Guild Wars 2

Guardian Angel
(Front line support/healer)

Introduction:

This build is meant for large scale combat support/healer role. The more enemies we’re fighting, the stronger the potential this build will have. It focuses on condi cleansing and a combo of active bursty heals and passive heals or HoTs (Heals over Time) . It is discouraged to have multiple guardians running this in one party. Preferable use is by having 1 guardian per FRONTLINE party run this. This is not remotely effective for backline support as it relies on being tight and close for maximum support. It’s also MANDATORY to have the white wings back-piece when running this. YOU’RE AN ANGEL !

• Note * : This build was made with large scale combat in WvW context in mind. It may be useless in pve, pvp, or havoc (i honestly haven’t thought much about it outside of that context). Therefore, please keep the comments on the build restricted to the context it was built for. No point in yelling " THIS BUILD IS USELESS IN FRACTALS!" when it wasn’t meant for that in the first place. The only thing a shout like that would do is show your inability to read and comprehend context :P .. having said that, enjoy the build!

Gear:
Weapons : Mace/Shield + Staff
Armor: Nomads
Trinkets: Clerics
Weapon stats: Magi (or nomads if more toughness desired)
Runes: Trooper
Sigils: Stamina + Energy on both weapon sets

Skills:
Receive the Light
Wall of Reflection
Hold the Line
Stand your Ground
Signet of Courage
Other possible skills fitting the role (might need further changes in traits):
Purging Flames
Possible trait combo : Master of Consecrations
Merciful intervention
Possible trait combo : Smiter’s Boon trait + Monk’s Focus trait
Retreat
Possible trait combo: Communal defense + Pure of Heart + Pure of Voice.

Summery:
Condition Clearing: You’re a condi cleansing machine with the combination of Pure of Voice and Trooper runes. With 3 shouts on the bar, you should be able to pick up the whole party condi clearing granted they have a little bit of personal condi clearing. Coordinate with the party members for the rotation. If more condi cleansing is desired, swap Wall of Reflection of Purging Flames. NEVER use Virtue of Resolve as a condi clear unless it’s ABSOLUTELY LAST RESORT.

Passive Heals: You have strong HoTs (Healing over Time) skills just by being there. Virtue of Resolve + battle presence gives about 223 healing per second. Signet of Courage gives about 154 healing per second. Regenration you give heals for about 322 per second. Combining all those would give allies around you : 6990 healing every 10s. That’s equivelent of giving them another healing skill every 10s. Therefore, Always remain on tag. You’re the first person in and last person out. Your presence is what sustains the front line.

Active Heals: Besides your passive heals, you have strong active heals. Staff will have 2 healing skills : Detonate Orb of Light heals for 1710 on a 10s CD, Empower heals for 3073 on a 16s CD. On your mace, the auto attack chain heals for 739 on a 2s CD. Symbol of Faith grants regeneration and acts as a continuous source of regeneration (see passive heals calculations above). On the shield, popping Shield of Absorption heals for 1607 on a 24s CD. Recieve the Light when used right and aimed right would heal 4 allies for 8062 per ally on an 32s CD

~~ SECRET SAUCE ~~: The strongest heal on this build that goes unmatched is the heal on dodge with Selfless Daring trait in the Honor line. Each dodge would heal for 1666 and you get a dodge every 8.7s naturally. But you might be saying we will be saving the dodges for when need right? That would have been the case if we didn’t have SO MANY DODGES. With the sigil combo Stamina and Energy, you will be dodging at any time you get a dodge. Every time you see XP numbers flashing on screen showing you that you got credit for a kill, you dodge left and right. Each kill gives 2 dodges. that’s 3332 healing per kill. No internal cooldown or nothing. That’s the strongest heal in our possession. SO GO DANCING!

• NEVER *******:
  use Virtue of Resolve active unless your staring death in the face. WE WANT THE PASSIVE TO REMAIN.
  use Signet of Courage active. As strong as the active maybe, it’s very difficult to pop it at the right time. The passive is what we seek here.
  use Symbol of Faith or Symbol of Swiftness on water regroups. You shall be shunned and shamed for doing so.

Downside:
What we provide in support takes away some of our own situational survivablity. We lose Renewed Focus , Shelter. So your playstyle and positioning needs to adjust accordingly.

We don’t do ANY significant damage. As a matter of fact the only time you should be concerned with hitting the enemy is when you want to get tags that will proc sigil of Stamina. other than that, you’re mostly focused on where the tag is, your party status (condis, health.. etc) and focus on mangaing your heals accordingly.

You will receive ALOT of hate .. i mean ALOT ALOT ALOT of hate from many players. You’ll be dissed, and attakced and called a noob that doesn’t understand that gw2 doesn’t have a holy trinity… My Advice, IGNORE em. Let the numbers speak for themselves. Providing this amount of sustain on the frontline is VERY VERY STRONG. Whether its benefit outweighs the loss of DPS, that’s up to commanders and guild leaders to determine on their own relative to their own raids. NO ONE should shake you into saying healing doesn’t scale well or it’s non-effective.Numbers don’t lie

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the build.

