Guild Wars 2

Hello team!

I started a series of vids showing how to run Cleric Tank Guardian in FOTM.
This build will allow you to face tank any fractal boss virtually without dodging/kiting while your team mates can focus on pure DPS (good old stack here and don’t move strat).

Here is the playlist on youtube with detailed build explanation, rotations and boss specifics. Currently being updated while i’m getting more fractal footage.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS

I hope this will be useful
Have a good one!

P.S. Holy trinity was never missing in GW2 it just never was a part of the meta. You can still play how you want and beat any content

Yeah I love my cleric healing tank guardian. But I only really run it in WvW. But when 2 of us wipe a group of 5, then take down 5 of a 7 man group right afterward before getting killed ourselves is just kind of awesome.

I can see how it could be useful in FotM, especially the higher levels.
But what about not being able to hold “aggro”? Which is one of the many reasons why a traditional trinity won’t work in GW2 unless combat itself was changed.
Is there a way you are able to compensate for that?

So you’re literally doing the job any guardian could do, but doing less damage to boot? Guardians have enough blocks and blinds to do most anything easy, so why are you gimping your damage too, especially when it’s very easy to dodge most bosses’ attacks. Also, you’re doing all of these on a 40? Why not a 50 if you’re going to prove a build – the damage difference is really quite noticable.

No build is safe from criticism – IMO, you’d probably be doing even better with soldiers gear. Tankier and more damage. The healing you get from cleric’s is probably not enough to outperform flat vitality, and more power.

In my vids i explain how aggro works in GW2 (for melee bosses like Mossman and Archdiviner). If you check it out you will see that I am able to hold aggro consistently.

Basically there are 2 things that allow you to hold aggro:
1. Toughness stat on your gear
2. Positioning. That means that as a tank you always wanna stay as close to the boss as possible (min melee range, just enough for you to not push him away) and you DPS wanna stay behind the boss at max melee range (just enough to hit with melee weapons). If both parties never move around you will technically never lose aggro. As a guardian i minimize dodging or try to dodge into the wall if possible. Some bosses do not require dodging at all like ettin.

I was referred to this by a guildmate. I can’t wait to try this out. I like the concept of it and it never hurts to have support for the fights. The most promising thing is that you can just hold aggro and let your party free cast with no interrupts. Thanks for the guides and keep up the good work!

I don’t really understand that language. Could you maybe use english while explaining? It would help a lot.

Not sure if troll.

Selfless daring has one of the best scaling with healing power in the game. If you are really going full clerics it heals for more than 1.6k aoe. Why not dodge?

The most interesting thing is that if I run double Energy sigil on my full berserker S/F+GS Guardian, I can ‘tank’ essentially just as well by dodging around. Furthermore, with a berserker Hammer Guardian build I can facetank any of these bosses and still do very high net DPS. I genuinely think you’re approaching this the wrong way if you are insisting on trying to fill the void where a tank role might go.

I do appreciate that at least this way you can survive in difficult encounters without much action or skill on one’s own part.

We should encourage pugs to do stuff like this more. Then maybe they wont complain about the meta every 5 seconds.

robertul.3679:

I don’t really understand that language. Could you maybe use english while explaining? It would help a lot.

The OP has heavy accent but her explanation is understandable if you listen to it keenly.

@Rising Dusk: Based on my experience, if you dodge the attack, bosses like Mossman and Arch Diviner will be more likely to switch aggro to someone else. However, if you block their attack, they will be on you longer. For Mossman, he will come out of stealth earlier if his attack connects to his target.

Also I believe the principle of the OP is to block the heavy hitting attacks, heal through the auto and dodge when she runs out of aegis. It is a sound strategy, provided the group has enough DPS. Come to think of it, I would like to see how OP’s strategy is applied in the Molten Duo Fractals.

xDudisx.5914:

Selfless daring has one of the best scaling with healing power in the game. If you are really going full clerics it heals for more than 1.6k aoe. Why not dodge?

The reason why I do “no dodge” thing is that you likely to lose aggro after you dodge (remember that positioning thing). That’s why ideally you dont wanna dodge at all. Also even if you dont lose aggro immediately after dodge boss gonna move to you – that means moving out of warrior’s 100b and other aoe.

