Guild Wars 2

I have always wanted to play a “holy mage (wizard)” type of character. Most games with priest/paladins have either an alternative for damaging (i.e. shadow spells) or simply can’t deal damage.
So, here’s the deal, give it to me straight, can you play this type of Guardian and be effective? If not, that’s fine, I’ll move on and let my dream continue to be just a dream, but if it’s decent, and I can finally be the character I have always wanted, I’d be very happy. I was looking at maybe doing spirit weapons and staff/scepter+focus. Any other suggestions on making this work?
Oh, and are spirit weapons even worth it now that they can be targeted, or should I look into maybe meditations or something instead?

What’s “holy mage” anyway?

One thing for sure, as a Guardian – once every 3 minutes, you can pull out a Holy Bible and feel very special for 20-30 seconds.

at one point in time, your dream was actually a reality: 3 spirit weapons going to town on enemies while the guard rained kitten from behind with scepter and staff, sometimes going into the melee themselves. sadly, spirit weapons are targetable now, and very squishy at that. not to mention that going pure range on a guard is just dumb in the first place. if you’re still bent on having a “holy mage”, i would suggest a meditation/consecration build. in no way will you be doing major amounts of burst, but your sustained damage is very formidable (provided you go meditations). Tome of Wrath can be fun in some circumstances, and lends to your archetype, but the other elites are better, imho.

Ramiah.5648:

I have always wanted to play a “holy mage” type of character. Most games with priest/paladins have either an alternative for damaging (i.e. shadow spells) or simply can’t deal damage.
So, here’s the deal, give it to me straight, can you play this type of Guardian and be effective? If not, that’s fine, I’ll move on and let my dream continue to be just a dream, but if it’s decent, and I can finally be the character I have always wanted, I’d be very happy. I was looking at maybe doing spirit weapons and staff/scepter+focus. Any other suggestions on making this work?
Oh, and are spirit weapons even worth it now that they can be targeted, or should I look into maybe meditations or something instead?

Yes you can. Guardian is the best at healing if spec and geared for. Staff is a great weapon and scepter got decent damage (an got an incoming buff to projectiles speed later down the line). If you take consecration spells, spirit weapons and such ,youll feel like a holy mage.

The only problem youll encounter would be gear look. Its hard to look like a clothy as a platewearer.

Okay so what I’m hearing is that I CAN use staff/scepter+focus (or torch, as some other posts seem to suggest that for range) and be a holy wizard, but considering Spirit Weapons and Meditations (holy nuke-type stuff) aren’t that great, it’s only marginally effective.
That’s very sad. Well, perhaps after the buffs come through, I can revisit it again.
Oh and the armor doesn’t bother me too much. The chain skirts look kinda like you are wearing chainmail robes which I think is neat.

darkchicken.8692:

Ramiah.5648:

I have always wanted to play a “holy mage” type of character. Most games with priest/paladins have either an alternative for damaging (i.e. shadow spells) or simply can’t deal damage.
So, here’s the deal, give it to me straight, can you play this type of Guardian and be effective? If not, that’s fine, I’ll move on and let my dream continue to be just a dream, but if it’s decent, and I can finally be the character I have always wanted, I’d be very happy. I was looking at maybe doing spirit weapons and staff/scepter+focus. Any other suggestions on making this work?
Oh, and are spirit weapons even worth it now that they can be targeted, or should I look into maybe meditations or something instead?

Yes you can. Guardian is the best at healing if spec and geared for. Staff is a great weapon and scepter got decent damage (an got an incoming buff to projectiles speed later down the line). If you take consecration spells, spirit weapons and such ,youll feel like a holy mage.

The only problem youll encounter would be gear look. Its hard to look like a clothy as a platewearer.

HotW (Honor of the Waves) BP and leggings have a clothy look about them, so that’s an option for OP I suppose.

