Guild Wars 2

A couple weeks back I transitioned into Altruistic Healing running hammer + staff and let me tell you.. I love it. The gap closing on MB, survivability, sustainability, and decent range option with staff is just an amazingly fun play style.. I don’t even respec for WvW, I just switch some majors around.

The thing I fear, however, is changes to what I think is our only viable spec.

I’m wondering if anyone is really even happy playing with any other specs? And have you tried AH+hammer?

I like 1h sword, the autoattack, blink, but zealots defense.. Misses anything thats moving…
I straight up REFUSE to use scepter.. So I’m forced to use staff if I want any ranged options…
While 1h mace is decent.. It’s just boring (the autoattacks, long cast symbol, and channeled block)..
Focus is good! ^^
Shield.. No.
2h sword was my main weapon before the changes, and was definitely rated as one of our Mose unique and fun weapons..

Is anyone else worried about the Guardians future? I’m just scared ANet will change AH and make our only good spec bad. Then what weapons will I use? Because as of right now.. I don’t like the majority of them.

Ofc im happy playing other builds, AH and hammer is a bit hyped right now but there are better builds for spvp/tpvp even though hammer/AH is valid.

If you like to go offensive support in tpvp its not even the best one.

Frankly the only weapon i find bad is mace, due to impact/speed. Have people realized how god kitten slow and reactive that weapon is?

The rest of the weapons are really nice tbh.

And no im not worried, if they change it i adapt and find an other way to max my impact.

Hammer is pretty much just an sPvP weapon. It has good synergy with GS, just ring and swap. That said I find it extremely lame for PvE for a number of reasons.

1) Perma-protection is good but you lose a ton of DPS, and I mean a TON. The best you can do with it is support but guardians aren’t really a support class in the first place so you’re going to be kittening yourself pretty severely if you go that route.

2) You can’t use an alternate weapon set. A number of weapons benefit from constant weapon swapping (scepter, greatsword, staff) but you won’t be able to use any of them because hammer requires constant auto-attacking to be useful.

3) It’s extremely boring. You walk up to a target, begin auto-attacking, go AFK, check back every now and then to make sure to target hasn’t moved. Mighty Blow is useless, Zealot’s Embrace is pointless, and Banish and Ring of Warding are highly situational. They have their uses in PvP but not in PvE.

My personal favorite weapon is actually the mace. High DPS, healing, and a situational counter make it quite useful, even with a low number of hits. Smite > Symbol clears out PvE mobs super fast though. By comparison I think I’ve only ever used the hammer like one time for one fight in one dungeon and that was only because I accidentally equipped it while trying to speed-swap to staff mid-fight.

@Guanglai Kangyi.

I stopped reading when you said “guardians aren’t really a support class in the first place”

Would you care to re-read that? Are you still sure that you know how to play this class? Guardians have one of the strongest support capabilities out of any of the available classes.

@Guanglai Kangyi

1. You dont loose out on dps, in fact its the other way around, its our best aoe dps weapon, GS included.

Not a support class, hmmm, what do you define as a supportclass?

2. Partly true but the main reason why it has low synergies with other weapons is that it might to powerful in pve. Other than that it has the same synergies as other weapons. And no you dont need to constantly autoattacking.

3. Highly subjective but standing and just doing the chain is boring to me as well, but the good thing is that if you want to maximize the impact you just dont spam. Then you are doing it wrong.

Might blow, our best aoe dps tool and the skill with the highest dps on all our weapons.

Yes skill 3-5 are very situational in pve and in some cases useless but hey are always usable in overpulls and as such they can save the team and you. But on the other hand with a lifeleeching/hammer/AH guardian you really cant overpull tbh.

You say you use mace and it has great dps when its infact has the lowest dps of our skills. Are you even playing the class at all?

Yeah i understand that you havent used the hammer based on what you write. Perhaps try it out and figure it out and you might realise it by far has the highest aoe dps, best burst and giving protection at the same time. in pve fights you can even stack protection on you so you can switch weapons for 10-15 seconds for increased dps, 1h sword, and then swap back without loosing the protection boon.

