Guild Wars 2

I’m looking to make my guardian a ridiculously tanky, unkillable commander. I want a build that can make me survive the longest possible in zerg fights, but is still viable for havoc groups.

Take into consideration that I have never played guardian before. My guardian is level 65, but she got there with leveling tomes and crafting experience. I’m taking time to learn this class before I get the tag. I’m also not from a server that has 100+ zergfests that can steamroll a map. Average zerg size is 25-50 people, 60-75 would be considered large.

1. What weapons, traits, armor, runes, and sigils would best help? I already have two cleric ascended rings, so I kind of want to build around that. I’d prefer to keep it simple and take one setup for both havoc and commanding, but if they’re too different, I’ll focus on commanding.

2. What WvW skills (ram mastery, etc) is best suited for a guardian commander?

3. I don’t want to just be unkillable, I want to keep other people alive. I don’t care too much about my own damage output – that’s the zerg’s job. Or should I care? Should I at least have some kind of ‘supportive damage’? Can a guardian do this effectively, and how?

4. How effective is the healing power stat for a guardian? I’m very tempted to have Giver’s stats on armor, weapons, and trinkets, but I don’t know if that’s a smart choice.

Thanks for any input and advice! I’ll appreciate it.

My experience comes from Commanding with my Guardian, piloting average sized groups of 10-30ppl and not often many more than that.

1) I dont havoc so i have 0 input on that aspect but for commanding you generally run; GS/Staff (staff is a must for Might/swift stack and Line of warding to split groups up) but you can sub GS for Hammer if u want blast finisher but GS #5 pull is amazing for localizing dmg. Sigils are kinda up in the air, personally i use Fire and Energy on GS and Bloodlust and Energy on staff (energy is good for extra dodge roll heals). Armor is Full PVT (power, vit, tough) with Superior runes of trooper for the extra group condi removal. Accessories are full PVT aswell but Clerics could work but its not ideal. Build is 0/0/30/30/10. In valor take strength in numbers, Purity and AH. In Honor take Superior Aria, 2H mastery and pure of voice (works well with Trooper runes). In Virtues take Master of Consecrations. For skills take Shelter for heal (a must), SYG (must), HTL (i consider it a must but some may not) , you get to choose Hallowed ground/Purging Flames as your last skill (kinda situational) and for elite I use Tome of Courage for heals when retreating from a bad spot but Renewed Focus can be better in some cases and is kinda a get out of jail free card.

2) Go full Guard Defense till you have it maxed for the vitality stacks, after that its personal preference but the Attack buff is also nice after u get the vit one.

3) The zerg will do the damage but that said with full BL stacks and the zerg giving u 25 stacks of might (your helping there too with staff 4) you do hit “fairly” hard. TBH your job is to call might stacks, call veil or portal, GS leap into crowd, GS pull into you, Call in Big dmg on your location, GS 2 and then the fights vary in winning or losing based on the group etc etc. This will usually still down a few guys though.

4) I dont use healing power, it seems decent but all your heals only heal 5 ppl and your tome of courage is very situational and heals like 2k a sec without healing power. Dodge roll heals you’ll benefit on but a dead commander cannot heal. so i’d say Vit>Healing power. Keep in mind Guardians are better at removing condi with PoV trait and trooper runes to make sure the condi dmg never happens in the first place and then u got light heals when your moving. In short, if the zerg needs heals call in water fields from ele, engi, etc. cause thats where you’ll get burst heals from.

Hope this helps

You should aim for around 800-1k healing power, 3.2k toughness and 18k hp. With that you should be kitten near unkillable. Contrary to what the guy above me said, healing power is a kittenload more useful inside a zerg than vitality is. Vitality means nothing when there’s 40 people dropping damage on top of you. You need sustain to tank that and that comes throguh healing power.

alright, before i say this, Healing power is a viable stat for WvW guardians but not commanders. Im not grabbing this out of no where so i’ll prove it (also, Healing power > Vit for command guardian…wtf man). So, As stated above u want 1k healing power so i’ll use that in my math. The guardian kit has these heal skills; Orb of light, Empower, Heal area (tome of courage), Selfless daring (Honor trait), virtue of resolve and regeneration boon on a few skills. Here’s the problem with Healing power, It doesnt scale the best, CC means you cant use most if not all of these skills and these skills have CD’s while Water fields come when you want if you have a zerg of 20ish ppl.

