Guild Wars 2

Here’s a build I’ve been meaning to get out there for a while. This is a quick guide on playing a Guardian who can both deal respectable damage, as well as output not-insignificant green numbers.

First, some basic goals and concepts: This guide is written from the point of view that any build which completely eschews damage output for any reason is unacceptable. This means full Clerics builds with 4% critical and no damage modifiers are out of the question. The primary goal is to provide competent if not spectacular damage, while also achieving meaningful maintenance healing with the potential for burst heals. Critical support abilities must also not be overlooked, such as Wall of Reflection. Lastly, versatility and easy role changes through trait and utility swaps is a plus.

Hammer/Mace Symbol Heal over Time

Stats: This build has 2278 Power, 25.76% Critical Chance, and 53% Critical Damage. For defense it has 2502 Armor and 14915 Health, with 780 Healing Power.

Play notes: This is very close to a build that I’ve been running for the past two months. Due to the inclusion of Zeal 15 for Symbol Vulnerability, it’s recommended to stick with two weapons that both provide symbols to keep those stacks up. Writ of the Merciful and Regeneration are consistent sources of party healing, and make up for the bulk of your healing output.

In battle, you’ll be swapping weapons almost on cooldown to get access to both permanent Protection and near-permanent Regeneration, facilitated by the recently improved Writ of Persistence. You’ll begin a fight with the hammer, allowing one autoattack rotation to complete and drop a Symbol of Protection. After the Symbol drops, switch to the mace. Immediately on switching, drop the mace Symbol. If you’re taking hits, after dropping the Symbol is the best time to use Protector’s Strike. If you aren’t, just continue autoattacking. Wait to switch weapons until you have dropped a second mace Symbol, then swap back to the Hammer. Swap back to Mace as soon as possible, but never interrupt an autoattack chain to do so – always wait until after the symbol drops. Pretty standard stuff.

Between Absolute Resolution and Purging Flames, you have two very powerful area condition cleanses. Stand Your Ground offers a good source of Stability on top of being a stunbreak, and the final utility slot is a wildcard – you can use whatever the situation requires.

Variations: The third slot being a wildcard allows for a lot of possibilities. Wall of Reflection is a must for many dungeons, but if you don’t expect to need it then equipping Bane Signet temporarily for the damage boost is a perfectly fine choice, as is Signet of Judgement for the additional stunbreak if you particularly require it. Traits wise, you have the freedom of selecting Unscathed Contender and Superior Aria to pull out some extra damage from adding Retreat!. This won’t affect the build overmuch. Writ of the Merciful, Writ of Persistence and Fiery Wrath are the only truly requisite traits. They facilitate the core of the build, that being support through symbols. Writ of the Merciful allows you to continue outputting heals even if someone else in the party is supplanting your Regeneration.

The off-hand item paired with the Mace is also optional; The regeneration offered by Focus is meaningless with the Mace, and the protection from Shield of Judgement is meaningless with the Hammer. It comes down to which 5-slot ability you prefer. The Shield does have the advantage of coming with a burst heal, but it scales poorly with Healing Power and doesn’t amount to much. The three pieces of Celestial armor can be replaced by Cleric’s gear if you don’t have access to Celestial. The result of that is slightly lower EHP and damage, but higher healing power and straight toughness.

The runes are also optional. You can use basically anything you want, to maximize whatever particular aspect of gameplay you want. My personal recommendations are Scholar Runes/Ruby Orbs (though Scholar costs a lot more, it’s also preferable considering how well your healing will keep you topped off) for damage, Melandru for more defense (it stacks with Purging Flames), or Travelers/Speed for much needed mobility (which does in fact work in combat, I was relieved to find – I had thought otherwise for a while).

None of these variations require trait changes. However, for WvW I recommend 10/0/0/30/30 instead of 15/0/0/30/25. That gives you the option of having an extra Stability source off of Indomitable Courage for landing finishers. Conversely, in PvE it also gives you the option of running Permeating Wrath which is actually quite good with so much AOE; more targets means more burn procs, and you’re in melee anyway. It’s to the point where in a large mass of enemies you can run permanent burning on the entire lot of them.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to holler. I’ll post DPS and healing numbers shortly.