In this build your main heal is gonna be Symbol of Faith (mace 2) and resolve (you can reset it with renewed focus). Shelter is there as an “ohkitten” button for extra block, i often use Healing Breeze as #6 when I dont particularly need to block boss while healing (Bloomhunger, Mai Trin, Fire Shaman, Uncategorized last boss etc).

Energy sigil is also there for “ohkitten” scenario and honestly you dont need it except for Mai Trin (i will get footage of Mai Trin later, just not been lucky enough with rolls lately)

I really only see this build as sort of training wheels for some new Guards to learn how to block big attacks by trading pretty much all dps for the ability to survive one or two more hits.

spoj.9672:

We should encourage pugs to do stuff like this more. Then maybe they wont complain about the meta every 5 seconds.

It’s like how people generally dislike turret engis and banner warriors in sPvP. They are not the meta for a high level competitive scene but perfectly viable in soloQ and whatnot.

Das.6071:

I really only see this build as sort of training wheels for some new Guards to learn how to block big attacks by trading pretty much all dps for the ability to survive one or two more hits.

In fact, she survives the whole encounter, which means she understands the attack pattern quite well and reacts reasonably to it.

i would like some of these zerk guards to 3 man and tank mossman while your party does full dps pls

NYAN.7356:

i would like some of these zerk guards to 3 man and tank mossman while your party does full dps pls

There are actually some mossman solos on youtube, in fully offensive gear.

Lendruil.9061:

NYAN.7356:

i would like some of these zerk guards to 3 man and tank mossman while your party does full dps pls

There are actually some mossman solos on youtube, in fully offensive gear.

Are you talking about Sesshi, our GOD of Solo? Don’t worry, he will be nerf’d soon (evil laugh).

https://www.youtube.com/user/lolSesshi/videos

Disclaimer: not everyone is Sesshi, Sandy or Goku’s level. Facts checked.

yeah i know what i am saying is the point to this is that your group (understand i said group here just so you can keep up) can full dps. it takes15 min plus to do it in offensive gear where this only take close 5 to 6 min to do just saying

Iris Ng.9845:

Lendruil.9061:

NYAN.7356:

i would like some of these zerk guards to 3 man and tank mossman while your party does full dps pls

There are actually some mossman solos on youtube, in fully offensive gear.

Are you talking about Sesshi, our GOD of Solo? Don’t worry, he will be nerf’d soon (evil laugh).

https://www.youtube.com/user/lolSesshi/videos

Disclaimer: not everyone is Sesshi, Sandy or Goku’s level. Facts checked.

He wanted to see a mossman trio, i just told him that there are even solos.

NYAN.7356:

yeah i know what i am saying is the point to this is that your group (understand i said group here just so you can keep up) can full dps. it takes15 min plus to do it in offensive gear where this only take close 5 to 6 min to do just saying

In good groups Mossman usually dies even before the warrior banners disappear.

So, how many people are there can trio Mossman? And how many can solo Mossman? Why do we even compare a solo achievement with a trio? Hmmm…? See the logic?

and i know i trio it all the time in fact i am the ele in most of these vids i am calling out you to do it mate pls

NYAN.7356:

and i know i trio it all the time in fact i am the ele in most of these vids i am calling out you to do it mate pls

Sorry, but I feel the need to say that I’m not siding with you. I understand that your group’s method is perfectly viable but it is by no ways better than a fully experienced trio group. In this sub forum, there are many people capable of that. So, calling out a challenge like that is not wise. Have a good day!

Iris Ng.9845:

Das.6071:

I really only see this build as sort of training wheels for some new Guards to learn how to block big attacks by trading pretty much all dps for the ability to survive one or two more hits.

In fact, she survives the whole encounter, which means she understands the attack pattern quite well and reacts reasonably to it.

Yup! I like what the OP is trying to do. Even the guides are there to essentially explain the attack mechanics, what to watch out for and how to defend.

