Guild Wars 2

So, I really like to play healing guard, especially in fractals as it makes them so easy for the group with a ton of healing and support, but I hate hitting like a wet noodle. Since GW2 is a dps race, I kinda feel pointless even though nobody gets downed and the run is smooth. So I’m thinking I should make a set of Zealot’s gear as it would add a ton of extra damage, but still maintain a lot of mitigation and healing. What do you think of my Zealot’s Communal Defender build?

I get that zerk is meta, I just hate playing it on my guard.

Hi

Well I don’t get the point of having Precision with no Ferocity, even if you crit you won’t be making a lot more damage. Staff is an awful PvE weapon just don’t use it. Now you say you like to support but you must know that every class can survive without your healings through all the PvE scenarios, even FotM lvl 50. Guard is not a must and, most certainly, healing guardian is not a must in any party.

If you don’t like to go zerker I recommend trying to mix Knight and Valkyrie gear with Obal’s Hammer build for fractals, you’ll be doing way more damage and granting constant protection that is more supportive than heals from a full clreic spec. Learn to use your active defenses (blinds, reflects, aegis).

If you still want to go full support don’t PUG or at least warn your party fellows that you’ll be playing the wet noodle build.

I use two setups with my guard, one being cleric, the other being knights armour over zerk/valk trinkets.

With 50% crit chance (over 4%) I’d be doing a TON more damage, like 25% just on crits, then you have to factor in the extra power, plus the sigils. Staff is quite good for the party heal and might, ie support. You just use those, then swap back. Plus the swiftness.

I already run with a hammer guard so there is no need for prot. There is no real need for ANY particular class to complete F50, but a hammer guard and also a healing guard make it a piece of cake you can just roll through without any problems, even with new players. If it didn’t sink in from the build posted, there is a LOT of active defense from it.

It just struck me that I could be playing in the middle of cleric/zerk and achieve both things at once.

Cleric guard will make runs go slower because of the lack of DPS. Something in between is not achievable you won’t deal the proper DPS and healing power will decrease compared to full Cleric. Yeah you’ll hit harder but very far from optimal and maximum damage.

If you want to try it go ahead but you’ll be wasting gold, time and crafting materials IMHO.

Staff is a WvW weapon for tagging, might stacking is something that PS warrior Eles and even Engies will do in way a more effectiveway, heal (#2) is weak and swiftness… For what? Any weapon is superior to staff talking PvE wise.

Truth be told, it’s hard to see a healing guardian as something different to a leecher while running on a full zerker party but, to each his own, if you have fun playing it and it suits your party and your friends are OK with it just go for it. Now healing+ optimal damage won’t be a thing you’ll be able to achieve, at least for the moment.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

So, I really like to play healing guard, especially in fractals as it makes them so easy for the group with a ton of healing and support, but I hate hitting like a wet noodle.

Well you already seem to have a better understanding of what a healing guardian does in PvE than most of the posters in this topic, so I don’t really think you need the advice much. It makes runs smoother and easier, but it slows them down. Zealot’s gear makes it so that you can keep things smooth while not slowing down the run as much.

Instead of a mace, consider a greatsword or a scepter.

I think it’s ok. But just realize 80% of the fractal is easy trash mobs that no pug have problem with. So you might as well use max dps for those.

Only use your creative builds for fight and boss you actually have problem with. And if you really want to tank, you need to have some toughness to grab agro(might change in expansion). Someone posted a cleric guardian guide in the dungeon forum a while ago. You might want to check it out.

If you want pure maximum damage zerk/valk is great.

But if you want decent damage & healing celestial armor with zerk trinkets becomes great. The only thing it has guardians don’t need is condition damage but who knows condition damage could end up better if they change burning (since they are looking at conditions)

Zealots gear can also work well.

I think you’re going about support in the wrong way. Damage mitigation is much more valuable than healing after the fact is. Things like protection, blinds and reflects are crucial support that a guardian can bring while still dishing out good damage.

Something like this would do the job. Camp hammer rotation for perma protection (33% damage reduction) and swap to sw/f for a couple blinds. Also, Absolute Resolution makes VoR a much better cleanse than passive heal for your team. You can use it twice with Renewed Focus if you need to in a short period of time, along with Purging Flames.

Hammer is king of support though. Even in your build, the perma symbols would heal for more than the mace does plus the 33% damage reduction of protection. And staff has no place in PvE for anything besides tagging while farming.

i run power toughness and vitality in all game modes works for me not always the best but never the worst

Shanks.2907:

I think you’re going about support in the wrong way. Damage mitigation is much more valuable than healing after the fact is. Things like protection, blinds and reflects are crucial support that a guardian can bring while still dishing out good damage.

