Guild Wars 2

I’m on the fence of making zealot gears. My friend told me it’s the best stat for guardian in WvW (combo withd dogde heal) and it provides the second best damage after berserker. is it true?

Since the price for those gears are very expensive, do you think it’s worth to make exotic zealot gears? I mainly do WvW for what it’s worth

Zealots armor can be iffy. Its glassy but offers you strong recovery in return. It can be an…akward. setup. I use zealots on my ranger for WvW on a Power,Bm focused setup. I know it can work well there.

For a guardian the only issue id see is that you would be HEAVILY reliant on active defense. I doubt you could survive long in the hammer train. If your gonna use this set it might be awesome for small grp roaming and for outskirt fighting. (Generally the same area where thieves will be found rampaging through your backline) I.E. Id try a few rounds fighting just on the outside of the hammertrain when you clash with another zerg (if your a zergling) to find out if you enjoy that area of the battle.

If your roaming with a grp or with the friend youv mentioned keeping protection up will do well to mitigate the lower toughness your build will likely have. Other than that its going to be a fairly high skill required fighting style. Your going to have to be heavily offensive when you fight to make good use of your stat weights while simultaneously going through your recovery rotation. Mace mainhand might be a very good weapon for this setup as it adds two more recovery options and an additional form of active defense.

As a guardian you wont be able to disengage easily. So make sure you are VERY fast at proccing your active defenses against incoming high dmg attacks.

The build your leaning towards is like a paper wall covered in an extremely thin layer of steel. However the Steel is up when you call it and the paper can renegerate. On the other hand. Youl hit fairly hard which most people wont expect from something with as much recovery you have.

It seems like youd be walking a tightrope while playing. But if you got it down right you could pull some AWESOME results.

I would dispute that zealot is the best gear for wvw. Soldier is better for zerg play, and dps builds don’t make good use of healing power.

It looks like a gear set meant to be mixed in with other pieces. You wouldn’t want to go pure zealot for example, because you would be so squishy that the healing wouldn’t help you. What’s the point of healing when you get oneshotted and your health drops fast anyways?

Healing power doesn’t scale that well with many things and is poor with low toughness. On the other hand, high toughness can benefit from healing power as each health point recovered is worth more. But at the same time conditions would eat away at the guardian’s naturally low health pool and isn’t mitigated by toughness. Poison, in particular which reduces healing would be lethal.

It is however true that zealot’s gear does the 2nd most damage next to zerker (I’m just going to ignore assassin as it doesn’t really hold much relevance to guardians) since it is power primary which gives it an advantage over knights or cavalier, and beats valkyrie because that’s power/ferocity. So it’s a potential substitute for these things. For example, you could go soldier armor and instead of zerker trinkets/weapons, you could sacrifice some damage to go zealot weapons or something.

The final issue is finding things that actually scale with healing power and that tends to be the death of it. The primary forms of guardian self heal, altruistic healing and monk’s focus aren’t too hot with healing power. Regeneration, dodge heals, and mace attacks do, but that is pretty niche. All, and all healing power points to a group support guardians, as healing power improves group heals like selfless daring way more. In the end, I see more opportunities on zealot gear on my thief than my guardian…

TL;DR Zealot’s gear is possible as a supplementary addition on specific niche builds that have very high toughness/vit and would like a bit more damage, and have traits/skills that scale with healing. But in most general cases, I think you’re better off with something else.

So maybe something like this (just throwing crap out there):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApWoNDxVI8DNRCBl5M+P2fYFl4yAsAA-TVSBABBt/wZKBXVp3VKDOVXQlq/swhAQjrAAAPAgAAIAhNDAZAW2CA-w

or

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApWoNDxVI8DNRCRk1M2frpXHscA-TVSBABBt/wZKBXVp3VKDOVXQlq/swhAQjrAAAPAgAAIAhNDAZAW2CA-w

This would use energy sigils to perform tons of 800’ish as opposed to 400ish roflcopter heals and make use of battle presence. Damage isn’t half bad with 2k base power, defensive stats are a bit weak but not particularly squishy.

Another possibility is to sprinkle a little more survivability in a damage build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAsdRlsApcoVDxbI8DVR8gkjNVFAznJv+XwcA-TlSBABWqqSg7PQpaFrq0zMlgXpMAP9BLcIA04JAAwJAgMALbB-w

Not too happy with my theorycrafting, hopefully someone else can make use of it.

Using Zealot’s as a guardian would put that guardian in a mid-long ranged support/dps role (ie. scepter/staff). I don’t think it’s a bad stat combination at all, but obviously one wouldn’t play it as most typically do with their guardians. It’s a 100% selfless build, so it’ll be quite difficult to play because of that.

Healing power usually benefits allies much more than it does oneself, and it’ll likely be the same case in this scenario. Using actives like Shield of Wrath and Sanctuary should be enough to protect the zealot’s guardian providing someone gets to them and tries to burst them. Their healing should also help to some degree.

The tomes seem to fit well in this build due to their long-range, although RF might be nice to help survive if you positioned badly.

IYou could mix it up a bit … don’t use JUST Zealot’s. l would mix it up with Knight’s a little.

I just wanted to jump in and +1 ArchonWing for some sound advice and break down on why zealot’s is not “that” great.

In theory it sounds good, but the break down of heals and build style is described well and should help clarify things.

ArchonWing.9480:

…
The final issue is finding things that actually scale with healing power and that tends to be the death of it. The primary forms of guardian self heal, altruistic healing and monk’s focus aren’t too hot with healing power. Regeneration, dodge heals, and mace attacks do, but that is pretty niche. All, and all healing power points to a group support guardians, as healing power improves group heals like selfless daring way more. In the end, I see more opportunities on zealot gear on my thief than my guardian…
…

I just spent a few hundred gold and a few months trying to make a mix of zealot main pieces and knightght off pieces work. I found the small amount of healing power to be underwhelming for roaming and the lack of vitality means you get Condi bombed easily. That vit would also help in zerg clashes too. Swap any zealot piece out for zerker and you’re probably better off.

Now instead, what I did is run full celestial with hoelbrak runes(which simultaneously offset the lack of power and help with conditions) . If you’re looking for a good spread of stats, that plus power weapons, mostly zerker trinkets and battle sigils should do great.

Kholdstare.9608:

I just spent a few hundred gold and a few months trying to make a mix of zealot main pieces and knightght off pieces work. I found the small amount of healing power to be underwhelming for roaming and the lack of vitality means you get Condi bombed easily. That vit would also help in zerg clashes too. Swap any zealot piece out for zerker and you’re probably better off.

Now instead, what I did is run full celestial with hoelbrak runes(which simultaneously offset the lack of power and help with conditions) . If you’re looking for a good spread of stats, that plus power weapons, mostly zerker trinkets and battle sigils should do great.

agree . right now the only trait that affected too much and scales good from healing power is selfless daring .

more healing power need the guards that affected from waterfields to fast and full restore their HP , aka the frontiline guards in raid .

500 – 600 hp is a very good number for a frontline guard and usage of celestials in parts that have minor stats ( like gloves , boots , shoulders , back item ) can give this number on healing power without loosing too much stats from other stats AND by changing only the traits someone can switch from raid mode to roaming easy