Feeling weak, as a spirit bunker
This is half a spirit build as you only use one spirit weapon. Thats what i find.
Most roaming classes are thiefs or rangers (but could be others too). So you want to be sure to build a bit for them. Thief has the stealth with the backstab for example. If you time it right you could use Renewed focus to negate the burst from thief. Another trick could be to use a focus instead of shield and pop skill 5 when the burst arrives. Just negate as much as possible. When out of negation: use retaliaton. When he is out of initiative: punish him!
Rangers. If you are dealing with ranged rangers the spirit shield could work very well. But you need to get close to them if you really want to hurt them. Find some kind of leap or heavy CC. Change your scepter for sword so you can jump on them with a blind. And the 3th skill will do damage and avert arrows. Watch out for there pets wich could have some CC on them. Use your SYG with care.
The sigil on your shield isen’t the best at this point if you aren’t getting many kills. Also as a bunker you don’t gonna be killing that much i think. So you’re better of with some lifestealing or something.
Then again, this is my opinion and any one else could tell you something different. If you can record your gamingsessions and take a look at why you died or what that other profession did to kill you, you can learn a lot!
edit: One extra note: you could invest in more thougness or power/precision or even vitality with your amulets/upgrades. Healing power isen’t the best scaling stat and you
will seldom outheal a profession that is trying to nuke you.
(edited by Jorund.6745)
I think you should drop pure of voice and 2 handed mastery and instead go down and get altruistic healing and maybe extra toughness Traits or glacial hammer if you are using the hammer. You already transform a condition into a boon with your gear. Your amulet will make more sense with altruistic healing since you have a lot of boons you can put up.
If conditions are an issue I like to throw sigil of purity on both of my weapons sets and that seems to help a lot. Changing your heal skill will also give you an extra condition removal every 10 seconds.
Big fan of the spirit shield.
This is exactly like the spirit bunker build that Silven posted on his guide. I have been using it now for the last week or so and I’ve come to really enjoy the ranged protection that the spirit shield provides, especially on Khylo at the mid-point. My teammates have also learned to abuse the spirit shield when fighting any class that uses projectiles.
The single biggest thing that helped me was learning to dodge a lot and swap weapons to dodge more when your endurance is low. When I learned to dodge often and appropriately, it drastically increased my survivablity. Between dodges use shelter/renewed focus.
Also, if fighting condition builds, use your shouts/Virtue of Resolve to clear conditions appropriately.
You are able to hold your own much longer than anyone else on your team but you will still need to rely on your roamers to come back relieve the pressure on you.
One thing I learned when playing bunker Guardian is that there will still be certain players that can still 1v1 you, and that you’re not completely invincible. Dodging often, and using your condi removal in a smart manner will get you far. Also don’t panic and blow your CDs at once.
Most roaming classes are thiefs or rangers (but could be others too). So you want to be sure to build a bit for them. Thief has the stealth with the backstab for example. If you time it right you could use Renewed focus to negate the burst from thief. Another trick could be to use a focus instead of shield and pop skill 5 when the burst arrives. Just negate as much as possible. When out of negation: use retaliaton. When he is out of initiative: punish him!
Actually there’s a pretty huge problem with negating their burst with renewed focus; unless they’re the instagib mug C&D BS burst type (which has been heavily nerfed, btw), they can re-burst every few seconds, whereas renewed focus has a pretty huge recharge. the best way to deal with backstab is to just spam your autoattack while moving around and/or whirling wrath while he’s in stealth. He only has 3-4 seconds to backstab you so you may as well punish him for it. He may backstab you for 3-6k depending on what side he backstabs you from (moving around more makes it more likely for him to miss a back backstab, do not under ANY circumstances run in a straight line unless you’re close enough to a keep or tower to escape), but you can return a couple 2k autoattacks and punish him with revealed.
If you’re facing S/D, just exchange autoattacks with him till he’s losing and switches to D/P. At that point, you can safely use boon utilities.
Rangers. If you are dealing with ranged rangers the spirit shield could work very well. But you need to get close to them if you really want to hurt them. Find some kind of leap or heavy CC. Change your scepter for sword so you can jump on them with a blind. And the 3th skill will do damage and avert arrows. Watch out for there pets wich could have some CC on them. Use your SYG with care.
spirit shield has 25% uptime on neutralizing projectiles ONLY. Once it’s gone, you have one utility slot on a 60 second cooldown. A bigger problem is, most rangers have the majority of their damage come not from arrows but in the case of BM rangers their pets, and in the case of trap rangers their traps.
Honestly, the biggest counter to their arrows is simply retaliation. It’s very possible to do more damage to a ranger through retal than he does to you through crossfire or sword auto.
The sigil on your shield isen’t the best at this point if you aren’t getting many kills. Also as a bunker you don’t gonna be killing that much i think. So you’re better of with some lifestealing or something.
Sigil of lifestealing sucks without respectable crit rate.
edit: One extra note: you could invest in more thougness or power/precision or even vitality with your amulets/upgrades. Healing power isen’t the best scaling stat and you
will seldom outheal a profession that is trying to nuke you.
That’s what i thought at first, but healing power is actually very useful. You can sacrifice some toughness if you have enough uptime on protection, and you WILL want to build for damage if you are roaming. There’s no other choice. 30 points in valor will give you 300 toughness and 30 critical damage, I strongly suggest you put 30 points in that line.
While I believe there are other viable ways to build a bunker, I really feel like the spirit shield is far from useless. It has been a difference maker in many fights where ranged attackers are forced into melee range if they are trying to take the point. In a number of fights, the ranged attacks from rangers, engineers, thieves, warriors and those pesky phantasm mesmers are completely nullified with my shield while I am dodging the melee fight on the point. If you take the 20% CD trait with the +50% duration trait, the shield provides a near constant protection from projectiles for 30s.