Ramiah.5648:

Okay so what I’m hearing is that I CAN use staff/scepter+focus (or torch, as some other posts seem to suggest that for range) and be a holy wizard, but considering Spirit Weapons and Meditations (holy nuke-type stuff) aren’t that great, it’s only marginally effective.
That’s very sad. Well, perhaps after the buffs come through, I can revisit it again.
Oh and the armor doesn’t bother me too much. The chain skirts look kinda like you are wearing chainmail robes which I think is neat.

Not sure where you heard meditations aren’t that good, because that’s complete bunk. Meditations are definitely more for personal survival / condition shedding rather than the usual shout/AH builds everyone gravitates towards. Using monk’s focus each meditation heals for 2k health. Plus Judge’s Intervention (a gap closer that aoe burns), and Contemplations of Purity (converts all conditions to boons) are stun breakers, so you’ll be hard to lockdown in both PvE and PvP. On top of that Smite Condition is on a stupid short cooldown, and does an aoe blast that does more damage if it cures a condition. So if anything I’d say give the meditation build a shot for yourself and judge how it works with the playstyle you’re looking for.

As for spirit weapons I’m not sure how much more useful they are with the recent hp increase, but in pvp sans aoe damage I noticed most people tend to ignore them or just don’t target them at all. I haven’t really messed with spirit weapons much so can’t say much else.

Setun.4368:

Ramiah.5648:

Okay so what I’m hearing is that I CAN use staff/scepter+focus (or torch, as some other posts seem to suggest that for range) and be a holy wizard, but considering Spirit Weapons and Meditations (holy nuke-type stuff) aren’t that great, it’s only marginally effective.
That’s very sad. Well, perhaps after the buffs come through, I can revisit it again.
Oh and the armor doesn’t bother me too much. The chain skirts look kinda like you are wearing chainmail robes which I think is neat.

Not sure where you heard meditations aren’t that good, because that’s complete bunk. Meditations are definitely more for personal survival / condition shedding rather than the usual shout/AH builds everyone gravitates towards. Using monk’s focus each meditation heals for 2k health. Plus Judge’s Intervention (a gap closer that aoe burns), and Contemplations of Purity (converts all conditions to boons) are stun breakers, so you’ll be hard to lockdown in both PvE and PvP. On top of that Smite Condition is on a stupid short cooldown, and does an aoe blast that does more damage if it cures a condition. So if anything I’d say give the meditation build a shot for yourself and judge how it works with the playstyle you’re looking for.

As for spirit weapons I’m not sure how much more useful they are with the recent hp increase, but in pvp sans aoe damage I noticed most people tend to ignore them or just don’t target them at all. I haven’t really messed with spirit weapons much so can’t say much else.

I agree with Setun, im not sure where you heard that.

Meditations skills are really good, just as shout. People tend to use shout more since Altruistic healing to help the whole group but monk focus give you strong self healing capability while they are great tools. So yes meditation or even consecration are really great.

The only thing that can be meh in the guardian in term of spec is the spirit weapon for a single reason, its a pet. In guild wars 2, pet get 100% damage from aoe and back before the patch and still even sometime stand in the cleaves. Since your dps or your usefulness is not only based on those weapons (compared to the ranger or a necro pet build), you can still do fine even if your spirit weapon is destroyed. You can do even the whole pve exploration/world with spirit weapons just fine. Even 1v1 pvp or some Tpvp you can use them (not saying you will be as efficient as another build), the hammer knockdown, the bow aoe and heals, shield reflect is super awesome etc.

The only problem with those weapons come in big battles or dungeon where you need to be efficient (high fractals). Because bosses will drop aoe that one shot everything in it or at least, one shot your spirit weapons. So since you dont have a perfect control over it like a necro (ranger can call back the pet), if the aoe start under your spirit weapon, say goodbye to it. But like i said, your damage is not solely based on it, even if your sword gets killed, you can get out a bow and do some healing with it, you can get a hammer. The spirit sword can stay out for like 45sec and have only 24sec reload when traited, you can command it to do a descent aoe damage at the same time you still attack. The cooldown start when the weapon dissapear so you dont have 100% uptime on a weapon.

If you are looking for high level fractals dungeon, zerg pvp or really succesful roaming (since i dont know the potency of these weapons in 1v1), you should go shout,consecration or meditation.

