Guild Wars 2

Hello Guardian world. I have been a follower of the forums while trying to battle the forums “401” Boss. Finally, through no real effort of my own, the “401” boss has been defeated and I am now here to YOLO the forums. I am Noctorus from Ehmry Bay.
I have posted up a picture of my character with /age so that I can establish some creditability with the community.

The main reason I write this post is in response to any poster, or guardian in general, who feels that their chosen profession is sub-par in damage dealing. I would like to challenge that way of thinking; rethink, support is damage. In stating this I am not trying to impose that anyone posting here has not already figured this out or saying that my way is better and etc…

My motivation to write this was after an AC run, something I have already done many times before with PUGs and with people I regularly play with. On path three during the Burrow encounter to defend the Ecto-Collecters, our group of sub-level 60s and 2 level 80s simply did not have enough DPS to burn the burrows down quick enough. I was one of the level 80s and I compliment my group as a full support guardian. The role I normally appoint myself is defense of one of the collectors while the team burns down burrows. I then appointed another member of the party to defend a collector while I joined the burn group. With party communication, I unleashed all of my support capabilities and our group was then able to burn down burrows quicker than five elementalists on crack. My ego then swelled as I realized why I built my guardian the way I did in the first place over a month ago, Death via Support.

Now many different situations prompt different uses of skills, traits, and gear; in my writing I want to focus on my original concept, which predates crithammer.
Gaining the TA set, I was able to bring my concept to life. I choose the stats: +Healing Power, Precision, and Vitality. The superior runes I use: Water, Hoelbrak, and Monk. Superior sigils are of Strength, for Hammer, and of Water, for staff. My jewelry is primarily Emeralds, but can vary depending on situation and mood. I use a staff and hammer and alternate frequently while in combat. A major bonus of my build is gaining +60% to boon duration. In the picture you can view my stats. (I am hoping that most guardians reading these forums can view screenshots and understand what is going on vs. me posting up 10 pages of stats.)

The main concept is Death via Support. The idea here is to provide major healing ‘SUPPORT’ (Not a healer), Party Boons, and front line shield. ‘But Mr. Noct, we understand how your healing support works and that you’re giving out decent party boons…. but how can you consider yourself ‘front line’ and that you are Death via Support, esp. with low survivability stats?’ I am glad you asked that question.
It is no secret that the two main bonuses of the hammer is the protection that follows on the third phase of auto-attack and the combo finisher of Mighty Blow. That protection coupled with the skill “Hold the Line” gives much needed protection to the Front Line fighter and to their allies. The skill also gives a decent amount of support heal to keep me on the front line. Couple with dodge rolls that heal, staff healing, and decent skills (someone please toot my horn), survivability is very achievable. As for Death via Support, which this is no secret to crithammers, the trait of Empowering Might and Inspired Virtues. Add the Sup Sigil of Strength; I have no problem keeping an average of 6 stacks of might on myself while in combat. Add in the staff ability Empower, the skill Purging Flames, and Hammer finisher from Mighty Blow (+Boon Duration), my overall damage is not too shabby while maintaining full support. And let’s not forget that support and all that might the party is gaining. So while in the dungeon of AC, I can remember why my Guardian is a true compliment to a party.

So if you trashed your Guardian because the its lack of damage, then remember: Death via Support!

I understand my post is long, and I hope you enjoyed it more than a personal story from GW2.

pvp 1v1s are the real issue..pve is not all that important

People are trashing guardian for lack of damage? Guardian does huge damage. The biggest problem isn’t lack of damage, it’s lack of burst. There’s a difference, at least in PvP where (some) people actually move out of AOEs.

608 hours in two months. I think I should challenge you to rethink life.

@andybmcc

Why?

Thank you Leonard! Nice to see a fellow proud Guardian.

Thank you for the challenge andybmcc. I took up your challenge to reflect on my life and figured out that I love me life. I am a full time college student who does not have to work while a student thanks to veteran benefits. This allows me to focus most of my time on school and of course, 608 hours of Guild Wars 2. Now that I have reflected, I have no shame in my past and I am optimistic about my future. Maybe your done attacking me? And now back to not-so-real life.

@ Guanglai: Yes. I have seen quite a few posts about guardian damage, mostly in concern vs. warrior damage. The argument has come from both PVE and PVP. Even myself questioned my chosen class after a fight with Lyssa in Arah. Every time our warrior crit for over 20k with 100 Blades, I could hear an echo in my ear over ventrilo, which seemed often. Of course I forgot at that moment that I timed my support with his 100 Blades. With his skill, “For Great Justice”, and my ability to give 18 long stacks of might, I felt useful again. And not just myself, I have seen other guardians in game who question the capabilities of their profession.

But Noct…. 100 Blades is a channeled skill and only works well in various situations, and don’t forget about PvP. Well I am glad you made that statement. I love various situations, otherwise GW2 would be a very stagnant game.