I’m all for zerker but that actually looks very impressive, good work, gives far more support than the standard AH builds or cleric builds as well as putting out decent party heals and vulnerability for your party to sit back on

A regular zerker 15.25.0.20.10 spec will do more than two thirds more damage, but you probably already know that and it isn’t the focal point of the build.

You do gain absolute resolution, symbol heal, roughly 2k more hp, roughly 500 healing power, and over 10% more damage reduction. I’m not sure I found this is worth it.

Wouldn’t battle presence mixed with that healing power and absolute resolution heal for more while also ignoring weapons set limitations and the symbol radius?

Drop the 15 zeal and put it in Virtues.

The 5 points in virtues will trump 15 pt in zeal every which way to Sunday….

Unless you’re talking PvE. =]

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A regular zerker 15.25.0.20.10 spec will do more than two thirds more damage, but you probably already know that and it isn’t the focal point of the build.

You do gain absolute resolution, symbol heal, roughly 2k more hp, roughly 500 healing power, and over 10% more damage reduction. I’m not sure I found this is worth it.

Wouldn’t battle presence mixed with that healing power and absolute resolution heal for more while also ignoring weapons set limitations and the symbol radius?

Do you have an actual DPS figure for 15/25/0/20/10? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hard number. It would be nice to get an actual comparison.

Battle Presence is an option, sure. The problem is that BP doesn’t affect any other Guardians in the party (including yourself) and Writ of the Merciful stacks indefinitely. Writ also keeps you topped off; BP doesn’t.

Amins.3710:

Drop the 15 zeal and put it in Virtues.

The 5 points in virtues will trump 15 pt in zeal every which way to Sunday….

Unless you’re talking PvE. =]

Wrong thread?

I was having a think on this one. I love/hate it: I get you are stacking symbols for max damage potential and supporting boons. It’s smart. It’s a busy build and doesn’t make use of the mace multiplier. That’s unfortunate.

I question the spread of stat categories on your gear. Is there any particular reason you split your trinkets and Armor across the different stat categories? It’s not wrong, but I’m wondering if you have a practical reason.

Personally, I would have grouped all my zerker in trinkets and made some or all of the zerker armor into clerics. Why? because trinkets are ‘more expensive’ and therefore, I don’t like swapping them as much between builds. Armor tends to be more fixed for a build, especially if you use runes. I would probably tried to group something more like this:

Weapons: Clerics
Armor: Celestical, Clerics
Trinkets: Zerk

I probably would tweak your build to something more like this to suit me:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS5OlYgqCXGCQkiIXQ9h4h9wif0jXKo4DB-jQyAoNBZKCMVIQJfBxsoyaboIasqFMlLRUt3ATGA9xA-e

Obtena.7952:

snip

I mainly wanted to raise healing power a bit higher. The gear choice is fairly open ended though, it’s not the most important part. Your build is fine but it completely eschews Virtues which makes it an entirely different animal from mine. I really like the support Virtues allows. Also, my build is a lot more versatile and can be changed on the fly to run Unscathed Contender, the damage from which would quickly outpace the relatively minor Mace damage bonus which you would only be able to take advantage of half of the time.

Has anyone tried to experiment with zealous blade now that it scales with healing power? The change is actually nice, but the trait now feels misplaced. It feels like zealous blade should in the honor tree and the two handed mastery trait in the zeal tree.

ZB is easy to access with this build if you just drop five points out of Virtue. The only downside is that the Greatsword symbol isn’t nearly as good as the Hammer’s. It’s also “selfish” – you won’t be doing anything for the party with it. That said, you’d be getting 40 per strike back.

Oops. I just realized there was an error with the build link. The Virtues traits were incorrect. That’s been fixed.

Wow. This is so weird. I’ve also been running a build very similar to this for a few months now. With mix of knights and clerics gear, beserker trinkets.
It’s a good build, i’d say Considering going full knights though. Hmm.

foofad.5162:

Do you have an actual DPS figure for 15/25/0/20/10? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hard number. It would be nice to get an actual comparison.

