Guild Wars 2

Title pretty much says it all. I’m looking to make a support/heal/anti-cc/anti-condition for large scale (zerg) WvW combat. I’m not looking for a high dps build, or a roaming build, or a build that’s necessarily good in 1v1.

It’s pretty much down to either a support guardian (honor/valor/virtues) or water elementalist. What do you think?

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Staff_Backline

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_AH_Frontliner

If your goal is to make some sort of dedicated healer, it does not work in GW2. Guardians provide stability to their parties to prevent hard CC’s and remove conditions. Elementalists have water fields they can drop on top of their melee train which guardians can use hammer #2 and warriors use warhorn #5 to blast. Blast finishers inside water combo fields does more healing for a WvW “zerg” than anything else in this game.

The deal with the Elementalist is that most people do not realize how “blasting” works.

You can have a full cleric Elementalist but if the person blasting your water doesn’t have a lot of Healing Power … the blast won’t heal a lot. Because it doesn’t scale with your Healing Power.

That is why almost none of the “meta” Elementalist build have any Healing Power. Yet, some people still think Elementalists are “healers” :/

They’re both different playstyles and you’ll enjoy both of them I believe.

Elementalists are the heart of sustain for WvW, you’re literally in charge of keeping the whole zerg alive with well timed water fields and CC.

Guardians do the bulk of absorbing and mitigating damage, with their Shelter heal, and renewed focus, as well as keeping their entire party alive with protection, and keeping their party moving through enemy CC with stability.

Between the two of them, you’ll need to decide whether you want to play in the front line, or the backline.

If you can’t be vocal with a microphone in teamspeak, I would suggest that you choose the guardian. Being an ele is great, but if you can’t tell the melee train that they’re standing in a water field (which they should blast) then you’re going to find it a lot harder to be effective.

Ele works best in an organized group that you can call water field out in so it is blasted. Guards have more use in larger pug groups because 1 good AH guard can support 4 other pugs in your party (given they have a certain amount of common sense)

Elementalists need to call out their waters on voice comms so others can blast them. If you don’t like to talk on comms, go Guardian.

Just remember the main thing here:

Guardian = lots of kittening loot
Water Staff Ele = “Is this all I get for helping all of you stay alive?! You should pay me for my waterfields!”

As a water ele myself I can tell you you will make a hell of a lot less gold playing ele, you wont get nearly as much loot as the rest of your zerg shouts about.
So many times I hear people on TS saying after wiping the enemy zerg “OMG so much loot!”, I check my inventory and I have picked up like 5 items, mainly spikes and hooves, and think WTF they on about.

And who goes cleric, ventari ftw!

Oh and not forgetting you have to work your butt off to keep yourself alive whilst keeping your zerg alive; whilst guardians just spam 1.

Couldn’t disagree more. When my waters are on CD I have other attunements AoE tagging everyone in range,

If your not getting the most bags, your playing ele wrong. Not to mention, the DPS and back line defenders will help keep you alive. Your only keeping yourself alive in an every man for himself style, with unorganized zergs with bad communication.

I play both and as someone else said, it depends on where you want to be, frontline or backline…

Personally I enjoy Ele more though, the skill level is higher and that’s what makes it enjoyable for me… It’s also fun to forward strafe and watch those heartseeking thieves miss-miss-miss-miss-miss …

Strongly disagree about ele loot. I get tons of it; maybe 2nd only to my power necro. To utilize ele to its full potential, you need to make use of all 4 attunements at the appropriate times to ensure you’re applying CC pressure, damage and supporting your team during fights. To get best use from an elementalist, you certainly shouldn’t be camping water attunement… or any attunement for that matter. There’s no such thing as a “water ele.” You need to rotate attunements and synergize with other eles in your composition to ensure you’re in water when you need to be. This means, in theory, there will always a water field available when needed and none are wasted by more than one ele casting water on top of an existing one. I also echo the importance of being on voice comms and being able to use a mic for this role.

Feel free to check out the guide in my sig for information regarding staff ele set ups.