Guild Wars 2

Hey there! I just had a thought; has anyone tried running a high vitality guardian build for wvw, such as the one here http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASWlYgyCXFSKEf4ES2DDEBXwqCxD2DMKj2IA-j0BBIjBi+AiKAIBtIasFTFRjVZDT9iIqWKAKWAA-w? If so, does it work? If not, what are your thoughts?
The idea of a guardian with 28K HP (adding on applied fortitude) just seemed a little absurd to me, so I thought I’d share it to see other people’s reactions as well. Have a great day!

The problem is what do you sacrifice for the gain in vitality?

At first glance you notice low healing power, so normal defenses of the guardian with dodge roll healing and regeneration are lessened. Two components that are often key to the sustain of a guardian.

Also the sacrifice of meaningful damage is noticed, with a low crit chance and crit damage. So you will not be ending fights quickly to make up for a probable lessened sustain.

To enhance sustain, abilities that heal well but do not need healing power could be used, such as meditations and/or altruistic healing. Those have limitations as well though.

Meditations is meant for more offensive burst damage and burst healing. Altruistic healing relies on allies to be near by.

So with high vitality, you will survive more instantaneous burst, but you won’t do much back and you won’t survive the following series of damage with no obvious way to recover.

Not saying it can’t work, but those are the traditional responses you will probably get. Often those are backed by the previous year of experimentation as the game released and we all tried different things, but settled on the “meta”.

If you can create a new role the all power to you, keep the theory crafting going, just keep some of those things in mind when trying to break out of the box.

I thought that would be the response, and I don’t mean that negatively. There ARE reasons why the “Healaway” guardian build is so popular because of the defense and healing in comparison to the high vitality of this build. The only thing I disagree with is that this build does not have much offense; the 2K power is quite a lot, even though it doesn’t crit. Anyway, this build was never designed with solo roaming in mind; more zerg/group combat. Would Healaway still be more effective in these situations?

Edit: I thought I might mention that I generally roam on other classes, but I am not sure what the current ‘meta’ is for guardian roaming. Something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASWlYgyCXFSKEf4ES2DDEBXwqCxD2DMKj2IA-j0BBIjBi+AiKAIBtIasFTFRjVZDT9iIqWKAKWAA-w

I thought I might add that I usually roam in WvW on other classes. However, I want to get into some guardian roaming but am unsure of what the current ‘meta’ builds are for guardian. Will ‘healaway’ work, or something more offensive like http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASRlYgiDXFSNEfIFSmiVCBtPAQ4CueARRUDB-jkBBYfBiKIQpmFRjtMsIasKbYKXER1A-w? Thanks for the help

Running with that high vitality would be good if you would do any dmg. You literally do no dmg. A healing signet warrior would laugh at you because he could outheal you. Well I guess you want to be in zergs with that build. Try to change the sentinel pieces to soldier pieces and get a bit more dmg from trinkets like a mix of zerker or cavalier to still dish out dmg.
If you want to roam run the healway build with cleric and some soldier pieces both armor and trinkets.

Typically people are concerned with three things in pvp:

Damage
Sustain
Mobility

While you do have 2k attack power, the frequency of damage and the spike of said damage is what often results in uncontrollable offensive pressure. Without the spike damage granted via crits and multiple damage modifiers, your damage will not be as threatening as other builds and classes.

Sustain is another aspect to consider, which is what you are attempting to address. With high sustain, you can make up for lower damage in an effort to outlast the opponents. The age old adage: “a dead dps is no dps”, is a compromise we all make in order to survive long enough to make an impact.

Against multiple enemies, sustain becomes even more important because you have to continue to fight after finishing the first enemy and needing to continue on to the next.

High health is a buffer to sustain, but replenishment of life is the largest impact on obtaining meaningful sustain. With only high health, you can survive a largest amount of damage, but in order to maintain that, you need a way to recover that damage done. So often any health past the estimated damage incoming is often wasted.

Anyone who has done tanking in other games recognizes this and you typically build health to “just enough” then contribute stats to other means of survival, such as self healing, avoidance, mitigation, etc.

Mobility plays a role in both damage and sustain. By being highly mobile you can reach a target to do damage, stick to a target to maintain damage, and also get away from a target to avoid damage and make a recovery.

With all that said, many players go one of three routes.

A meditation/greatsword/sword type build that has optimal damage, moderate sustain, and high mobility.

A Healway type build with high sustain, moderate damage, and decent mobility depending on weapon choices

or

An Altruistic Healing build, with very high sustain in a group scenario, and easily modified to damage or defensive support as AH does not need as many stats put into healing power, allowing you to tailor it more to your play style (as long as it is grouped).

Typically glass cannon builds with no sustain are limited to PvE, and I believe often times the above three build types are used for WvW guardians. If there is another, I apologize, it has been a few months since I played.