Something like this would do the job. Camp hammer rotation for perma protection (33% damage reduction) and swap to sw/f for a couple blinds. Also, Absolute Resolution makes VoR a much better cleanse than passive heal for your team. You can use it twice with Renewed Focus if you need to in a short period of time, along with Purging Flames.

Hammer is king of support though. Even in your build, the perma symbols would heal for more than the mace does plus the 33% damage reduction of protection. And staff has no place in PvE for anything besides tagging while farming.

I already said I have a Hammer guard in the group. And there is tons of mitigation in that build from Aegis, so many sources of it, plus blind. Then a lot of heals on top.
Mace actually does really good damage. I often swap out the staff for GS.

Not everyone runs around min/maxing with zerk, PS war, eles etc. Some people just get together to have some fun and want an easy run, it doesn’t matter that it take an extra 10mins to complete a F50 because we are not using meta builds and gear.

I now honestly don’t know why I even posted this.

the real reason u shouldn’t go all in on zealot? you will never be ascended. unless there is a new way to acquire

https://www.gw2spidy.com/item/49693
https://www.gw2spidy.com/item/49686
https://www.gw2spidy.com/item/49680

I was just about to mention that. If you make zealot gear, I recommend just sticking to exotic. A few extra points in stats isn’t enough to justify that 1000+ gold requirement to get all of those ascended zealot recipes.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I was just about to mention that. If you make zealot gear, I recommend just sticking to exotic. A few extra points in stats isn’t enough to justify that 1000+ gold requirement to get all of those ascended zealot recipes.

Did you read his post? That’s mostly for Fractal, that’s the one place where you need ascended gear.

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you read his post? That’s mostly for Fractal, that’s the one place where you need ascended gear.

I did, and I don’t think an extra 75 power, 43 precision, and 43 healing power are going to be life-changing. Did you read the part of his post where he said he doesn’t care about min-max’ing?

Fashion Mage.3712:

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you read his post? That’s mostly for Fractal, that’s the one place where you need ascended gear.

I did, and I don’t think an extra 75 power, 43 precision, and 43 healing power are going to be life-changing. Did you read the part of his post where he said he doesn’t care about min-max’ing?

think the guy quoting u meant with respeckt to needing ascended for the agony resistance in fractals

Healing is the least important kind of support in GW2. You’re much better off learning how to take advantage of blinds and blocks to mitigate damage altogether, and fortunately, those two things are very accessible to DPS Guardian.

I run with GS / S+F, which has plenty of blinds, and the trait to recharge F1 on kill is super important.

If you get hit with 2 guardians in the group, at least one of them should just roll something else.

Jaxom.7310:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you read his post? That’s mostly for Fractal, that’s the one place where you need ascended gear.

I did, and I don’t think an extra 75 power, 43 precision, and 43 healing power are going to be life-changing. Did you read the part of his post where he said he doesn’t care about min-max’ing?

think the guy quoting u meant with respeckt to needing ascended for the agony resistance in fractals

Exactly. You can in theory run fractal 50 without a ascended armor, but it’s a bad idea.

‘’AGONY RESISTANCE’’

Thaddeus.4891:

Jaxom.7310:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you read his post? That’s mostly for Fractal, that’s the one place where you need ascended gear.

I did, and I don’t think an extra 75 power, 43 precision, and 43 healing power are going to be life-changing. Did you read the part of his post where he said he doesn’t care about min-max’ing?

think the guy quoting u meant with respeckt to needing ascended for the agony resistance in fractals

Exactly. You can in theory run fractal 50 without a ascended armor, but it’s a bad idea.

‘’AGONY RESISTANCE’’

Can do 60 in trinkets and then weapons to round out the 70. I keep 60 AR in my bank to plop on any toon at any time, easier than swapping gear sets around

I think those raider’s chest have zealot gear. I always pick berserker though.

Oh wow, I just saw those prices for the ascended recipes… LOL Never going to happen. That is absurd. I really like the build, mitigation, damage and healing with more of everything than my knights setup has (except toughness) a good compromise for how I like to play, but for that money, I’ll never make the armor and you cannot get ascended trinkets yet, I think.

I played with the setup a bit, adding in zerk gear instead of zealot, losing 700 odd healing power and gaining 38% crit dmg, more blinds, changing some traits around etc. Still looking pretty nice to me. Zerk Communal Defender

Jerus.4350:

Can do 60 in trinkets and then weapons to round out the 70. I keep 60 AR in my bank to plop on any toon at any time, easier than swapping gear sets around

That mean crafting or buying 3 of those +10 AR at 50 gold each. That’s not too much, but i’m at my 5th ascended armor, so they don’t cost much anymore.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Oh wow, I just saw those prices for the ascended recipes… LOL Never going to happen. That is absurd. I really like the build, mitigation, damage and healing with more of everything than my knights setup has (except toughness) a good compromise for how I like to play, but for that money, I’ll never make the armor and you cannot get ascended trinkets yet, I think.

