Guild Wars 2

I usually roam abit on my own and with a friend in WvW alot, and I’ve constnatly found this probably that when we run into a group of 2 equal people we just seem to get destroyed, I cant do enough damage to kill someone, while I also cant do enough healing to keep us alive.

I’ve gone through quite a few builds, weapon sets, and armor sets trying to find something that works but I just am not able to do so. Was hoping for some advice from other guardians, I just cant seem to find the right mix that works.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

post your setup here; so the community can improve it. also post the professions you run with as well as their specs; so we’ll see if we can make suggestions.

You cant healing too much here. Your protection and help to allies comes from boons. Healway is great for that by long duration boons (search it in this forum) Apply CC too with Hammer and Staff. Is very annoying.

Sometimes i use in both healway and AH builds a Staff/mace-focus build, with trait to healing with symbols, that give a lot of perma regeneration to allies (double symbol traited to healing + regen + staff4&2) but you havent mobility, is a very stationary fight. Depend a lot what you need.

Timing your blocks and blinds, thats help a lot, if you run a GS/sword-focus roaming weapons, with retreat and 5 points in radiance trait you have 3 blinds (one is aoe) and 2 aegis (f3 and retreat) + focus 5 block for you. If you timing your blocks and blinds you can mitigate a LOT of damage because you negate all of it.

Another way i use with GS/sword-focus with my build (AH with nice damage&critic and healing power) is doing pressure with sigils of hydromancy, i run dual hydromancy sigil so i jump to enemies (sword2) change the weapons to apply 3sec chill and stick to him, them GS2 & GS5, G4 for retilation combo, jump again (GS3) and change weapon when swap if possible for another 3sec chill, this is very annoying to keep pressure in glasscannon enemies.

Use your pull (GS5) wisely, dont spam it, sometimes you need chain them and keep it for the best moment to pull them because some enemies cast stability intermediately when you use it, wait for boons out and cast the pull. That pull help a lot to your teammates.

I change my weapons choice a lot depend of my team composition or roles, choose your weapons wisely.

I have alot of experience in small scale Guardian wvw healing or dps, for a long time i’ve been mostly focused on healing as it gives me the most consistency in winning small outnumbered fights, playing with a few of my different friends in duos or trios I feel like we’re very successful outnumbered, lots of builds can work great obviously, i’ll just give you an example of something to try maybe.

0/0/10/30/30 staff/hammer with elite focus http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJAWSlcgCDXFSLEm4ES2DRCBLJsHYUGtRXFSIA superior runes of altruism

I’ve only done this with high dps teammates for duos and trios, mesmer thief or warrior usually, it’s important that your teammate isn’t some kind of usual small scale tanky spec who can’t burst targets down:

I’ll draw out an example of duoing vs 3+ enemies:

One of the most important parts is picking the most killable first target, so throw a target on that enemy, get near your teammate, as soon as he starts getting pressured/taking damage, immediately hold the line, stand your ground and put a line of warding down near your teammate so they can run over it alot forcing enemy stability or saving alot of damage for your teammate, buff might early as you can and basically just keep your squishy dps teammate as topped off as you can with healing breeze, hold the line, #2’s with staff, empower.

Once your target is starting to get into trouble and as long as your teammate is above say 50% hp, switch to hammer and root the target(make sure your teammate knows this is about to happen so they can get ready to land an important ability), put a ring up, do a blast finisher to get area retaliation, spam autoattack and keep pressure up and proc area retaliations, once someone goes down or when things look to be going wrong, dump all your cooldowns, put down a hallowed ground(perma stability, lasts a very long time with trait) and dodge around in it and go into tome of courage and cast either an aoe daze or full heal, this is where timing your full heal is crucial and your hardest job, with communication just make sure your teammate is going to be able to stay alive long enough for it, then do #3 and spam #1’s if you have to, depending on how things go you probably wont want to use the full 30 seconds of tome of courage and drop it to get back to empowering, line of warding and just messing up the enemy with Hammers various annoying CC and blast combos.

I find elite focus important for tome as sometimes it creates a huge aggro sink for enemies while your teammate gets off more burst damage, using all of tomes abilities well is important for this approach as you can do wonders to keep a squishy teammate up with constant heals for 2k.

One more thing is sigil of stamina is huge for winning outnumbered fights, nothing else is going to give you as much healing once an enemy or two or random trash mobs go down, just have to be aware of when a kill is about to happen and you can unload lots of dodge heals, when I duo I use mostly cleric gear with some precision/vitality/healing mixed in and a few pieces of berserker or precision/power/vitality, it’s important to have at least like 25% crit I find so you get the vigor procs and your damage wont suck with all the might buffs.

