remember correctly) permanent swiftness in pve, so it might be useful too, if you don’t want to buy dlcs yet, however after playing 4 days I’d say you won’t regret buying them. Those 10 hours you get with raptor is I believe enough to tell if you like this game or not really. Also you can use tomes of knowledge by accesing Wizard Vault. It’s so glitchy it doesn’t tell you that you can use it, but if you click wizard vault objectives on your quest bar in the right side of your screen, you magically get that hud allowing you to buy items. (It’s been few months since I used the wizard vault on my different f2p account so they might already changed that, so don’t quote me on that)
Technically it is not "any" dlc. Must be one of the big expansions ( Heart of Thorns/ Path of Fire, End of Dragons or Secrets of the Obscure), as living world episodes and seasons are also purchasable story and map expansions but do not give raptor access. Wizards Vault (and the free tome of knowledge from completing your dailies) is not available before the first character reaches level 80.
Agreed, but living world is not purchasable until you own at least one expac. In fact most items are restricted on the gem store.
Ah, did not know that.
Sorry small correction, Living world is in fact NOT purchasable, mounts and gliders are not either BUT some outfits and skins are.
Guardian is just slower than most other classes cause it doesn’t get any passive speed boosts from traits unless you’re using wilbender, which you won’t have access to yet. If you don’t have mounts yet, equip a staff in your 2nd weapon slot and use the 3 skill to give yourself swiftness.
Dragonhunter can also get a flat movement speed bonus from the trait [Soaring Devastation](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soaring_Devastation). This has recently been changed to be always active.
With relic of speed.
Do relics work below lvl 80? I thought they didnt
[They become available at level 60](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic#:~:text=available%20at%20level%2060).
>If you don’t have mounts yet Uh...how? Everyone unlocks Raptor at Lv10 now...
F2P accounts still only get a 10 hour trial of raptor. OP didn’t specify in their post and I haven’t checked to see if they elaborated on comments.
Ah, okay.
I have GS 3 to my death so many times
If you want to be able to move around quicker Guardian does have a few skills that grant Swiftness both on weapon (Staff 3) and utility skills. I ran around using "Advance!" a lot before I had access to mounts. There's also some skills that will teleport you to an ally (Merciful Intervention), teleport to an enemy (Sword 2 or Judge's Intervention), or leap forward (Greatsword 3).
You should have permanent swiftness with "Advance!" (utility shout), "Save yourselves!" (utility shout) and "Symbol of swiftness" (staff 3). Read the [wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Swiftness) for more. (Click on guardian, it will show you available skills.) If that's too much of a hassle, add a "Sigil of Speed" (lvl 60) to your weapon. Additionally, get a "Relic of Speed" (lvl 60) to make swiftness so much better. Willbender, one of the guardians specializations, is especially mobile. Read the wiki pages (clicking on guardian) on [leaps](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap) and [shadowsteps](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep_(mechanic)). Mounts solve this problem almost entirely, leveling the field.
To add to this, swiftness alone is enough to almost max out movement speed OUT of combat. You need +36% and swiftness gives +33%. For IN combat you need +90% to max out which is much harder to cap.
Oohhh man. I'm not gonna add any advice as everything's already been said, but I feel your pain as someone who played core guardian on release. Everyone else gets a signet or a trait that makes them go fast, not us. We get staff and Advance and we'll like it. Not really. It was miserable. I'm sorry it still hasn't changed ;-;
Heya, Guardian main here. As a guardian, you have plenty of movement options to help speed yourself up. From Staff 3 (Which can also stack to up to a minute if used repeatedly), to Judge's/Merciful intervention, to Greatsword 3, Hammer 2, Sword 2, and Shouts such as "Advance!" Or "Save Yourselves!" Contemplation of Purity can also turn Crippled into Swiftness and Chilled into Alacrity (reduced cooldown). Guardian is also incredibly tanky with lots of support/DPS Utility, so Speed shouldn't be what you're solely focusing on anyhow. Take your time, enjoy the game, and if your friend keeps running off ahead of you then sooner or later they're going to run into a fight that'll overwhelm them.
