Guild Wars 2

I have played guardian for around 2000 hours. I do not do any type of PvP. I play a AHEM (Altruistic Healing Empowering Might) boon duration guardian. With that in mind I need help picking out which ascended armor I should go for.

Due to the build I want to play what would you use? I need something with good precision because the build heavily relies on a High Crit Chance. For those of you that are not familiar with the build every time I Crit I gain a stack of might and since that is a boon I also heal myself at the same time.

Reason I am asking for others opinions is because I am only making one set of this and I want to make sure I go the right route.

Here are the choices I have to pick between

Beserker:
Power – 329
Precision – 235
Crit Dmg – 17%
Notes: High base damage with a good chance to crit.

Assassin:
Power – 235
Precision – 329
Crit Dmg – 17%
Notes: Very high crit chance with lower base damage

Knight:
Power – 235
Precision – 235
Toughness – 329
Notes: High survivability at the cost of DPS but has a good chance to crit.

Celestial:
Power – 147
Precision – 147
Toughness – 147
Vitality – 147
Crit Dmg – 19%
Healing Power – 147
Con. Dmg – 147
Notes: Not sure what to think here it decent in every attribute but only a master of Crit Dmg. Picking this would be losing at the least 88 precision. But on the other hand it may enhance my boons.

All comments are appreciated.
Thanks!

Beserker. Would be silly to spend so much gold on anything else. A mix of beserker and assassins works aswell. But for simplicity I would just recommend full beserker.

spoj.9672:

Beserker. Would be silly to spend so much gold on anything else. A mix of beserker and assassins works aswell. But for simplicity I would just recommend full beserker.

I’ve personally never used assassins yet. Were you talking about a full split 3 pieces of each or of specific pieces?

Interesting look at a high dps guardian build here (pure assassin):

Its long, but interesting how he illustrates that Anet’s descriptions of weapon usages is so off it is laughable. e.g. scepter .25 sec attack is actually not even close due to use animation delay. I wish Anet would fix their action descriptions to be accurate by accounting for use animation delay.

curtegg.5216:

Interesting look at a high dps guardian build here (pure assassin):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMpyuieGyhc

That’s a crap build, not a high DPS build. Do not use it.

If you go for any assassins it would just be helm chest and legs, rest beserkers. But its not really worth it. So id just recommend beserker. Full assassins if you want to try for the lupi solo record on guard.

curtegg.5216:

Interesting look at a high dps guardian build here (pure assassin):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMpyuieGyhc

Its long, but interesting how he illustrates that Anet’s descriptions of weapon usages is so off it is laughable. e.g. scepter .25 sec attack is actually not even close due to use animation delay. I wish Anet would fix their action descriptions to be accurate by accounting for use animation delay.

He assumes zero fury uptime and swapping out zerkers trinkets for something else if there is fury from party which ends up in lower damage.

You already get 100% crit chance with RHS on exotics, it would be a waste to spend so much gold on assassin ascended and end up having useless extra precision.

spoj.9672:

If you go for any assassins it would just be helm chest and legs, rest beserkers. But its not really worth it. So id just recommend beserker. Full assassins if you want to try for the lupi solo record on guard.

I tested what you said in the build calculator given perfect scenarios with Chocolate Omnomberry Cream and Master Maintenance Oil since those are the two I use. I already have full Beserker trinkets and weapons so I included those as well.

The effective power of a Full Beserker Set was 3734.32 with a 50.12% crit chance
The effective power of the Assassin/Beserker was 3711.02 with a 53.16% crit chance

That means the difference in the effective power would be 23.3 and 3.04% crit chance. Seems like you would lose more crit chance than you would power. What do you think?

Id go with the one with higher effective power. Seeing as that factors in crit.

I would suggest you run everything berserker except for 2H weapon, coat and helm. These ones should be celestial because they are imbalanced(they provide more crit damage % than the berserker ones, that’s actually weird).
Of course, if you are at least a little bit interested in WvW, you should run full Celestial Armor and customize trinkets(they provide less crit damage than other ones, another confusing bummer)

This is the reason why I am going to avoid ascended armor. I swap gear pieces in and out way to much to be limiting myself to one ascended set.

Evalia.7103:

I would suggest you run everything berserker except for 2H weapon, coat and helm. These ones should be celestial because they are imbalanced(they provide more crit damage % than the berserker ones, that’s actually weird).
Of course, if you are at least a little bit interested in WvW, you should run full Celestial Armor and customize trinkets(they provide less crit damage than other ones, another confusing bummer)

I ran the numbers on this and it came up with 3314.89 effective power with a 46.91% crit chance. That’s a pretty big step down from the other two mentioned what would the benefit be other than having more crit dmg?

A full set of Celestial would be 3326 effective power with a 47.11% crit chance. This would mean I could be a jack of all trades a master of none. The difference between this and full zerker would mean I would lose 407.77 effective power and 3.01% crit chance.

The stat increase from exotic to ascended is very minor. This means you should probably worry more about what you are using for pve when selecting what stats to choose on ascended armour (In particular fractals for the ar). For pve you really do want to max out damage. Losing effective power for some measily healing and survivability isnt going to help you or your teammates. It will just reduce your damage.

You can get exotic stuff for wvw and you should be fine.

Very good point just trying to exhaust all my options to make sure there was not something that I’m overlooking.

Another question I have been wondering is does sigil of strength which gives a 30% chance to give you a stack of might on critical work hand in hand with the empowering might trait. Not in the way where it will give your whole party 2 stacks of might at the same time but in the way where it will give you two stacks at the same time therefore causing two mini heals in one swing?

I assume so. But for dps runes i recommend runes of the scholar or ranger runes.

spoj.9672:

I assume so. But for dps runes i recommend runes of the scholar or ranger runes.

Yeah I have a set of exotic armor with scholar runes but for my ascended set I plan on going the route of Boon Duration.

2 – Water = 15% boon duration
2- Monk = 15% boon duration
2 – Traveler = 15% boon duration
Traits = 20% boon duration
Food = 20% boon duration

Totaling out to 85% boon duration

For me its my favorite play style you get swiftness out the wazoo, and “Hold The Line” becomes greatly effective when lasting for such a long time. Also the stacks of might you apply last way longer because they are effected by your boon duration and add to your DPS. Its pretty easy to get over 20 stacks of might or more during a long fight with no ones help.