Guild Wars 2

So my guild has been havocing alot lately im wondering what kinda build I should be playing. When I play bunker guard I don’t die easily and I keep boons flowing. This is great for when we run into a zerg or cut off a zergs tail. On the other hand sometimes we run into other havoc groups and then my lack of damage seems apparent and the fight often slowly dwindles down my allies till we are all dead. Basically I find myself not being able to help bomb anything because I hit like a wet noodle. I’ve tried going glass and its the opposite. Great for havoc Vs Havoc but you melt when you get a zerg. So what do all you other guys run? I’ll link my current supporty/tank build for criticism as i’m unsure about it.

-ty in advance

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQJASWlsApVo1CxZI8DNRCRk1M2fhpXHcdA-TVyDABM8AAKS5Hvq/cqSQAOCADY+TXdBKt/AEXCASB41WA-w

Lately I have been trying out a build that would focus on keeping my friends protection and retaliation up constantly instead of purely going with healing. Healing Breeze and Tome of Courage do a wonderful job even with low healing power.

The protection focused rune can be swapped to Grove, Water or Travelers depending if you want to lengthen the uptime of other boons instead of just protection.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAW5el8Apeo1CxVI0ENRCRldR8fBIWfw1BwEcAA-TlSDABPcEA8Rp31TfySZgL7P0o6PAcBAUQJoEPEg40NQKAv2CA-w

Vikkela.7261:

Lately I have been trying out a build that would focus on keeping my friends protection and retaliation up constantly instead of purely going with healing. Healing Breeze and Tome of Courage do a wonderful job even with low healing power.

The protection focused rune can be swapped to Grove, Water or Travelers depending if you want to lengthen the uptime of other boons instead of just protection.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAW5el8Apeo1CxVI0ENRCRldR8fBIWfw1BwEcAA-TlSDABPcEA8Rp31TfySZgL7P0o6PAcBAUQJoEPEg40NQKAv2CA-w

Looking at your build and you opt for solider’s gear which is typically good but after looking at your build, how do you deal with condi’s ? You purge 3 condi’s on VoR but thats all I really c. Also how do you use shelter in a havoc group scenario? More curious about this one

I think it depends a lot on your Guardians role within the group and what you wish to accomplish as a group. We generally run 2 Guards but they are slightly different in their roles/builds, 1 is the driver who pushes hard and is always at the front of the group. The other(me) is more support/healing based, more how you have set up your guard with nomads.

Both have some measure of healing power, i think our driver sits at about 800, whereas with stacks im about 1300. Both are shout builds with PoV for condi control and run the same 3 shouts, SYG, HTL, SY. Same traits(0-0-2-6-6) and same weapons(hammer, staff). Staff because its the ultimate support and hammer for blasts, although for a duo id most likely switch to scepter/shield support rather than hammer. I run healing breeze whereas our driver runs more survivability with shelter, given that he is usually at the point pushing it makes sense.

We differ in runes and stats, he runs trooper so 2 condis every shout whereas i run monks for more healing output, i am still picking up the 1 condi every shout due to PoV, both of us run AR for the 3 condis cleared from everyone in 1200 rng on F2. He runs more Soldiers/Clerics(toughness, Power, Healing Power) whereas im more Nomads/Clerics/Magi(healing Power, Toughness, Precision). He runs DPS food i run boon duration.

In a havoc fight the bomb and counter bomb seem to be pretty dominant thus the AR and SY that both guards run. SY can help with the inital spike as it generally comes on the end of a shatter mesmer iLeap, or some kind of immob, to prevent dodge roles. 2 Guards give us some serious uptime on stability both with SYG and IC(F3). My SYG stab with 75% boon duration is 8.75seconds another 5.25seconds from IC trait, so its key they land that immob as stuns/pulls etc will most likely b ineffective. Also gives us good sustain with all the boons/condi clear/healing and hammer blasts on smoke/water fields.

I find the tomes far too slow for that sort of fast paced havoc bomb/counter bomb, but in large scrims the heal can be useful. The fact i can fire off my VoR for a 2700 heal with a 1200rad + 3 condis reset it with RF and fire it off again for my group is solid.