Knowledge of how to mitigate damage via active defenses is essential for surviving in full zerker and this could be a good first step for many new players. It’s much easier to learn when you can take a hit or two; instead of jumping into a full meta build and spending a lot of time on the floor because you don’t know what to do.

I would like to clarify the point of the cleric build.

The point is not to “solo”. The main idea of the build is that you giving up one DPS spot in your group for a Tank+Healer and that will allow your team to do pure damage without need for kiting/dodging(mostly).

With this build you can be able to do Mossman trio/duo legit, without the need to bug out adds.

Skady.5916:

I would like to clarify the point of the cleric build.

The point is not to “solo”. The main idea of the build is that you giving up one DPS spot in your group for a Tank+Healer and that will allow your team to do pure damage without need for kiting/dodging(mostly).

With this build you can be able to do Mossman trio/duo legit, without the need to bug out adds.

Good to see more people wanting to try out something different at higher level, I’ve been showing this off myself with the numbers I put out (4k heals back to back, can sustain pretty easily on top of all of the active defense I can also bring to the table).

Its a breath of fresh air I think. I’ve been running glass builds since forever (zerker engie, thief, warrior, mesmer, you name it, sPvP, I’m roaming dps, WvW, I’m backline), It feels really good, I enjoy it myself seeing all the green numbers.

We did that for awhile a long time ago (although I must say even if you don’t wanna dodge knights gear will be more than good enough and doesn’t completely kitten up your DPS). Since then I learned how to guard properly and as long as there are some icebow freezes during the fight it’s quite possible on berserker gear too.

What I see here is people trying to defend against the idea using tankier gear is a training wheel, and then discarding proofs of the ability to survive fine without them by saying the people doing it had more skill. If it’s not a training wheel, it has nothing to do with skill level. If it is a training wheel like I and others believe, it just means you can improve your gameplay to the point you don’t need defensive stats anymore, wich is the whole point of the pve meta. There’s nothing wrong in not being absolutely godmode at this game, but don’t argue trinity is back or healing power is useful in a speedrunning mentality.

To keep on the same analogy of turret engis or any cancer condi builds in pvp, It’d be like posting a thread about " turret engis shaking the meta" while playing against barely experienced players.

tl;dr: have fun with what you play, but don’t try to justify it by saying it’s efficient. It’s easier, yes ( for you mostly; your team couldn’t care less), but not meta in any way.

I’d like to second this build. I think it’s effective, and the strategy is sound. I run it regularly in fotm 40/50 trios. Our fastest fotm 50 trio is 34 minutes, and we regularly run high 30 / low 40 minute runs. You can watch our runs on Ambro’s twitch channel: twitch.tv/ambrosialk

I also want to address some of the topics that were brought up in this thread:

1. I don’t claim (nor does Skady I don’t think) that this is the meta for record runs. It is simply one possible build that is effective for fotm trios. I’m sure there are god like players out there that can solo full fotm 50 in 3 minutes flat, but that is beside the point. The fact that we can consistently do sub 50 minute fotm 50 trios is a testament to the effectiveness of this build. I myself have never been in nor witnessed a fotm 50 trio that is smoother/faster with a berserker guardian.

2. A full berserker guardian can not pull off this “no-dodge” strategy. If someone out there can, please show me. I would love to learn. Seriously.

3. The purpose of clerics gear is not to make it easy for yourself, nor is it training gear. The toughness stat is for maintaining aggro properly, and the healing stat is for your team mates. While it’s true that the gear makes every encounter more forgiving, you’ll find that playing the build as it’s intended is actually quite difficult. The mace is a slow weapon. Maintaining the proper rotation is actually harder than simply dodging. The healing stats/traits/skills are not intended for yourself. They are there to maintain the health of your team mates. Ideally, they never have to dodge nor heal to break their perfect dps rotation.

4. I have not found knights gear to be as effective as clerics gear in 3-man fractal runs. If you prefer it, good for you.

Nice stuff OP. I very much approve.

Brown.8560:

run it regularly in fotm 40/50 trios … You can watch our runs on Ambro’s twitch channel: twitch.tv/ambrosialk

rofl brb kicking Ambro from rT

The biggest issue in usual organised fractal groups is everyone is made out of paper and you have to juggle aggro and mitigate damage – which basically makes your damage plummet from anywhere near your theoretical numbers since you’re jumping in and out of combat all the time.

