Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQJARWlYgiCnFyKEf4ES2jVCBTQsHYUG1RXFcIA;T4AgzymEMJZS1kiJqsMZJyymlLLZWrNGiA

This is my tanky as a kitten build that I’ve been using for the last 2 days. I had taken a month long break from my guardian to play my necromancer in WvW. I decided to pick up the guardian again this week, respecced in a sorta ad hoc manner and ended up with this build which I am loving.

The objectives I had in mind and the strengths it has in my mind are

*Be the guy that can charge through an enemies seige battle lines and and break their organization with the zerg behind me.
*Be the focus fikittengets of non-thinking enemy zerglings while my teamates clean them up.
*AOE shout support for protection, swiftness, stability, healing, and crazy condition removal.
*Even when not charging into the battle still have very good support skills with staff and shout build.
*GS damage not amazing, but nothing to be sneezed at.

What kind of critiques or comments do you guys have for this build? How could I improve it or perhaps do the same thing from another angle?

Edited for linking purposes.

Give the link when linking to GW2skills.net. For some reason these forums don’t like reconnecting to that site, so we have to copy/paste it

Bad link. 15 letters.

Updated for link.

Max Virtues? Jesus Christ how horrifying. Go look up Altruistic healing (Valor grandmaster trait) and tell me what you think. Mind you that you get 75 hp per boon applied to anyone.

Now realize that each tick of might you give with Empower counts separately. Like being able to heal yourself for 6k+ every 16 seconds (as long as you have friends around)? So do I.

Since it’s for WvW you should also point what type of gear you’re using, since you’re not limited to the PvP Amulet’s only there.

Well, leaving stats aside, there isn’t much we can discuss about but…
Maxing Virtues is a BAD idea. If you want to be in the front lines leading the zerg and being the focus of attacks, you need Vitality and Toughness as main status if you want to survive.

Like Kita commented, check the Grandmaster Traits from the Valor line. They help greatly with self healing and defensive stuff.

Also, I don’t recommend Signet of Resolve, if you plan on getting in the middle of the enemy zerg, Shelter is a must. 2 seconds of invulnerability is much more valuable than 100% extra healing.
I do this often and I can get away most of the time back to my zerg with Shelter, popping Virtues and Renewed Focus.

GS damage nothing to be sneezed at? Everyone thinks so because they can kill stuff with whatever build they do.
If you’re not using a build with the highest ATK (Berserker, Valkyrie or Soldier), you won’t even tickle a pure bunker build. Even more so if you don’t have Crit Chance and Crit Damage.
Cleric set is good for healing, but you get crappy Health and Damage.

By crappy damage I mean, even if it has Power in it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t low. Any other gear set will have at least that amount, so if you compare a full Power/Precision stats to yours… there’s no comparison.
And if you read/heard someone saying that it’s enough to kill anything in WvW, it’s because they’re killing scaled-to-80 guys with a defense so low that I feel bad everytime I crit 8~10k on them.

Also, you can’t expect to do everything and be fine. If you get inside the enemy zerg, if they’ve respectable players with half a mouse and a keyboard, chances you’ll get spam Immobilized and Knocked down and die are HIGH.
To avoid this, you must use Condition Removals really fast if you want to escape: Contemplation of Purity, Smite Condition (unreliable), Judge’s Intervention (just don’t aim further the zerg), or protective bubbles to get sometime to recover and escape: Wall of Reflection, Sanctuary, Shield in offset.

So, I’d suggest picking a specific role and sticking to it to the end. Even if you do get a full bunker build, if all you can do is get in the enemy zerg, damage 20~30% of someone’s health and get out, it’s worth nothing.
This is something I learned after leveling (and gearing to the teeth) my Elementalist: it doesn’t matter if I can damage a bunch of people for some damage, I have to kill them or they’ll just heal and come back. Against huge groups there’s so many AoE healing going on and self heals of other professions have such low cooldowns, that it’s not worth to risk going in the middle of the enemy zerg, popping all your skills to barely damage someone and run with less than half health left. They’ll just pop their 15~25 sec Heal and will be back on fight, while you’ll have nothing and will be just way back in your lines waiting for your stuff to recover.

With this in mind, if you want to be useful to your group, you can either have as many AoE boons you can get, or have as many as enemy crippling skills you can get (knock downs and immobilizes), or just have an insane damage capable of taking someone 100%~20% in a few seconds not giving them enough time to recover (for this you can only get with high amounts of power AND precision).
Bunker builds only serve as location holders and they’re not even that useful since you’ll be dying anyway if you face any kind of zerg with a small group.

