Guild Wars 2

Im currently using my own varient of an A.H build that relies on using a sigil that procs might on crit for a.h plus the empowering might trait for might on crit and the trait that give vigor on crit, plus 5 in virtues and elite focus elite and spamming virtues.

Now i find myself in wvw / dungeons a lot were my team isnt always around me or close enough to benefit from a.h, and it seems ah heals are only worth it when u have a full party around you, im going to try out a meditation build, my own variant of course, was wondering what you guys think of meditations vs shouts for wvw / pve/dungeons (all cept pvp)

edit : Also is the trait that makes meditations instant needed? i really like having the 5 percent of toughness goes to prec trait because it gives me 5 more crit chance, boosting me up to 40 crit instead of 32ish.

Meditations for soloplay or with a friend/group that doesnt understand how to benefit from your boons.

As long as you have one guy that stay close enough and you have empowering might (if >40% crit chance) and symbols AH is the better choice from a healing perspective and that they in general are better support.

Note that signet of judgement also give boons to the team and conditions to the opponent while active and 10% reduction in incoming damage when passive. Basically a shout but with a passive effect.

No its not needed to have them instant in pve, in pvp they might come in handy on smite conditions. The two stun breakers in meditations are all ready instant. Reduced cd is more important and i would use either Purity or Retributive armor in wvw.

i dont understand how does sig of judgement give conditions to oponents and its not classified as a shout but since it gives retal it might proc a.h? anywho thats a lil offtopic im more asking about meditations and if the instant meditation trait is needed as they already seem pretty instant. plus in wvw somtimes i am going solo or im running in to melee range solo a lot and i find its just me benefiting from a.h.

Whats the pros and cons of meditations vs shouts? Other then the obviois ones like shouts help support your team

Brutaly.6257:

Meditations for soloplay or with a friend/group that doesnt understand how to benefit from your boons.

As long as you have one guy that stay close enough and you have empowering might (if >40% crit chance) and symbols AH is the better choice from a healing perspective and that they in general are better support.

Note that signet of judgement also give boons to the team and conditions to the opponent while active and 10% reduction in incoming damage when passive. Basically a shout but with a passive effect.

No its not needed to have them instant in pve, in pvp they might come in handy on smite conditions. The two stun breakers in meditations are all ready instant. Reduced cd is more important and i would use either Purity or Retributive armor in wvw.

You also have to take into account,
Are you using solider runes with the #6 passive to remove conditions when you use shouts.

If you use this with stand your ground it will get you out of any situation.

guys your heading a lil offtopic here :*(

Signet of judgement gives weakness in a 600 radius and retal in the same radius. My point was that deciding on shouts or meditations you need to look outside the box.

Altruisitic Healing is triggered by signet of judgement and passively you get 10% larger healtpool which is in line with the heals from one meditation with Monks Focus..

Medtiations dont heal when you use a AH build.

The difference is that shouts are groupcentric and meditations isnt.

Meditations increase mobility, shouts doesnt.

regarding instant i answered that in my previous post.

Blissified.8369:

guys your heading a lil offtopic here :*(

No frankly we arent, you asked what the difference and what we thought of them and the answer is kind of complex.

The Blue Ace also pointed out one more important difference and you also have pure of voice which is group wide which trigger even more AH even though kind of buggy atm.

Of course meditations dont heal when you use an ah build
And i understand what your saying about signit of judgement, and i realize this i do use sig of judgement when i need more tankyness in certaint situations s’all im saying.

So is the instant meditation trait required?

Also i’d like to state ive been playing guardians since beta and have tried all the possibilities of A.H / shouts, i havn’t explored into meditations too much as i found them lackluster but im willing to give them another try because i want to feal a bit more independent now and not rely on my teamates as much as a lot of the times i get ganked in wvw.

Also the added mobility plus synergy heal with that seems nice, also i do need to do more damage i find on some tanky targets in wvw i don’t do enough damage, and i am specced to be a tanky dpser, more dps then tank , but i can take a beating,

Blissified.8369:

was wondering what you guys think of meditations vs shouts for wvw / pve/dungeons (all cept pvp)

edit : Also is the trait that makes meditations instant needed? i really like having the 5 percent of toughness goes to prec trait because it gives me 5 more crit chance, boosting me up to 40 crit instead of 32ish.

What isnt answered in your question in the above posts? Its a meditation vs shout question and how can that be answered without talking about shouts?

Blissified.8369:

So is the instant meditation trait required?

Already answered.

