Guild Wars 2

I’ve been running a PVT armour set with full cleric trinkets for a while and it has done me well, but I feel like mixing it up a bit. I’ve tried knights in PvP and it doesn’t have as much sustain as I’m used to. Magi really interests be because of the combination of helaing power and precision. I’ve fallen in love with healing power on the guard lately, mainly because I recently switched to tome of courage (It’s OP as hell btw, stop using RF). So I’m just wondering how viable Magi’s actually is on a WvW gaurdian. I’m used to be extremely tank, so the lack of toughness worries me a bit, I’m hoping the healing power will make up for it.

the problem with magi’s is it has no power. all the crit % and damage in the world won’t mean a kitten thing when you hit like a wet noodle in the first place. also, if you’re relying on retaliation to do damage, that won’t do anything at all, since it scales off power, but deal condition damage, so it cant crit. eventually, you will run out of heals and condition removals, then you will get torn apart. splashing a bit of magi’s hear and there may be fine, depending on your needs, but avoid using it as your “main” affix.

Like Arashi noted, the precision will not make up for the complete lack of power in the stats: your damage will drop significantly. No matter what, switching to Magi’s will necessitate a change in your play style, switching you from a durable damage dealer to a healer / boon giver.

Something like Empowering Might + Altruistic Healing could be pretty nice, especially with the combo that vigorous precision & selfless daring provide. Again, it’d be more about boosting your allies’ damage than your own.

Of course, mixing armor types is a thing you can do, rather than taking pure Magi’s.

I’ve found some magi pieces to be nice, but you don’t want a full magi set.

Softspoken.2410:

Like Arashi noted, the precision will not make up for the complete lack of power in the stats: your damage will drop significantly. No matter what, switching to Magi’s will necessitate a change in your play style, switching you from a durable damage dealer to a healer / boon giver.

Something like Empowering Might + Altruistic Healing could be pretty nice, especially with the combo that vigorous precision & selfless daring provide. Again, it’d be more about boosting your allies’ damage than your own.

Of course, mixing armor types is a thing you can do, rather than taking pure Magi’s.

Are you speaking from experience or assumptions? I think my survivability will be extremely high with a healing power set, so durability isn’t really in question. I’ll still be rocking full cleric trinkets, and probably soldier runes, so there will still be a bit of power there. I honestly think high precision will make up for that. I hit like a wet needle as it is, damage is not a big part of my build, cause my damage already sucks. I’m failry sure a raise in precision would increase that, not to mention help a lot for an AH build.

i think you can find a good mix if you’re going for healing power. i.e. mixing magi’s and cleric’s. you’ll definitely be playing differently compared to PVT + cleric’s. i think what they meant was just to not go full magi’s.

i’ve actually been trying to build a healing power set with higher crit chance too ; ))

Moleless.1462:

Softspoken.2410:

Like Arashi noted, the precision will not make up for the complete lack of power in the stats: your damage will drop significantly. No matter what, switching to Magi’s will necessitate a change in your play style, switching you from a durable damage dealer to a healer / boon giver.

Something like Empowering Might + Altruistic Healing could be pretty nice, especially with the combo that vigorous precision & selfless daring provide. Again, it’d be more about boosting your allies’ damage than your own.

Of course, mixing armor types is a thing you can do, rather than taking pure Magi’s.

Are you speaking from experience or assumptions? I think my survivability will be extremely high with a healing power set, so durability isn’t really in question. I’ll still be rocking full cleric trinkets, and probably soldier runes, so there will still be a bit of power there. I honestly think high precision will make up for that. I hit like a wet needle as it is, damage is not a big part of my build, cause my damage already sucks. I’m failry sure a raise in precision would increase that, not to mention help a lot for an AH build.

A bit of experience, but mostly theory. Your survivability will be pretty good since you’ll be able to recover from damage quite well, and you’ll have enough health that getting bursted isn’t too likely, but since there’s very little toughness there, you’ll take bigger hits from direct damage than before when you were running PVT. All in all, it could work out, as long as you aren’t under too much pressure yourself.

But on another point: if you ever have an equal choice between power and precision, equal points of power will translate to more direct damage than equal points of precision*. Precision looks like it’s about damage, but really I think it’s about proccing unique effects. (Like giving all your allies might or yourself vigor)

That said, if you don’t care much about the direct damage you do, then you can maximize precision to get those other neat effects.

The extra crit chance might make up for the lack of power. Remember you’ll also have vigor up more often and proc might from crit more often. That means extra heals if you’re running with AH.
Don’t forget weakness is ignored if you crit also.

Magi is pretty good if you don’t go full. I’d say just get the weapon, and the rest of your gear mix it.

Having full armor as Magi, with Cleric Trinkets would be a good mix. Including jewels, your Trinkets will have a few more stat points than your armor gives, discounting runes (I weigh it this way as jewels are only for stats, where as runes can be for effects, which can make the stats somewhat less important).

From what OP has stated, I’ve made this build, which should only show the stats that you’d have from armor only. I’ve also included a cleric and magi weapon swap to gage the stat differences between those.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASGAA-jwxAoNA8GUasIasV2ioxqawUqER1ukioVDA-e

Now, coming from a Soldiers armor set, you lose a lot of power compared to Magi’s (comparatively. Power being soldier’s main stat, and prec only being a secondary one). However, you’ll gain a lot of Hpow, which can translate to much better dodge roll heals, and better heals from whatever else you may be taking advantage of. Since you’ve said you don’t care much for damage, you can look into proc on crit sigils to help your allies out.
With Magi armor and a Magi weapon, you’ll be looking at a base 22% crit chance, plus whatever your traits give, and 1k hpow before traits.

Magi is also nice as you can get it from running AC, TA, and HotW, and you can get everything except boots from Karma.