Thanks Sgttimmen. Maybe I will do a down an dirty post about my build. That is if anybody is interested in something other that the CritHammer. Not to knock the build, its very effective and fun.

Mostly right now Im trying something different in an attempt to tackle Arah more effectivly.

You have awful armor, awful power, and awful critical damage. The reason you were having a hard time burning down the burrows is that for all intents and purposes you weren’t contributing meaningful damage to the fight.

This wasn’t death by support. This was you fellating yourself while your group finally got their act together.

You’re wasting a utility slot with Signet of Judgement, using it as a crutch to lower your incoming damage when you should instead be packing on armor and using an actual worthwhile utility instead. Stand Your Ground would be a much better option along with Superior Aria in order to – you know – actually support your party instead of tacking on a signet so you don’t die as quickly.

All your +healing is very poorly capitalized on with respect to healing yourself as a result of your low armor. +healing does not scale well enough to be used as a primary stat, especially not when the cost is you having abysmal armor. 2500 armor is what a medium armor class expects to get with modest survivability.

Meanwhile, your power is absolutely anemic. Your damage contribution is embarrassing, it’s no wonder you guys were having trouble burning down the burrows. The smaller the party, the more important each individual’s contribution to the overall damage of the party becomes. I don’t care if you can briefly stack 12 stacks of might from your staff and maybe another 4-5 from crits with Empowering Might and three from Justice. Your damage would be that plus a lot more if you actually had decent power.

40% crit chance is basic but acceptable for a guardian – the problem is that your crits hit like wet paper towels. You have no crit damage gear, which is further contributing to your already awful damage contribution.

Get rid of the +healing gear. You seriously aren’t doing anyone any favors by kittening yourself in order to eek out more healing. Your utilities are two thirds crap. You would get a lot better condition removal and a lot better personal survival and group survival with the addition of Stand Your Ground with Soldier runes and/or Pure of Voice (Stability is incredible and you don’t have any stunbreaks which blows my mind) and getting rid of Purging Flames. When you get rid of the +healing gear and pick up some Knight’s or anything else with Toughness (Power/Vit/Toughness would be good too but doesn’t address the crit damage problem) you can also junk that signet (seriously, it only reduces damage by 10% – you know how much damage 500 more toughness would reduce?) and replace it with something that would actually benefit your party and not just you. Triple shout with Save Yourselves and Pure of Voice would remove two conditions every time you shout. That’s gonna help your party an awful lot more than Signet of Judgement. At that point though you could replace the third utility with just about anything and it would be a better choice than Judgement.

So, the point here is: The whole idea of “death by support” is that you act as a force multiplier. Your presence increases the effectiveness of everyone around you. There are much, much more effective ways of doing that than what you’ve got going on. Kittening yourself that badly in order to heal a bit better is doing your dungeon party more damage than you’re able to compensate for.

^Wow it just got really cold in here.

I actually like your build, Leonard. Its takes guts to stand up and tackle the norm. I’m not saying that this is the most effective build, but its good to see people still looking for alternatives instead of defaulting to Crit Hammer. Guild Wars 2 is a game that offers so much variety and choice, so its quite a shame to see people throw it away in place of “more favorable” builds. So, in short, ignore the haters and keep doing what you’re doing and getting better at it!

Cheers
-A fellow Guardian.

Why do people think they have to use crude language and act all tough to get a point across when all it does is make everybody discount their point in the first place?

Enjoy the video. In response to foofad.

<iframe width=“560” height=“315” src=“http://www.youtube.com/embed/5c_iwT2TAHU?rel=0” frameborder=“0” allowfullscreen></iframe>

First, who is to say what is and is not accecptable for a guardian? You? Is it Brutal? The guy who took the time to share his say on the CritHammer build?

“…you know how much damage 500 more toughness would reduce?) and replace it with something that would actually benefit your party and not just you.”

Well yes I do know the damage mitigation. The question is… do you understand my topic and concept? I did post about my Full Support playstyle and concept. Last time I checked, I can’t dodge roll 1088 toughness to the party now can I?

“Triple shout with Save Yourselves and Pure of Voice would remove two conditions every time you shout.”

I have little trouple keeping the majority of nasty conditions off myself. See photo for refrence. Also, Combo Field Light, last time I checked it helps remove conditions. Please someone correct me if im wrong. Also if party needs more condition removal, please refer to my video just for you.

I came up with a build that’s somewhat like yours, though with a minor twist… I don’t see the need to regain aegis all that much (especially in a shouts build).. And the focus on retaliation? With 15 points into radiance, you’ll get retaliation every time you activate Justice, as well as giving your group 3 might stacks! And in dungeons, you’ll be using justice a lot! Even a lot of bosses have adds that get killed throughout the encounter, so you’ll have benefit of that there too… Oh.. And justice not only burns, but also applies blind AND vulnerability in this build.