Anyway respecing is cheap and you dont need a particular set of gear to make pet stronger, they have their own stats. So its kinda almost free to try out.

As an exemple : Im lvl 80 with modest gear, not full exotic. I have 0 traits toward spirit weapons. The slash non crit of my sword hit for 500 (in knight gear, precision toughness power) while my auto attack with my hammer is 500. Sacrificing it (if traited the sword is not destroyed) made an aoe crit for 1600 damage. The auto attack can slash multiple enemies if placed well.

So i think its fair to say its really decent. 45 sec duration traited, 24 sec cooldown traited. 1k per swing , can aoe 4 time (1 every 10sec) if traited

Spirit Weapons have gotten two health buffs lately, so they’re a bit better than they used to be! Don’t totally discount them. If you pick up the one that gives them a burn, the sword can be a pretty good nuke (ish) spell. You just have to contend with the somewhat spotty AI.

Battlemages are totally doable. Spirit weapons and consecrations make for great magey skills. If you want to go the healer route you can, but I don’t recommend it. Rather, you can do pretty serious damage with scepters so you might as well build for that.

Well they seem to have around 10-15 k hp.

Sword = can cleave if enemies are placed well , around 500 ish damage (dont know if my gear affect it or not. Can be sacrified (not if traited) to do an aoe over 1k non crit

Bow = Send bolt of healing to random players (well i was alone so it was always on me) for around 400 and it remove a conditions which is super nice. When sacrificed, it make an arrow shower on itself and heal everyone in the area.

Hammer = Strike (that do damage ) and push the target , when commanded, it knock down the target.

Shield = Untraited it last 20 secs, on these 20 secs ,i almost had like 17 seconds of a projectile absord (reflect?) bubble on me. You can command it to go an attack for around 800 non crit and put weaken on the enemy.

Like said , you have trait to make them last longer, come back faster, do more damage and that they dont get destroyed when you use the command.

They are definately good, they just need to stay alive. When in the outside world , they usually do their full duration for me

The burning from A Fire Inside hits for about 1000 per second by the way. It’s amazing on the sword.

Edit: Apparently I’m misremembering, it does hit for harder than the player’s burns but it’s below 500.

i would have to try it with the sword, hammer and shield command, see for how long i can get the person burning XD

Go for it, be different. Maybe Anet will throw a bone to the Guardian’s ranged weapons sometime. Staff skills are solid support, but Scepter skills are a bit lacklustre. Orb autoattacks are easily avoided by other players and are a bit vanilla in what they do, and I kind of wish Smite was another Symbol skill but alas it’s just a plain AoE damage spell.

If you’re going for a “Holy Mage” style of character, Consecration utility skills kind of fit the theme too. Wall of Reflection is remarkably useful in some PvE encounters and WvW fights, is a Light field so you’ll get plenty of extra condition removal and Retaliation from people combo’ing from it, and a Fire fields from Purging Flames are always welcome for extra damage (burning and Might combos) and the inherent cleansing effect.

I’m actually kinda starting to get hopeful and excited.
To be honest, I mostly only PvE and a little WvW. It seems like you guys are saying the spirit weapons do decently well there, and I do like consecrations, especially Purging flames. I wish there was an effective way of doing Purging Flames+Smite Condition on the same build.
When I was looking over spirit weapon builds, I had actually passed up the burning, I didn’t realize how good it was.
Additionally, if I take all the spirit weapon abilities, I can easily swap traits to go consecrations and scepter+torch instead of focus. Then I’d be more nuke-ish, and contribute with boon/condition removal as well as burning. I’d have the option of two types of “holy wizard” builds without having to retrain.
Oh my goodness, this might actually work.

So on a lark I just spent a few hours in WvW with staff and mace/focus, with PvT armor, Berserker trinkets, might duration runes (2 Fire/2 Hoelbrak/2 Strength), and 10/30/10/20/0 as my build. I wasn’t using food because I forgot to. For utilities, I had Shelter, Signet of Judgement, Sword of Justice and I alternated between Retreat! and Hammer of Wisdom.

