Guild Wars 2

Hi all, thanks in advance for reading this thread and helping me answer a couple of questions about my planned level 80 Guardian build.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|1.1k.h4|2.1n.h1f|1n.7m.1n.7m.1n.7m.1n.7m.1n.7m.1n.7m|1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.8a.68|0.k00.0.u29c.k29|a.7|w.z.19.16.1j|e

There’s a link to what I am planning on using on gw2buildcraft.com – it is mostly complete. For those who want the quick and dirty version here, it looks like this.

WEAPONS: GS/_ (Hammer/Staff/Other – I like to bring an arsenal with me)
ARMOR: 6x Knight’s with 6x Dolyak runes
ACCESSORIES: All Cleric’s with Cleric jewels
TRAITS: 15 Radiance (VI) / 30 Honor (II,IX,XII) / 25 Virtues ( II / IX)

Key points: ~1k Healing Power, ~30% Critical Chance, +25% Boon Duration and Virtue Recharge

It is intended to be high on toughness and healing power with over 3k armor, along with the Absolute Resolution trait to beef up passive healing and add condition removal. I like changing utilities often, but generally run with a couple of shouts and Purifying Flames or Signet of Judgment for the passive damage reduction. I also would be popping Virtue of Justice as often as possible, where the 15 points in Radiance are to keep it recharging. Damage would be pretty moderate with high Retaliation uptime.

MY SPECIFIC QUESTIONS:

What sigils would you recommend on weapons (non-killstacking variety) ?

Is 1k healing power enough to make a noticeable difference in VoR and healing skill efficiency?

Are the Dolyak runes overkill on toughness and regen and, if so, what would you recommend? Defensive rune categories preferred.

Thank you again for your feedback.

What traits are you going to take in Radiance? Hm, instead of Radiance, why dont you invest some points in Valor, take Retributive armor, and put a Superior Sigil of Accuracy in your weapon for example.

Are the Dolyak runes overkill on toughness and regen and, if so, what would you recommend? Defensive rune categories preferred.

I would go with soldier runes, the regen on Dolyak isn’t very good and with soldier you have condition removal on shouts. Plus soldier cost a lot less, I have recently changed from Dolyak to Soldier I wish I had this advice before I wasted the money.

To me this build seems overkill on survivability. I run an Altruistic Healing build with knights armour and berserker accessories and it kicks the kitten out of all the other builds I have tried.

I play a lot of WvW where you have to be tough and even with all the berserker stats I still find I’m usually the last one standing.

In dungeons where you have 4 other people close by to buff, AH makes you survivable while berserker accessories allows you to contribute dps to the fight.

I have run builds that use all the different trait lines and I think 30pts in Valor with AH is by far the best trait line. Don’t forget as well as the 300 toughness you also get + 30% crit dmg.

On your elite, if you are spending 20pts on Virtues, you may want to try renewed focus as it allows you to pop your virtues and then instantly get the passive effects back.

If you like to use shouts, the soldier runes are indeed quite good and certainly more useful than dolyak. 30 regen/s is not really good – take mango pies and you already get 85 HP/s. Never understood why so many people seem to go for dolyaks.

For the sigils, I’d say that accuracy might be a safe choice since you don’t want kill stacks (though they are pretty good in most cases and the use of both a stacking weapon and a weapon with another sigil is rather nice). That gives you more reliable vigor stacks and if you sometimes use Empowering Might, it helps there, too.

As for the 1000 healing, it will boost the VoR passive by 60.