“We can jump…. Can Zombies jump?”
Dungeon Shout Support Build
If i may, I would suggest that you take 5 points out of Radiance and put them into Virtues. You will be amazed by how much more healing you produce through Altruistic healing when you pop any of your Virtues. It can be a life saver.
As for your major trait selections. I would use a focus instead of the shield and get rid of the shield centered traits. Take Purity to remove conditions and take the trait that grants 5% of your toughness as precision to make you crit more often and consequently, heal more often through your dodge roll and the buff of vigor.
In the Honor line, you should pick up Writ of Exaltation and Writ of the Merciful and Battle Presence. Your group healing will be through the roof, as much as GW2 permits, in any case. The shouts are fine, although I would recommend taking save yourselves over Hold the Line or Stand Your Ground. Again, terrific healing and you can really help your group out if they are taking a beating via conditions. You may also want to run with your healing signet in this case so you have two conditions removed every ten seconds (stacking with purity).
Hope this helps and good luck with your build.
I am currently unable to load guildhead, so I can’t see what you’ve posted, so my comments are based primarily on the context I’ve gleaned from Animus’s response:
I’m told the focus is good, but I don’t really see the benefit, personally. The shield is a party protection skill and projectile shield/heal. The focus is a self-block and blind. The blocking skill is good, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t help the party, and it sounds like you’re going for party support. Blind will do nothing on a boss 90% of the time, and you shouldn’t need it for anything less than a boss. The shield is a solid pick, I think.
I tried Altruistic Healing before and, quite frankly, I was underwhelmed. It never managed to heal me enough to make a big difference, and it was a large investment that I didn’t really need—The other points in that line could have a better impact elsewhere. After trying an altruistic healing build, I went back to a Permeating Wrath one—the 30% boon duration is invaluable as a support-heavy role.
It sounds like you’re placing a lot of emphasis on toughness and vitality. I have found it is difficult to get and hold attention with this type of build, and that is what it is prepared for. Also, while your health pool is among the lowest, your natural toughness is the highest (heavy armor). Over-sepcialization tends to breed more weakness than rounding out your edges.
If you’re looking to tank, then Save Yourselves is a good pick, but I wouldn’t give up Hold the Line or Stand Your Ground in a dungeon, barring specific fights. I also advocate the signet heal—the heal strength is good and the passive condition removal is great for breaking fears (longest fear I ever had on me was over 3 minutes, but it broke after 6s—passive condition removal is sweet).
I tend to run with 15 points in Radiance. I can chain-blind large groups of weak foes and, coupled with permeating wrath and searing flames, hold their attention quite well. I leave the single-target tank/kiting to the warrior and focus on the groups. In a situation like this, I can quite often get close to the Might cap on the party, too (thanks to 5 points in virtues).
Just my 2cp
-Fildydarie
Hutchmistress of the Fluffy Bunny Brigade [FBB]
Hutchmistress of the Fluffy Bunny Brigade [FBB]
As Animus stated, the 5 points out of Radiance, and put into Virtues to pick up the trait Inspired Virtue will grant you quite a lot of healing, and support to you and your team. This combined with the elite skill Renewed Focus works wonders!
As for your Major traits, here is a Guildhead link basically matching what Animus is talking about
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mMcczmcMzmGavmmGavm0VxxVmVqcab
On the other hand, you could go for a Meditation build and focus more on +Healing. This will grant you and your group more healing, but less boons. You will die a lot less, and grant your group more sustained support this way. Here is an example build of what I am talking about.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mMcczmcMzmrnvmmrnvm0VxxVzVbcab
Notice the only thing I changed was 2 of your skills on buttons 7 and 8 (keeping skill #9 as “Hold the Line!” for the added Regen, and Protection on a somewhat short cooldown). Also the major skills in the Valor line have changed. This will give you a bit more versitility in dungeons if you need to switch back to a boon support build if the healing you are providing is overkill for yourself.
Let me talk about the Honor line for a moment, and what kind of group heals you will be seeing from this build type:
The Major skills in the Honor line consist of Wirt Exaltation, which basically doubles the size of your Symbols, This is quite important because of all the AoEs that get tossed around from mobs, you need to make sure you and your group have enough room to stay inside your symbols. The next Major trait is Writ of the Merciful. This skill will give your group another heal over time effect which stacks with Regen, and Virtue of Resolve as long as they stay inside your symbol. The last Major trait is Battle Presence which grants the passive healing from Virtue of Resolve to your entire group.