With superior runes of altruism the early healing breeze giving us fury and 3 more stacks of might really helps to overwhelm a target… timing the immobilize with hammer and getting the area retaliation up for you and your teammate will go a long way too… use the virtue activates early and often as needed, a major subtle point of this approach is to confuse the enemy into thinking your somewhat glass cannon partner is a tank spec so they aren’t sure who to attack, use all your cooldowns all the time and keep dodge healing, keep vigor procced.

Hope I didn’t ramble too much and gave you some ideas, small scale WvW has a pretty huge skill ceiling and things like watching for stability or timing stability or a block can be what really wins a fight, just don’t try to win with some healing with a partner who isn’t focused on doing heavy damage imho.

Sovereign.1093:

post your setup here; so the community can improve it. also post the professions you run with as well as their specs; so we’ll see if we can make suggestions.

My setup currently is a GS/Staff, PVT gear with Melandru runes and a spec of 0/0/30/30/10 and 5/6/11 2/9/11 2.

My friends setup is an elementalist D/D I think they usually run Berserkers gear, just kind of realised i never asked them lol. If theres a better suggestion for what their Ele should run I’m all ears for that too

Graka.9457:

Sovereign.1093:

post your setup here; so the community can improve it. also post the professions you run with as well as their specs; so we’ll see if we can make suggestions.

My setup currently is a GS/Staff, PVT gear with Melandru runes and a spec of 0/0/30/30/10 and 5/6/11 2/9/11 2.

My friends setup is an elementalist D/D I think they usually run Berserkers gear, just kind of realised i never asked them lol. If theres a better suggestion for what their Ele should run I’m all ears for that too

What runes are you using? And trinkets? Do you use infusions?

Sovereign.1093:

Graka.9457:

Sovereign.1093:

post your setup here; so the community can improve it. also post the professions you run with as well as their specs; so we’ll see if we can make suggestions.

My setup currently is a GS/Staff, PVT gear with Melandru runes and a spec of 0/0/30/30/10 and 5/6/11 2/9/11 2.

My friends setup is an elementalist D/D I think they usually run Berserkers gear, just kind of realised i never asked them lol. If theres a better suggestion for what their Ele should run I’m all ears for that too

What runes are you using? And trinkets? Do you use infusions?

As I said Melandru runes, and trinkets are also Ascended Berserker with full agony resistance infusion. Changing these isnt a problem as I have tons of extra guild tokens and laurels.

Graka.9457:

My setup currently is a GS/Staff, PVT gear with Melandru runes and a spec of 0/0/30/30/10 and 5/6/11 2/9/11 2.

My friends setup is an elementalist D/D I think they usually run Berserkers gear, just kind of realised i never asked them lol. If theres a better suggestion for what their Ele should run I’m all ears for that too

I know i’m going against the grain but I believe this jack of all trades common altruistic healing build is extremely mediocre for duoing(esp with melandru PVT, your strengths are too spread out, you’re tanky but not going to be able to spike heal enough to live against some focus fire/CC, your damage is extremely average and very easy to pull away from dodge and recover), your build does very minimal healing despite alot of traits in the healing tree, very average damage as the crit% is low wasting high crit damage from valor.

If I fought you with a berserker teammate 2v2 you two wouldn’t be able to burn through my healing(my 30 second tome of courage would ensure 30 seconds of my teammate living I guarantee with 1500-1700 healing, I don’t think the squishier of the two of you would live much longer after I come out of it with all my cooldowns up) and nothing would stop my timed hammer abilities + berserker partners burst abilities from killing your elementalist..

I recommend picking a side and not using a build that does everything average, go heavy damage and focus the right target in your 2v2 or whatever or get your healing up above 1500 without neglecting crit and use hammer to create a kill, in small scale greatsword I believe is pretty average compared to hammer, in my experience landing the immobilize on cooldown is a really big deal in securing a kill with a teammate who knows it may be about to happen(can’t dodge while immobilized is the major point), so is the ring and so is the punt when you’re good at watching for stability and figuring when the enemy can’t dodge.

I think any 0/0/30/30/10 build is not well suited to very small scale WvW, not enough damage, not enough healing, above average survivability that isn’t needed since you probably won’t be attacked much by good players anyways… highly recommend you pick a side and either go heavier damage with burst and pick the right targets and focus fire/coordinate CC stuffs or go pretty heavy healing with the ability to create a kill with hammer.. you say you are struggling as a 2 man in WvW and I believe it all starts with a watered down(yet highly popular imho because of its consistency especially in the usual style of large scale WvW) build that leaves you slightly irrelevant against players that know what they’re doing.

Another main thing about hammer is the constant area retaliations you can put out when you start applying pressure, this to me really makes it easy to win most 2v2’s, too many guardians out there doing small scale group wvw with greatsword AH builds being too easy to beat in my experience.