I’ve always been a big AH guy.

After talk’n w/ Bash in my thread, I said I’d give mediations a try and see how it goes… Well, I have been and all I can say about them boils down to a 1 liner:

" Mediations for Burst Healing / AH for Sustained Healing ".

Plain and simple.

To put this into context: I’ve found Mediations to be a better source of healing when I’m NOT running in a Tank/Bunker type build. We get bursted for more, faster, and to have the counter is significant…

The issue, ofcourse, is you loose alot of your ‘support’: IE, healing others in its most basic consideration by the vast majority.

Reality: we don’t loose support, we just focus on support in different ways through playstyle.

In the end it’s always 6-1 half dozen to the other. It’s all about who you’re playing with and the playstyle of your cohesive group.

PS: Thanks Bash =]

I’ve got a couple video’s int he making w/ Meditaiton.

I run 0/15/30/20/5 GS Meditation build for WvW. Knight’s armors and Valkyrie trinkets. I tried AH build, but I felt that it wasn’t my thing. I just love jumping into mobs using Judge’s Intervention and spin the hell out. Conditions are easily negated using Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity.

I don’t use Focused Mind, since it only affects Smite Condition and I’m fine with its 1/4 cast time. I wish Focused Mind was more useful.

Like Brutaly mentioned, AH is more group oriented. AH is more into tank support than tank offensive.

Regardless if you’re in a group or solo, I find shouts to be vastly superior. In PvE, all benefit you so well while meditations provide a small instant benefit. Pvp, it’s a different story.

Good stuff in here.

Personally I use meditations just because I’m usually the first person to rush in. I need to know that I’ll be able to heal myself, remove conditions on demand, and have that added mobility as well (helps make up for the lack of cripple and gives me an instant way out of the fight if I need it). For utilities I run SY, JI, Smite. I also traited for retal on judgement (since I know people will be beating on me) as well as 3s of stability on VoC which helps a ton vs cc/knockbacks. I also find that meditations are better for anti-burst since I can pop those 2k meditation heals vs having lots of small heals with AH.

If I’m doing more group/team work I do swap over to AH and change utilities to suit that role better though. Both are very good in their own ways and in the end it just comes down to what you want to do… solo vs group.

Wondering if focusing on symbols to give passive healing and meditations for burst self healing would be a good idea?

something along the lines of
http://bit.ly/129nm98

I rarely run with AH choosing almost exclusively Monk’s Focus, even with a group. As a GS’er, a lot of times I find myself solo melee’ing the mobs while the rest of the group stands back and uses range. Same in WvW; I often find myself alone or away from the zerg/group while they either range it or wait until I’ve gathered enough of the oppositions attention.

As others have mentioned, Focused Mind is really not needed at all. Also, Mediation Mastery coupled with Smite Condition is nice for burst healing and keeping it on a fairly low CD.

I run a hybrid DPS build btw.

I’m just finding some of the meditations to be mediocre i don’t know im warming up to them a bit, i mean even when traited the cooldowns seem too long for what they do, anyway heres the buil i built for meditations.

Blissified Meditation WvW/PvE Tanky Dpser Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlUgiDnGyNEf4ERli4dPMFaMjXPoIEbIA

Any help with the skills? should i all 3 meditations on the bar or onl 2 and somthing els?

Also this is the first time i put some points in zeal, and im wondering, my passive burn that burns every 4th hit seems to last a big longer with some points in zeal but it still seems a little too short for me to be getting the plus 10 percent dmg bonus their should i get rid of zeal tree and go into virtues like i did with my a.h build?

NOTE The items/armor/trinkets im using are a mix of dps and tankiness i have:
3k armor
40 crit chance
55 crit damage
16 000 hp
(Using a mix of different orbs in armor, armor itself is a mix of knights / zerkers / power/vit/tough)
2 hand gs signit : Sigil of strength (might on crit) for now, because i was using it for my A.H might proccing tanky support / dps build and may switch back.

What sigil would best synergize with that build and is that build ok? (I use sigil of energy on my staff which i think is the best choice)

Anyway i’ll post MY A.H build also, now for the A.H build all my weapons/armor/trinket stats basicly stayed the same as i like the good all around’ness of it.

