Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty new to the game, played about 2 months now and have three level 80 characters. So far the guardian is my favorite, but I’ve been very confused on how to build her for end game content. I’m pretty much a solo PVE player, WvW seemed ok with a good group, and I didn’t enjoy PVP, so please gear your responses to PVE play.

Anyway, I’ve read a lot of posts on this forum and the overwhelming build advice is go Berserker’s on guardian for PVE. It just doesn’t feel right to me. I tried it and found myself dying instantly in most situations. The common response seems to be learn to play, but I’m a casual who doesn’t have the time to memorize every enemy animation and dungeon so I can dodge all damage. I need some room for error. (Plus, a lot of people in the world you play with are not very good either…) Not only that, but the guardian doesn’t seem geared to be a big damage dealer. Most of the weapon skills focus on utility more than damage. Really, the profession seems more suited to be the perfect support and anchor role for a group. Pretty much a never die, blind enemies, heal allies, wipe conditions from allies, hand out boons to allies like candy, rinse and repeat. The guardian has access to a lot of healing in their kits, so why not maximize it with Healing power?

Anyway, right now I find myself using Greatsword/Staff or Mace-Focus, and I tug a hammer around for tough situations as well for near perma protection. I invested into Knight’s exotic equipment due to popular opinion (well 2nd most popular after Berserkers…), but I just feel the precision is wasted. Staff doesn’t really have much that benefits from it. Mace-focus doesn’t benefit from it. Greatsword is just ok with extra precision simply for the “2” skill. I was running full cleric’s prior with green items, and I the extra 20-25% crit I added with Knight’s doesn’t feel worth it. I had 18% crit with cleric’s, and I felt that was plenty to proc the vigor on crit consistently. Having 40% crit with knight’s feels similar, but I lost healing power.

Long story short, I guess I’m looking for more explanation why Cleric’s is advised against for PVE on a guardian? With the popularity of Berserker’s in PVE, it seems smart to have an anchor/healer/support that can keep Berserker players alive when they make mistakes. Yes, I noticed the healing coefficients for guardian skills are crap (except the dodge heal), but with access to so many ways to hand out heals, the little bit of extra healing power seems to really add up in fights, and bring a lot more to the party than giving yourself some extra crit.

Thoughts, explanations? Is Cleric’s really that bad in PVE? I feel like I’m regretting my Knight’s set that I spent 20 gold on…. Too bad that was all the gold I had!

EDIT: My trait setup currently is 0/0/6/6/2 but sometimes I spec 0/0/6/4/4 for the trait in the last line that makes your f2 virtue cleanse conditions.

Let me put it this way: If PvE was a war Cleric Guardian would be Costa rica.

Healing is just very limited in the game and especially in regards to the utilization of healing power, it is generally quite a low coefficient.

Generally speaking in most content you can avoid almost all the damage and survive quite easily while you kill things. So focusing on faster kills is preferred rather than extending fights and having more chances to fail a dodge/block or even run out of condi cleanses and what not. Faster completion times are generally prefered over a safer situation.

So between those two points (heals being weak, and heals not being needed) you have a situation that generally leans towards not worrying about them and preferring speeding it up a bit.

Now, Clerics guard actually can be very good in a few situations. Look up Skady’s Clerics guard build in fractals for examples, but, those situations are so few and far between that I would not focus on them. Berserker = main gear, clerics a situational set would be a raesonable idea, but not the other way around basically.

And as for gearing, maybe look into getting rares as you try new sets to start, then you can upgrade to exotic if you like what you have, saves you some money

- Healing Power in general
Healing skill in GW2 have a high base amount of healing and healing power improve them only by a small margin. So you need to invest massively into healing power only to heal a little bit more. For exemple, AH heal you of 69 and improve by 1 each 100 healing power. AH is one of the worst healing skill in that regards, but you don’t have much skill that have a ratio of 1 or higher. That’s on purpose because Anet didn’t want to create healer, but we can argue that they kind of over do it in PvE. In PvP, that’s not as big of an issue.

