Guild Wars 2

Link to the Build: [Or one Variant]

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAW5elcgiCnFyKEf4ES2jVKBRQsHYEB2RXFSIA-j0CBoNCyUDQE1A0HwJRFRjtMMIVXht8KaqGY6UER1OFER1A-w

Most of the information on what to invest in can be found in the link but I’ll provide a written description as well.

Gear: Armor and Trinkets should all be givers, Cleric’s would be a second best option.
Runes: 2 Runes of Water The Traveler, and the Monk.
[If Traveler’s Runes are too expensive for you, 4 runes of Altruism and 2 of Water is my secondary recommendation]

Weapons [All Clerics]: Staff, Mace/Shield . Put a Sigil of renewal in your Staff and a Sigil of Life / Energy in your main-hand and offhand, respectively. I’ll talk about this later but you can also switch a shield out for a focus if you want to prioritize regeneration / condition removal over protection.

Traits:

There are a few different variations to this build, so let’s start with what doesn’t change.

You want 30 in Virtues and 30 in Honor, and either 10 in Valor or 5 in Valor and 5 in Radiance. So in other words, 0/10/0/30/30 or 0/5/5/30/30

In Virtues: II, X, IX, in Honor: II, [I,V,VI] XI And if you’re 10 in Valor: IV

Slot Skills: Healing Breeze, Retreat, Stand your Ground, Hold the Line, and Renewed Focus

How it Works: This build has three main components. Boons, Condition Removal, and Direct Healing. I call this build a ‘Dedicated’ Support build because it excels beautifully in supplying all 3. When you’re finished, you’ll find you’re equipped with a Guardian that can make their entire party virtually unkillable. [In Dungeon’s at least] And in roaming WvW, enemy players will have difficulty killing anyone on your team unless they outnumber you considerably.

Boons: If you’re using the Gear and Traits I assigned, you’ll notice that your character has 91% Boon Duration That’s without the addition of food. [I’m not sure if there’s some limit over 100%] Normally an optimization of this kind would be wasteful, but you’ll also notice as you play this build that virtually all of your skills involve granting boons to allies [in addition to other effects]

I’ll list each boon you’re granting and how long you’ll expect to be granting it. Also note that all boons granted via virtues can effectively be granted twice every minute and a half due to renewed focus. This build does not rely upon the passive benefits of any of the Virtues.

Protection: Hold the Line [7.75s] Virtue of Courage (with inspired Virtue) [9.5s] Shield of Protection [9.5s] Protector’s Strike [5.75] = 32.5s Total

Regeneration: Hold the Line [11.5s] Virtue of Resolve [9.5s] Symbol of Faith [1.75*5] = 21 -> 29.5s total [The upper limit is somewhat theoretical as the symbol of faith is basically melee range. Though you could Activate virtue of resolve twice in a row.

Might: Virtue of Justice [3 stacks for 9.5s] Empower [12 Stacks for 19s] Note that this renders getting reduced CD on 2h skills is irrelevant, the duration of Might is nearly as long as the cooldown.

Swiftness: Retreat [38.5s] Symbol of Swiftness [15.25s] Total 53.75

Stability: Stand your Ground [7.75s] Virtue of Courage [5.75s] Total 13.5s

Aegis: Once for Retreat, and Twice from Virtue of Courage if you use Renewed Focus.

Retaliation [Allied Only]: Stand your Ground [10.75s]
Note that if you are using Wrathful Spite [one of the 3 I recommended for the Master Major trait in Honor] Each time Aegis breaks on yourself or an Ally, they’ll gain Retaliation for a bit more than 6 seconds.

Retaliation on yourself includes everything above plus every time you activate a virtue, you will personally gain Retaliation for a bit more than 6 seconds.

Notice with the Vengeful trait our retaliation our duration is actually at 116%,

So in other words. We have the power to grant nearly permanent protection, regeneration, swiftness [when needed], near permanent retaliation [ definitely permanent for ourselves], 15 stacks of might, as well as a fair duration of stability. Superior Aria and 30 points in Virtue mean that all of the skills that grant these boons recharge as quickly as possible.

Also note that Shouts, Virtues, and Weapon skills can be used simultaneously, meaning there needn’t be any downtime between activating your boons. [I’ll discuss tactics below but I seldom recommend activating every skill at once.]

Finally, if you went 10 points into Valor, strength in numbers gives an extra 140 toughness to allies, which you can think of as an addition to the protection boon.

Note that you also gain 9s of Vigor when you critical hit, but since your Crit chance is crap, I don’t view it as something integral to this build.

The only boons your class can’t give on a regular basis is Fury and Vigor. I would leave that do your Warriors and Ele’s

Continued…

Healing:

GW2 isn’t supposed to have a healer class, but if such a thing does exist, it’s probably something resembling this build. One thing you’ll notice with this build is that you’re literally teeming with burst heals, some of which are quite considerable. This section lists only the burst heal abilities your class can dish out to yourself and allies. Notice that with the superior Sigil of life and Giver’s Gear, you should be able to max out at 1300 Healing. Each of the below Burst heals assumes you’re at that max healing potential.