Or… you can do none/all of the above and be just one more in the zerg dealing 500~1000 damage to whoever’s near to you, or just charging the enemy zerg, dying and waiting for a ress/running back from the WP.

@Kita
There is nothing wrong with maxing virtues if y want to provide full support. AH is a nice trait, but it is a tanking trait, not a supportive one. Just saying you don’t have to necessary run AH, it all depend on your playstyle. Of course if Radiodread playstyle is all about being a front-liner, ground-pounding infantryman then I would agree running AH is better for this style of play.

@Danicco
You talk about the the importance of condition removal, but did you check the OP’s build? It got 3 shouts + Pure of Voice + solider’s rune, signet of resolve + purity and absolute resolution. He is stacking an enormous amount of condition removals (maybe even too much imho). Condition removal doesn’t always come from meditations skills. Otherwise you provided some sound and good advises.

@Radiodread
Your build is not bad at all. However, it is not a front-liner build, like others have said you do not have much offense and you lack in self-healing. If you really want to be a front-liner Kita and Danicco have provided you some good advise (like going 30 in Valor and getting either Ah or MF).

Now you want to keep your build here is some advise I can give you :
1. You got with cleric equipment which give lots of healing, but you only got HtL and your healing skill that use it. I would think about going with a Mace + Focus weapon set to have 2 extra ways to apply regenration to maximize your healing stat.

2. So you go with absolute resolution with a high healing stat, I feel Battle Presence would be better than Pure of Voice. You already got soldier’s runes to remove condition and you got plenty of condition removal already.

3. I feel 3 shouts is too much in WvW. 2 is engouh and you free a slot so you can put something like Wall of Reflecting (great against ranged enemies), Signet of Judgement (greatly improve your survavibilty) or Bane Signet (provide you with a CC).

The 3 main objectives I’m looking for are:

*Tankiness
*Boons up the kitten
*Condition Removal

I started out with Cleric gear, 6/6 Soldier. Instead of the Might on crit, I took the trait that makes shouts convert a condition to a boon. The effect of this was 3 shouts each being able to both remove one condition and convert another. Effectively this was 6 condition removals on short cooldowns.

Now, I don’t want this build to kill people. With this build I lead the charge, draw the fire, and break the enemy lines. Having 2-3 tanky people plow through your team (followed of course by our own zerg) causes alot of chaos to the untrained zerg masses. Many of them turn for a partial retreat thinking that the tides have turned. As soon as 30-40% of the zerg turns tail, their doubts of victory become reality.

A thief who’s running scared of the guardian who can’t really kill him is a thief that is not contributing to the battle.

As soon as I’ve broken the lines I pop SYG for stability and renewed focus for invulnerability. I can almost always return to my group alive and safe and ready to reset and do the same. It is very effective.

Did they change shelter? Last I used it it was stationary which was terrible.

This is a good build if you don’t actually want to swing your weapon ever?

Suggestion, if you are going for full support build do this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQJARWlYgiCnFyKEf4ESmiVCBxUgRZ01jEyhYIA;T4AgzymEMJZS1kiJqsMZJyymlLLZWrNGiA

Copy paste the link

this way your shouts heal you. Also drop anything you put +healing on and replace with vitality. +healing at its current state is really bad.

This allows you to heal/give buffs to the front line while surviving. As a side note, the staff 4 ability every tick will heal you when you are giving out might boons, its a lot of healing with this build, 1-2k x 5

For what you want, you might want to consider the Monk Focus build. 30 Valor, 30 Honor (or 20, I recommend 30 though) and 10~20 points wherever you see fit.

Meditations will heal you by 1900ish if I recall correctly, if you use at least 2 it’s a good Healing with great effects as well (Contemplation of Purity/Smite Condition for example).
With the same build you can switch to Altruistic Healing and get a more passive healing which may heal you more in the long run, but you won’t have another healing on demand.
I prefer Monk Focus all the way though, AH heals me for 73ish for every boon so I don’t think it’s worth it… I’d need 26 boons applied in 16 seconds to be worth the Healing of a single Smite Condition with Monk Focus.

Consider Contemplation of Purity for the boons you want too (it’s also a Stun Breaker), depending on how/when you use, you can get Regeneration/Swiftness for a min or so after a Save Yourselves during a siege (use close to the doors where pretty much everyone has a bunch of conditions).
It helps you with both Condition Removal and boons that you want.

Shelter was never stationary.

“A thief who’s running scared of the guardian who can’t really kill him is a thief that is not contributing to the battle.”

But thieves don’t really contribute to the battle… =p