Guild Wars 2

Tough Meditations

Ok, I have been doing my own test runs with this, but wanted external non biased input from others (not my own opinions but others).

The idea started with a zerker hammer/gs build utilizing on swap burst damage to hammer then back to gs for continued ae pressure.

After that I was looking at the tankier celestial builds and trying to come up with something “survival” based while still doing “ok” damage.

This build will provide you with 3500 armor and 17255 hp.

Damage rotations will provide a 3k weapon swap/mighty blow on hammer with glacial heart + mighty blow + sigil of hydromancy as well as a 3k whirling wrath potential. nets you a somewhat reliable 6k ae damage burst.

Not amazingly high, but what I was enjoying was the 3.5k armor. I feel the survival is noticeable (better than full zerker) and the damage is decent (better than a full cleric bunker build) so it was a happy middle ground for me.

Using knights amulets loses out on vitality that the zerker has, thus the push down Honor to make up for the lost vitality.

I sometimes swap elite for tome of wrath for AE point pressure, and it actually helps a good bit as long as I stay on the sidelines.

If you do swap around and go zerker I would suggest either of below:

Frozen Resolution

Freezing Blast

x/x/6/x/4 is the goal and then flavor after that to your liking. With this your WW/mighty blow swap gives you closer to 10k ae damage combo.

Feedback appreciated. Do you think the knights build does “enough” damage with decent survivability? I felt pretty strong on team fights and useful in ranked and unranked queues.

edit

Added Meditative Soldier discontinued

It’s an idea I’ve played around with too but I can never seem to justify mixing meditations with tankiness. I don’t think that it brings enough to the table this way because you provide less support to the team. None of the utilities will help your allies besides the usual keeping you on your feet and in enemies’ faces. And I do think that it will lack damage (with knight’s). Maybe not terribly, but enough to put you in that limbo where your damage isn’t ‘high’ and you don’t provide ‘as much’ supportive effects to allies and you just end up outliving your allies in a fight and then running/dieing on point.

It could be a good point holder though, it comes with good mobility and if you can get to far point you’d probably do a good job of possibly 1v1ing and surviving outnumbered until your team gets there.

the other amulet that might give you what you’re looking for is Valk. You’ll pick up that might main stat for consistent damage, toughness because toughness, ferocity to match your points in valor, and healing power to increase Monk’s Focus by 200 hp. Sadly you lose the precision and would want intelligence on both weapon sets and possibly consider picking up a rune with precision in it. Although Melandru fits the theme of being tanky, Lyssa could be a good choice.

Also, I’d rather take 2h mastery instead of EM, especially in a build that runs two 2h sets and no AH. RH is also better than PoH but since we’ve already added healing power, it can’t hurt your 1v1 game. WoE is also a good choice since both weapons have symbols.

Might play around with your knight’s setup tomorrow and see how the burst is.

I might also add that going 30 points deep into Valor and Honor as well as picking up FoW for the extra vitality should be a good spot in a meditation build in terms of surviving and recovering from burst damage. Even though you have smite condition and contemplation of purity, I think the problem will still lie in getting eaten up by conditions especially with the uptime of poison that’s around right now and the fact that this wants to lean towards tank. Lyssa will give you the condi removal that you’re losing from Melandru and won’t waste more points on toughness.

P.S. I guess valkyrie also bumps selfless daring to 445hp on dodge, which is actually pretty neato.

I’ve been trying it in unranked. I like it, its definitely more fun in teamfights than the meta medi, I can tank much more and dont notice too low of a decrease in dmg. 1v1s are not fun though

@GSiege

I pondered 2h mastery as well, but with the lack of power on knights, I was trying to maintain “some” might stacks to keep damage a little higher.

I also played with larger/longer symbols, and it seemed decent if you wanted it.

Resolute Healer is good group support, but I went with Pure of Heart to try to maximize virtue utility. Totally viable either way I feel, PoH helps with self sustain a bit more though.

I don’t feel extra healing power helps monk’s focus enough to warrant it, and the lack of precision is killer if trying valkyrie.

Lyssa is I think a good alternative.

As far as being eatten up by conditions. Currently conditions apply so much and so quickly that any amount of condition clearing is never enough. Burst condition cleansing is what gets you through to may be the next cooldown on your heal skills to avoid burst condition damage, but persistent condition overlaps like a constant 3 stack of bleed will always be there no matter what you do.

That said, with higher vitality than a normal medi build, you are better off on soaking up conditions, additionally the choice of melandru helps reduce condition duration, and we have our condition cleanses as well. I considered dropping 2 points out of honor and 1 out of radiance to get absolute resolution in virtues tree to help with conditions. The HP loss is big in numbers, but the effective gameplay is so so? I think that would be preference.

@Aether the Nob
Like you said, group fights I felt more durable and effective in holding a point and continuing to fight, contesting a point longer. Also I didn’t end up as downed fodder for a quick stomp revive by the opposing team.