This is something I’d try myself if I could actually be bothered to play the game, but it does seem like a really good answer to – while pugging – making some of the usual challenging fights in fractals a cakewalk by having a cleric guardian just afk tank the whole thing since the aggro was generally quite consistent on the mossman video. And then maybe if you’re just doing a casual run in guild you just set up the tank guardian and everyone else can chill behind the boss and spam their rotations to infinity.

is it an actual dps increase over 5 glass players? idk, maybe someone can run the dps meter on a usual comp and a 4 glass + cleric guard.

and if it’s higher, maybe it’ll allow the general discussion forum to calm down a bit since there would be a place they could roleplay healers and actually be useful.

oxtred.7658:

- basically can’t look past the tryhard mentality -

Another PvP analogy would be like this: Tage had been playing medi deeps guard in solo Q long before it was even considered meta. Then TCG had him change to bunker guard to stay on point and support other squishy deeps (Helseth/Sizer, etc). Now in oRNG, he comes back to deeps guard and the new team comp and strategy make it work soooo well. Both play styles are perfectly viable, as shown by Tage, but each works for different team strategy. If you are not Tage, who are you to judge which builds require more skills?!!

On the side note, turret engi is cheap because it is relying on AI 99.9%. But have you ever fought against a team with turrets and venom share? Rekt. Rekt. Rekt. and Rekt.

oxtred.7658:

tl;dr: have fun with what you play, but don’t try to justify it by saying it’s efficient. It’s easier, yes ( for you mostly; your team couldn’t care less), but not meta in any way.

Agreed and well said.

maha.7902:

The biggest issue in usual organised fractal groups is everyone is made out of paper and you have to juggle aggro and mitigate damage – which basically makes your damage plummet from anywhere near your theoretical numbers since you’re jumping in and out of combat all the time.

This is something I’d try myself if I could actually be bothered to play the game, but it does seem like a really good answer to – while pugging – making some of the usual challenging fights in fractals a cakewalk by having a cleric guardian just afk tank the whole thing since the aggro was generally quite consistent on the mossman video. And then maybe if you’re just doing a casual run in guild you just set up the tank guardian and everyone else can chill behind the boss and spam their rotations to infinity.

is it an actual dps increase over 5 glass players? idk, maybe someone can run the dps meter on a usual comp and a 4 glass + cleric guard.

and if it’s higher, maybe it’ll allow the general discussion forum to calm down a bit since there would be a place they could roleplay healers and actually be useful.

For the most part I believe it is a damage loss as far as theoretical numbers are concerned but it also begs the question as to what you can take advantage of in a situation to increase overall dungeon crawling speed, charging the entire last room of the urban fractal head on comes to mind, have been doing this quite smoothly myself with a swap of the clerics guard or bringing a sinister’s necro into the mix.

The fire shaman comes to mind as far as anchor methods are concerned. With enough hots, party members can literally just stand there with no worry of that specific mechanic, could anchor+heals boost efficiency during that fight? Guess we’ll have to do a side by side video comparison of that.

Effective for niche situations (2-3mans)? Undoubtedly.
Efficient for everything else? No. The meta was built around the need to maximize efficiency. A build where one player gives up all their damage capabilities in a game that doesn’t require any player to give up their damage capabilities will never achieve that.
Easy to play? Definitely. Please don’t start something about Mace Rotation difficult to maintain. Lol.
New? Not really. Some of the better premades I know have been running Clerics guard at their core since fractured.

Finally.. effective for everyone? Definitely not.
In your typical pug run, the majority of the players are far from optimized, they will put out far from optimized DPS. I’m sure you all know just how terrible fotm 50s can be at times if you decide to pug. Gimping your own DPS to a minimum does not help. In a sense, it might even be counter productive to post a build like this on the forums just because of that.

tl;dr It’s a niche build, for niche settings (2-3 man runs, in organized 5mans even fractal bosses die faster than you can deplete a zerker Guardians amount of Aegis and blocks)

did you even watch any of the videos?

the cleric guardian basically just sits there and brain afk tanks bosses while the whole party does basic DPS rotations over and over again which are harder to do in standard parties because of less reliable aggro.

are we having another case of the dungeon community being close minded again?

