Guild Wars 2

My PVE DPS build

PVE HEALING BUILD
Ignore the numbers; they’re blatantly wrong. This is simply a visual summary of this build.

TRAITS

30 Valor

• I. Meditation Mastery
• VII. Mace of Justice
• XI. Altruistic Healing

20 Honor

• III. Writ of Exaltation
• X. Writ of the Merciful

20. Virtues:

• VI. Master of Consecrations
• VII. Elite Focus

SKILLS

Healing Breeze
Stand Your Ground
Merciful Intervention
Sanctuary
Tome of Courage

ARMOR

Shaman’s Banded Helm of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Pauldrons of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Coat of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Gauntlets of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Legs of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Greaves of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)

WEAPONS

Main:
Shaman’s Norn Mace of Restoration (Superior Sigil of Restoration)
Cleric’s Shield of Restoration (Superior Sigil of Restoration)

Secondary:
Carrion Legionnaire Staff of Restoration (Superior Sigil of Restoration)

TRINKETS

Risen Spineguard (Exquisite Chrysocola Jewel)
Orrian Artifact Shards (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Orrian Artifact Shards (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Dissonance Amplifier (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Magi’s Ring of the Cleric (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Magi’s Ring of the Cleric (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)

BASE STATS (No buffs, white only stats)

Build stats are bold

Power 1,006
Attack 1,990
Precision 1,126
Critical Change 14%
Toughness 1,291
Armor 2,362
Vitality 1,797
Health 19,615
Condition Damage 349
Condition Duration 0%
Boon Duration 35%
Healing Power 1,109
Critical Damage 30%
Guardian 20%
Agony Resistance 0
Magic Find 12%

SUMMARY

I have played a DPS Guardian since launch. People have said Guardian healing builds are useless. I wanted to see if this was true. After a day of trial and error I came up with the above build.

First this build is designed not to be expensive. My primary build is DPS and I don’t do healing often so I didn’t want to spend 15 gold on exotic armor and weapons. Instead I went for rare gear with exotic runes, sigils and jewels. Total cost: ~5G

I did all three paths of Crucible of Eternity and Citadel of Flame. I ran COE with a Chinese farming group. COE is very healing friendly. On the other hand P1 and P2 of COF was designed to be heavy DPS. COF P3 was where the healing build really helped especially at the part where a base in establish and your group needs to defend it against 7 waves of mobs. Through it all I was able to heals for large amounts. The Tome of Courage skill Light of Deliverance is really amazing. several members on the verge of being Downed were brought to full health. All in all this build did a very good job so much so that even the Chinese farming group liked it! They may take a Healing spec’ed Guardian on their next dungeon clear.

What helps most is if players stack on a single mob or the primary target. If players are spread out to far they won’t be able to benefit from heals unless I’m using Tome of Courage.

If this build helps please let me know.

Hi! I’ve only been healing for a couple weeks, but I’ll give you my two cents on your build drawing from my limited experience. You’re correct that Writs of Exaltation and Merciful are pretty integral to Guardian healing with a mace, but I’m also a very big fan of going 30 points into honor for Writ of Persistence. We really have most of our heals from symbols. With regards to Altruistic Healing, I’ve found that I’m usually not the one most in need of healing, as I a) have my shield and b) spend the most time within my symbols. I’ll respec to AH tomorrow night to see how it feels out of curiosity. I would also replace Stand Your Ground with Hold the Line as you get healing out of it, unless you’re doing a fight with a lot of knock-downs you need to avoid.

The one issue that I’ve had is that in fights that involve a lot of mobility or less healing, more dps, I’ve felt pretty useless. I just made a new build last night that I’ve only tested once, but it attempts to leverage a bit more dps using a hammer / staff instead of the standard mace&shield / staff on fights where I need the dps boost (the last boss of AC p2 comes to mind). I’ve linked it below, very open to thoughts and critiques. As for gear, I’m still working on it but going to run 3 monks 3 water.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeWlcgyDnFyMEmIFRuArCAsmR8mH2DN6xPC

I’m planning to switch between Blind Exposure and Signet Mastery depending on whether the fight calls for more dps or self-heals (I would use Signet of Resolve instead of Healing Breeze when using Signet Mastery). My first skill slot is fight-dependent. Sanctuary is pretty useless if everyone’s constantly moving, so I’d replace it with Wall of Reflection for a projectile fight or Merciful Intervention for anything else.

Who knows, the points in Zeal may not be worth the survivability loss from no points in Valor.

I’m actually curious to see how well a pure healing Guard would do in WvW for zerg battles using a traited Tome of Courage. Would it be worth it?