Gw2skills link: (Main Build)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWl8AhehYtQwVIQTEHJEUeG/vE4GEiUcLQAOAA-T1BDABHqEkP9BAr+TT7PolyvJOFAA8EAIFw36tA-w

Variation 1: When having another guardian in party running strength in numbers:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWl8AhehYtQwVIQTEHLEV+F2vQAnAVQJcDgvcAA-T1BDABHqEkP9BAr+TT7PolyvJOFAA8EAIFw36tA-w

Variation 2: more healing focued, less condition clearing focused
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWl8AhmhYtQwVIQTEHLEV+F2vQAnAVQYeDgvcAA-T1BDABHqEkP9BAr+TT7PolyvJOFAA8EAIFw36tA-w

Love the support build! It’s a very underestimated side of guardian.
Bump.

You ever consider swapping shield with focus? Mace / Focus seem to flow better. Also you have trooper runes for condi cleansing – ever consider defender runes? Those are typically what I run anyway when in groups and playing the supporting role.

Seems like the shield is more of a modifier than an actual “use/block” weapon. I like it, just doesn’t seem to fit the supporting play style.

Crapgame.6519:

You ever consider swapping shield with focus? Mace / Focus seem to flow better. Also you have trooper runes for condi cleansing – ever consider defender runes? Those are typically what I run anyway when in groups and playing the supporting role.

Seems like the shield is more of a modifier than an actual “use/block” weapon. I like it, just doesn’t seem to fit the supporting play style.

Shield vs Focus is a flavoring matter. It doesn’t make or break the build .. I personally went for shield for the extra heal on the bubble, protection of allies, and projectile immunity when needed. In WvW all of these are very useful. Whereas the focus, it’s personal 3 blocks max, and a random aoe regen/blind/condi clear. However the Focus does have a blast finisher so some might want that over the shield.. It’s really a flavouring thing up to the player’s taste.

As for the choice of the rune, I’d still stick to Trooper over Defender. Th reason being this would allow us to fill 1 main role (healing) and 1 secondary role (condi clearing). In wvw large scale combat is filled with conditions and as the june 23rd patch, they could stack up to 1500 stacks of each condition (barring som exceptions)… therefore it is my belief that the meta is shifting away from condition duration reduction and more towards full condi cleansing. running 3 shouts, trooper fits better here. Defender on the other hand is aimed purely for personal survivability. It adds healing power however that addition isn’t too significant because we already have high healing power. Threrefore I’d stick with Trooper runes.

If you don’t want to take on Trooper runes and want to focus purely on the healing, consider using Rune of Water or Rune of the Monk as they fit the role better.

I always run my Nomad healer in large zergs and have pretty much the same skills as this (I generally use staff/hammer and judge intervention to make up for the inability to leap though). Healing really is underestimated. A few of them in a zerg and the efficiency is vastly improved (you can pretty much equal a strong 5 person AoE heal skill every 10 second or so). In particular, its an excellent commander support build if your frontline is comparably smaller than the backline.

Unfortunetly, it absolutely suck small scale, lol.

Any aoe build will clear that… since most blobs are aoe condi not even jump doge will help u much…. and that a very low mobility, low mobility means that will loose against any class with better mobility and range/aoe u wont even triger mace for heals.

ex: since the buff on engie explosion radio it is even easier to joke with bunker guards, as some one that played frontline sturdy build, nowadays they are very very easy to get them down, and they are nto helping much the team.

(edit) it will work if the other zerg is awfully bad, and have low condi pressure and not much aoe.

heals don’t crit.

In the short time I played Support Guard, I find Protective Reviver better than Invigorated Bulwark.

Also, the Shield is really weak, maybe when they really buff this weapon, maybe I try again.

Sorry for necropost, but I actually really enjoy this build for world bosses.
Because the zerker meta is strong in the majority of open world pve, some characters are very fragile, so it’s just fun to keep everyone up and running through the passive heals.

The projectile block from the shield is good against say Claw of Jormag. Just my 2 cents.

Build quick update

Build is still viable with some changes. Shield is now almost mandatory and no longer a flavouring option after adding the ageis to the shield 4. Also heals on ageis is chosen in the traits with communal defences. I will update the OP at some point but here is the updated versions :

Ascended:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWl8AhehYtQwVIQTEHLE1NA+yBI/C7XIgTgKoEA-T1BDABTcKA4TfQT7PolyPgV/BgnAwhKBJFw36tA-w

Exotic:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWl8AhehYtQwVIQTEHLEFOBqgS4GAf5Akfh9LEA-TFDDABNt/ASKVUVJ4EPBAdUxhXzf5oeQSKpWRLAAnCgfUGoiuASB8tWL-w