Guild Wars 2

I am wondering what people consider to be the optimum amount of health/toughness to be…
I have been mucking around with builds for a while trying to work out how much I can compromise in exchange for damage output and things like that while being pretty “safe”.

IE, in my defacto AH build I have ~3K toughness and about 20K health rendering me almost unkillable without a decent size zerg, although damage output, particularly with a GS is pretty low with that setup.

On my 1HS + Shield build I had ~17k HP and a bit under 3K toughness but damage output was substantially higher.

What have you guys found? How low can you go?

13500 HP and 1600 toughness, though I expect to get about 1-1.5k HP from runes which I haven’t bought yet.
I’m not easy to kill, but that’s because I have mad dodging skills from playing an ele and easy perma-vigor helps. No face tanking for me. I think lots of people get surprised when I hit them like a truck and they were expecting a bunker guardian.

Gaudrath.6725:

13500 HP and 1600 toughness, though I expect to get about 1-1.5k HP from runes which I haven’t bought yet.
I’m not easy to kill, but that’s because I have mad dodging skills from playing an ele and easy perma-vigor helps. No face tanking for me. I think lots of people get surprised when I hit them like a truck and they were expecting a bunker guardian.

What sort of numbers do you hit for? which weapon sets do you go for?

Well, I have 64% crit rate with 75% crit damage and and my GS autoattacks usually crit around, depending on target, between 1200-2500 points. I run with Staff/Greatsword for general WvW (I don’t do sPvP) but my favourite fighting set is GS – Sword/Torch combo because it has nice mobility, lots of blinds and good AoE/ranged options.

Though lately I’ve come to appreciate the staff more… faster Might stacking before fights + watching runners bounce off the Line of Warding is funny.

I would recommend at least 1800 toughness and about 1400 vitality. Living guardian>dead guardian who hits higher.

you should go pvp so that you see what bunkering is xD
i have played pve and wvw and i algo tank bien dps more or lees like you but pvp… no dps tanking there as guardian xD

Hicci.8761:

I would recommend at least 1800 toughness and about 1400 vitality. Living guardian>dead guardian who hits higher.

Depends on what you want to do. If I pop Save Yourselves + Leap of Faith + Judge’s Intervention and Whirling Wrath in the middle of a group, I’ve just nailed several people down to 50% or less (even downed a few a couple of times) before they even had a chance to react.

Of course, if I get focused I die quick, so this is not one of the builds for 1vsX play. More of a shock trooper stuff because I rely on my group to hit them immediately afterwards.

So far had little trouble in such scenarios, and even if we lose I am usually one of the last to go down. But I am susceptible to burst damage, so gotta watch out for that. I’m not saying mine is the best build out there, I was just answering OP’s question, how low can you go with HP. Well, really low.

For PvE you can pretty much go all zerker’s for any content and just trait and utilize weapons and skills properly. Of course if you pug for dungeons then its a different story.

For PvP it depends on the role you are going to play. If you are going to be point assualt, then slot zerker amulet with valk jewel and run a symbol bomb build. If you are going to bunker mid, then run soldier’s or cleric’s with a good bunker build. If you are going to roam (which is rare for a good pvp team) then all zerker’s.

For WWW if you are going to be frontline of an organized zerg then you want to stack these higher as your job is to soak damage or try full healing power with toughness. If you are just running small groups then a balance is good.

2900 is when your bigger diminishing returns start to hit; though they aren’t bad. If you want to min/max this a good soft cap. Vit really depends on how effective your condition removal is and how skilled you are in general. 17k hp is probably a great start then you can work your way down to less hp.

Gaudrath.6725:

Hicci.8761:

I would recommend at least 1800 toughness and about 1400 vitality. Living guardian>dead guardian who hits higher.

Depends on what you want to do. If I pop Save Yourselves + Leap of Faith + Judge’s Intervention and Whirling Wrath in the middle of a group, I’ve just nailed several people down to 50% or less (even downed a few a couple of times) before they even had a chance to react.

Of course, if I get focused I die quick, so this is not one of the builds for 1vsX play. More of a shock trooper stuff because I rely on my group to hit them immediately afterwards.

So far had little trouble in such scenarios, and even if we lose I am usually one of the last to go down. But I am susceptible to burst damage, so gotta watch out for that. I’m not saying mine is the best build out there, I was just answering OP’s question, how low can you go with HP. Well, really low.