Personally id ditch AH and RA for PoV and IC. Check my sigs 1st vimeo link for some fraps of our guards in action getting zerged.

Animosity.5968:

Looking at your build and you opt for solider’s gear which is typically good but after looking at your build, how do you deal with condi’s ? You purge 3 condi’s on VoR but thats all I really c. Also how do you use shelter in a havoc group scenario? More curious about this one

I always keep SYG and Hold the Line and swap the third utility between Purging Flames, Sanctuary (it is really nice now to get allies up from downed state since it basically removes all stability stacks from enemies) and WoR just before the fight depending on what enemy is coming up against us. Checking classes and foods easily tells you if there’s gonna be a lot of crits or conditions.
I use Shelter only when I play alone (and haven’t bothered to swap to a more solo-orientated build)

Chorazin.4107:

I think it depends a lot on your Guardians role within the group and what you wish to accomplish as a group. We generally run 2 Guards but they are slightly different in their roles/builds, 1 is the driver who pushes hard and is always at the front of the group. The other(me) is more support/healing based, more how you have set up your guard with nomads.

Both have some measure of healing power, i think our driver sits at about 800, whereas with stacks im about 1300. Both are shout builds with PoV for condi control and run the same 3 shouts, SYG, HTL, SY. Same traits(0-0-2-6-6) and same weapons(hammer, staff). Staff because its the ultimate support and hammer for blasts, although for a duo id most likely switch to scepter/shield support rather than hammer. I run healing breeze whereas our driver runs more survivability with shelter, given that he is usually at the point pushing it makes sense.

We differ in runes and stats, he runs trooper so 2 condis every shout whereas i run monks for more healing output, i am still picking up the 1 condi every shout due to PoV, both of us run AR for the 3 condis cleared from everyone in 1200 rng on F2. He runs more Soldiers/Clerics(toughness, Power, Healing Power) whereas im more Nomads/Clerics/Magi(healing Power, Toughness, Precision). He runs DPS food i run boon duration.

In a havoc fight the bomb and counter bomb seem to be pretty dominant thus the AR and SY that both guards run. SY can help with the inital spike as it generally comes on the end of a shatter mesmer iLeap, or some kind of immob, to prevent dodge roles. 2 Guards give us some serious uptime on stability both with SYG and IC(F3). My SYG stab with 75% boon duration is 8.75seconds another 5.25seconds from IC trait, so its key they land that immob as stuns/pulls etc will most likely b ineffective. Also gives us good sustain with all the boons/condi clear/healing and hammer blasts on smoke/water fields.

I find the tomes far too slow for that sort of fast paced havoc bomb/counter bomb, but in large scrims the heal can be useful. The fact i can fire off my VoR for a 2700 heal with a 1200rad + 3 condis reset it with RF and fire it off again for my group is solid.

Personally id ditch AH and RA for PoV and IC. Check my sigs 1st vimeo link for some fraps of our guards in action getting zerged.

Nice videos! They are actually amazing feats. So I changed my build up a bit. After rolling with my group last night I found that my dps was too low with nomad’s armor and AH just kept me alive long after my team was dead. So i swapped some stuff around. New build is currently
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWl8ApVo1CxfH8DNRCRldR8fBI2fQIkCXFAA-TFTDwAOeAAHVC5TZCM1fiq0IgZqCmQYu/AgjAgClgSuEAp0FQKAv2CA-w

I’m liking it a bit more. I sacrificed a bit of healing power and toughness for raw power but it seems to work better for us. Im kinda interested in Mace/Shield over hammer too but im unsure on how good that is. The heals it gives when water fields are on CD is nice and you can bubble downed so rangers can’t shoot your mates off the rezz. Plus the extra prot boon would be nice. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Long time player, first time poster.

It would help your build if you drop Healing Breeze, the scale off of healing is pitiful to say the least. The support that it gives your party is pretty minimal. Shelter would serve you better, to help keep you up (helping your party stay up).

