Guild Wars 2

Hi,

First things first: I’m not claiming originality on this build. Someone out there probably came up with something similar to this before me, so please don’t be all like, ‘You ripped this off of so-and-so and you’re claiming it as your own!’

This is a build in progress, so any notes are welcome.

When replying, please don’t be a butt (i.e. being insulting, condescending, and generally unpleasant and thinking it’s okay because you’re behind a computer screen). You’re a person and I’m a person, and this is just a game (a game that I very much love and am very enthusiastic about like a lot of people – hence the build post – but still just a game at the end of the day, so please…there’s no need for any nastiness).

With that said, let’s get into this build…

This is a build that utilizes both shouts and meditations – in combination with virtues – to give a player decent survivability through stun breaks, blocking, condition cleanses, healing and damage reduction, while also dealing decent damage itself through might-stacking via attacking, blocking, weapon-swapping and Empowering.

The staff on this build, combined with the shouts and virtues, is meant to give decent support to teammates through condition cleanses, healing, and boon application.

This build is designed for WvW zerg runs (this build should be helpful to other players both in and out of combat via swiftness/mobility and good support/damage), and also for PvE (this build should be helpful to fellow players during dungeons and world bosses while dealing decent damage itself via might-stacking).

In short, this build is meant to be both offensive and supportive (to yourself and to allies). Maybe it doesn’t do either as well as if I did just one or the other purely, but this build is meant to find a good medium between the two while still doing both at a decent effective level.

So, as I said, notes are welcome. Please let me know what you think and how I can improve this build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApfnlCxbI8DNRDBl18x+CHPEXfgBEAA-TFSDgAMXShelfzq/kv/QiSwqnUAouGAzfkCIihRA-w

Also, this is an exotic build, as I do not have ascended/legendary gear yet. So if you’re going to post any build examples, please make sure they’re set to exotic stats. Legendary/ascended builds aren’t helpful to me as the stats are not accurate for a player running an exotic build such as myself.

Meditations require a full bar to work. Going in valor and honor for meditations and shouts will make them compete for the traitline, and you’ll miss some effective traits for both. Retaliory subconscious is a really bad trait as well. For WwW zerg fights, you’d be better traiting for MoC ( master of consecrations, virtues traitline) and taking a dual shout/ one consecration spec with AH instead of monk’s focus. The HpS you get with meditations, not including smite condition, is low. Too low to justify a 6 points investment. You already have melandru runes and possibly -40% condi duration food, so CoP is useless in this build. I’d say going hoelbrak runes is better for an empowering might build, as you get both reduced incoming condition duration and might duration. I’d swap 2 or 3 knight pieces for 1 berserker/1 ptv, to gain a bit more power and ferocity. Your crit chance is decent, but could be a bit higher. Same problem with Purity: one condi cleanse every 10 second isn’t a big deal. Take retributive armor instead.

This build won’t work at all in pve. I can see where you were heading, but shouts and meditations requires good traitpoint investment to work, and using both will greatly weaker them. Tl;dr: drop that med for a consecration, get rid of the meditation traits, use hoelbrak runes possibly, get more crit chance via retributive armor, and swap retaliory subconscious for MoC. This build is purely for WwW though, don’t take it into pve, except open world content.

First of all, most people are probably going to tell you that this sort of thing doesn’t work in PvE because good players don’t need support. I don’t play PvE, so I have no experience with this, but, you know, it’s going to happen.

The build is similar to my WvW build, but makes some odd choices. Let’s go over those:

Utility Skills:
I don’t think you’re choosing optimally here. With Pure of Voice (and, as we’ll discuss later Runes of the Trooper) you shouldn’t need Contemplation of Purity. Instead, you should probably want to take “Stand Your Ground!” so you don’t miss out on the stun break. With “Retreat!” and “Save Yourselves!” you’ve taken the Shouts with the highest cooldowns, which sorta lowers the effectiveness of Pure of Voice. I’m not saying you should swap them out, but just think it over. I personally don’t use “Save Yourselves!” when zerging because it hinders me too much (a lot of conditions flying around in zerg-to-zerg combat).

Traits:
Anything with Meditations is weird here, even if you end up keeping Contemplation of Purity. Neither Contemplation or Renewed Focus are skills so good you need to lower their cooldown in this build and their cooldown remains to high to get real value out of Monk’s Focus. Monk’s Focus only really shines because of the short cooldown on Smite Condition. Altruistic Healing will give you more healing for less effort.

You can theoretically keep Meditation Mastery but without Contemplation of Purity, it won’t do that much.

Weapons:
No real comments, but in WvW Sigil of Energy is really, really good especially since you got Selfless Daring for some extra healing.

Armor:
Knight is a respectable choice if you want to mix damage with support, so you can totally keep that. For runes I would totally pick Trooper, even if you don’t end up swapping a utility for a Shout with a lower cooldown (which I strongly advice).

In conclusion:

I see very little reason to take the Meditations. They do very little in this build and what they do can be done better with only small modifications to the build. Otherwise, solid build for WvW.