Well first of all “save yourself” in large fights WILL get you killed plus in pvp the buff duration is half of their duration in pve. Still a good skill tho. I have noticed something really important when playing and that is how inefficient our bust builds are. We lack the ability to escape properly. Especially if you don’t get condition removals for your utility and get crippled or chilled.
The most efficient offensive build for me has been the combination of Judges intervention with hammer #5 and then GS #2. The opponent WILL panic even without huge burst. I will combine this with semi-high tankyness to allow me to escape the situation. Using this tactic without high defense and condition removal is very risky since you will want to soak your GS #2 to deal good damage but while u do that, u will get ranged by the enemies allies. 1800 toughness and 1400 vitality is therefore almost mandatory. Plus u don’t have to sacrifice stats on gear for this since u have 2 traits to boost your toughness in combat. +90 from the shield trait and the other one, strength in numbers, will benefit your team-mates as well. Guardians are VERY vulnerable against conditions because of our low health pool but adding a bit of vitality and condition removals will save your life.

Hi,

I run 16K HP and over 3100 armor…50% crit chance and 55% crit damage without food buffs…with EM and AH traited…it’s godly!!!

Hicci.8761:

Gaudrath.6725:

Hicci.8761:

I would recommend at least 1800 toughness and about 1400 vitality. Living guardian>dead guardian who hits higher.

Depends on what you want to do. If I pop Save Yourselves + Leap of Faith + Judge’s Intervention and Whirling Wrath in the middle of a group, I’ve just nailed several people down to 50% or less (even downed a few a couple of times) before they even had a chance to react.

Of course, if I get focused I die quick, so this is not one of the builds for 1vsX play. More of a shock trooper stuff because I rely on my group to hit them immediately afterwards.

So far had little trouble in such scenarios, and even if we lose I am usually one of the last to go down. But I am susceptible to burst damage, so gotta watch out for that. I’m not saying mine is the best build out there, I was just answering OP’s question, how low can you go with HP. Well, really low.

Well first of all “save yourself” in large fights WILL get you killed plus in pvp the buff duration is half of their duration in pve.

That’s for sPvP, in WvW, the duration is same as in PvE. But you are right about killing yourself if you pop in in the middle of a fight… which is why I pop it before I jump in from 1200 range. The extra crit from fury + protection might and swiftness means I get a really nice buff for that initial charge.

However, as you pointed out, if something goes wrong, I have very few means of getting out. Renewed Focus helps with 3 seconds on invulnerability, as well as nicely timed dodging.

Hammer #5 with JI is also good, though I haven’t had that much time to practice with the hammer… the autoattack just seems so clunky to me.

3k Toughness
16k Hp
Massive Condition Removal (Meditations, Lyssa Runes): the more the better!
2.8k attk
50% crt dmg
40% crit
650 +healing

The “Sweet Spot” is difficult to find because you never truly know what you’re going up against and w/ smaller grp roaming, we neeed to be able to impact on the dps side of things, whereas in big grps, damage soaker is much, much better as very few other classes does it as well: engi’s are good and warriors can be good…. but for straight up face-tanking, we do it pretty darn good.

I’ve thought about trying for a larger Armor/Health pool w/ Passive regen (dolyak, mango, VoJ)… but hitting like a wet noodle sucks. I want to see 3k mighty blows… not 1800! lol

I did actually play around with a set of (almost) full zerker gear last night… 80% crit damage and 50% crit chance, 3K power….

I did actual damage to players in WvW which was super exciting! On the downside a single thief downed me. :<
Might need to adjust my gameplan a little bit.

Incidentally, with full zerker the numbers I hit for with GS are still only almost as good as knights with 1hs or hammer. Obviously that’s a more complicated issue than just flat out numbers. I’m just exploring the class a bit at the moment, I have developed some horrible habits having playing guardian since release just facetanking everything and never dodging because lolwhy. Hopefully rolling around in glass canon gear for a while will help me relearn a few things.

ultimately depends on your playstyle and how comfortable you are with that. then yuo can finetune and adjust afterwards in areas you want to be stronger, or make up for some soft spots.

personally a starting point for me was 16k HP, 3k armor.. then i started messing with various builds – some with higher crit and crit dmg some with more power, etc etc and i adjust. though i’ve always hovered around the two stats i gave above. i have some builds with close to 20k health but of course you can imagine, lot less dmg. and some builds where i’ve gone to as low as 14 – 15k health, and again, a lot more dmg.

so i guess one thing constant though is i try to main at least 3k armor (roughly 1.8k toughness)