Comparing the effective power of the builds should do the thing (as long as you just look at the hammer, ofc), since you already used buildcraft. There, I get a 34% difference, assuming 5 boons for PotV, which sounds reasonable.

Effective power is only an appropriate comparison when you’re using the same weapon. I’m assuming he’s referring to using sword/greatsword rather than mace/hammer.

Aza.2105:

Has anyone tried to experiment with zealous blade now that it scales with healing power? The change is actually nice, but the trait now feels misplaced. It feels like zealous blade should in the honor tree and the two handed mastery trait in the zeal tree.

foofad.5162:

ZB is easy to access with this build if you just drop five points out of Virtue. The only downside is that the Greatsword symbol isn’t nearly as good as the Hammer’s. It’s also “selfish” – you won’t be doing anything for the party with it. That said, you’d be getting 40 per strike back.

I just wanted to further comment on this since I use this in my Virtues Blade build and have a lot of experience with it.

As foofad stated, you only get 30-40 hp per hit with it now, depending on HP. That said, it is STILL not a game changer and STILL needs more healing or something else to make it worthwhile.

foofad.5162:

Effective power is only an appropriate comparison when you’re using the same weapon. I’m assuming he’s referring to using sword/greatsword rather than mace/hammer.

I know about EP, but since he’s talking about 15/25/0/20/10, I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about SF/GS, since that one is a pure hammer DPS build.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Aza.2105:

Has anyone tried to experiment with zealous blade now that it scales with healing power? The change is actually nice, but the trait now feels misplaced. It feels like zealous blade should in the honor tree and the two handed mastery trait in the zeal tree.

foofad.5162:

ZB is easy to access with this build if you just drop five points out of Virtue. The only downside is that the Greatsword symbol isn’t nearly as good as the Hammer’s. It’s also “selfish” – you won’t be doing anything for the party with it. That said, you’d be getting 40 per strike back.

I just wanted to further comment on this since I use this in my Virtues Blade build and have a lot of experience with it.

As foofad stated, you only get 30-40 hp per hit with it now, depending on HP. That said, it is STILL not a game changer and STILL needs more healing or something else to make it worthwhile.

I’ve tried it. With 1300hp I think it was giving me around 56hp per hit in return. Its a positive change but as I said, I feel the trait is misplaced. It doesn’t make much sense, in order for a zeal trait to scale, you need healing power.

CptAurellian.9537:

foofad.5162:

Do you have an actual DPS figure for 15/25/0/20/10? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hard number. It would be nice to get an actual comparison.

Comparing the effective power of the builds should do the thing (as long as you just look at the hammer, ofc), since you already used buildcraft. There, I get a 34% difference, assuming 5 boons for PotV, which sounds reasonable.

Take away the 10% freebie dmg multiplier that website gives to elusive power, and then give both builds real dps food, fury and might. I’m easily seeing a 60% plus increase in effective power for the 15/25/0/10/20 build over this one. That’s before considering the gap-widening effect of night sigil, damage multiplier potion, vulnerability and more boons.

Although if you’re adamant about using hammer, losing WoP isn’t a good idea. Huge dps boost, that.

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CptAurellian.9537:

foofad.5162:

Do you have an actual DPS figure for 15/25/0/20/10? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hard number. It would be nice to get an actual comparison.

Comparing the effective power of the builds should do the thing (as long as you just look at the hammer, ofc), since you already used buildcraft. There, I get a 34% difference, assuming 5 boons for PotV, which sounds reasonable.

Take away the 10% freebie dmg multiplier that website gives to elusive power, and then give both builds real dps food, fury and might. I’m easily seeing a 60% plus increase in effective power for the 15/25/0/10/20 build over this one. That’s before considering the gap-widening effect of night sigil, damage multiplier potion, vulnerability and more boons.

Although if you’re adamant about using hammer, losing WoP isn’t a good idea. Huge dps boost, that.