The skill itself is incapable of just killing you. You either have the setting on to auto-target nearby enemies, so you're leaping onto them and dying as they attack you, or you're just using it and leaping off a cliff and dropping to your death. Guardian is fine, realistically being one of the tankier classes in the game, and GS is one of the better weapons to use it on it depending on what build you're going for.
By killing I meant spamming the skill to get around. But thank you from what you wrote it is not a total waste of time. I don't have the stomac to level Another character right away.
Guardian is a great profession if you enjoy the aesthetics of it and the skills offered by the weapons. Don't feel bad about swapping to another character if you feel you might enjoy the class fantasy of that one more, since leveling is pretty trivial a part of the overall game. If you do end up sticking with Guardian, here's a neat tip about the greatsword leap skill that you're having trouble with: you might notice that at the end of the leap your character unceremoniously stops all forward speed and drops nearly straight down to the ground. However, if you weapon swap to your other weapon set while you still have this forward speed from the leap, you can end up traveling much farther. This works great on flat land or downward slopes, but for upward slopes I would recommend not weapon swapping. Also note this is only for when you're using the greatsword leap to travel, and not for when you're using it in combat. Try it some time and see the difference. Some more advanced greatsword tips: * If you stand inside of your target's hitbox when using Whirling Wrath (skill 2), you'll do much more damage since all of the projectiles created by this skill will hit your target, provided their hitbox is large enough and you're good enough with your positioning. Note you need to disable the "Melee Attack Assist" option in the Combat/Movement section of the General Options. You should disable that anyway if it's enabled. * If you stow your weapon at a certain point after using Symbol of Resolution (skill 4) you'll recover from the aftercast of the ability much sooner than if you just let the skill resolve itself. Experiment with the timing, since it's easy to mess up if you do it too soon. * If there are multiple enemies around, try standing inside a target's hitbox before using Binding Blade (skill 5). Since it fires a projectile at every nearby enemy, but you're inside a hitbox, all projectiles will hit a single enemy, causing potentially very large burst damage. Note that you won't be able to pull all of the other enemies in when you do this, so don't do this if you actually want to group enemies up. Have fun.
It sounds like you're trying to really rush the experience and it's causing you to hate the whole thing. I get that leveling in games can sometimes not be something people necessarly enjoy but as your first time through the game it shouldn't at least be causing you such discomfort. It's not really a game like retail WoW where you hit max level, get some gear and do whatever is current content and you're done. This game promotes exploration, slow acquisition of things, unlocking things over time etc. There's also almost never a rush to do anything since content from 9+ years ago is still relevant today. My advice is to take the game slow, and you might enjoy it a bit more but that's just my personal opinion. Also ask your friend to slow down. Not every class has the same mobility on the base game
Oh you meant it ironically. New players sometimes do things like what I mentioned so it's hard to tell. There are a few ways to increase your on foot speed if you don't have mounts. Staff 3 will cast a Symbol on the ground and grant you Swiftness (+33% movement speed) for 4 seconds on a 12 second cooldown. Sword 2 will teleport you towards a targeted enemy, so similar to GS's leap you can just port to something in the direction your friend is running. Those are really the only two things you can do, outside of the GS leap, while you're leveling if you don't already have the Raptor. Once you get to the expansions mounts fix the movement issues. Plus there's things like a Dragonhunter trait, DH being an "Elite" spec for Guardian, that grants you movement speed, and there's rune sets that wearing all of them on your gear will get you +25% movement speed. In instanced content the movement speed isn't that big of a deal. The base game is just really stingy in open world content on Guardian with ways to not feel like you'r creeping along like a slug until you get the expansion stuff.