Trait setup was:

Spirit Weapon Mastery
Blind Exposure, A Fire Inside, Right Hand Strength
Purity
Writ of Exaltation, Empowering Might

And it was okay. Not great, just okay. The paradox was that because Staff is a support weapon, it behooves you to work with a group. Especially since with 60% Might duration you’re looking at 16 seconds of might per Empower. However, group fights are bad for your spirit weapons because they get caught in the AoE. So it’s a little odd. Also, the lack of any real meaningful damage from weapons sucked, so I think Mace was a bad choice despite my thinking that it would be good for keeping the spirit weapons alive a little longer. I’ll probably switch to sword, and then switch Writ of Exaltation to something else. Having Sword would improve mobility dramatically and it has the added bonus of great autoattack damage. I haven’t tried Scepter out, but I suspect it is just as good a choice as sword. I didn’t get any good 1v1s in but I suspect having a sword instead of mace would improve it, though I’m not sure.

If you want to be more ranged and less melee (I prefer melee) then you can swap out Signet of Judgement for Wall of Reflection – that’s also a better siege and group play option.

So there you have it. It works fine. I get a lot more kills doing full berserker sword/shield and greatsword, but this is certainly different and entertaining.

Chilled Beans.2041:

If you’re going for a “Holy Mage” style of character, Consecration utility skills kind of fit the theme too. Wall of Reflection is remarkably useful in some PvE encounters and WvW fights, is a Light field so you’ll get plenty of extra condition removal and Retaliation from people combo’ing from it, and a Fire fields from Purging Flames are always welcome for extra damage (burning and Might combos) and the inherent cleansing effect.

I was going to suggest this myself – in fact, consecrations are really more ‘holy mage’ like than meditations. Especially if you take the Consecrated Ground trait, which allows them to be placed at range.

Spirit weapons are something I’ve used in low-level fractals, and they seem to survive well enough most of the time. As with any utility skill, though, remember that you can trade them out if they’re not helping as much as you’d like.

On weapons – staff and sceptre/focus are both quite good weaponsets in PvE. Most enemies don’t actively dodge, so the slow sceptre projectiles aren’t as much of a problem in PvE. Personally, I tend to regard sceptre/focus as the set for bosses (good range and skill 5 is great not dying) and staff as the weapon for dealing with chaff and buffing allies through Empower. (Note, though, that Tyria is also a world in which spellcasters are reasonably happy to go into melee – every spellcaster has at least one melee option – so going into melee as a holy mage wouldn’t be too out of character.)

When it comes to armour sets – my recommendations would be Draconic (the exotic crafted) and the HotW sets. The cloth hangings on each of these sets give them looks reminiscent of light armour magic-user sets, albeit with a lot of armour added – a similar principle, in fact, to the more heavily armoured Wizard outfits in Diablo 3. Asura and sylvari racial armours (female sylvari especially) also provide some options that would probably work well for a holy mage, although flavour-wise humans, norn and possibly sylvari are probably the best fits, in that order. (Sylvari are questionable in that they don’t really worship anything, but the Dream does give them a form of spirituality.)

Oh I’m so happy, thank you so much.
Based on your advice, I theorycrafted a 30/20/0/0/20 and it looks to be perfect. I have all the spirit weapon abilities, and by swapping traits like Eternal Spirit-> Sceptre power, A Fire Inside-> Radiant Fire, etc, I can actually have both a Spirit Weapon “damage” build and a supporting Consecration burning+boon/condition removal build available at all times. By using Carrion gear, I help the low HP of Guardian without increasing my toughness and therefore threat. Additionally, I am good in events with staff for AOE stuff and scepter/focus for the big scary bosses I want to stay away from. This is wonderful.
Oh and I really like the Banded Mail for wizard-ish armor. It looks cool and is a relatively cheap rare, so I could afford it and it would still be decently good armor (better than masterwork anyway).

Thanks for all the advice. I might actually get to play something I love both thematically and in gameplay.