The build I’d use at 80: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccM0V0zMMNvamMNvam0f0xpoMRqMs08kin707kin7070M7kNf70z7kGo70z7kNh70z7owX70m

You could technically swap Empowered Might for Two Handed mastery if you wanted, but since you like to focus on crit and giving might stacks to people.. Being able to proc 2 might stacks on a crit (with sigil) is undeniably in favor of your playstyle.

Also, a counter argument to your ability to remove conditions from yourself.. The main reason you take Pure of Voice is to help your party, not yourself. I also know that you’re missing a fire field to proc might inside.. But to be frank, it’s not very good and the duration is pretty short. Someone else in your group will probably be able to supply a fire field anyway. And justice will work much better in that regard anyway, with a longer range! (though the duration is shorter).

Unfortunantly the video did not come out as good as I had hoped. One thing I wanted to show in the video was the sustained stacks of might and the affect it has on my power raiting. Without Might: 2,559 power. With 18 stacks of Might: 3,189 power. Sustained at 12 seconds, then dwindles down.

Also my second point: what I was saying the in the chat long in response to foofad. I traded the Signet for the skill ‘Stand Your Ground’, then attacked the wooden post. I then typed in the chat about how useless ‘Stand Your Ground’ is because the wooden post are not knocking me down. It was in hopes to poke at foofad about every situtation requires different skills. Last time I checked this is not GW1, where we cannot change skills on the fly.

@Aseir, yes there is many of times where other people in my party is able to supply the fire combo field. In those cases I adjust fire and equipt another skill. As for the party condition removal, ‘Combo Field Light’. Yet my principle still stays the same, Death via Support. Trying to help maintain high stacks of might for my party and support heal. I do agree with points you make. The regaining of agies is a block and heal on remove. Giving it a try.

I just figured that sacrificing 5% boon duration for the ability to refresh justice can do you a lot more good, than using all those retaliation traits in the virtues line. And +50 precision doesn’t hurt either

Also.. “Stand your Ground” is pure gold, and can save your group’s kittens in a lot of places! I don’t like “Save Yourselves”, because the buffs it supplies you with (besides fury) are easy to get through other means, and 12 seconds isn’t long compared to “retreat!”’s 20+ seconds of swiftness.. And if you time it well, Aegis can also save your group from being one shot (Kohler comes to mind). Also, “Save yourselves!” Only applies the buffs to you, which is an important con for the spec, which is focused on group content!

I just want to say this. Dissing people’s build because of utilities is stupid. Just because they have those, it doesn’t mean that they can’t change them. Utilities are designed to be switched around especially on contents like dungeons. Certain utilities will be better than others in a particular situation. If you’re running dungeons, you should be switching utilities every few pulls.

“Well yes I do know the damage mitigation. The question is… do you understand my topic and concept? I did post about my Full Support playstyle and concept. Last time I checked, I can’t dodge roll 1088 toughness to the party now can I?”

While fantastically impressive, your dodge roll heals are not valuable enough to merit the severe lack of personal damage you bring to the dungeon. With 300 healing power from nothing but traits, you will heal for about 40% of that, while at the same time having room in your available stats to both take less damage during a fight and put much more damage out personally. This will raise your status from “well meaning hindrance” to “valuable team member.”

“I have little trouple keeping the majority of nasty conditions off myself. See photo for refrence. Also, Combo Field Light, last time I checked it helps remove conditions. Please someone correct me if im wrong. Also if party needs more condition removal, please refer to my video just for you.”

What you have is 3 conditions removed every 42 seconds for your party. That’s great. What happens when they get feared immediately after you pop Resolve? It’s not like it gives you an anti-condition field that prevents more conditions from being applied. Conditions are applied all the time. If your goal is party support, you have to be able to deal with that. You sort of are with Purging Flames, but not as cleanly as if you went with something like a shouts build with Soldier runes and Pure of Voice, which doesn’t have a positional component like Purging Flames does. Multiple shouts, on a shorter cooldown (two conditions removed on Stand Your Ground every 24 seconds for up to 5 people within earshot is incredible enough as it is) than Resolve are going to completely obliterate it in terms of condition removal. Which, by the way, translates directly into damage your party didn’t take. Which means you don’t have to heal them as much. There’s a lot more to support than green numbers. Oh, and this way you don’t have to suffer a downtime in your personal drip heal, which will go toward helping you not die.

“Unfortunantly the video did not come out as good as I had hoped. One thing I wanted to show in the video was the sustained stacks of might and the affect it has on my power raiting. Without Might: 2,559 power. With 18 stacks of Might: 3,189 power. Sustained at 12 seconds, then dwindles down.”

First, some semantics. Attack is different from Power. Power is the meaningful stat, whereas Attack is functionally useless (Attack = average weapon damage + Power stat, and is not actually used in any damage calculations ever. Only Power is).