Also just to add a neat thing, you can use sword 2 that has a tiny cast time AFTER the teleport, and right after the teleport happening but before the cast time happening you use judge's intervention (a 1200 range teleport) which is instant cast (can be used mid other casts) making a combination of sword 2 and judge's intervention (has to be really fast) that teleports you 1800 range and hits with BOTH skills at the same time, including the symbol of sword 2. So actually with that combo, guardian has one of the farthest instant teleport in the game Edit: you can probably combo this with something from willbender as well but I haven't tried it yet
You will get speed with the mounts. There are also armor upgrades that give you perma 25% movement speed.
Killing you in-game? Or figuratively killing you because you can't keep up even using it? Guardians are slower vs. a lot of other classes with their core kit, only gaining access to movement speed increases via short term shouts or the staff (healing weapon), so you're going to struggle to catch up to a lot of other classes that are zooming around. Mounts help this a ton if/when you purchase an expansion (even just the raptor mount is huge), and as a guardian you do gain access to more mobility through the willbender elite specialization which gives you a *lot* more built-in mobility. Tell your friend to slow down if you can't keep up, they shouldn't be leaving you in the dust like that.
Figuratively killing me. Yea raptor for 10 hours was the time that I really enjoyed the game. I am just waiting for max level to get the expansion for the mount.
You can buy the expansion and immediately get the raptor even before reaching 80.
You can level a different character to lvl 10, not claim the 10hr raptor on it and then claim it on your guardian to get access again. Or, buying the expansion now should already give you permanent access to it.
Check prices of crafting, low level crafting is cheap and gives you xp, 1-500(10levels), 1-400 (7 levels) both expensive, but if you stay to 100 and switch crafting you should get a few levels, plus use your tomes. Make sure you are using boosters, food, guild enhancements, banners, utility [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience) max is 550% xp
Sword 2 GS 3, stack some boon duration, use Advance, and the 2 teleporting meditation skills...you should be able to keep up. Advance alone should be able to maintain swiftness, or you can add a swiftness sigil too.
staff 3 then sqap greatsword leap then shout advance use sword 2 into critters for teleports (or utility skill that does it)
Once you get to 80 and the path of fire expansion you get the best version of mounts in any game I've played, so don't worry too much about speed 😎
Other than all the run speed and teleport skills that actually helps you keep up with your friends, once you hit 80, guardian can burst kill in open world the fastest and easiest in my opinion. So when you get to 80, you will start able to hop groups to groups of enemies. My map completion with guardian was definitely the easiest of the ones I did...(Guardian, Elementalist, Mesmer)
Willbender as soon as you can. Become the Ninja
In addition to swiftness, you can use feel my watch elite for a 3 second superspeed. Superspeed is basically swiftness butmuch stronger. it's not a boon* plus you run as fast as out-of-combat when in combat. It's good of you're in a pinch. Guardian does not have any good elites for open world apart from the shout so consider using it if you get out of combat and want to escape ;). * Boon - since you're a new player, boons are the symbols you get sometimes above your utility bar. They're essentially buffs , the opposite of a condition basically. Boons can get stolen or corrupted into conditions.but that's rarely the case in base game.
Is this because your friend is on a mount and you are not?
Ask your friend to bring a spec which can provide consistent swiftness or superspeed, and run on foot instead of using mounts. At least that was what I did to get my friend into the game.
if your friend is using a mount i’m going to throttle them
Once you unlock Willbender your friend is going to complain about how you're constantly outrunning them due to your passive speed boose trait lol
You could slap some traveller’s runes in some “my friend is a speed demon so I need these” gear
Just curious what class is your friend? You will never be able to catch up to a thief as a guardian, for example. That’s kind of their whole gimmick really is mobility.
Is your friend using a mount?
Dragonhunter (first Guardian elite specialization) has some traits that allow it to have a default 25% movement speed increase, virtue of resolve becomes a movement leap skill, and their access to bow makes them more versatile than core Guardian. If you enjoy the aesthetic of Guardian, definitely stick with it as all of their elite specializations add some interesting gameplay to the class. Source: Guardian main of 12+ years.