For those of you saying hammer has higher damage than the gs please tell me how you get those result’s. I’ve tried the hammer and the gs. Personally i cant even get the hammer close to the gs even in its current state. Heck gs skill 2 tends to hit about twice as hard as hammer skill 2. Over all i kill about half again faster with the gs. Now i realize i might just be doing something wrong and is why i’m asking.

Mace is lowest dps?! Just cause it’s slow doesn’t mean it doesn’t hit hard (in reality, the mace’s chain is only half a second longer than greatsword). Protector’s Strike and Faithful Strike hit for a pretty decent amount, especially if they crit not to mention relatively spammable symbol ticks. Protector’s Strike is awesome!

Yes Whirling Wrath does more damage than Mighty Blow, however, only if all bolts hit. Also Mighty Blow can be used twice as often as Whirling Wrath if you have two-handed mastery and it’s all in one hit. The higher crit (and dmg) you have, the better.

You do have the slow swing on the third auto-attack, but the symbol’s damage more than makes up for it. The total damage IF they’re in the symbol in the whole time is x3 of your 1 or 2 chain (Nearly x3 of GS chain 3 too). Yes if they move out of the symbol the damage will decrease, but blasting the symbol means residual damage from retaliation will also take place.

Altruistic Healing + Hammer is but one of the ways to play the Guardian as a “tanky dps” that happens to have great support capabilities. It’s not the only viable way to play. Heavy consecrations with 30 in Virtues is something to consider especially in a WvW setting where they really do shine. More offensively oriented meditations or spirit weapon builds may not be the ideal choice in tPvP, but anything can work in sPvP.

For tournaments, it’s not uncommon to see 30 Valor, 20 Honor, 20 Virtues bunkers set with 2 Meditations + 1 Shout gunning for maximum condition removal. It’s what I use and it plays and stays alive differently through meditations instead and works fine too. My first character was a Necro, that’s a class that is way restricted in builds. You have many ways to deck build across all game modes, it’s a good day to be a Guardian.

Don’t understand this community’s disdain with Shield, it’s a great off-hand but personal preference I guess. I find the mentality of refusing to use a certain weapons is just restricting yourself but it’s your choice. I primarily run with Hammer/Staff in PvE/WvW situations with Greatsword, Scepter and Shield all in my bags.

Hammer and mace are there to help you practice your reaction times and concentrate on mitigating damage. The real killers are traited symbols and retaliation. This is the guardian build where you can be a big fat target with excellent healing and condition removal while your mage support from the sidelines – kind of the last vestige of a tank build. The last 3 skills help you to establish that demarcation and shoo off people from your glass cannons.

If you want to do DPS with it, try combining with scepter/torch or whatever and putting in some spirit weapons. That’ll help keep you from getting bored and also proc fire damage if you have 20 in radiance to compensate for your slow attack speed. It will also give you more reason to use the last 3 skills as your weapons like stationary targets more.

First Mighty blow has more then half the dps of ww and half the cd which makes it have higher overall dps. WW is a burst tool but for sustained damage mb is better, especially versus moving targets.

Here are the damage measurements i done with our weapons and they were performed versus medium golems, naked and no traits and its average killtimes i measured and each test was a minimum of 10 samples and then were all consistent and really nicely clustered, besides one hammer run which actually killed in 42 seconds but that one i removed from the sample as an anomaly..

Skill 1
1h sword 51s
Mace 82s
Scepter 77s
GS 60s
Staff 95s
Hammer 51s

The reason why hammer is so strong it that it actually hits at least 7 times and procc burn once or twice on every chain and ofc the symbol and that the third hit hits hard, really hard.

If we use symbol+chain om Mace, GS and hammer (still only skill 1) and we apply the symbol whenever its off cd then average killtimes are:
Mace: 61s
GS: 60s
Hammer still 51s ofc

If we add in ww, mb and ZD as well we get this:
GS 51s
1h 46s
Hammer still 51s

This also means that when traited with 2h mastery GS will improve somewhat compared to hammer on single targets and the killtime is 48 seconds.

On the other hand when you trait writs then it will improves hammer more then GS and make it possible to have 24/7 uptime on aoe.

Add to this that the symbol on hammer has about 400 in ranges as well.

So for single targets 1h sword is the best, why i use one in tpvp btw and why its really nice combined with hammer whihc is weaker on single targets.

If you want a hybrid of single target and aoe then GS is an option.