A.H CRIT STACKING TANKY DPS / SUPPORT BUILD :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgyCXFyvDf4ERWhVi9AjZE+XPooDZIA+

Note: My A.H build is built around A.H and shouts ofcourse but also proccing might, i proc might using:
Sigil Of Strength (30% chanceMight on crit)
Empowering Might Trait (Might on Crit)
Greatsword 1 chain attack #3 (Might on 3rd hit)
Vigor on Crit Trat

All these alone give me Ok healing it seems, i don’t know if Meditations trump it at all.
For additional healing i can spam all my virutes (10 in virtues) for nice healing and nice buffs to dmg and survability, i can pop off my passive fire ability for some might and burst fire plus healing if i need be, then refresh it with my elite.

Instant meditations for the most part are not worth it and is a left over trait from beta where all meditations had cast times. Currently 2 meditations are already instant and the other two have quick cast times anyways. As for using interventions over shouts in an AH build, I would say go for it if you find them more helpful. Shouts give your group boons, but besides stability the boons aren’t that unique or hard for other classes to maintain. Also shouts only contribute a small portion to AH healing. Weapon skills and EM procs will give you lot more healing.

Meditation for solo play, Shouts for group

interventions over shouts in an ah build? I don’t understand what your talking about, and im not really askin about shout builds as i played the class inside and out since beta. I tailor made my own A.h build that works good imo.

I dislike using judges intervention without it being traited (like using it with shout a.h build) because the cast time traited is already pretty long, plus with that long of a cast time and no heal, i would rather have an extra shout.

Drgori.5724:

Meditation for solo play, Shouts for group

Please refrain from posting general statements like this,

We all know that shouts work better in groups but its not as night and day as this.

Because a lot of the time even when im in a huge wvw group with a party, im too far away for them to benefit from shouts

Blissified.8369:

Drgori.5724:

Meditation for solo play, Shouts for group

Please refrain from posting general statements like this,

We all know that shouts work better in groups but its not as night and day as this.

Because a lot of the time even when im in a huge wvw group with a party, im too far away for them to benefit from shouts

It actually is pretty much as night and day as drgori stated. Meditations (with the exception of Merciful Intervention, which most guardians don’t use) provide no benefit what so ever to your party members and Monk’s Focus doesn’t provide as much survivability as AH when in a 5 man party. When solo, AH gets weaker and MF outperforms it in survivability. The only point of difference is that shouts are still very viable outside of parties because they still provide good boons, although there boons aren’t that game altering.

Blissified.8369:

Drgori.5724:

Meditation for solo play, Shouts for group

Please refrain from posting general statements like this,

We all know that shouts work better in groups but its not as night and day as this.

Because a lot of the time even when im in a huge wvw group with a party, im too far away for them to benefit from shouts

The difference is night and day though. Not being in range of the shout in WvW or SPvP has nothing to do with the build. This has more to do with the player, not the build.

How does it not have anything to do with the build? Taking into account that when i play often times in my playstyle i wont be using Alteristic healing to my full advantage plays a huge part.

Plus why would you discount the FACT that shouts are not only self buffs but team buffs also?

Im talking about using shouts / meditations for me, why do i get the fealing people arn’t reading my opening post and my second post (the two that are a few paragraphs)?

see, people are reading it, but there IS no black and white answer to your questions. we can all offer insight, but ultimately it’ll be up to the user’s play style and choices. there is no definitive which is better. if there was, i’d say it’d eb – which do you have more fun with?

as i hit 80 and until maybe a month ago, i ran exclusively AH. and the most standard type. i loved it and was shout heavy. and from my experience, i wouldnt’ say AH is useless when you’re roaming solo. i’ve done plenty of content running around with shouts (for e.g. SY is extremely strong solo and can be used for a slight burst as a Guard. why do you think they have to nerf it for sPvP?). if you want to MAXIMIZE, then of course, shouts + AH would be ideal in a group setting. ideally if all your allies were never more than 600 away from you. so if you have a dedicated group to do that with in WvW, by all means, i think AH is a good option.

though at the same time, i’ve been recently meddling with a triple med build and it’s been super fun. lot more mobile and i feel more “reactive” with my utilities as opposed to just popping a shout and let the durations run their course. you have to be on your toes more i feel so it’s a nice change of pace. at the same time, i wouldn’t say it’s not support at all.

is meditations exclusively better when going solo? not necessarily. i’ve done 1v2, 3’s before using an AH build fine. is AH and shouts strictly better when in a group? if you CAN have higher DPS with meditations and are more mobile and can provide more strategic movements, i don’t see how that doesn’t help your group either.

in your second post you mention you are the only one benefiting from AH, and that’s true. the core effect of AH is that YOU get heals when you place boons. not you and your allies get heals when you place boons (how OP would that be). the “altruistic” parts comes in the fact that you have more incentive to give out boons, which in turn, can be seen as support. but that’s besides the point. so when you DO feel you’re solo-ing more, you’re just not reaping the FULL benefits of AH as you would if you had allies around. but AH still works.

depending on the situation, and as already mentioned, meditations give burtst heals. AH heals for less but more sustained and a steady stream of it. since they’re both in the same line, why not just switch traits and utilities when you’re in a group? and if you know you’re going to go solo, switch to MF and take all meds?

