Blue Guardian

Blue Guardian Tank ‘Defender’ Build

By Araphorn – Updated for Yondershire, U33

Trait Trees

Trait trees for Guardian are pretty straight-forward and just needs 1 Blue Tree for tanking all content.

This tree gives all of the important stuff which is required for all content. Majority of the points are spent in yellow due to War-chant targets, Thrill of Danger morale absorb and Redirect potency.

35 Trait Points Build for Legendary Servers

60 Trait Points Build for Beginners

Virtues

These are the virtues I use to reach the Stat Goals. I use these 5 virtues on all my tanks as I find these exact ones to be the best for tanks.

Here are the Virtues which go along with the Stat Goals:

1. Loyalty (Great for Vitality)
2. Fidelity (Great for Vitality + Tactical Mit)
3. Charity (Gives great amount of Resistance, decent Vitality and Physical Mit)
4. Tolerance (Gives great amount of Tactical Mit, decent Physical Mit and Resistance)
5. Innocence (Gives great amount of Physical Mit, decent Tactical Mit Mit and Resistance)
   • If you are over Physical Mitigation cap, swap Innocence with Honour

If you don’t have these virtues, here are some alternatives:

• Honour (Gives decent Tactical Mit, Morale and Critical Defence)
• Fortitude (Gives decent Morale, Resistance and Critical Defence)
• Compassion (Gives great Physical Mit, decent Tactical Mit and Armour Value)

Legendary Items

Guardian tanks require 2 dedicated LIs for tanking, and with the new LI revamp, not much has changed.

*Note: Please use Word of Craft Traceries as per Stat Goals.

1-Hander Weapon

Type	Sockets
Heraldic Tracery	Heraldry of the Ox
Word of Power	Base Morale Multiplier
Word of Power	Incoming Heal Bonus
Word of Mastery	Guardian’s Ward Damage & Parry Chance
Word of Mastery	Guardian’s Ward Duration & Block Chance
Word of Mastery	Shield Damage
Word of Mastery	Stamp Cooldown & Damage
Word of Mastery	Turn the Tables Cooldown
Word of Mastery	Warrior’s Heart Stoic Bubble Strength
Word of Craft	Grand Willpower
Word of Craft	Grand Willpower

Guardian’s Belt (Class Item)

Type	Sockets
Heraldic Tracery	Heraldry of the Ox
Word of Power	Area Effect Target Count
Word of Power	Incoming Damage Reduction (Physical)
Word of Power	Incoming Damage Reduction (Tactical)
Word of Mastery	Adaptability Block & Parry Rating
Word of Mastery	Catch a Breath Cooldown & Heal
Word of Mastery	Force Taunt Duration
Word of Mastery	Guardian’s Pledge Cooldown & Magnitude
Word of Mastery	Warrior’s Heart Duration
Word of Mastery	Warrior’s Heart Morale Heal & Maximum
Word of Craft	Grand Armour / Grand Willpower
Word of Craft	Grand Armour / Grand Willpower

Rotation

Here is what I do on Guardian Tank.

For AoE aggro control:

1. I will try to bunch up as many mobs as I can take, usually around 7 to 10. While I’m running to collect them up, I use Shield-swipe and Shield-taunt (along with Guardian’s Ward for the buff), and some Retaliations if I receive Parry responses. I don’t use War-chant unless I know it will hit all my targets, or I use it only if mobs run after someone else.
2. When I have all the mobs lined up in one place, I quickly use Redirect (use a Whirling Retaliation if you don’t have it open). This allows me to absorb lots of damage and saves me from using a cooldown. I follow the Redirect with a War-chant after.
3. After Redirect, I do a shield rotation, which is pretty simple, Shield-swipe – Shield-taunt – Shield-smash. If you don’t have a initial block response, use a Shield-blow first to start the shield rotation.
4. After Shield rotation is done, I use another War-chant. This pretty much keeps all the mobs on you, but if your group DPS is too high and they steal some mobs, you are safe to use a Challenge now.
5. Use Catch a Breath on cooldown pretty much if your morale is going down.
6. Keep War-chant on cooldown also so your cooldown of Redirect and Catch a Breath gets reduced.
7. If you are still receiving too much damage after Redirect expires and Catch on Breath on cooldown, you can pop one of your other cooldowns. Start with Thrill of Danger first. Then eventually proceed as needed, Juggernaut/Pledge/Warrior’s Heart. But you generally don’t need all those cooldowns for just 1 trash pack, save other cooldowns for the remaining trash packs.
8. You can cut Shield-smash animations with your Stamp skill to speed up rotations a bit, but keep an eye on your power pool if you do that.

For Single-target aggro control:

1. This is generally pretty easy and nothing hard. Start the fight with Fray the Edge.
2. Wait around 6-7s and use Engage. Wait another few seconds, around 5s to be safe and use Fray the Edge again. You can pretty much go afk after that as far as aggro is concerned.
3. Keep Redirect on cooldown for the damage absorption buff. Keep doing Shield rotations also, and War-chant on cooldown.

Fortification Buff explained:

1. You get stacks of a buff called Fortification each time you use a Shield Skill.
2. You can gain up to a maximum of 5 stacks of this buff, with each stack giving +2% mits (physical and tactical), and up to +10% mits maximum.
3. Shield skills have a 25% chance to apply a stack of this buff.
4. It is very important that you build this buff up really fast by just focusing on a Shield rotation (Shield-blow – Shield-swipe – Bash – Shield-smash) for boss fights. Faster you have a maxed Fortification buff, better your chances are to survive boss hits.
5. Don’t worry too much about the Fortification buff for trash fights, you will eventually build the buff, focus on holding aggro first on all mobs, then do a Shield rotation on trash packs for the buff.

Break Ranks Buff explained:

1. This is a buff you apply to your fellowship/raid if they are within a 20 meter circle with you, it applies a 40% Mastery/Damage buff for 15s, and has a cooldown of 1 minute.
2. In order to proc this buff, you need to have the Fortification buff at 5 stacks, and then use a Shield-taunt.
3. This Break Ranks buff can be helpful to the group if and only if you can manage to stay alive without Fortification max stacks.
4. If you do end up using Break Ranks buff, then make sure to quickly build up the Fortification stacks again.
5. If you want to skip Break Ranks buff and want to maintain permanent uptimes of Fortification buff, then either un-trait Break Ranks or skip using Shield-taunt in rotation and use Bash instead to open Shield-smash.

Smashing Stab CJ (Guardian’s Fellowship Maneuver) Explained:

1. Guardians have a neat utility to CJ targets from Smashing Stab skill, which comes in very handy. It just requires Guards to use 2 certain skills before being able to make Smashing Stab do a CJ.
2. In order to do so, you have to hit the target with a Shield-swipe (which requires a Block response).
3. Next, you have to hit the target with a Retaliation (which requires a Parry response).
4. It doesn’t matter which order you hit the target with those 2 skills, you can do whichever one first.
5. Now that you have hit the target with both, Shield-swipe and Retaliation, you can open a CJ.
6. Use Smashing Stab whenever you want now to do a CJ, there is no time limit.

Consumables

There are the consumables I use on Guardian:

1. This an important consumable for Guard, it helps with Aggro control.

And this is the food to use:

Updated as of U33.

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