Anyone without poor gear selections should have no trouble hitting 2700 power before adding Zeal traits (which are going out of style these days). Surprise: Those people have access to the same Might sources you do. Which means you’re still doing less damage than everyone else, and that’s ignoring your lack of critical damage which brings you even further down.

“Also my second point: what I was saying the in the chat long in response to foofad. I traded the Signet for the skill ‘Stand Your Ground’, then attacked the wooden post. I then typed in the chat about how useless ‘Stand Your Ground’ is because the wooden post are not knocking me down. It was in hopes to poke at foofad about every situtation requires different skills. Last time I checked this is not GW1, where we cannot change skills on the fly.”

While your stick smashing abilities are to be commended, Signet of Judgement is a terrible skill in virtually any situation considering how much better just about everything else is in both keeping you and your party alive. The only interesting part of it is that it’s a source of Weakness which we don’t have anywhere else as far as I can recall. The benefit of this is debatable given your other options.

Everything you do with the build you’ve cited you can do better with less healing power and more personal effectiveness. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need healers. It needs people who contribute, which despite your green numbers your build doesn’t do enough of.

Aseir.2046:

I don’t like “Save Yourselves”, because the buffs it supplies you with (besides fury) are easy to get through other means, and 12 seconds isn’t long compared to “retreat!”’s 20+ seconds of swiftness.. And if you time it well, Aegis can also save your group from being one shot (Kohler comes to mind). Also, “Save yourselves!” Only applies the buffs to you, which is an important con for the spec, which is focused on group content!

Save Yourselves is our only source of reliable Fury, which goes a very long way in increasing burst damage. It’s also ten seconds of protection which while you can get it from other sources, I mean… come on. Ten seconds more of 33% damage reduction. It’s also a stunbreaker which will save you from knockdowns and fears, and it’s another source of condition cures if you have Soldier runes or Pure of Voice. My understanding is that it cures conditions before it pulls them to you, which means often times it won’t even negatively affect you. If it does, the effect is minimal.

That said, none of that helps against certain boss fights like Giganticus or other one-shot heavy bosses.

Before I repeat myself again in another long post I want to say this. foofad, join me in a dungeon and let’s see who is more useful. Or at least make references, video, or photos, to your claims: esp. concerning the claim that Zeal can stack up major portions of sustained might. And if your claim is that zeal itself acts as might, then how does that help the party’s damage? Do you still not get the point or are you trying to argue without merit?

Can you at least show a video or any reference that visualizes your, ‘better’ build? At least then you can show me and the community how so terribly wrong I am. Did I now show my credibility in my first post by the age of my account and, I hope you recognize the gear and badges in my inventory. I have already tried many different ways to play a guardian, and now I post method of full support guardian.

And I guess if I had to insult you in any way… I will quote you: “Anyone without poor gear selections should have no trouble hitting 2700 power before adding Zeal traits (which are going out of style these days).”

May I ask you why Zeal is going out of style ‘these days’? Are you a guy who only follows the builds of others? Is it going out of style for you or for other players? Last time I checked, virtues were never in style and I guarantee I am more effective than you. I’m willing to dungeon with you or others in this community and place my credibility on the line. Let me know when you are.

“esp. concerning the claim that Zeal can stack up major portions of sustained might.”

Didn’t say it could. What I said was:

‘Anyone without poor gear selections should have no trouble hitting 2700 power before adding Zeal traits (which are going out of style these days). Surprise: Those people have access to the same Might sources you do. Which means you’re still doing less damage than everyone else, and that’s ignoring your lack of critical damage which brings you even further down.’

My mentioning of Zeal was offhand so that there was no confusion as to the fact that 2700 power comes from gear alone. When I said that “those people” have access to the same Might sources that you do, that was in reference to people who have the gear to support 2700 power, not that people who have points in Zeal have a Might generating trait or some such. In other words, people with the exact same setup as you but instead of +healing gear have gear that actually helps them do more than throw around green numbers. The point of course being that with 2700 power and 18 stacks of might, that person would have 3330 power – which is more than you. All things being equal, more base power means they do more damage – simple. That’s all. I can kind of see the confusion so I won’t make a snarky remark about your reading comprehension.

“Can you at least show a video or any reference that visualizes your, ‘better’ build? At least then you can show me and the community how so terribly wrong I am. Did I now show my credibility in my first post by the age of my account and, I hope you recognize the gear and badges in my inventory. I have already tried many different ways to play a guardian, and now I post method of full support guardian.”

There’s no point in posting a video. It would basically be me not dying easily and our team completing a dungeon successfully, which isn’t exactly impressive. You can swap traits and gear and see for yourself how much more you contribute to a fight. It’s not like there’s some sort of mystic quality to builds – anyone can try them. I’ve tried full Cleric armor and I know it sucks compared to other options. Full healing is unnecessarily removing your damage from the total party damage pool.