Like, I actually want to see if the loss of one guy’s damage in a party while making it possible for the rest of the team to optimise their rotations is actually a worthy trade off in the case of fractals (not dungeons obviously, stack might and delete boss in two seconds is normally what happens there). Because in my opinion, to hell with DPS theory if it isn’t even manageable in an actual game situation.

and if it’s actually less efficient to take a cleric guard, then it’s just a matter of case closed, back to using standard compositions. it’s literally a win/win either way.

maha.7902:

did you even watch any of the videos?

the cleric guardian basically just sits there and brain afk tanks bosses while the whole party does basic DPS rotations over and over again which are harder to do in standard parties because of less reliable aggro.

are we having another case of the dungeon community being close minded again?

Like, I actually want to see if the loss of one guy’s damage in a party while making it possible for the rest of the team to optimise their rotations is actually a worthy trade off in the case of fractals (not dungeons obviously, stack might and delete boss in two seconds is normally what happens there). Because in my opinion, to hell with DPS theory if it isn’t even manageable in an actual game situation.

and if it’s actually less efficient to take a cleric guard, then it’s just a matter of case closed, back to using standard compositions. it’s literally a win/win either way.

It’s almost certainly going to be faster with a pug. I mean I pug mossman all the time and the pugs just scramble (myself included) like chickens with their heads cut off. As an engi, I miss tons of grenades, jump shots, etc. My rotation is complete garbage and not maximized at all.

In fact, one of the guys who I regularly run with often will pull out a cleric warrior on mai trin and face tank her if the group is uncoordinated. It’s not going to be the fastest way to do it, but it certainly makes things faster and smoother when you don’t know what the rest of the party is doing.

But will it be faster than a coordinated meta group? Or faster than a group like this:

I seriously doubt it.

Brown.8560:

I’d like to second this build. I think it’s effective, and the strategy is sound. I run it regularly in fotm 40/50 trios. Our fastest fotm 50 trio is 34 minutes, and we regularly run high 30 / low 40 minute runs. You can watch our runs on Ambro’s twitch channel: twitch.tv/ambrosialk

I also want to address some of the topics that were brought up in this thread:

1. I don’t claim (nor does Skady I don’t think) that this is the meta for record runs. It is simply one possible build that is effective for fotm trios. I’m sure there are god like players out there that can solo full fotm 50 in 3 minutes flat, but that is beside the point. The fact that we can consistently do sub 50 minute fotm 50 trios is a testament to the effectiveness of this build. I myself have never been in nor witnessed a fotm 50 trio that is smoother/faster with a berserker guardian.

2. A full berserker guardian can not pull off this “no-dodge” strategy. If someone out there can, please show me. I would love to learn. Seriously.

3. The purpose of clerics gear is not to make it easy for yourself, nor is it training gear. The toughness stat is for maintaining aggro properly, and the healing stat is for your team mates. While it’s true that the gear makes every encounter more forgiving, you’ll find that playing the build as it’s intended is actually quite difficult. The mace is a slow weapon. Maintaining the proper rotation is actually harder than simply dodging. The healing stats/traits/skills are not intended for yourself. They are there to maintain the health of your team mates. Ideally, they never have to dodge nor heal to break their perfect dps rotation.

4. I have not found knights gear to be as effective as clerics gear in 3-man fractal runs. If you prefer it, good for you.

Just going to comment here and say, I DO NOT play these builds nor do I support them. Yes you may find our runs on my stream but never expect me (the streamer) to ever be running these kinds of builds. I do however support my friends and do not mind if they play how they want because I enjoy their company.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

maha.7902:

did you even watch any of the videos?

the cleric guardian basically just sits there and brain afk tanks bosses while the whole party does basic DPS rotations over and over again which are harder to do in standard parties because of less reliable aggro.

are we having another case of the dungeon community being close minded again?