BUT ifd you want max dps over times versus more then one opponent then hammer is superior.

Add to this that MB is a much more reliable source of damage since its pure aoe and also is a gapcloser/target changer with really low cd.

The reason why i didnt even consider mace as an option is that the third skill of the mace isnt reliable at all as a source of dps.

If you dont believe me go to the mist and try this for yourself and please stop spreading hearsay and start using facts.

Besides number (that are kittening right) we need to consider that:

the damage rotation of the hammer is composed by 2 skill (autoattack and MB) with this two skill it have its nearly maximum damage, wich is not high than gs, but its near to the gs damage, you have a 5 second of damage rotation, and you have 3 control skill left.
For GS to rech its maximum damage pontetial, you must use all the cd of the sword in a single time, and the damage you have surely HIGH, but NOT so high, and then you have 8 sec for the first damage skill (WW). Add some crit on GS help a little in the autoattack moment, but crit chance, work better for the hammer rotation.

The reason why i didnt even consider mace as an option is that the third skill of the mace isnt reliable at all as a source of dps.

little sidenote. for me mace is fine, yeah its slow, but for dungeon is a real kitten saver. The only thing that dont work so well, is that after the change to Mace3, the skill sometimes dont proc when you have an ally into your shield.

It’s really too bad that greatsword has the AoE friendly pull, but then again a GS/Hammer build isn’t out of the question

Warlord Jim.2870:

@Guanglai Kangyi.

I stopped reading when you said “guardians aren’t really a support class in the first place”

Would you care to re-read that? Are you still sure that you know how to play this class? Guardians have one of the strongest support capabilities out of any of the available classes.

But no class is dedicated support, and every class can be specced to yield significant party support in tandem with their offence.

Engineers with an elixir gun can heal and strip conditions off their allies while piling conditions onto their foes., elementalists can heal and protect their allies and create amazing combo fields.

Mesmers chaos storm puts protection AND aegis onto allies in it’s AoE with a cooldown of a mere ~30 seconds – a trick guardians usually like to claim is unique to them and them alone, nevermind the fantastic array of reflects and conditions/boon removers and decoys.

Thieves can spec so that they constantly put weakness onto all nearby enemies drasticlly mitigating enemy damage; due to the initiative system thieves also make some of the best combat medics as they can dump their init and go heal someone without “losing” their sustained DPS or shroud them in shadow refuge.

Even the humble warrior can be a huge boost to the party specced right… so, no. I’d argue guardian might feel like a support class if you’ve never played anything else, but the reality is guardian is no more or less supporty than any other class.

I think the bigger problem isn’t that AH/hammer is one of our best options, but that Honor/Valor are so kitten good at the moment. I didn’t think Valor was that great, but its Grandmasters certainly make up for middling lower traits. Radiance is nice to dabble in, as is Virtue, but then you have Zeal which never was spectacular on launch. Dabbling in Zeal loses you valuable traits elsewhere in the tree.

So, it’s not that AH/hammer is the only way to go; rather, it’s that Honor/Valor are our two best trees right now, and they work very well with the hammer. I’ve had no trouble switching to a sword/board, or staff when running the AH-based build, so it’s not necessarily centered around a singular weapon. I just happen to love using the hammer, and found a fantastic build that utilizes it to its fullest.

TL,DR: blame our crappy traits.

There are no support classes.

Everytime I go to the builder with a class idea I end up making a sight variation of Altruistic Healing. Its just so fundamentally Guardian.

I have tried all sorts of builds and I just find, maybe because we have so little health, that the AH builds outshine all others. I have tried Meditation Builds, Burning Builds and Spirit Weapon builds but the AH builds seem to be better.

I think it comes down to, we don’t have a lot of health, we need to have heals coming in from somewhere. The amount of health we have seems to be limiting what would be effective builds. Without AH or Monk’s Focus, we don’t have the surivivability of a Warrior who has 25k+ health and does better dps. With one of those 2 Tactics our survivability increases substantially. I personally find that AH gives better healing and feel more comfortable with it. But I can see why some might prefer to get their heals in 1k injections.

Hammer as best guardian build?

Guardians not support profession?