Your account age means virtually nothing, and if you’re proud of that number I can show you a bigger one. Don’t turn this into an kitten contest when it doesn’t have to be one.

“May I ask you why Zeal is going out of style ‘these days’? Are you a guy who only follows the builds of others? Is it going out of style for you or for other players? Last time I checked, virtues were never in style and I guarantee I am more effective than you. I’m willing to dungeon with you or others in this community and place my credibility on the line. Let me know when you are.”

Unique builds aren’t inherently more effective. There are no bonus points for originality. But no, my build is based on a working knowledge of the game accumulated through my time playing Guardian plus the amalgamation of the research I have done on the forums, wiki, and in game, plus theorycrafting I’ve done in order to support my concepts. Like any good nerd I have spreadsheets galore, including a fully functioning character simulator – which sadly I don’t have the web skills to put online.

Every once in a while I go Zeal and Virtues for Spirit Weapons and improved Wall of Reflection, and romp around WvW with them. They scare people more than they should, and it’s fun to watch people try and run away from them. But I don’t run dungeons that way.

Since you don’t have any idea what build I run, your guarantee that you’re more effective than me (at what? Beating up wooden dummies?) doesn’t hold a lot of water.

But this isn’t about me.

Rather than try and turn this into a contest, why don’t you just experiment with moving away from +healing gear and see how much better you’ll be for it? Don’t just set the goal of stacking healing so you can throw around green numbers, set the goal of being good at killing things and helping people not die. That’s what I did, and I worked pretty hard at it. The net result is that I kill faster than you, better than you, with more effective HP personally, while maintaining an extremely high level of party utility in the form of condition removal, healing, boons, and so on. Don’t compromise. It’s good to be a Guardian. Don’t mess it up by trying to be a priest.

Assuming the game and theory crafting is tangible, all test would have been completed in a sterile environment. Obviously the testing was very controlled and simple. I will assume that foofad is comparing my build with Crithammer; a build that is tested and reliable. I used the Heart of the Mist to conduct testing. To get my numbers I tried to emulate both my support build posted and my other armor setup with Crithammer traits. I also reviewed and incorporated some of the stats from Brutaly’s, “Guide: Hammer and Altruistic Healing gameplay.” My build vs. your [foofad] build.

(Each Test was conducted with a Sigil of Strength in the Hammer.)

First test was conducted on Target Golems. I constantly attacked Golems for 60sec to test Might stacking. For these tests: My setup: 0/10/0/30/30; Empowering Might in Honor. Attack-2,596, Precision-39% with 0 to Critical Damage. With Your setup: 0/5/30/30/5; Retributive Armor in Valor, and Empowering Might in Honor. Attack-2,950, Precision-40% with 50 to Critical Damage.

My Build: I maintained on average about 7 stacks of Might with my highest at 13 stacks.

Your Build: I maintained on average about 4 stacks of Might with my highest at 7 stacks.

I then tested both builds with my style of: Empower + Mighty Blow/Combo Field Fire + Virtue of Justice 18 Stacks of Might

My build diminishes at 18 stacks for 12sec. 6 stacks at 8sec. 3 stacks at 30secs.
You build diminishes at 18 stacks for 8sec. 6 at 5sec. 3 at 20sec

Conclusion: Both setups can yield up to 25 stacks of might; however, the might I lend to the party last longer and my average is higher. My average gives 105 constant power over your setup. And we know that Might gives 35 power per stack. So if we assume a perfect scenario to where all party gains the might at all times: my average is 245 power multiplied by 5 party members for 1225 extra power vs. your average of 700 extra power over the party spread.

For the next test I only conducted Auto Attacks with the hammer on a single Heavy Target Golem. I attacked the same Golem until it was destroyed. I did this with both setups three times in a row.

My Build: Total Damage; 37,728 over 64 hits with Auto attack for an average of 589. Most notable critical was about 1,000

You’re Build: Total Damage; 38,540 over 48 hits with Auto attack for an average of 802. Most notable critical was about 1,500

The next test I ran was in the middle of the Target Golems. I used a Greatsword and Hammer. The Greatsword was used to pull the Golems to myself using Binding Blade/Pull. After the pulled the Golems, I switched to Hammer and Activated Virtue of Justice. I used Virtue of Justice as a timer. With the Hammer I Auto Attacked until the Symbol of Protection was down. Immediately after I activated Might Blow., I then did two more sets of SoP then MB and continued in this order until all targets was fully destroyed. In my starting position I only pulled five Golems instead of all six. I stayed in this position throughout the entire test.

With My setup: 0/10/0/30/30; Empowering Might in Honor. Attack-2,596, Precision-39% with 0 to Critical Damage. (My VoJ timer started at 22sec.) My times: 16sec. 17sec. 17.sec.