Like, I actually want to see if the loss of one guy’s damage in a party while making it possible for the rest of the team to optimise their rotations is actually a worthy trade off in the case of fractals (not dungeons obviously, stack might and delete boss in two seconds is normally what happens there). Because in my opinion, to hell with DPS theory if it isn’t even manageable in an actual game situation.

and if it’s actually less efficient to take a cleric guard, then it’s just a matter of case closed, back to using standard compositions. it’s literally a win/win either way.

It’s almost certainly going to be faster with a pug. I mean I pug mossman all the time and the pugs just scramble (myself included) like chickens with their heads cut off. As an engi, I miss tons of grenades, jump shots, etc. My rotation is complete garbage and not maximized at all.

In fact, one of the guys who I regularly run with often will pull out a cleric warrior on mai trin and face tank her if the group is uncoordinated. It’s not going to be the fastest way to do it, but it certainly makes things faster and smoother when you don’t know what the rest of the party is doing.

But will it be faster than a coordinated meta group? Or faster than a group like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll55RA5kU3o

I seriously doubt it.

Everything works. Some friends took their nomad guardians and facetaked mossman like a boss and didn’t have to dodge once. But just because it works, it doesn’t mean it is the best/fastest way.

If you want a tank for any of the bosses like mossman/archdiviner then just summon a rock elemental, chain deep freezes, and even better – spam chill fields on the bosses.

Problem solved without needing to take any cleric/nomad tank guardians.

The advantages of 3/4 ele fractal groups.

of course a cleric guardian won’t be faster than five pre-nerf fiery greatswords, don’t be ridiculous.

I just want to see people try and do a fast kill of mossman/archdiviner and then try and do a fast kill with the cleric guy instead and see what the time difference is. i mean, at least if you don’t record it at least to get some feedback in the thread on the general difference in “feeling” – simple things like was it easier to maintain rotation, die less, completed in what felt to be similar time to usual runs, etc. etc.

mind you i haven’t played in forever and i barely did fractals so i have no idea of what general completion times are on average or any awareness of actual fractal meta comps, etc.

Depends on the party composition. But i would expect if you made the guard wear clerics instead of berserker in a 3 ele, 1 war, 1 guard. The time difference would probably be very small. However with that composition just using hammer guard is enough to completely lock down mossman. And if thats not enough you can chain earth/ice elementals.

Its not really about the time difference though. Its about difficulty.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crashing_Waves

Oh look a 6k free heal for eles. ;>

This is just another way to play the game. Some people might find it fun, others may not. I happen to have a berserker guardian. That’s pretty fun too.

Plus a lot of these berk guardians know full well in their solos/duo/trio they are bugging the boss at the bridge.

This is a great build to carry pugs with.

It’s also probably going to only get better with HoT as more mechanics are put in to punish stacking and more bosses bring a break bar to counter ice bow freeze.

Zenith.7301:

Plus a lot of these berk guardians know full well in their solos/duo/trio they are bugging the boss at the bridge.

Lol.

Since you seem to know so much about this game, care to elaborate on how the “berk guardians” are bugging him then?

maha.7902:

of course a cleric guardian won’t be faster than five pre-nerf fiery greatswords, don’t be ridiculous.

I just want to see people try and do a fast kill of mossman/archdiviner and then try and do a fast kill with the cleric guy instead and see what the time difference is. i mean, at least if you don’t record it at least to get some feedback in the thread on the general difference in “feeling” – simple things like was it easier to maintain rotation, die less, completed in what felt to be similar time to usual runs, etc. etc.

mind you i haven’t played in forever and i barely did fractals so i have no idea of what general completion times are on average or any awareness of actual fractal meta comps, etc.

I will second this

At the very least, it deserves a case study.

Purple Miku.7032:

Zenith.7301:

Plus a lot of these berk guardians know full well in their solos/duo/trio they are bugging the boss at the bridge.

Lol.

Since you seem to know so much about this game, care to elaborate on how the “berk guardians” are bugging him then?

You’re right. It’s just a quirk of the encounter that every solo video happens to take place at that bridge. Nothing changes about it.