Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUAQRApd8flUgSDXESOEf4Eh1DCCwCWVYeXPgoCbIA;TwAgyCuowyglALLWOskYtEZswWk5CA

(copy and paste link for it to work, ANet has said there is a problem with links with semicolons in them on this forum)

edit—- (had wrong link in there, was an older block build I made)

I had tried a “hot block” build before and it was limited in many ways. From feedback I got from that first build I integrated mediation heals and retaliation into the build.

Other defensive builds just seemed like a slow death to me as no damage was coming out so I couldn’t hold a point very long before I died.

With the monk’s focus and smite conditions a decent heal and condition removal ability gives you the ability to keep fighting long enough for other cooldowns to come up again such as your heal.

By adding perfect inscriptions the retaliation duration from signet of judgement changes from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. Coupled with signet mastery you now have a 16 second cooldown on the skill. This leaves you with 6 seconds of down time on the retaliation.

The reason I added retaliation back into the build is because I was fighting a necromancer who ate all my burning stacks for heals and loaded me full of more conditions than I could cleanse off myself. So without burning damage I can at least hit back with retaliation. This seems to work well with lots of condition stacking fighters.

The reason for using blocks at all is because of the big hitting abilities that retaliation can’t possibly keep up with. Taking 10000 damage and doing about 300 damage back is pointless, so blocks from shelter, shield of wrath, and protector’s strike help to stop bad things from happening.

Beyond that everything else in the build is utilized to keep burning on the target. Switch between primary and secondary weapons to get 3 stacks of might, highest you can get might by weapon swapping is 6 stacks and it drops back to 3 before you can hit 9. Also have Sigil of corruption on the other weapon to keep adding to condition damage.

Rune of the guardian and shattered aegis put a 3 second burn on anyone who picks a fight because the first thing they will hit is your aegis, so that is a block burn/aegis removal burn/and an armor block burn.

The only ability I am unsure of is Blind Exposure. This could be replaced with searing flames or even radiant fire as it only provides 1% extra damage with vulnerability on blind.

I did find that running with the carrion amulet is a game breaker on this build. Tried running with soldiers amulet and knights amulet, but without the added condition damage the burns were not threatening enough and always ended in me dying just slightly before my opponents. Carrion amulet seems mandatory.

This set up has been closer to my idea of what defensive fighting should be. So far I have enjoyed it more than other pure dps setups because I am able to survive longer while still a threat to the enemy. The only time this build won’t work is when they realize to stop hitting you or time the condition removals right. So the answer to that is know when to pop the blocks and save the burns for when they can’t remove them if you can.

Why use Shelter when Signet of Resolve profits from your signet improving virtues?

Also why Renewed Focus? Is the recharging of virtues really worth not picking up a tome?

Also you’d have to rely on your team to provide stability.

Shelter is used because it provides multiple block possibilities. Think 100 blades, pistol whip, rapid fire or things of the same nature. This has the potential to mitigate more damage than Signet of Resolve will purely off of the full block effect on more than one attack. Timing is everything but this could be personal preference on which heal to use. I figure if I’m going to get multiple blocks and blocks give burns, then the synergy for what I want is most gained out of Shelter.

Renewed Focus instead of one of the tomes can easily be replaced with probably tome of courage, but I have been finding more often than not players are interrupting you on the max heal, especially if I am trying to stay in melee range for blocks.

Which leads us to the lack of stability. If I had stability it would allow for tome of courage better. Judge’s Intervention was picked to help provide mobility and stun break. This will not stop all problems that stability helps with, namely daze. This could be swapped out for Stand Your Ground, but with Monk’s Focus, I found that having that extra heal has provided more survivability than breaking a control effect on me every 30 seconds.

The synergy with meditation trait benefits gained from the valor line has me leaning towards that extra effect. Judge’s Intervention provides: A moderate heal, stun break, mobility from with a teleport, and extra burning benefiting from added condition damage every 36 seconds.

It depends on who you are fighting and if you want to help the group or yourself more.

Reading about it on the forum and theory crafting is one thing, I suggest you hop into the mists and try it out. Costs you nothing and you can see if it works for your play style like it has for mine.

Great build! I run a shout build for group play, but I switch out traits to Meditations if I’m solo – I always try to keep Judge’s Intervention on my bar because it’s just too good to ignore!