Solo, it is “ok” and fights last longer, but you have to really time and outlast your opponent. I did run into a classic hambow war that just better outlasted and damaged me on point. So there are for sure counters as always, but I feel it helped keep me in team fights more.

I want to find a way to push the damage more, because surviving and not doing damage is worthless, it does “ok” damage but not enough I feel. Maybe more integration of burning somehow to keep pressure damage going, duno yet.

I prefer running this with Knight’s + Ogre’s to make up for the lost damage due to not having Berserker’s.

I think running larger/longer or healing symbols is pretty good (esp. if you’re going to be teamfighting all day), you can keep spamming that AoE protection.

I really like this build. I’m a pretty low mmr, but in Ranked Solo Ques I pulled a legit 1v2, no kiting bullkitten. Its also really fun in team fights, still need to duck out at times if the pressure is too much, but I guess its like that with every build. I definitely feel more effective overall.

Thing is, though, I changed it, and I think this may be the change you were looking for: swap the ammy to Valk and slap Intelligence symbols on both weapons. IMHO, that is bordering a sexy af setup. I really, really, really like valk and intelli sigils. REALLY like them.

Only thing is that there may be classes like d/d ele and shoutbow warrior that can do the same role better. Idk about that though, this build is just a blast, so thanks

Awesome, feels good getting some positive feedback. I will try out the Valk ammy and see how I like it.

For sure there are better sustain/pressure dmg classes, but I wanted try to achieve something close to that for guards, and I am constantly trying to adjust builds to find something better/faster/stronger.

Glad it works for you, hope we can keep evolving things!

I’m having a blast with this build as well on valk amulet, but instead of putting sigil of hydromancy on the hammer, I’m using it on the GS, I just feel GS #2 is too easy to miss, I can get a few extra hits with this variation.

I understand the swap for hydromancy on GS, although you could have it on both.

I feel the swap burst with hydromancy and mighty blow are kind of key to the build. Of course you can tailor it to how ever it works for you and it was just a build idea I wanted to field for others to try, and I’m glad it is getting positive reviews

have you tried rune of ice with this build? might be worth trying.

Stat wise, rune of ice does not add a whole lot, and probably get more by going for a power based rune.

Chill is not persistent enough but added as a quick burst of damage (unsure if it will apply at the same time as the hydromancy swap or after hydromancy and mighty blow gets 7% more damage).

I had gone with the melandru for the reduction in condition duration and to add to the idea of toughness at 3500 was a nice rounded out OCD number :p

Everyone is welcome to try different things, as the others have shown with valk amulets working well for them.

I really like the idea behind this, great work CMF.

After playing with this build many games as a soloq player I’m actually liking this build much more than the meta medí one and the reason for that is simply because the current meta medi requires much more coordination which won’t happen with pugs, being too risk rewarding, while this build works very well if you join solo, you can fulfill multiple roles or at least try. I haven’t tried this in a team composition, right now I’m really enjoying it as a solo queuer.

Updated/adjusted my zerker variation with more damage and hydromancy on both weapons.

Freezing Blast Build

Ran it in a few matches and it felt pretty solid. Of course squishier but did reliable damage.

In fact, going to adjust the Tough Meditations build to also include two hydromancy sigils instead of fire and air on greatsword.

Altruistic healing semi-bunker build with soldiers, an offensive rune like pack, intelligence runes, and glacial heart will do close to as much damge as an kitten medi build be more durable and bring more to the group I crit for 5k with glacial heart against light armor frequently. Im talking about a “durable” medi build you should go all or nothing imo or what is the point? The mid way rarely works.

Meditative Soldier

Trying a different approach with soldiers rune instead, less toughness but more damage. I couldn’t get valk to work the way I wanted to, lack of precision and little gain from healing power I felt.

While this is getting closer and closer to the older medi builds but with a soldiers rune, maybe it is worth revisiting?

Let me know how this fares versus the previous builds

Ran it last night, didn’t feel effective at all.

brannigan.9831:

Altruistic healing semi-bunker build with soldiers, an offensive rune like pack, intelligence runes, and glacial heart will do close to as much damge as an kitten medi build be more durable and bring more to the group I crit for 5k with glacial heart against light armor frequently. Im talking about a “durable” medi build you should go all or nothing imo or what is the point? The mid way rarely works.

I always felt like AH builds were too inconsistent depending on who was around. Great in wvw, “ok” in pvp. Even in traditional bunker builds, the largest part of survival were dodge rolls. Without staff the AH was really not noticed, and with staff your damage is not noticed either.

As far as the mid way, isn’t that what celestial builds are? Midway of survival and damage. Largest difference is the alternate way of doing damage via conditions and/or might stacking.

We don’t have as effective of a might stack unfortunately.