Guild Wars 2

I’m relatively new to Guild Wars 2, so I’m not at all experienced in designing builds. That’s why I’m making this thread, to seek the advice of you all, whom I expect know a lot more about this game than I do.

I’ve been running the standard variety of Berserker builds. GS/Sword + focus for dungeons, Hammer/GS for fractals, etc. Those are great, but I’d like to experiment with some other builds for fun.

I’ve seen some builds utilizing a mace, but a lot of them are 18 to 24 months old. They also don’t seem like they have been iterated on heavily. I’d like to find/create something that’s more refined.

Basically my goal for this build is too create an extremely tanky Guardian that also provides healing support to allies in dungeons/fractals, along with the standard array of blinds, aegis spam, and reflects.

My initial idea is Magi stats for Mace/Focus and a Magi staff. My first question is would a Sword/Shield in the off-hand be better than a staff? I believe this would offer greater DPS, but at the expense of Empower. Is Empower worth it?

What would be the optimal sigils for these weapons?

As for armor, I’m think Knight’s. I don’t know what runes would be best, however. And what about trinkets? More Knight’s? Or Celestial?

As for traits, I came up with 0/0/4/6/4.

Valor: VI, VII
Honor: II, VII, XII
Virtues: I, IX

Would Writ of the Merciful be better than Writ of Persistence? What about Pure of Voice instead of Battle Presence?

Alternatively, I considered 0/0/6/6/4 with Communal Defenses. The advantage here is might and more aegis spam for your teammates, but the loss of Absolute Resolution. Would this be better? I suspect not, but I’m no expert.

As for utilities, since I’m using Superior Aria, I figured lots of shouts would be good. Retreat, Stand Your Ground, and Wall of Reflection were my choice for utilities. I figure Hold The Line or Purging Flames could be substituted in based on circumstance.

I think that’s everything. I realize this hardly optimal, but I want to create the best possible build utilizing my stated objective of healing support and tankiness.

Please, don’t.

Ask yourself what will that vitality/ healing power achieve against OHKO bosses. Mitigating damage > healing it.

Yeah, your usual berserker answer, but playing a selfish guardian is just wrong. Shouts are bad for support. Gear isn’t tied to support either. Staff is a garbage weapon.

oxtred.7658:

Please, don’t.

Ask yourself what will that vitality/ healing power achieve against OHKO bosses. Mitigating damage > healing it.

Yeah, your usual berserker answer, but playing a selfish guardian is just wrong. Shouts are bad for support. Gear isn’t tied to support either. Staff is a garbage weapon.

Your tone is unnecessarily hostile. You can offer constructive criticism and suggestions without being dismissive.

If you read my post, you’d see that I asked questions like would Communal Defenses be a useful trait instead of Absolute Resolution because it provides aegis spam. I also asked whether a sword rotation would be better than staff. Instead of saying “staff is garbage,” offer an alternative.

What you are trying to create is a useless dungeon/fractals guardian and there’s no way to sugarcoat this. Every class has sufficient success to healing skills in regards to dungeons. In high level fractals a lot of classes will get 1 shot, whether or not there’s a guardian in knights armor standing next to them is of little relevance. Taking and holding aggro in this game relies on far more than just toughness.
There’s a reason this game has such an all encompassing meta which happens to be all about dps. If you want to completely ignore that you can play any build you like. If it’s about healing and support it is always going to be really bad for dungeons and fractals and you will always be a burden on your team.

No, communal defense isn’t useful, because just like most ICD based traits, you can’t reliably make it procs when needed. Absolute resolution is a great trait against condi heavy encouters, but if you don’t need the condi removal nor the stability and can’t get unscathed contender for whatever reason, move those points elsewhere, possibly in radiance or valor for more dps. My tone wasn’t hostile. I did offer constructive criticism ( healing power won’t help, vitality is a selfish stat, shouts are bad, staff is a bad weapon). IF your role is support only, a GS/hammer is what you want,but keep in mind that the light field spam coupled with the lack of burst damage makes it inferior in normal dungeons play. You should be carrying every weapon depending on encouters, but hammer is the go to “support” weapon. Its perma protection is a good addition to non experimented teams and it gives you the needed tankyness if you’re not comfortable enough with the guardian class. Switching to sword,mace, scepter, focus and even torch depending on the encounter is something you want to do when you get confident with the build. You said you were already using those, well, keep going that way if you really want to be a support guardian. I guess that covers most of your questions.

Veydar.5017:

What you are trying to create is a useless dungeon/fractals guardian and there’s no way to sugarcoat this. Every class has sufficient success to healing skills in regards to dungeons. In high level fractals a lot of classes will get 1 shot, whether or not there’s a guardian in knights armor standing next to them is of little relevance. Taking and holding aggro in this game relies on far more than just toughness.
There’s a reason this game has such an all encompassing meta which happens to be all about dps. If you want to completely ignore that you can play any build you like. If it’s about healing and support it is always going to be really bad for dungeons and fractals and you will always be a burden on your team.

I was quite clear about my intentions here.

I am not trying to create an optimal Guardian build. I am trying to create an optimal Guardian build with the given parameters of using a mace for defense and healing.

If you’re not interested in helping me, then don’t post in this thread.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApdSlsApXolCxTI8DNR8gUbgEY/s727OC-TBSBABCqPgSVIMTJ4VK/i4UAkq6Lzs/AAPBASBMqyI-e

Just spitballing here, and taking a stab at what you want while still maintaining some damage. Of course not optimal, but the focus on this is to provide symbol damage with a focus on utility and healing.