I played with the setup a bit, adding in zerk gear instead of zealot, losing 700 odd healing power and gaining 38% crit dmg, more blinds, changing some traits around etc. Still looking pretty nice to me. Zerk Communal Defender

No offense, but imo that build is quite bad. Given your parameters and presuming you know what is considered meta and for what reasons, I would adjust your build and go with sth. like this: Link
What you lose: Valor Trait line, including Communal Defender, Empowering Might.
What you gain:
- spamability of VoJ = more blinds = more damage mitigation = more support.
- Increased symbol duration = more damage, opportunity to change GS for Hammer if you need some protection ( = more support)
- 5 points in Virtues = omnomnomwtfbbq support when using consecrations (swap in whatever fits the situation), cond remove/stability on F2/F3 (whichever fits the situation), more personal dps
Personaly I would also change your healing skill, Healing Breeze never felt really usefull to me. Hard to aim, especially if your teammates actually move (what they should do anyway) and your stuck on it for 2 1/4 seconds.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Oh wow, I just saw those prices for the ascended recipes… LOL Never going to happen.

There’s still Raider’s Chests I suppose, as another poster suggested. Those chests seem to be the only reliable way to get ascended zealot’s gear.

Nash, I don’t build for mowing through trash mobs, which is what VoJ spam is for, it serves no purpose for boss fights.

Like I said a couple of times, we already have a hammer guard so no need for that.

When a boss fight requires consecrations, I’d just put the extra 5 in virtues.

The entire build is centred around Communal Defender, for many sources of Aegis, so to change that completely changes the build… Defeating the purpose.

I’ve never had a problem with HB, I like it. I call it in TS and we stack for it.

Oh well, overread the part with the hammer guard, my bad.
There are reasons why I dislike Communal Defender and suggest to drop it:
you have to block first to give block to your party. Now let’s check your blocks- you got:
- mace 3
- focus 5
- Retreat
- F3
- “SY!” and
- Valorous Defense
If you position yourself correct so mace 3 covers your allies, that’s already 3 party wide blocks and 50% of your equipped blocks. So for these, Communal Defender is just overkill. In addition, ComDef’s aegis only lasts for a rather short time, so chances it will just run out without doing anything are pretty high.
So all in all it’s 6 trait points spent for a pretty low impact on your and your team’s performance – imho totally not worth it. And since you titled “I like to support, but also damage.” I showed you away to do both while not running the meta train. Take it or leave it
Anyway, if you already play in a regular party and not pugging via lfg and you are already two guards in the party, I just don’t see any reason for more than one “full support”. There was this topic in the dungeon/fotm subforum a while ago, where someone presented their way of doing high level fotm’s, using 1 full support guard while the rest goes full dps, well knowing that it will slow down the run, while making it quite a piece of cake. here are the videos. You might wanna give that a shot.

You will note that my 1st post stated I like to play healing guard in fractals, but not to hit like a wet noodle. I have a set of clerics that I use for that. I also have a zerk hammer guard that plays with us, the rest are zerk wars or eles. The differences between the cleric and zealot would be I could do more dmg with the zealot build, but less healing and less maintaining of the agro due to much reduced toughness. It’s just a trade off I’m not sure I want to make. The extra dmg would be fantastic, but the ease of a run with a 2000+ healing power guard is hard to match. Just Regeneration/Battle Presence is 650hp/s for everyone. They can concentrate on their job of DPS and I can keep em above 90% for their scholar runes. I’d just like to be able to do some more dmg too

Buy going full damage, you are supporting your group. Things die quickly before the group is wiped out.

Guardian TANK http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASSlsApRoNDxXI8DNRCRl1Mg9IsCl51BwFcAA-TxBGABAcBAMS5Xhq/QlSQk2fwMdBH/AAAA-e
+
Guardian HEALER http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApeSl8ApTo1DxdI0ENxDBl5JmP2NIEZ4yBEAA-TxRDABO8AAMUJ4n6DCV9no2fAgTAwoK/AA-e

Easy way to all dungeons and fractals

carabidus.6214:

Buy going full damage, you are supporting your group. Things die quickly before the group is wiped out.

No one is “supporting” their group by hitting harder, they’re just killing things so fast that those things don’t have enough time to do anything significant. It helps the group in the sense that the dungeon finishes faster, but it doesn’t actually directly help anyone like something that’s actually support.

Thanks for those builds, but I like mine better. Your second one is using all ascended zealot gear, the trinkets of which are unobtainable and the armor recipes are over 2000g. Won’t be getting those anytime soon.

When I play hammer tank, its with this build

When its healing, its this one

But, I’d like to be able to run one similar to that you posted, its just absurd amounts of gold right now, oh well…