The overall healing is quite significant to you and your group with this build. With 1400 Healing you will be healing your entire group for 700-750 health per second. This assumes you keep the Regeneration boon up about 75% of the time, and your Symbol up 50% of the time, and keep Virtue of Resolve on passive 100% of the time.
You should stay in the front line with this build and use your Meditation skills on cooldown, and pop your virtues everytime you have Renewed Focus ready for you for added boons and instant healing from Virtue of Resolve. The extra healing you receive from the Meditation skills, and the healing you and your group receive from your roll dodge should be enough to keep you alive in melee range against pretty much anything as long as you continue to time your dodges correctly to avoid the really big hits.
Meditations heal you for around 2k each, and your dodge roll heals for about 600.
Lets take an example of 60 seconds of a hard encounter (boss or other):
Healing Amounts:
Symbol: ~150/sec @50% upkeep = 9,000/min
Regeneration: ~300/sec @75% upkeep = 18,000/min
Virtue of Resolve Passive: ~150/sec @100% upkeep = 9,000/min
Meditation #1(Smite Condition): ~125/sec @100% usage = 7,500/min
Meditation #2(Judge’s Intervention): ~53/sec @100% usage = 3,180/min
Dodge Rolling: ~60/sec @1 use/10 seconds (more with the Vigor Boon) = 3,600/min
Signet of Resolve: ~250/sec @100% usage = 15,000/min
So our totals here would be (assuming you kept everything on cooldown and dodged everytime you had enough endurance to do so)
Heals/Sec to you: 1,088
Heals/Min to you: 65,280
Heals/Sec to allies: 660
Heals/Min to allies: 39,600
As you can see you are able to support your group very well through healing as long as they understand they need to stay in your symbols. This is not as hard as people make it out to be if you have a group that is capable of communicating with you .. which may not happen to often if you rely on Pick Up Groups as your only form of dungeon grouping.
I will work on a Boon healing amount list later. It is a bit more complicated as you have to factor in crit chance.
To clarify why I believe the focus outshines the shield for dungeons, I’ll provide a few extra bits of information. The 4 skill on the focus not only causes blind, but bounces to your nearby allies and gives them the regeneration boon. Consequently, this is healing for them, and healing for you through Altruistic Healing. To explain why the 5 skill is a better group utility than anything the shield offers, I need to go into a bit of strategy here.
Although tanking as we knew it in previous MMO’s is gone, it is not altogether removed from GW2. If you are running a mace/focus build, you can actually provide your group with quite a bit of damage soaking to begin a particularly rough encounter.
Aggro mechanics in GW2 are still somewhat of a mystery, but one thing is certain, enemies will definitely attack the first player that engages on them. So, tell your group to hang back a moment as you charge in first (this is assuming you have traited heavily into Honor and Valor) and as you are engaging the group, start channeling Mace ability 2 in order to have your symbol land just as you reach the enemies. Pop focus 5 and your next three incoming attacks are blocked. At this point, your team should engage, and then you throw out focus 4 and you have now blinded and healed up quite a bit of targets.
At this point, whatever you have managed to “hold aggro” on will not be able to take you down with the appropriate level of dodging and healing up/buffing and the rest of your group can clean up the mess as usual. I have found this incredibly effective on packs of enemies as well as on bosses. Obviously, it must be supported by skilled play on your part, as well as your group’s.
Give it a shot and let me know if you still prefer the shield. I would be interested to see the comparison as I haven’t really tried the shield much since AC story mode.
I use a 2H hammer and sword+shield. The 2H hammer’s for putting down symbols of protection, which gives -33% damage +heal with Altruistic Healing. The sword’s for DPS mainly. Though a scepter may be better, I dislike that weapon xD so I use a sword. The shield’s for granting protection and knocking back mobs if we need to retreat or were flanked from an ambush. The shield’s bubble is also useful for absorbing projectiles, which are common and deadly in dungeons. I prefer the shield over the focus because it gives me protection and a knockback skill.
I think the shield’s 5 skill is more useful than the focus’s 5 skill when attacking ranged mobs. If two mob rangers start unloading a series of 5 arrows each, the focus’s block will be diminished quickly while the bubble will absorb all attacks for the first few seconds. Yes, the focus 5 skill is good at blocking melee attacks for tanking, but most of the time you can just get away by kiting the melee attacks.