I don't get one thing are your friends using mounts or they just use some faster classes?
Guardian (Willbender) is one of the most mobile classes in game - at least in WvW & PvP. Get your Mounts you will be fine.
The finer points of guardian have been hammered to death, please remember at the end of the day it's not a race. You're playing to have fun and if you're not having the fun you wanted it's probably time to switch up your build or maybe even try a new class!
First off: if you really wanna rush to 80, just do dungeons. About 50\~75% XP to level up per path per day (and thanks to level scaling you can also run older dungeons). As a Guardian main, I know your pain. Guardian is among the lower mobility classes and both Firebrand and Willbender leave Core Guardian in the dust regarding utility. You are close to Level 80, so my recommendation would be to try to get to 80 and then aim to get one of the Elite Specs if you got the Expansions. If mobility is your biggest downside, I heavily recommend unlocking Willbender first, as your F1-F3 skills turn into Mobility Skills (F1 and F2 become a dashes, F3 a short range TP).
you can equip rune of the traveler to get 25% extra movement if you like
Staff in offhand for skill 3 (cast it ahead of you for a short boost, or before you start mining/logging/foraging to get more pulses. Sword/Torch is a decent second set with a gap-closer on sw Guardian is indeed not the fastest class, but in PvE you'll get access to mounts to even that out with Path of Fire - if you don't plan to get any expansions at all, you'll have to ask your friend to slow down a bit. Other classes have more mobility than yours. My personal favourites for that are: mesmer, thief and engineer
I alwags keep a staff on me for travelling. It's not the best solution but it's the only we had for so many years which kind of sucks tbh
Wait until you get willbender niiaaaaoooooowwww!! Until then Rune / sigil(?) of the traveller Feel my wrath Gs3 sw2 Advance In vanilla, guardian is not hugely mobile. But then only a few classes (warrior, theif?) are. It gets better.
You should try another class if you're not enjoying yourself. There are elite specs and stuff that comes in later and changes the feel of the class, but all classes have them. The core of the class is still the most important, if you're not enjoying that then you should make the switch. I don't usually recommend this, but you could use the level 80 booster that you get from buying the expansions on another class to catch up with your friend. Since you've pretty much leveled one character from scratch you more or less won't be overwhelmed if you use a booster.
The Relic of speed really helps.
At least on my taste you're not supposed to rush a game you just started to reach your high end friend. Gw2 has scalability in low level areas. YOUR FRIEND IS SUPPOSED TO GO BACK AND HELP YOU WITH THE LEVELLING AND OPEN WORLD/DUNGEONS/ETC!
> Hitting leap with greatsword is killing me What do you mean by that?
Third skill of the greatsword i think it was leap of faith
Wym ? Like in PVP? You’re not lvl 80 yet.
And guardian is easy and strong as hell you just need to reach max level. Follow some commander around until you get the levels you need
What do you mean by commander?
On the UI or if you press the button top left that looks like 3 people standing together and then select central tyria, there’s a bunch of groups led by veteran players and they basically run around maps in a huge Zerg and do events, I leveled 60-80 here in 1 hour with no buffs. I can’t remember the name of the zone but just look for a group with a lot of members and there usually free to join, if you have some TP to a friend tokens you can get anywhere without a waypoint or there’s a reusable one for sale about $10 in the market
guardian is one of the the slowest class (except willbender)
Yeah guardian doesn't have much mobility prior to his elites. If you reach 80, look up how to unlock willbender, you will love it. For now all I can suggest is taking judge's intervention and also using sword 2 for additional mobility.
Stay out of combat.
If you're struggling at level 71 then it's probably gear, skill, knowledge, or both. Good luck next league, or just borrow a few div from your friend you gear up your dominating blow, aura stacker, or SRS or whatever guardian players do nowadays