…please continue, this is getting interesting. /popcorn

haha definitely enjoying this.
i won’t say hammer is the weapon of choice for a Guardian. but it is THE weapon of choice for MY guardian. i play the kitten out of all weapons, but only as my 2nd wep set. first slot is and always will be the hammer.

to the support profession comments.. this is in general. people need to get out of their head that each class can only do ONE thing at any given time. i support when i need to, and i kill kitten when i need to. that being said, specc-ed for support AND dps. perhaps i won’t have the HIGHEST dps in game. nor will i have the HIGHEST healing. but i sure as hell do hold the line and stand my ground (ha). i am able to constantly give my allies boons, along with to myself, and am able to hit crits of up to 2k.

that being said, i can see similar numbers when i wield the greatsword. staff is great for travelling and when in zergs, i like to get hits in and tag mobs with #1 AoE, nothing gets better than that. and then when i’m comfortable enough i hit #4 give peopel around me stacks of might and then switch to hammer and finish things off. scepter and torch are great in dungeons for me personally or whenever i need to keep a distance from the mobs. mace to be honest i don’t use much. sword + torch or focus is great. highly mobile and good DPS as well.

I think the main issue is that AH is very popular right now, and hopefully that will lead AN to buff some of our other grandmasters instead of nerfing AH.

Re: Hammer, the downside to the DPS is the slow attacks, which means if any of them are interrupted or blocked, it’s a very large DPS loss. GS may be less DPS but “safer” in that way.

And GS has the “utility” advantages of being able to generate more crits (faster attacks & WW) for traits that depend on them, plus a Leap finisher and a “gather mobs up for AOE” ability, so it SHOULD be less DPS.

Monks Focus and a 2/3 or Meditations build works about as well as Altruistic Healing (as long as you have Smite Condition slotted) but it’s more “selfish” because you aren’t encouraged to stack as many boon-granting abilities as possible. It’s probably as good or better than AH if you’re alone.

One of the reasons Valor is so critical (ha) to any Guardian build that wants to do damage and not die horribly is the fact that for whatever reason, Anet gave that tree Critical Damage. Crits without Crit Damage are pretty sad, and if you aren’t critting, you aren’t doing a whole lot of damage. If it were on Zeal or Radiance instead, people would flock to them like they were free candy. Alas.

That said, it’s possible to build an effective Guardian without AH or MF. You need good condition removal, long Protection and Regeneration uptime, and some vitality/heal over time food but that’s not hard to get. That’s if you want to be survivable. Conversely you can go full glass cannon and obliterate everything you look at and never have to heal. That works pretty well in WvW but I wouldn’t try it in dungeons. Greatsword or Hammer with points in Zeal, Radiance, and either Honor or Valor, plus Berserker and Knight’s gear… Lot of damage, real quick.

P.s., Scepter is incredible. The autoattack sucks but no one uses Scepter for the autoattack. Smite murders people and the easy access to Immobilize makes catching things a snap. Way better ranged damage and personal survivability from Scepter/Focus or Shield (prefer Focus with Scepter though because you can stay mobile instead of ducking under Shield of Absorbtion) than you get with a staff, even with the on-demand 12 Might stacks.

Hammer isn’t going to get nerfed because of AH. In fact, it’s probably not likely to receive nerfs to anything besides maybe Ring of Warding, because none of the other skills are particularly OP. At least not compared to the GS’s original 10s symbols.

Symbol of Protection is (traited) 4 ticks of AH per person every 4s or so, and you get protection. Symbol of Faith, on mace, is 7 ticks of AH every 9s and you get regen. It’s not a significantly huge difference, but also keep in mind that:

1) Hammer attacks very slowly. You will get more crits to proc vigor and might with pretty much any other weapon, but especially mace, GS, and scepter. By comparison the hammer is extremely bad at getting crits so you get very little healing from AH crits. You will end up losing AH ticks because of how few crits you’re getting.

2) Hammer does very poor damage. It deals less damage than any other guardian weapon, except maybe staff, where it’s sort of a toss-up. Anyone who thinks mace is bad damage needs to actually look at how much they’re hitting for with the mace skills per hit compared to the hammer skills. Mace attacks are slow but hit for very large numbers.

3) You lose all other incidental benefits of other weapon sets, and only gain protection. Protection is good but you can’t use any of the other CC skills (and they’re mostly pointless in PvE anyway) without stopping your healing and pretty much guaranteeing that you will die very quickly.