1. Given that I have 19,615 health I’m going to drop Valor > XI. Altruistic Healing. This build has a lot of health. If I die it’s probably due to A) bad luck or B) I was one shot (which Altruistic Healing probably wouldn’t heal through) or C) my group mates aren’t doing their job and pounding the mob to get their attention.

So in place of Altruistic Healing I have these option:

Honor > VII. Writ of Persistence
Honor > XII. Battle Presence

I’m trying to decide which is better?

With Writ of Persistence I get this:
- Increases symbol duration by 50%, rounded down; for example, Symbol of Protection will pulse 4 times instead of 3.

With Battle Presence I get these:
- Applies the Virtue of Resolve passive effect for 3 seconds, reapplying itself every 3 seconds.
- Has a radius of 600.
- Is affected by Absolute Resolution.
- Will remain in effect while Virtue of Resolve is on cooldown.
- No self-benefit

I’m leaning towards Battle Presence, but what are your thoughts?

2. I like the suggestion to change from “Stand Your Ground” to “Hold the Line!”. I initially chose SYG for the damage reflection. I thought this would be awesome. Instead what I found (now that I’m in a support role) is that most mobs don’t have a priority mechanic. Most of the time I am simply ignore even if I’m doing mass heals. Basically it’s like mobs have ADD. So “Hold the Line!” is it. Thank you. :)

3. I’m not going to care much about DPS. This build is sacrificing DPS in favor of keeping other’s alive to let them do DPS. I treat this like WOW. In WOW as long as the healer kept the tank alive the tank can then hold aggro thereby allowing the DPS to do their job. The holy trinity does not exist in GW2 but the principle is still the same. In this case I’m keeping the players alive so that they can tank and DPS.

4. That build looks good. Keep me updated with its progress.

5. In my DPS build (link in the first post) I found Signet Mastery works well if combined with Signet of Resolve and Renewed Focus. All three are a lot of healing. I would not use Signet Mastery in a healing build. Like Altruistic Healing it benefits self. My healing build has a lot of health. I’m more concerned with healing others and that’s why I go with Healing Breeze. With my build Healing Breeze heals for 600 health per second in an AOE field. If everyone is stacks everyone is healed for Healing Breeze’s duration. This makes it a very useful skill to have for any Guardian healer.

6. After telling the group I was in numerous times to stack on one mob or target Sanctuary became useful. It became VERY evident in path 3 of Ascalonian Catacombs for Hall of Champions’ burrows. The amount of adds was getting intense but I quickly told the group to stack on each mound. From there I triggered Sanctuary and dozens of mob bounced off the shield. Basically the key to Sanctuary’s success is to get the group to stack.

JoeyB.3509:

I’m actually curious to see how well a pure healing Guard would do in WvW for zerg battles using a traited Tome of Courage. Would it be worth it?

Most definitely it would. It only fully heals up to 5 allies but if you were standing next to the allies doing the most damage that would be amazing. Imagine if there were 3 Guardians running this build. That’s 15 players that would be fully healed from a near Downed state.

TOC skill Pacifism (#4) would probably be good too. The 3 seconds of daze could give you the time you need to get off a Light of Deliverance (#5) heal or free target whacking for your allies.

TOC skill Heal Area (#1) would probably be the bread and butter skill. If you have the Elite Focus trait then TOC lasts for 30 seconds instead of 20. 30 seconds of Heal Area at specific times like when storming the keep while players are being inundated with arrows from arrow carts could be amazingly effective given Heal Area’s zero CD and very fast 3/4 casting time. Now multiply this by 3 or 4 Guardians with this build.

A healing build would be really helpful but remember these are human players; many of whom are WOW PVP alumni. The moment they see what your doing you will become the primary target. The good thing though is the radius for Guardian’s heals is enormous. With Tome of Courage the radius is around 75% the radius for arrow carts!

But all of this is academic because I haven’t actually run this build through WvW. Feel free to try it out and report back.

Things of note for Guardian healers from the Cutthroat Politics update.

• Monk’s Focus: This trait now scales 40% with healing power, up from 10%.

Nice.

• Merciful Intervention: This skill’s recharge has been lowered from 80 seconds to 50 seconds. Base healing for this skill has been increased by 48%. Scaling with healing power has been increased to 60% effectiveness, up from 20%.

Holy crap!

• Writ of the Merciful: Fixed a bug so that the healing area provided from this trait will correctly scale its radius with the Writ of Exaltation trait.

Finally!

These are very meaningful fixes for Guardians looking to create healing builds!

Thank you Arenanet!

Thanks for pointing this out! This rocks!!