Guild Wars 2

For the most part I’ve used the guardian to be my team’s meat shield / buffer to this point. It’s an extremely challenging ordeal that involves pushing buttons as fast as I can but I hate to say… I’m bored of that.

I’ve grown to love the mace/scepter/shield. The mace especially. But I feel like I am not doing right by the mace right now.

I have a set of aurora armor right now, but I am contemplating getting a suit either with more healing power, or precision.

I am debating precision/healing power because the next debate is sigil of rage or sigil of water. Which one would play best with the mace’s auto attack heal?

Basically I’m looking to build a suit around the mace shield combo. Damage is a secondary consideration to me if I can fill the roll of tanking and agro while keeping a steady trickle of health going back into my allies.

Whether healing power is ever worth it is very controversial on this forum. Personally, I’m not against healing power in general. I have it on most of my own gear. However, in my opinion, the sigil of water is worthless. It heals for 350-400 on a 10-second cooldown, which just isn’t much at 80. The sigil of rage is a more solid choice even for a build that does go for healing power.

If aggro control is you main goal, you’re probably better served by pumping damage anyway. However, the weapon set would probably still be effective with healing power if approached as a way to stay alive while putting out a steady stream of control and damage, although maybe not as effective as if you replaced the scepter with a staff.

I am doing precision healing power atm and loving it. I have a ton of healing power and the mace/shield is almost a must in dungeons with a lot of melee. My main armor goes, healing power, precision and vitality. which makes me very tanky and able to take a big hit while regening it back pretty quickly. This and giving myself the protection from the shield and mace skills keeps me beefy enough for most fights.

To maximize the mace we should look at what it does:

Slow/big hits
Heals
Blocks

So by that quick list we see that it is a bursty type fighting style that could benifit from crits and crit damage, it has great sources of healing to maintain fighting, and any “on block” abilities are greatly utilized here. (Namely on block burn and on block might)

Many discredit the utilization of healing power, and while I don’t think it is something that we should focus on, it definitely helps maintain your life in a fight. I think of it more as a passive regen ability versus a burst recovery heal ability like in most traditional MMO styles.

Healing/precision/vitality or healing/precision/toughness? I guess I don’t know exactly the difference. Is there a sigil more suitable for a mace to cope with the slower attack speeds? While quickness is great, the rage sigil still has a 45s cooldown, which is a LONG time in a fight.

I like using it with toughness because regen can always use more protection and vice versa.

I focus on a Heal/Tough/Vitality build using armor with the same bonuses. I mix the armor’s primary stats between Toughness and Heal. For weapons I went with Mace and Focus. I put a Superior Rune of Life on the Mace and a Rune of Energy on the Focus.
I’ve heard my spouse chuckle at me while fighting Kohler several times in AC as I count a three count twice on the auto attack before I lay down a number 2 on the Mace for the heal off the symbol. I don’t have huge spike damage, but I’ve got moderate numbers across all my abilities and I rarely have trouble staying alive. Its surprising how tough (almost typed tanky) you can be with blocks/blinds and a good regen.