If Anet does decide to nerf AH, it will probably take the form of a nerf to symbol boon application or to Empowering Might/Vigorous Precision. Nerfing hammer because of AH would be way off target.

I started utilizing the staff as part of my Altruistic healing setup and I can honestly say that it has the healing potential that will match if not exceed the the hammer.(pending how many allies around you)

The symbol is self explanatory which offers a decent tick in healing and ground targeting is a plus. Empower is where the insane amount of healing takes place. I did a test with 250 healing power and each tick healed me for 71. You receive three ticks each time empower pulses so that adds up to 852 without the last healing pulse(Around 2500 with) allies nearby. If you take into account 4 other allies in say an spvp match then you’re looking at almost a 6k heal on top of the rather nice 12 stacks of might each shall be receiving. Combine this with the hammer and it’s almost continuous ticks if healing.

Edit: I couldn’t agree more with Guanglai, the hammer has the potential to provide some damage and support but that potential is easily squashed by its slow speed.

Something else to keep in mind as far as AH/Might Crits, Empowering Might has an internal cool down of approximately 1 second, so successive crits in a short time span are wasted as far as group utility goes and stacking party boons to trigger more AH.

That said a slow weapon based on EM and AH work fine since you will attack about as fast as the internal cool down for EM to trigger again. (Vigorous Precision does not appear to have any coo ldown so triggers on every single crit)

A far as more damage or more AE damage, hammer is lower than greatsword but higher than staff (not by much) on paper.

The biggest advantage of hammer is the ease of use and precision of attacks. Greatsword drops out on damage due to whirling wrath damage being inconsistent especially on a moving target.

Hammer does damage in short bursts with the 1 and 2 abilities so it gets more complete hits on a target. If you factor in symbols the symbol lasts shorter so again you maximize the intended time for a target to be in a symbol versus the greatsword where they often run out of the symbol on a mobile fight.

End result: people like hammer better because it is easier to use and maintains a better synergy with altruistic healing because of shorter symbol cooldown and more boons in a fight. EM also works well with hammer due to the slower nature of attacks so crits are not “wasted”.

Mace is often overlooked in its healing potential being greater than hammer for a crit/hammer build but it does not provide the same up time of protection as hammer, so again hammer wins out in this factor.

Crit/hammer is our best chance at staying alive and doing sustainable damage with as little effort on the players part. It is not more damage via numbers but a dead player = zero damage.

If solo, crit/hammer is less effective because there are not multiple players to stack boons on, so a meditation build actually provides more benefit. Great thing is you already are down the same trait line so you can switch without much effort or cost.

When i’m in a group I find EM to be extremely useful due to 5 ticks of at least 71 almost constantly. When i’m alone, it’s a completely different story. I’d rather use 2h mastery since the benefit is near zero.

Was just thinking, factoring in staff symbol+empower it would result in more boons (more self healing) than hammer would and more group utility. Again you would not have protection, but it does about the same damage as hammer. Same exact traits just change weapon.

Oddly enough the staff which is a defensive weapon provides more offense in a group (via might from empower).

This is in contrast to the hammer which is a balanced weapon will provide more defense (via protection from chain attack).

So what does your group need more, defense or offense. You can always swap weapons consistently and provide a little bit of both.

You can but the only problem is will your group utilize the short duration protection over a much longer duration(and more powerful) might buff? I’ve been heavily testing it in spvp and for the life of me unless I have them in zealots embrace or RoW, cannot finish the third swing.

spvp is a very different beast and I detest hammer in it because of the speed of the weapon. Some people like it, but to do so you need to play a very “jousty” type of fight. Move in move out. This may be the reason they added the chance to slow on crit to help people land more hits in pvp

It really is a different beast but I think provides the best scenario of truly testing your weapons capabilities.

Players move differently than NPCs. Most NPCs don’t try to kite you, so as you mentioned the hammer can be difficult to complete the chain attack consistently versus players.

Of course you have ring of warding or zealots embrace to help, they are not up consistently enough to maintain pressure. Utilizing the utility skills would help via knockdowns/immobilization or teleports.

Many people love the Judge’s Intervention/Banish combo for a surprise knockback.