- Damage mitigation is king
The game was designed around damage mitigation and preemptive active defence. Recognizing an attack and counter acting it is more engaging for some compare to healing after it. That’s why PvE is all about slow big attack that we can see and block/dodge/blind, etc. The game was designed to push the player to prevent a hit rather and repair the damage afterwards. For that reason damage mitigation skills are far stronger than healing of defensive stats and they need very small investment in your build.

- Guardian healing capability
The guardian is actually pretty weak when you talk about healing others. Yes if you list all the skills of the guardian that allow you to heal others you gonna end up with a good list. But they are usually all over the place making them hard to use in one build and they usually need high investment in term of build meaning that you need to sacrifice a lot to gain them. Don’t get me wrong, you can do a healing guardian, but you gonna need to make a lot of sacrifice to do so. Other profession like Warrior or Elementalist can do the same job with lower sacrifice. Guardian is better in slow sustain healing than anything else, something that can be hard to notice in fight.

- Guardian strength
Not only damage mitigation is stronger in this game, but the Guardian is the king of that kind of defence. Blind, Aegis, Reflect, Protection, etc. He can do it all and he can do it better than anyone else, while sacrificing little.

- Gear
You have 4 main type of stats from gear. First is healing power, which we find out isn’t that great in PvE. Second is condition damage, which should be good but for bad design isn’t that great for group PvE, but good in Solo situation. Something that we hope will be fixed with the expansion. Third is personal survivability with vitality and toughness. And fourth is direct damage. Basically in the current state of the game, gear is pretty much a slide between direct damage and personal survivability. Gear is independent of your build and you can put the amount of personal survivability you need, while the rest is about direct damage. Ideally you would want to be 100% direct damage from your gear and use damage mitigation alone to survive. But for new player, casual player or players that just want to play relax, vitality and toughness are good option. The goal here is have just enough defensive stats to feel comfortable, but not more. As you get better you slowly replace defensive gear by direct damage gear (mostly zerker or assassins). Because in the end, your gear won’t help you to give better support. Your trait and skills will do that, not your gear.

If Guardian builds were cookies, Cleric would be raisin cookie pretending to be chocolate chip cookie.

Cleric’s is not a good choice unless you just want to be lazy and passive.

EDIT: My trait setup currently is 0/0/6/6/2 but sometimes I spec 0/0/6/4/4 for the trait in the last line that makes your f2 virtue cleanse conditions.

If you want to fit in with the zerk meta in dungeons, that’s not where you want to put your traits.

With the popularity of Berserker’s in PVE, it seems smart to have an anchor/healer/support that can keep Berserker players alive when they make mistakes.

If you’re after playing how you want with like minded people, then sure. but it’s not helping with people speedclearing so I would advise against joining those parties unless you want to run zerk with 4/5/0/0/5. There’s plenty of support in that build and in a zerk party it will be alot more useful.

By all means if you can find 4 other people who will happily endure clerics with an AH build go for it, but yeh, you cant take that build into a zerk team and expect people to be happy about it.

- Don’t regret your knight’s set, its a good stepping stone on the way up to berserker and contributing the most to your party. Now all you need to do is focus on changing up traits and understanding where to use what utilities and weapons to truely support your team. If you’re not interested in that, you can go ahead and play how you want, just make sure it’s not intruding on people who are trying to be efficient.

If Guardian builds were T.V. shows, Cleric would be keeping up with the Kardashians.

PvE and WvW/PvP have different combat dynamics. As mentioned by others in this post PvE is all about looking for the slow, yet devastating, attacks. WvW/PvP, on the other hand, requires recovery and mitigation from relatively smaller yet more frequent attacks.

That dynamic alone is why Cleric’s gear is considered the raisin oatmeal cookie of the PvE stats. Knight’s is more favorable because it still provides Power and precision while toughness is a direct mitigation of damage. Vitality isn’t as important when compared to toughness as the PvE scene doesn’t bombard you with conditions as much as other aspects of the game.