Stats
I was aiming for:

• Moderate healing of about 800+
• Crit damage of at least 200%
• Crit rating of somewhere around 40-50
• Power also I wanted over 2k
• Toughness was an after though after hitting the other marks.

Damage

• Mace symbol provides a potential crit of 1241 per tick and normal hit of 620 per tick. With Writ of Persistence this would do an overall 8687 crit and 4340 per symbol duration of 7 ticks (not counting vulnerability stacks that it adds)

• Hammer auto symbol will also provide 1364 crit ticks 682 normal ticks and full rotation damage of 6820 crit and 3410 normal damage per symbol placed for 5 ticks.

Healing
Additionally overlapping healing via regeneration, writ of the merciful, and virtue of resolve will provide 547 healing a second.

Support
Utilities are a toss up, but standardized wall of reflection, and retreat for blocks and reflects, then signet to help boost healing power if wanted. Can be replaced easily.

You provide your team with an additional block with mace, and some extra healing if they are in symbols with you. You can also swap to hammer if you are topped off and don’t need healing and want protection instead.

Misc
To maximize damage you will probably want to swap and overlap symbols periodically, which will provide small bursts of damage as well as healing. Weapon sigils could be replaced with an on swap type sigil of wanted, such as battle for more might stacks possibly, or if you want more healing do water for 30% chance on hitting enemies.

Additionally the heal could be replaced with healing breeze for more group healing and the off hand focus could be a torch for group condition cleansing.

This should provide a “defensive/offensive” type mace build. Kind of sucky at healing or damage, but interesting compromise between the two.

You will NOT tanking in this, though. It is meant to help keep health recovery going while still utilizing dodges and blocks when called for.

DISCLAIMER
Have I run this? No, I just made it up based on your requirements, so it can easily be reworked or scrapped for something better.

Thank you for coming up with this.

I kind of wish there was a way to squeeze in an extra point for additional Mace damage, but I suppose there’s no way to do that without sacrificing symbol damage.

Zealot armor is also a good idea, I hadn’t considered that.

I don’t see the advantage of Cleric stats on the Hammer though. I think Berserker would be better there (I already have Zojja’s Warhammer too). Am I wrong here? The Mace has two healing abilities compared to the Hammer’s potential of one.

Edit: Does the trait Protective Reviver work with Signet of Mercy? That could be useful it it does, since we’re not getting a ton of use out of Superior Aria.

Edit 2: It doesn’t.

A mace healing build works better in small-medium group wvw or unorganized zergs. It works less well in organized zergs as your light fields overwrite water fields.

Wisp.9725:

I kind of wish there was a way to squeeze in an extra point for additional Mace damage, but I suppose there’s no way to do that without sacrificing symbol damage.

I think that one is a toss up. My logic was, that symbol was the primary form of damage with the mace and hammer, with the auto attack strikes as extra. So I got 10% out of symbols on both weapons versus 5% out of all mace strikes. Maybe dependent on if you choose to take hammer or another weapon swap.

Wisp.9725:

I don’t see the advantage of Cleric stats on the Hammer though. I think Berserker would be better there (I already have Zojja’s Warhammer too). Am I wrong here? The Mace has two healing abilities compared to the Hammer’s potential of one.

I took the clerics gear on weapons simply out of stat balance. Continuously pushing precision up past 50% will create a deficit in your other stats, with possibly less return out of it.

Also, was looking for a gear set that would help push healing power up closer to the 900-1k mark. So clerics gear helped provide a little bit extra power and healing power without wasting stats on precision. You could possibly do more stat balance and trade out other pieces to raise and lower precision out. I think popular consensus is that your crit chance should be around 35-45, and hitting 50 starts to waste stats. Anything past that you really shouldn’t be focusing on it. I like 50 though.

After that I wanted to get the crit damage as close to 200 as possible, because doubling your damage is key to increasing your burst/dps. You could have high crit chance but low crit damage and it equates to nothing.

I haven’t looked at this chart in a while but if you want to balance crit and crit chance look it up here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Average_damage_increase

Wisp.9725:

Edit: Does the trait Protective Reviver work with Signet of Mercy? That could be useful it it does, since we’re not getting a ton of use out of Superior Aria.

There is a fairly big lack of shouts being used, and you could replace superior aria with writ of exaltation probably. Or even pure of heart.

Or you could change some utilities to bring hold the line to keep regen ticking while not in mace, to help offset the lack of a secondary healing skill on hammer besides symbol healing.

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Again, I emphasize this is not field tested, so if you do run it or a variation, put some feedback and let us know how it goes

cleric gear is an exploit because it allows you to ignore game mechanics such as retaliation

Don’t listen to the vitriol. A healing/support guardian is perfectly viable and a useful addition to a fractal 49 run.
The usefulness diminishes the more pro your group are. If they are great players they won’t need your heals, but if they are zerkers with zero skill mindlessly following the forum hype then you will be a great addition to the group.

Pugs always go smoother as ventari, organised always goes smoother as zerker in my experience.

Regular dungeons however go far quicker as zerker.

Anyway I recommend 0.0.4.6.4 with strength of numbers, Mace of justice, superior aria, merciful symbols, battle presence, consecration mastery and absolute resolution. I use ventari gear with cleric trinkets. Mace /Shields and staff. Water runes, water sigil and life sigil. Utilities are swappable but I recommend hold the line, the ease of applying that many massive regeneration ticks without positioning concerns is great with this much healing power.

If you drop double symbols (weapon swap) and pop protection there’s pretty much nothing that can harm you, I’ve stood and rezzed all 4 dead pugs during dozens of fotm49 bosses without breaking a sweat.