With Your setup: 0/5/30/30/5; Retributive Armor in Valor, and Empowering Might in Honor. Attack-2,950, Precision-40% with 50 to Critical Damage. (Your VoJ timer started at 28sec.) Your times: 14sec 16sec. 14sec.

Conclusion of the last two test: CritHammer does what it is intended to do. As I conducted the test, the white damage of both builds was not very far off. However, the CritHammer setup lived up to the name; its damage derives from the Critical Damage modifier.

The Healing Power: My build has about 959 Healing power and +60% Boon Duration. A skill I always keep on my bar is ‘Hold The Line’. This is about 6sec. of Protection and 2,249 healing over 9 seconds for about 249 a sec. Add in Virtue of Resolve Passive, about 100 a sec., that’s 3,149 over 9 seconds. Add a dodge roll, that’s 4,237 health gained. The awesome thing about this is that it’s not just me that gains this but everyone within range. With no real effort at all, I gain a little less than half my main heal.

In all my dungeon experience, I have only ran into a few fights to where I would change my skills in an attempt to tackle the team’s conditions. In most cases I find with both PuGs and Friends that conditions are rather manageable without my severe intervention.

Final conclusion of yours vs. mine: With the supposed suggestions that you have given me about my build…. Well you just trashing my build and stating I should run what you run which I assume is the CritHammer.

You’re Build: More powerful attacks and higher damage output. Build contains a little more survivable due to toughness over healing power. Overall build lacks true party support on the statement that: ‘If I do more damage, my party is better off.”

My Build: Less damage but higher and longer sustained damage bonus to party. Lower overall survivability but grants higher survivability to party. Overall the build lacks the higher damage output but sacrifices this via: “If I help my party survive and do more damage, my party is better off.”

Now to you Mr. foofad. You come to my first thread on the forums and attempt to debunk my build; that is fine. However, you come with a vengeance and malice to a person you do not know. You attempt to insult and harass me. You claim that this is no contest, yet, to argue against another statement is a contest. Foofad, this is a contest and I am telling you to put your money where your mouth is. “Your account age means virtually nothing, and if you’re proud of that number I can show you a bigger one. Don’t turn this into an kitten contest when it doesn’t have to be one.” I am telling you to show me a bigger one. “Since you don’t have any idea what build I run, your guarantee that you’re more effective than me…” I am telling you to post your build and concept: place yourself on the line or otherwise your just another babbling mouth. And if you come back later and tell me you have placed yourself on the line by telling me what I should run, and then go against the idea that “I do not know what your build is”, then you’re a fool. And lastly, run instances with me. Get the community involved to do real testing of our differences. Until then, get the heck of my thread; no room for a self-proclaimed nerd who runs stats all the time yet shows nothing of them.

What gear did you run the tests in?

Give me a moment and ill screen shot it.

The first three screen shots are of ‘My Build’; an attempt to emulate the attack abilities of my PvE, full Support Guardian. The runes I used are of …Water, …Monk, and Dyawna. I did not add ….Strength because I did not want to give myself more power in the test.

The last three screen shots are of ‘Your Build’.

I don’t want to butt in much, but I can’t ignore the fact, that suprisingly many people belittle the meaning of Healing Power stat on Guardians. It almost seems as if one person said once “it scales poorly”, and everyone else follows this statement blindly. If this stat would be THAT useless, it wouldn’t be there in the first place, would it?

I’m guardian since the launch of GW2, few weeks after that I started successfully doing all dungeons, and still loving it. I have few armor and weapon sets, so I can switch between them as the situation demands, and I notice a huge difference in survivability of my party members if I stop using my Healing set. I run with steady group, most of them are sort of glasses though. They deal huge damage and kill foes quickly, I heal them and spread a lot of protective boons for them. Each my dodge roll heals for around 1,5k HP, and since I can do it twice within a short amount of time, I find it very useful. My regen boons heal for around 3k, if they last for 10s (and usually they do, if not longer). My virtue of resolve heals for around 3k as well. Empowering heals for another 2,8-3k. My symbols heal too with each tick. Healing Power affects every outgoing healing.

I can bring warriors back to full life within 10 seconds while they were close to reach the bottom of their HP pool. I can’t do that with half much Healing Power stat, and if I ignore that stat completely, I feel useless. Protection from Crit Hammer build is not enough for me. Retaliation and Regen are not enough either. Direct healing is necessary as well, in my opinion, to keep people alive.

My gameplay though, is based on a good teamwork between damage builds of my friends and my own full support build. They don’t have to run away from mobs and can keep attacking at astonishing speed, I take care of their survival. I call it a fair trade, as it works much better this way. If I went full offensive build, while my other members would go defensive, we would get much worse results. I checked it.