Pve is all about support coupled with damage. People saying otherwise aren’t experienced enough.

Oxtred, thanks for the notes. Some of them were helpful, especially about the runes and the traits. I do think you’re exaggerating though when you say that this won’t work at all in PvE; I’m sure you meant that it’s not as effective as another build. Can you explain why you don’t think it would be effective enough? Also, can you clarify if you meant PvE in general or specifically dungeons and events? In either case, can you provide specific reasons why you don’t think this build would be good for PvE?

Also, oxtred, do you have any notes on how I can make this effective for a PvE variation then?

The basic thing is that PvE and WvW are completely different gamemodes and both prioritize different things, so instead of trying to create 1 build that is good, or should I say mediocre, at both you should go for making separate builds for both gamemodes

Obal has a good guide among the stickies for a PvE build, don’t be afraid of going full berserker there!

Well yes, everything including naked no traits specs work in pve: what i meant is, it isn’t suited for it. As I said and keep spamming everywhere because it’s important, guardian is a defensive support class, and just like in www, you’re taking care of condi removals, damage mitigation, and healing for your whole party. But in pve, the fights are largely different: you don’t need 4-5 sec of stability on a 30 sec cooldown, having a permanent stability area, wich is also a firefield, and a +20% boon duration bonus, is far better. That’s why shouts aren’t used in pve. Consecrations and virtues offer far more condi cleanse, and they are better suited for pve. A shout spec will have to choose between spamming boons either for the boons in itself, or the heal from AH, or the condi cleanse. A virtue/ consecration guard will use Hallowed ground for the whole duration of the fight and provide condi cleanses via f2, for instance. Since unlike WwW, most if not all the damage is avoidable in pve, the usual meta spec is built around the idea of active defense. Blinds for trash mobs, aegis for bosses, and small duration protection with f3 to burst things down.

The core of the spec and the most used/ most suited for all situations is 4/5/0/0/5. This is an average dps build, with access to instant condi clear on f2/ stability on f3, reduced cooldown and longer consecrations, and blind spam with the radiance traitline. From there, there’s more damaging options like 4/6/2/0/2, but it’s less supportive. Gear is full berserker, and you don’t take personal survivability traits. THat’s the main difference with pvp related specs: you won’t boost your own survivability, because you’re thinking as a group where all the support will come from specific classes. Guardians being the king of defensive support, they can survive easily in all high end contents, but a true guardian will also make his team survive.

I think this explained why shouts isn’t good for pve: It’s just not the suited support for the types of encounters, the traits enhensing shouts are in a non-damaging traitline, unlike virtues ( unscathed contender, power of the virtuous) or blind spam ( vulnerability, a lot of precision, 2×10% multipliers). I see this is becoming a long post, so I’ll stop it there but I’m still up for more details/ explanations if needed.

To OP,

0/0/6/6/2 is a worthy build choice for wvw, so you are on the right track. Empowering might trait can stack quite well with AH, and not monks focus however. Just like a tick of empower on staff. However, I would choose trooper runes if you are shouting and with PoV, and lose retreat for SYG; stability is a crowd pleaser after all, with less CD thanks to SA.

I would consider bringing mace/focus instead of gs, for the additional block/mightstack, and that you don’t have 2h mastery.

I am assuming you wont be fighting without a couple of players in your immediate vicinity here, otherwise your choice of weapons is fine.

Save yourselves and contemplation of purity work well together, and I wouldn’t want to see these disappear from your utilities. most meditations function well enough with just trait I in Valour, perhaps you can fine tune your build in this part. Good Luck!

I’m not saying it can’t work in PvE. Just that other people likely will. I have no experience in PvE (I’ve done 3 dungeons runs and Fractals once since launch). For World Bosses you can bring pretty much whatever as long as you stay alive. It’s like with big enough zergs: it stops matter what each individual brings because it’ll likely be redundant.

I would take a read through of Obal’s PvE guide and Harbringer’s WvW guide. These guides don’t simply tell you what to do, but rather give you insight on to why. I’ve learned a lot myself reading these, and even still refer to them now.

It’s not wise to make an all in one build and run between PvE and WvW with it. Traits and gear are easily swapped. You become too spread out in your vision and lack a real role.

Obal’s PvE Guide
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Harbringer’s WvW guide
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-World-Vs-World-The-Guardian-and-You/first

MM, Monk’s focus is not effective with only one meditation, especially the one with the longest cooldown. Also, SYG is highly recommended. SY/COP is not a bad combo but it’s just too long of a cooldown. If you are to pick medis, I think judge’s intervention is best for the mobility. Also, health is on the low end.

And yes, pve works too differently from wvw to mix builds beyond open world pve so this is wvw.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApcotCxZI8DNBDBlZL2PmZI5XngIEAA-T1SDgAMHQhelf57PAr+zxDAI5CAKBrOQBg6aGOEAAm/kOCAkBYZLA-w