Something that I see a lot of Guardians do when they try to increase their DPS they just focus on Power, which is okay, but you’ll notice you get a lot more return if you up your Crit Chance.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApVo1CxZI8DNRCRk1M2fhpXHcdA-TVCEABQcEAKe/BMV/pLlgMpkSLlLtpLAgHAwDXCgAAHA/+bA48zP/8zPvf/93f/93SBwkyI-w

This isn’t the build you’re running, this is commonly what I use. The point is, notice the high critical chance and high critical damage. These make a huge difference at being able to burst your opponent down quickly. The difference between the crit damage you have now and the crit damage on the above build, is the difference between a 5k crit and a 9k crit.

Even if you don’t increase your critical chance the superior sigil of water on your hammer is not optimal, it has very minimal healing. A sigil of intelligence would help your cause. I would also drop the superior sigil of life and replace it with a superior sigil of bloodlust or hydromancy.

I’m sure you’ve noticed you’re easily kited and your engagement time comes into being about three hits, especially with hammer. A sigil of intelligence would make those 3 hits count and compliment well, seeing as you have no crit chance. And keep in mind you have strength in numbers running so you just need 2850 armor to get that 3k mark.

Healing breeze is good, 5 pulses @ 1510 healing per pulse at about 1000 healing power to group members in a cone, say u miss a pulse or 2 that is still 4500+ health to someone, maybe multiple people.

It’s rare as the support/bunker Guard you are targeted for DPS/spike unless you are pushing into a large group. This is why our driver runs Shelter, but i run HB just fine. It’s the same problem with altruistic healing, sure you can heal yourself but usually its your group that needs the healing not you.

It ends up in the scenario animosity described where they just kill all your DPS around you until you are the last 1 left. So you can either go medi burst guard, or pile on as much group support as possible to make sure your DPS keeps ticking.

I agree with sigil of water, if you want healing go renewal over it or switch it out altogether.

So you’re telling me that you want to add 500 healing power just to get less than 100 hp to a heal. If you give up your offensive stats into defensive stat that gives very diminishing returns, what’s the point? You can just as easily increase your damage without losing survivability for yourself or your party. This allows you to apply pressure and actually get downs. In a small man group this is pivitol. In a 5-man party you don’t need a character who is a dead weight bunker spec. At least not in WvW. Bunker = last one to die. I realize a lot of people run bunkers and this is not attempting to offend anyone and I’m sure individuals have had moderate success with these builds but in a small man group the best defense is a good offense.

skills that scale from healing power for guardian:

selfless daring
absolute resolution (not even that well)

If you want a heal for your party blast a water field. Our hammer is also a very spammable blast finisher. This will give your party way more sustain than the pitiful healing you can do attempting to be a “bunker nomad heal spec guardian”.

If I might interject on this one Cough

So I have to agree with my man Kag on this one to a certain extent… The heal scaling on guardian is pretty god awful. If you want to increase your DPS Kag’s method is definitely the way to go! Guard power scaling isn’t that great either, you will see a much bigger increase by going crit chance and Ferocity to a certain point.

As far as Healing Breeze goes. I have to disagree, HB is a phenomenal under rated group heal. There have been countless occasions in my roaming team, where a well placed HB can help win a fight. Literally use it on the person that is being focused combined with boons such as Prot and Stab it makes it very difficult to bring down the target. I’d recommend checking out some of my video’s on youtube for support guard play in WvW.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ17QbAvHRWSxPUgcz-FpoA

In my experience (and I have a lot of it) I would say that the only time you want to stack healing power on a guard is if you are going to say kitten all offense and go full on support. Meaning base Power, base Precision and base Ferocity, because at this point the stats are so low you might as well not bother wasting points in it to see no return. If your OK with hitting for about 100 damage but being able to support and sustain your group then its the way to go. If your not ok with that then Kag’s method is the right choice IMO.

kagak.4230:

Long time player, first time poster.

It would help your build if you drop Healing Breeze, the scale off of healing is pitiful to say the least. The support that it gives your party is pretty minimal. Shelter would serve you better, to help keep you up (helping your party stay up).