As an example, my best Warrior guildie that goes full DPS build and I easily duoed AC path 1 within 18 mins. He was dealing the damage, I kept him alive. We did the dungeon faster than it usually takes to 5 people in PuG. Imagine 3 Warriors and 2 guardians like that Or even 4 warriors and 1 guardian. I think that going full support and investing in healing Power is not bad idea at all, I’m loving it. Some people just prefer more agressive gameplay, so you can stick to your critical builds, which are fun to play too. But I don’t think you have ANY rights to diss people who actually do very well with totally opposite tactics and use some stats that you find useless. It all depends on your own personal preferences and the way your party members play. If they can take care of thesmelves, but deal poor damage – I switch to DPS sets and help with that. If my team requires protection and healing, but they deal more than enough damage, I don’t see a reason to waste my healing abilities just to increase the DPS a little bit more.

Leonard.2867:

The first three screen shots are of ‘My Build’; an attempt to emulate the attack abilities of my PvE, full Support Guardian. The runes I used are of …Water, …Monk, and Dyawna. I did not add ….Strength because I did not want to give myself more power in the test.

The last three screen shots are of ‘Your Build’.

Cheers for that, very interesting stuff.

This thread is awesome.

Whoa, Foofad, man… you need to unplug for a little while. While i can’t really disagree with anything you’re saying, i can’t agree with it either. You haven’t really provided any empirical evidence to support your argument. Having a bunch of spread sheets is fantastic for you, but it doesn’t really do anything for the rest of us- so it’s just kind of hard to care. What I can tell you however, is that I noticed a lot of unwarranted hostility coming from you right from the get-go. You were insulting the hell out of leonard with your initial post and it just got worse from there. What was the point of that? It just seems juvenile at best, at worse it’s counter productive to your case and shows a complete lack of understanding. You can’t get people to listen to you if you’re just going to act like a condescending jerk about things. Relax.

In regards to the build differences. Leonard is running a full support build for group work and focuses his time and energy not on being the harbinger of death but instead sustaining the integrity of the group by providing a consistent stream of healing and long term boons in the form of protection, regeneration, might, and light based combo fields for condition removal. Since we don’t know for sure how many hit points and armor points mobs and bosses have in dungeons, the difference between 10k dps and 13k dps may be negligible. What we do know is that maintaining group survivability and increasing group damage exponentially increases group effectiveness- which is the purpose behind a support based build. All the personal dps and defense in the world isn’t going to make any sort of difference if you’re the only one standing for the last 5 seconds before the boss pummels you to dirt. Being able to keep 4 out of 5 group members on their feet for the duration of an encounter on the other hand ensures success and I think that was the angle Leonard was going for with his build.

Now, Foofad, i’ve read some of your other posts and you offered some good advice and I never got the impression that you were being an kitten in those posts. What makes this one so different? Why so mad, bro?

Leonard: The premise behind your build and the philosophy supporting your playstyle fascinates me. I, too, have run a 30 Honor 30 Virtues build before, albeit different from yours. In my experience, 30 Honor and 30 Virtues is actually a remarkably adaptable build, owing to the versatility of Honor traits and the playstyle-agnostic Virtues line, which is useful for any build and any playstyle on any day of the week and in any dungeon. ;)

Consequently I feel like the way you’ve realized your design philosophy is weirdly at odds with the potential of the Honor and Virtues trait lines. These are two powerfully versatile trait lines, and in their versatility, these trait lines reflect the design philosophy behind Guardian support: not through +healing and boons, but through a combination of everything, including damage, conditions, condition removal, aegis applications, Virtues, boons and—yes—direct heals.

Therefore the playstyle you’re submitting seems ironically hamstrung by a build that runs into issues of ‘soft’ diminishing returns. What do I mean by soft diminishing returns? Essentially this: By investing so deeply in +healing and purely support Traits, your capacity for offense and direct damage has become almost crippled; however, the loss of offensive capacity is proportionally greater than the actual, tangible, practical “support” you gain in return. Thus, ‘soft’ diminishing returns.

Let me give you some concrete examples. You’re swinging a hammer, but not really taking advantage of Writ of Exaltation or Writ of Persistence, both of which: A) Make it much easier for your party to actually trigger Combo Finishers off your Symbol of Protection and B) Take full advantage of your +60% boon duration and C) Make it easier for your party to pick up Protection and significantly improve your Hammer damage output as well. Instead your screenshot shows you with Pure of Heart. Now, I don’t know the numbers and I’m not sure how well Pure of Heart scales with Healing Power, but that’s not the point. Pure of Heart is a trait that really shines when you’re pumping up as much Aegis as possible (i.e, it works best with Valorous Defense, Might of the Protector and Shattered Aegis).

I feel like you’ve overemphasized support based on a traditional, Holy Trinity stereotype of support, hence your emphasis on big Might stacking, powerful dodge roll heals. In fact, your original post says that Protection, Hold the Line coupled with a powerful dodge-heal and Staff Empower gives you “not too shabby” survivability.