3076 – Healing Breeze [7876 on yourself]
2850 – Empower
2638 – Virtue of Resolve
1570 – Shield of Absorption [Detonate the Shield]
874 – Selfless Daring [Heal on Every Dodge]
578 – Faithful Strike [Mace auto Atk]
1598 Orb of Light [With Detonation]
541 – Orb of Light [Without Detonation]
500 – Superior Sigil of Renewal
982 – Whenever Aegis Breaks if you’re using pure of heart instead of Wrathful Spirit

Adding these up is a bit pointless since Burst healing is situational and you would never be able to activate all of them simultaneously. But, for example, you could simultaneously activate healing breeze and virtue of resolve, Healing everyone in front of you for roughly 5700.

I’ll discuss this more in the section on tactics, but You Normally can’t heal people out of damage in GW2, but it becomes close to possible when you combine healing with the defensive boons AND condition removal.

Lastly, Condition Removal

Your two grandmaster traits in Virtues and Honor cause your shouts to convert boons into conditions [the only thing better than removing conditions is turning them into boons] and to turn virtue of resolve into a triple condition removal ability. This is useful since your healing ability doesn’t doesn’t cure conditions. [I suppose if you use Anti-toxin instead of healing breeze you can] Using a focus or a torch instead of a shield will add an additional condition removal skill.

Also don’t forget that even with the shield, and also with your mace and staff, you can create light combo fields, allowing allies to cure their own conditions.

Overview

The general idea of this build is that a single guardian is capable of exceling at boon stacking, condition removal, all simultaneously in such a way that these abilities compliment one another. Having used this class to run through several dungeons, I’ve observed that it will vastly increase the survivability of other classes. If you’re focused entirely on keeping allies alive, it means your allies can focus entirely on offense. [Or nearly entirely]

The main weakness of this build is that it has virtually no damage output, but that’s what you would expect given how superb it is at keeping allies alive. I have sometimes found that enemies will deal as much damage to themselves via retaliation as I can deal to them. At level 80 you will probably never see damage numbers above 500. The main way by which you add to the damage of the team is by might stacking and keeping the glass cannons alive, also by stacking burning on foes and retaliation on yourself and allies.

So Support is great, and damage Sucks, how about Defense? You probably already know the answer.

As a guardian you have to suffer with 14000 HP, but that’s 14000 Health, fortified with 3200+150 base Toughness [+150 from Strength in Numbers], as well as persistent protection, Regen, countless burst heals, Three layers of Aegis, and possibly Blind [if you went 5 into Radiance] And again to top if all off, you’ve got retaliation. I’ve had a few instances in WvW where people killed themselves trying to kill me.

Continued…

Tactics

Each paragraph is basically a separate ‘Tip’ for using the class effectively

Try to position yourself where your boons can reach all of your allies. That means in the center if your party is spread apart and one step behind if your party is stacking. Since you’re very tanky, there’s no problem getting close to the fighting.

At the Start of each fight, Activate Empower and virtue of Justice simultaneously, 2 seconds or so before the enemy makes contact with your party. Also activate Virtue of Courage so that all opening attacks are blocked. If you don’t need to ration your condition removals, you can also activate “Hold the line” to grant protection and regen. Then switch to your Mace/Shield and activate shield of judgement. When using shield of judgement, try to align it so that allies and enemies are both hit. If you do that correctly, you’ve just given 15 stacks of might, Aegis, Protection, Regen, and a short bit of Stability.

For General combat, Use the Mace auto attack, especially against bosses, so that you get the auto-attack heal. Staff can hit multiple enemies but you also want to be killing foes with the mace in order to get the 250 Healing Boost from your Sigil. If you’re smart in your playstyle you shouldn’t be getting downed.

It might seem more sensible to have put the life Sigil on the Staff since it can hit more enemies, but that means you would have two on weapon swap Sigils for your mace and offhand. Your Sigil of Energy should, in theory, allow you more dodge rolls, increasing survivability and allowing for more healing.

When your enemy relies primarily on direct damage, use the shield to stack protection combined with Aegis if necessary. If you’re confident that you won’t need it to cure conditions later in a fight, use virtue of resolve as a powerful group heal [if health drops below a given threshold]. You can also combine this with a detonated orb of light [Double tap 2], healing breeze, and/or a dodge roll or two. Remember that switching from Staff to your mace gives you back endurance, so you may wish to dodge once with the staff before switching to a mace.