PvE places a challenge on teams to be proactive with their defenses. For every class, dodging is one of the greatest forms of mitigation. For a Guard we bring superior proactive defense in the form of blinds, Aegis, stability, protection, projectile migtigation, and much more. By being a “Healer guard” with Cleric’s and that build you posted you are effectively shifting your defense to be more reactive. In other words your build works to recover from the damage/harm after the fact. While that sort of tactic works in WvW/PvP that sort of playstyle is crippling in PvE.

Best scenario I can describe would be if you were on a team with a squishy ele or two. BBEG swings his club at your team, and both you and the ele fail to anticipate the hit. Good news, you were able to soak the hit. Bad news, your ele friend got down. Don’t worry though you can just heal youself up and then start rezing him. Scenario B: You’re traited more offensivly, anticipate the hit, and throw up a blind/Aegis. Not only are both you and the ele still up, but there virtually is no time that was wasted as no one down or had to take the time to rez someone. (highly generalized scenario)

While you are right in saying that not every player out there is very good, the majority of the community is familiar with the profession sterotypes. Warriors are bringing banners, Ele’s are bringing conjures, Thieves bring blinds and stealths, etc. For a Guard you’ll be bringing defensive support in the form of mitigation and utility. Substituiting this role with one based on healing will just slow down your team. However, the general concensous for groups is max dps. So while staying alive is fine and dandy you want to make sure you are contributing to your team offensively as well. It’s no fun to have everyone in the party wipe except for that one “tank guy” that is slowly withering away at the mob he is trying to fight.

I’m just going to leave this here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Holy-Trinity-is-back-Cleric-Guard-FOTM/first

Seems to work for fractals at least.

Thank you. Really great responses that make a lot of sense. I guess I just wish that everyone wasn’t always dying all the time. I’m not good by any means, but the majority of people I play with in LFG or big world events are pretty bad.

Goon for Hire.7150:

I’m just going to leave this here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Holy-Trinity-is-back-Cleric-Guard-FOTM/first

Seems to work for fractals at least.

Yup, but like discussed throughout that thread, it really only makes it easier on a handful of fights in fractals. Then in dungeons… well it’s basically never worth it there.

And yup, sanddragon, best ways to help them are to utilize your reflects/projectile defense, your aegis, your blinds, and kill the sucker faster

Welcome to Guarding where Blocks are made up, and the light fields don’t matter.

Yes and no. If you’re with a group that’s struggling to finish a boss and getting whittled down on their own, switching to cleric & mace can do wonders for keeping your team upright.

But if your team is actually competent / good, your outgoing healing is basically redundant and your lower damage will slow down progress.

Usually dungeons are so easy that berserker gear should be used just to speed through it. Fractals are a lot harder usually, so a healing build makes things much smoother there. If everyone in your group happens to be playing perfectly in a set of fractals, you should swap to berserker gear (unless you find yourself dying a lot too). If your allies are dying repeatedly, I recommend sticking to a healing build (using Zealot’s gear preferably, but that tends to be difficult to get a hold of).

Without healing power, a guardian’s allied healing is very weak with the exception of Healing Breeze and Tome of Courage’s Light of Deliverence. I don’t know why people always imply that all healing coefficients are bad and that healing power does nothing when its usually just self-heals that have bad scaling. There’s also % healing to allies gained from a variety of sources which scales healing regardless of its healing power scaling. The problem with healing builds isn’t that they don’t heal enough, it’s that they slow down the run a bit, but sometimes a smoother run is more appropriate.

Useless for dungeons, great for wvw zergballs, great for un-organised high level fractal pug groups. Not so great in high level fractal pug groups that are all top tier players.

Cleric guardians are like Dinosaurs, died by meteor called Meta.

It’ late already I know, but the precision from a Knight build is not a total waste if you wanna play boon orientated and use contact sigils.

On either knight or cleric you will need a lot of azurite trinkets and jewels
just to have a decent health pool. So if it’s exotic gear we are talking about, rather not.

Have you tried gw2skills.com yet? They have a build planmer which you can use to play around with ideas.