I must say that build of yours is looking fantastic, I have been trying out exuberance runes on my other guard and they do wonders – he is one of the guards just going for power and ignoring precision except for intelligence sigils with a normal 0/0/6/4/4 – build (starts grinding money for another set of exuberance runes), and I agree with you on the part that healing breeze does not scale well with healing power, which is a fact, but healing breeze is one of the most underrated skills in the game, and since (i assume) we are talking about a support guardian role instead of a DPS-one, I don’t to understand why a supportive heal skill that heals your friends for ~6500 untraited (?) is bad choice? I LOVE SHELTER, I USE IT 99% of the time, but since you would be running a supportbuild where you would anyways be the guy non-focused/dying last, why concentrate on yourself when even a 1k heal can give your friend enough time to get a skill off-cooldown (with healing breeze in theory if all 4 allies would be targeted we are talking about untraited 1,3k heal/pulse which could end up with 26k health restored on a 40 sec cooldown – yes you sacrifice your own survivability so allies stay longer alive), while shelter only focuses on yourself, one would already be running Altruistic Healing for that

srry if this is badly written

this is my build for wvw, it suits me well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASRlsApbolDxaI8DRRDRljNYHBZQXe9BkABAA-TFDBwAfOEAYeAAbVi0VJRfdBYVOJRJIgjAAO1fYcBASYCC5+DBAOA+93893AIFggKjA-w

full power is 2600 with all buffs and ~22k hp while having 46% crit and 200% crit dmg.

@Vikkela.7261

I’m not saying healing breeze is a bad skill. What I’m saying (and I should have been more specific) is that as a guardian in a small man havok squad I find things work better for you and your party if you’re aggressive. You have alt. healing, you have the surviviability, and you want them to focus you. This build is for a havok squad and as I stated you shouldn’t be running a bunker build healing guardian in a small man havok squad. You have more than enough ways to sustain your party with selfless daring, your orb on staff and empower. Between these, timing your shouts, timing protection, and timing block- healing breeze is not needed. Loosing the utility that shelter gives (might on block) turns this defensive skill into an offensive skill, allowing you to push in to the middle of a group (where you probably shouldn’t be), remain alive, and being able to fire back and apply pressure with the might they just gave you off of your defensive skill. Key role of the guardian on a havok squad is realizing what defensive utilities you have that can be offensive and vice-versa annnnnd above all else if you want to heal- blast a waterfield.

@Ragnarox.9601

Looks fun bud you may want to try a sigil of fire on that GS rater then the rage 30sek CD kills that sigil. And where your food is good you may find mango pie as a cheap alternative for helping your up time just to save some gold that or for more dps and up time Omnomberry Ghost 66% chance to heal on crit be good food to.

I think a delineation needs to be made between say a 5v5 scenario and a havoc squad, usually [lion] are staring down big numbers due to our playtime. In a 5v5 its all about burst/counter burst, this changes dramatically when u are looking at 5v15-20 which is what happens a lot for us. Thus we have tailored our comp/builds for these sort of scenarios.

I agree that in a 5v5 you could drop your healing power/bunker for offense, i think our driver runs about 800 healing power with more offense and shelter(hes the 1 pushing generally so gets the focus). I would scale it back to around the same, drop my toughness down and boost my precision/ferocity. Or i would just switch it to Medi burst and leave the minor group support to him.

Counterpoint to this any sort of burst build that relies on mobility/evasion like a shatter mesmer or DPS thief in open field is just going to melt a lot of the time for what we do like a lord room defense/standing our ground vs large numbers. Their main strengths, evasion and mobility, which is what keeps them alive, is gone, and they have to stand in AoE, arrow carts, etc. Sustain really comes to the fore in this sort of scenario which is why i run bunker/support and this is more what our group does.

It’s also why our group runs so much condi clear on 2 Guards, you are probably never going to need that much in a 5v5 but for large numbers your group is constantly getting condis piled on them. We have PoV on both guards with 3 shouts each, 2 SY’s, 1 Guard with trooper runes, 2 AR’s for the 3 condis on VoR, it’s also why we pile on so much stability. In open field 5v5 having a little stab is nice but you dont need 2 guards both with IC for stab on VoC and SYG’s. Im running 75% boon duration so im looking at 8 stacks of stab over 15.75 seconds for my group. Throw down the other guards stab and we have some decent stab uptime.