I submit to you that the use of dodge-heals and Staff heals to promote survivability is actually a misuse of dodging and staff. Healing is a poor way to mitigate damage given long cooldowns and low scaling, and is best used to keep health pools up and top off incidental damage rather than substitute for survivability or bring you back up after eating a hit. Your survivability is almost always going to come exclusively from two sources: 1) Well-timed use of specific abilities and 2) Good dodging and spacing.

Just taking AC Explorable as an example, the Lieutenant Kohler fight is almost entirely neutralized by having one decent Guardian of any spec (20% faster Shout recharge is ideal) using “Stand Your Ground!” the second he starts charging his Scorpion Wire. The timely use of a single shout utterly neutralizes the single most threatening aspect of this fight. No amount of +healing or boon duration can even come close to the survivability provided by knowing when to dodge and knowing when to use SYG.

You cite powerful Might applications, frequent availability of combo fields and good incidental heals as the keys to your success as a Supporting Guardian—and I agree with you. But I also strongly believe that you’ve overinvested in pure support, and your investment is going to give you very little return after a certain point.

My suggestion therefore is to trim the fat a little and cut some of your healing and boon duration in favor of offense. Damage, after all, is what wins a fight, and nothing is better for a team than a dead enemy. Sacrificing your damage for support will not give you a 1:1 return, and eventually you’re sacrificing more damage than you are making up through party synergy. Here are my proposals. Take them with a grain of salt:

(Con’t’d, because I talk too kitten much.)

Reconsider your points in Radiance. Adept Radiance traits don’t really help you, but instead shoehorn you into taking Signets that don’t do much for you. Healing Breeze might actually fit your playstyle more, in which case Signet of Resolve doesn’t offer you much, and the condition removal can be replicated by 10 Valor for Purity, which also gives you decent Toughness.

I would even drop points from Virtues. You don’t need Grandmaster Virtues and you can live without the extra 10% boon duration. This opens up options though. You can put 15 in Zeal for a comfortable boost of Power, plus Fiery Wrath (enemies are almost always burning if you’re in a group) plus Symbolic Exposure (you use a lot of symbols, and Vulnerability stacks are useful in a group), plus 5 left over for either Valorous Defense or Power of the Virtuous or Justice is Blind.

I recommend varying your stats as well. Try to hit a comfortable baseline with your power, toughness, vitality and crit. 40% is probably a bit higher than I’d recommend (35%), and the rest is up to you.

Fundamentally, I agree with foofad. I think there’s a lot of value in his basic message that Guardian support relies on damage as well, and that signal may have been lost in the noise. You don’t have to agree with his tone or his choice of words, but the basic advice he’s giving reflects Guardian support philosophy: the sum of everything, including damage. Tactical power always trumps stats; don’t hamstring your playstyle by ignoring damage and synergy.

@Kami

I think it’s because 608 hours translates to around 25 days played in a two month period. I don’t math, but that’s around 10 hours a day (every day) for two months.

[Edit: I’m not judging, just pointing out why Andy might have been.]

If you dont at least have dmg off gear. depending on builds pwr/prec/crit dmg or pre/pwr/cnd dmg. you are pretty useless to most of dungeons.

If you go full time support you need to play with friend that is glass cannon. if you can do that it’ll work. But puging is different case. lots of people goes with build that provide survivebility so it means your party overall dmg with drop a lot with you providing extra (not needed?) support.

“death via support” is useless if you dont play with glass cannons.

If you want to play support guardian in pug you need to own dmg gear.

(Can’t hear me on vent.)

Here is a video of a Kohler fight. It consist of myself, a mesmer (my partner in crime who was laughing on vent about doing no damage), and three pickups; two warriors and an elementalist. Normally when I fight Kohler I use specter/focus instead of staff and change other traits and skills around. But for this fight the only thing I changed was the Signet of Judgement for ‘Retreat’. I thought I started the video at the very beginning of the fight. Right before the video started I went down once, twas bested by the mesmer adds, was revived, and the video pretty much picks up from there. After the two adds was defeated, the fight took a slightly over two minutes to defeat an isolated Kohler.

In a non-sterile environment, I was only able to maintain about 4 stacks of might from attacks vs. the 7 from the Target Golems in the mist. The primary damage dealers were the two warriors and the elementalist. I am going to focus on the two warriors as they were the two who remained to melee Kohler constantly.

-Both Warriors went full signets during the fight. Neither used Signet of Justice as a direct heal during the fight.

-The Warriors, mostly the 1st one, was able to maintain about 5-7 stacks of might own their own. After I started my support they were maintaining the maximum (25 stacks) with little trouble.

-The Warriors maintained protection boon through 90% of the fight.

-Our Mesmer was useless, and I am going to get him to read this so I can laugh at him.

-All sources of regeneration boon came from me

-Notice at 01:16 the health bars of the warriors; Staff with Empowering Might + Virtue of Resolve Active.