Provide links? I’m not sure how you’re going about generating a 60% difference with that spread. I see a 35% difference between those two trait setups, provided you discount Elusive Power and provided you use full berserker in the 15/25 one. 35% when fully buffed is within tolerance for me.

CptAurellian.9537:

foofad.5162:

Effective power is only an appropriate comparison when you’re using the same weapon. I’m assuming he’s referring to using sword/greatsword rather than mace/hammer.

I know about EP, but since he’s talking about 15/25/0/20/10, I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about SF/GS, since that one is a pure hammer DPS build.

My b, I got it confused with 10/30 for a minute. Was replying from work. Bad idea.

I really don’t see why people are comparing this to full dps builds, yes of course it’s going to deal less damage. But for pugs you could really be onto something. If you provide permanent protection with strong amounts of prot/regen good condition removal mid dps and vulnerability the only thing you are really lacking is might, but I understand in this build writ of merciful>empowering might.

fadeaway.2807:

Take away the 10% freebie dmg multiplier that website gives to elusive power, and then give both builds real dps food, fury and might. I’m easily seeing a 60% plus increase in effective power for the 15/25/0/10/20 build over this one. That’s before considering the gap-widening effect of night sigil, damage multiplier potion, vulnerability and more boons.

Ah right, missed EP, I should have known better. Still, that increases the gap to about 50% more damage for the DPS build, not 66. And just one thing, since you seem to get that one wrong: All those damage multipliers you mention increase the absolute gap in damage, but they do NOT cause any changes in the relative gap, as long as the same multipliers are used on both setups.

First of all, awesome build! Kinda fits my playstyle so I will consider using this build when my guardian has reached 80.

Have a question tho. Since this build requires a weapon swap whenever it’s on cooldown, would it be better to use Sigil of Battle or Renewal instead of Force and Perception? Not saying that it’s wrong, but I would like to know the reason behind it. Thanks.

foofad.5162:

Provide links?

I’m not trying to derail the thread into another zerker or gtfo thread so I apologise if it appears that way. Just showing what you give up in order to get the bonuses of this build. It’s not a small dps loss, and spammable aoe blind / vuln is missing. I just don’t know if it is worth it. I

No links, just step by step
Your link has 4027 ep. Links don’t include manual alterations.
add the 5% power of the virtuous modifier.
the base build now has 4228 ep.

swap to ascended weapon.
take off 10 honor trait points to remove elusive power.
equip power/crit dmg food.
equip 10% dmg potion.
25 might
25 fury
add 170 precision and 180 precision for spotter/banner
add 15 critical damage for banner
you’re now at 8194 ep.

now swap everything to zerker, and swap to a 15/25/0/20/10 spec.
you’re now at 12999 ep.

Increase of roughly 60% effective power (from 8194).

Ah, I see the problem now. It’s a semantic misunderstanding. I’m saying 8194/12999=63%~, in other words “this deals 63odd percent of the damage of full zerker” as opposed to “zerker provides an increase of 58%”. Both statements are true. To me, anything over 60% is acceptable.

Aza.2105:

I’ve tried it. With 1300hp I think it was giving me around 56hp per hit in return. Its a positive change but as I said, I feel the trait is misplaced. It doesn’t make much sense, in order for a zeal trait to scale, you need healing power.

They should have made it scale w/ POWER, not Healing Power.

This way it wouldn’t become OP when you stack it up w/ a Dodge Roll Healing…

It would have opened up a 20/15/30/x/x build, or soemthing to that extent….

Amins.3710:

Aza.2105:

I’ve tried it. With 1300hp I think it was giving me around 56hp per hit in return. Its a positive change but as I said, I feel the trait is misplaced. It doesn’t make much sense, in order for a zeal trait to scale, you need healing power.

They should have made it scale w/ POWER, not Healing Power.

This way it wouldn’t become OP when you stack it up w/ a Dodge Roll Healing…

It would have opened up a 20/15/30/x/x build, or soemthing to that extent….

Simply made it a % of the damage dealt? That’s essentially the same effect as scaling with power, except now crits count too.