Orb is 271 heal + (.2 × 1000 (your healing power) = 471 healing.
Empower is 1.5k heal + (1 × 1000) = 2.5k heal (better for might stack but heal is nice)
Heal area (ToC) is 1.3k heal + (.5 × 1000) = 1.8k heal
Selfless daring is 129 heal + (1 × 1000) = 1129 heal (awesome cause it just happens)
Virtue of resolve is 1625 heal + (.75 × 1000) = 2375 heal (strong heal)
Regeneration is 130 heal + (.125 × 1000) = 255 heal

Reasons this is worse than Vit for commander is because you take heavy burst damage cause you literally leap into the fray first and there’s no guarantee your getting your heal off if your CC’ed. Its safer to call in water fields. Now for the math run down of it all…

Orb is 271 heal + (.2 × 300) (from 10 in virtues your healing power is 300) = 331 healing.
Empower is 1.5k heal + (1 × 300) = 1.8k heal (better for might stack but heal is nice)
Heal area (ToC) is 1.3k heal + (.5 × 300) = 1450 heal
Selfless daring is 129 heal + (1 × 300) = 429 heal (awesome cause it just happens)
Virtue of resolve is 1625 heal + (.75 × 300) = 1850 heal (strong heal)
Regeneration is 130 heal + (.125 × 300) = 160 heal
You lose out on 2-5k hp depending on equipment if you go with Healing power > vit
Keep in mind your heals will heal 5 people not the whole zerg while Water fields get blasted when you call for them and heal for 1.3k heal base.

Ultimately its up to you but imo the numbers there dont warrant me to go change over to Healing power from Vit cause there’s many times when 5k hp will save your life when chained CC’ed and if your trying to learn good commander habits then you should be regrouping mid zerg fight for might stacks/water fields heals and calling for water fields in the thick of it if you bite off too much. I can see Healing power as viable for Havoc groups though.

ps. I know AH scales with healing power too but its scale with a .01 scale so its not worth doing math on

Moleless.1462:

Vitality means nothing when there’s 40 people dropping damage on top of you.

This is actually the reason to get vitality. Sustaining and tanking are different and it’s true that Healing Power is useful for sustaining. However, you gave an example of tanking, not sustaining.

I guess it’s related to the individual’s game play. When you see a 40-man zerg ball, do you face it or roll out of it? VIT for the former and Healing Power for the latter. Mind that you can’t always rely on rolling out with CC’s from enemies.

I can always use the cleric setup for pve/havoc, or for non-commander zergs.

Is the shield a viable choice for guardians in WvW?

Arikyali.5804:

I can always use the cleric setup for pve/havoc, or for non-commander zergs.

Is the shield a viable choice for guardians in WvW?

Mace/Shield is indeed viable for WvW. Check Harbinger guide, basicly seeing what you ask, he might have all the answers. Link for the Guide:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-World-Vs-World-The-Guardian-and-You/first

Frontline/Havoc build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARSlsApWotCxfH8DRBDBljNYnhkPirLQECAA-TFDEABJcBEiSphTKxSUtCJOEANpMQRVVAUJYS7P0muGAeQBPcEBCAgAczbmNvZ28m38mP6RP6RP6R7mH9mH9m3sUAmrMC-w

Mace/Shield is this one:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApeWlsApWotCxZI8DNRCBl5M+P2f4Ep4yA0AA-TVTDABOcIAQUJIVKNySJ2TKD+UfQjqVw0+DXqqyAHoAAOBAS8EAiTDTAAEgb2mt5Nzm38m38RP6RP6RPa38o38o38mlBgZBA-w

Never, but NEVER use Cleric in PvE, that is the ultimate useless stat for PvE in any class, only for WvW in PvP. Believe me I used to use AH for both WvW and PvE because I was lazy to go the the class vendor and change traits, but with the recent changes there is no excuse to not change Traits on the go anymore (even before was a weak excuse but I was too lazy), and believe me, after trying and getting used too Obal Guardian Build, I don’t want anything else for PvE, I just can’t go back. I still die soemtimes in Dgn’s that I’m not used to do, as for example TA as I recently started farming that one too, but I farm CoF and Ac a lot and there I rarely go down, unless the group sucks or isn’t made of Zerkers, this because there support will never be enough to keep me alive and the damage will not be enough to kill things fast, but Zerker groups I do just fine.
Just use one setup for PvE and one for WvW, best decision I’ve made while playing Guardian (and if you have all 20 solt bags and salvage/sell trash before every dgn (not path, dgn) you have more than enough space to carry both setup)

I’ll drop in my two cents:

I run a 2k hpow build for my preferred wvw setup. Armor is magi with monk runes (oh hey, you can buy exactly that from AC) with cleric everything else. Staff/mace+shield, 0/0/4/6/4 with battle presence, mace trait, VoR trait (I’ve forgotten all these names… Why), and whatever else I can choose to increase my healing options. Sigil of benevolence on staff and sigils of water (?) on each set.

The hps is a little insane and because of that magi armor, you’re sitting at 20k+ hp after guard stacks. The first day I brought it out, we had a ZvZvZ in SMC that I just sat in for about 10mins. This wasn’t “poke people from the edges and how they don’t see me”, but rather " tag all the things! Heal all the dommages!".

Something like this might suit some well and it might not, but unless you’re personally severely outnumbered, you should never die, nor will any of the people in your general vicinity.

Moleless.1462:

You should aim for around 800-1k healing power, 3.2k toughness and 18k hp. With that you should be kitten near unkillable. Contrary to what the guy above me said, healing power is a kittenload more useful inside a zerg than vitality is. Vitality means nothing when there’s 40 people dropping damage on top of you. You need sustain to tank that and that comes throguh healing power.

Or get arround 30k -31k on your guardian and relly on well coordinated waterfields.