When your enemy relies primarily on conditions, it may be a better idea to use a Focus or a Torch. However, as I said, the Shield can also create a light combo field which can either be used to cure conditions or can be detonated to grant more healing. I prefer to use the shield. Do NOT spam Shouts or virtue of resolve when you may need it to cure conditions later on. If you desperately need more team condition removal, replace Retreat with save yourself. But 95% of the time I use retreat, since Aegis and the effects of it being brought down are so useful and synergize well. Also, granting tons of boons to yourself isn’t the purpose of this build. — This is ALSO why we don’t get altruistic healing. There’s nothing Altruistic about sacrificing your support abilities just to give yourself more Healing. [And as I’ve shown, this build has tons of ways to keep you alive already] If your stacking with your party, use your light combo fields to cure additional conditions.

I said you could use for your master trait, either pure of Heart, Resolute Healer, or Wrathful Spirit. Resolute healer’s effect only lasts for 1 second, so is the least useful. I recommend Wrathful Spirit over Resolute healer most of the time since you’re very often granting Aegis to people at full or near full health, making the 900-something burst heal also rather useless. However it’s just as possible in certain PVE situations to lose Aegis and have an NPC attack you only after Retaliation is gone. [Although that would be 6 seconds] On this issue my recommendation to you is to experiment and see if you notice a difference.

If you go 5/5 in Radiance/Valor instead of 10 in Valor, you’ll lose the 150 Toughness, but you’re virtue of justice will cause Blind, which in some respects is almost equivalent to Aegis. However, the blind only lasts for 3 seconds. So whether or not it actually gets used is a function of how quickly your enemy attacks and how well you can time virtue of justice. The problem with ‘timing’ virtue of justice is that my strategy calls for using it as a means of granting burning and might to allies. Think the costs and benefits over and experiment.

Though not specific to this build, When fighting mobs, you can use the Shield of absorption as a form of crowd control. Your staffs line of warding can be used similarly when running from enemies down a chokepoint. [Say, COF or CM dungeons]

Renewed focus can be used both to double down on whatever boons your virtues grant, but also as a quasi ‘block’ skill, since it makes you temporarily invulnerable.

Finally, there’s no real set rotation to the build. Your role is to use abilities as circumstances demand.

This is VERY similar to the build I made recently But mine is more of a hybrid.

Blessed Guardian Build
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQNAW5elYgKC33RMEm4ES2DRKBRQsHYE8tRXFoIA-jQDB4NERzEDwEEQ0HCZZPCZJQSslhht6KalXBRvATdiIq2fAzpgIqWEAzYA-e

Useless in WvW and very little value compared to other support builds. Any stat is better than healing power, it has too little value at the moment to be worth it.

It is sad but true, i have a cleric stuff too … but it will remain in my bank till anet give some value to healing power.

Healing power is only good in PVE, in PVP and WvW you will suffer from conditions and poison will rip your healing to pieces and since you have kitten damage you will die in the end, otherwise the blessed build is better than yours, it has more vitality.

Healing Power is excellent in WvW. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

The problem with the OP’s build is that you can get 91% boon duration without gimping yourself. Just because you’re “dedicated support” doesn’t mean you have to deal zero damage. I rarely outright say a build is bad, but this is a really bad build. There’s dealing reduced damage due to gear choice, and then there’s dealing zero damage due to gear choice. Zero damage is truly unacceptable, in any content. PvE, WvW, sPvP, everything.

Even with food you only have 1300~ power. It’s tragic. Meanwhile, you can do something like this and have almost the same healing power, lower Toughness, but deal three times as much damage – and still have 95% boon duration, which I think we both agree is essentially the heart of the build. That’s with traits intact.

So eh.

In other news, I love your username, Snackbar.

Yeah, people who underestimate +healing builds in WvW sometimes just need a little reality check:

check one

check two

check three

[EDIT] I also agree w/ foofad.

Boon duration is indeed capped at 100% (which makes the II trait in virtues really, really sad).

Healing power builds are great but I agree with Foofad, no need to take giver equips.

People don’t underestimate healing power, other stats just have more value in wvw. Don’t get this wrong, many players would love to play full healing power in wvw (including me) but with the current wvw zerg meta, poor healing power scaling (except dodge heal) and static symbol gameplay we almost all ended to the conclusion that other stats have more value in wvw and that just a few healing power is enough.

With time you might end to this conclusion as well.

Anyway if you enjoy this build don’t bother and enjoy your guardian !

Not all WvW is Zerg vs Zerg.

username.4932:

With time you might end to this conclusion as well.

Amins.3710:

Not all WvW is Zerg vs Zerg.

username.4932:

With time you might end to this conclusion as well.

Without being an expert on big zerg fights, hard to imagine there isn’t a place for healing guardians there either.

There isn’t, a heal combo fest is always more efficient than a dedicated healer.

if you were to run that in dungeons I would kick you without a second thought, for dungeons that is just about the worst build I have ever seen in my entire life

username.4932:

There isn’t, a heal combo fest is always more efficient than a dedicated healer.

A thousand healing power nearly doubles the heal combos. They are affected by healing power.