Ah stacks with how many people are around is my point, my buddy worked out the healing of a.h vs monks focus with 3 traited meditations, and it becomes equal around 3.5 people with a.h, roughly. And ofcourse this is highly situational//broad/subjective but it still helps you get a grasp on things

interesting. so like said, in general if you’re in a party (you + 4), AH could have a SLIGHT edge. and your allies could definitely benefit more from the boons you will be handing out. though again, it’s still up to you ; ))

going forward i will most likely keep switching back and forth. though even my trait setup is different from my AH build vs MF build.

don’t forget to take healing power into account as well. how to strike a good balance between healing, toughness and vitality is another issue.

added: also to take into account are obviously your gear, as well as runes. this could play a huge part in what build you decide to take as well.

Blissified.8369:

Im talking about using shouts / meditations for me, why do i get the fealing people arn’t reading my opening post and my second post (the two that are a few paragraphs)?

Because this is the questions you ask in OP. It strongly indicate that you need a comparison.

Blissified.8369:

was wondering what you guys think of meditations vs shouts for wvw / pve/dungeons (all cept pvp)

edit : Also is the trait that makes meditations instant needed?

And as Akamons says, there is no black and white.

Blissified.8369:

And it becomes equal around 3.5 people with a.h, roughly. And ofcourse this is highly situational//broad/subjective but it still helps you get a grasp on things

It would if the numbers where correct but they are flawed, with a maxed AH build you get higher HPS with one (max 2) teammates in range then you get over time in a meditation build.

What you get from a meditation build is more margin of error due to the burst heals.

Example over 15 seconds of battle
50% critrating and hammar and writ of persistance and empowering might.
12 proccs from AH triggered by symbol of protection.
3 proccs from empowering might, its actually more like 6-7 proccs but i wanted to be moderate in my assment.
3 proccs from retal in mighty blow
3 proccs from vigorous precision

18*72=1260/15=84 hps

If you use JL and Smite Conditions and Signet of Judgement (very good “heal” indeed since its a 10% damage reduction) as utility then the average traited cd is 27 Seconds and they contribute with approx 3800 in health. Which is 140 hps

If we then add in boons SyG and HtL (untraited) and signet of judgement you get:
SyG+HtL+SoJ= 6 hps. 6+84=90

Traited (5 points) virtues give you:
VoJ 7 hps (refresh on kill not include nor is that you can use the elite) in open world pve this is virtually spammable with a max performance build but we exclude this.
90+7=97
VoR+VoC 3 hps

97+3=100 hps

Now if we add in an ally here is what you approx get.

SoP+EM+Retal 70 hps 100+70=170
Shouts and SoJ 6 hps 170+6=176
Virtues 10hps 176+10=186
In virtues i havent included refresh on kills or the elite.

For each ally in the area you can add approx 86 in hps.

So basically you use meditations when:

A. You play solo
B. You are poor in positioning yourself aka poor supporter of the team
C. You need burstheal
D. You are into scepter and 1h Sword
E. You dont want to support
F. You are in an environment where positioning is close to impossble to have control over so you cant benefit from the symbols.
G. Etc

And last but not least, add in sigils that give you might on crit and you can add about 20 hps more. So basically AH in solo play (pve) gives you about 10-20 less hps then a meditation build. Its more in pvp due to difficulty to control the effect from symbols and you also miss more hits.

Add in a friend and good team play and AH is just a no brainer.

Ofc we can tweak some in the utilities, for instance i wouldnt play without SyG in wvw which either removes one meditation or signet of judgement.

Is this an answer to the Meditations vs Shout question you initially asked?

EDIT: If i really tried to max it, spamming VoJ and maxing boons i wouldnt be suprised if you could get it to heal more then meditations do, even in soloplay, in pve ofc.

Also add in the effect of the boons, just add in one well placed HtL, SyG or aegis from retreat and that is enough to avoid damage bursts that are comparable with the heals form one meditation,.