As for the heal, I use Shelter as well for the block possibilities – you can chain that with Virtue of Courage – Renewed Focus – Virtue of Courage to have ~6s of immunity and multiple blocks (2 from Aegis alone). This gives you a lot of time to get some of your other skills off cool down, or wait for support if you’re getting overwhelmed.

Thanks, I was toying with the idea of getting more survivability out of the build.

Either take away retal via improved signets and go for the dodge roll heal, or get more aegis’ in the build.

As it is, I have fairly long fights against necromancers/mesmers that are really close calls. Against elementalists. Lately I have been getting into trouble with elementalists as well.

This may be due to blowing all my burning damage too early and they wipe it off either by skill or luck. What tends to kill me are conditions. block stops a lot of the burst abilities, but a condition will just keep ticking. That was the original reason why I put retal into the build.

Every time I try to do a “glass cannon” build with a guardian it just ends badly. I push out amazing damage….for a guardian….but other professions just do damage better in a shorter duration, so I keep defaulting back to a sort of defensive/redirect damage build. Hitting me hurts you, and most players want to hit me a lot without thinking so that helps make this build work.

Anyone with feedback on adding more heals/defensive capability while still being able to do damage back are more than welcome to add input.

I suggest try swapping carrion amulet with shaman, as it still gives pretty good condition damage but has better survivability. Also, I would definitely suggest the healing signet over shelter. I know the shelter synergizes with your build better, but as it is now the signet just gives you way more healing than the other 2 options. Plus the passive on it is nice too.

I originally tried with the shaman amulet as you mentioned because of the added toughness, but I have found that I die faster with toughness than I do with vitality.

In a couple of tests by only stacking vitality or toughness I noticed that I could take approximately 32 hits of various damage before I died with with 991 toughness, 24685 hp, and 2202 armor.

With 2304 toughness, 10805 hp, and 3515 armor, my hp pool dropped but what I should see is lower damage with what I expected to be equivalent survivability. With only toughness I could only take 24 hits of damage before I died.

Toughness did reduce the damage by about 32%

Moral of the story is vitality gives more survivability but you need toughness to make your already good hp pool better. Toughness by itself is not enough.

The healing signet versus the blocking heal is still a judgement call for me. I really like timing a good heal with someone trying to do a flurry/spam attack on me and stacking tons of burning damage on them. I use the heal offensively so for me it works. My defensive tactic is to roll around/block and keep my hp as high as possible before I even get low enough to “need” a heal.

I think it depends on who you are fighting and how you play which will determine which heal to bring.

I did find a post on another topic that has me re-evaluating how I want to integrate retaliation into this build, but this reply is getting too long as it is. I will link the post I’m refering too and simply state that I want to drop Signet of Justice and get retal via aegis breaks. 13 seconds of retal off aegis, aegis at 50% = 26 seconds of retal, 30 second cooldown on Virtue of Courage = 4 seconds down time of the retal boon.

down side is I lose condition damage by building that way.

-The referred post is by Lilbeezy.8134:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Guardians-are-Breaking-Tournaments/first#post274824

The new build idea is:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mcc9fa0xaGVzMbzMa

With this I gain stability via Virtue of Courage, passive retaliation synergized with aegis, an extra utility button for another meditation heal+more condition removal.

I lose condition damage, Virtue of Justice blinds, and burning removes enemy boons.

Will see how this goes tonight and report back.

Well, played a bunch of spvp games with the above build utilizing retaliation via aegis break. Retal was up a lot for no effort. It is really hard to evaluate just how effective it is since I don’t get a damage report of people I killed and condition damage type things are not listed in the combat log.

What I can say is that I don’t feel I lost any survivability by changing. If anything I got better control over my character with 2 stun breaks via meditations, an addition heal via the third meditation added instead of signet, and I gained stability with virtue of courage.

I think I"m going to stay with this one for a bit longer to see how it plays, but 1v1 and some 1v2s I played it out fairly well. Majority of the time even if I did fall to the ground they did too or right after due to retal and burning. Most of the time I didn’t drop unless it was a large zerg, and well. can’t do much against that.

I did fight a bunker style guardian with a staff, shield/scepter I think it was. I couldn’t kill him, he couldn’t kill me. Was just the two of us in the map so we stood there pummeling on each other at one of the nodes. The advantage he did have was the pushbacks with shield and sanctuary, so he had better control over the node and was able to cap it over me. Neither of us died but he won due to points.

Food for thought.