Guild Wars 2

Made my Guardian my main now; mostly WvW; and doing heals/support there is easy and fun. Now I want to do PvE with more heal/support focus (Open World; dungeons; Fractals).

Since the big update I don’t see much on Support Guardians for PvE. I have a DPS zerker build for solo/story/open world – it’s fun but I always go back to support/rezzing in events/other stuff. Why I really became a Guardian.

Yes I see metabattle, the DPS support build is really DPS with minor support; I’m looking for well more support/heals. I get it also depends on content and if not druid/ele you kinda need to be DPS.

Q: Open World is one thing, but Dungeon/Fractals and sure Raids is Guardian Support/heals even a thing? Always Druid/Ele heals, chrono tank a lot, etc. prob preferred Guardians do DPS/minor support?
Q: Mace for heal/support good now in PvE? Or Staff/Hammer? I use hammer in WvW with mace/shield. But that may be too supporty for PvE?
Q: Soldiers gear still ideal? Zerker mixed?
Q: Dura runes or Monk? Monk means much more heal focused yeah.
Q: Healing power does it still scale to make a difference w/ Guardian? Like I know for whatever reason it doesn’t with Druids and it used to actually make a big difference for Guardians.
Q: Boxers or briefs?

I’ve seen healer/support builds months old on the forums but with the new meta wondering what’s changed. Thanks.

There is a video out there by Ren where they ran 10 guardians and did what is IMO the hardest raid (Matthias, granted I haven’t done Xera yet). So it is a possibility, just I wouldn’t try and pick one up and would opt for a Druid/Ele as healers first (far better range heals can make things so much easier, plus just more healing in general). Guardian can tank very well too, but again, you usually go Chronotank because you want a Chrono but since their damage is so low anyways might as well have them be the tank because they can easily do it. Plus, guardian is actually one of the top damage now, and bring strong support (support in this case not being healing, but utility things like reflect, and aegis is always good)

Mace/Shield is my setup for most things, with mace block giving aegis, and shield aegis, plus retreat/virtue/Shield of the Avenger, you can get quite a nice aegis rotation going, great for bosses like the Gladiator at the end of Chaos fractal. I generally use Hammer offhand for protection when I don’t need an aegis rotation.

Depends what you’re doing, but I’d say no to soldiers. Healing Clerics in fractals is great, tanky but high healing. Magi is needed for raid healer so you don’t screw up toughness tanking. If you’re tanking in raids Clerics for tank with healing capabilities, or some knights pieces to minimize damage loss while still tanking.

Monk if you’re looking to heal for sure. If you’re looking to just tank, you’d likely have enough toughness through just some knights gear that you would just still run DPS runes but perhaps not Scholar.

Healing power does scale pretty well with Guardian, doubling a lot of their heals, percentage modifiers are huge as well though, like sigil of transference, Rice balls, and Monk runes.

I’m a boxer brief guy, all the support without the bunched up hammock down there.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeik8AhShYZhokX+mf6xSgK4EuCgHYAA-TxxHABg/EAOS5HAnCgCV/hOlg/s/Aa6DIFgfDtA-e

This is what I use. People will complain because it’s not meta, ‘you sacrifice way too much damage’ but in reality pillar guard builds never lost their value, people just stopped needing them for the most part. I’ve found with the resurgence of new fractalers that’s just not the case anymore. In fact my group the other day on Mai Trin we had one of the pugs comment ‘wow she’s just melting’, which was because she was staying still, and getting her stacks stripped quickly, and no one really even got close to going down. As for the empty utilities, they change too much so I left them blank. Also some traits change but again I’ll let you learn and tweak what you want it’d get too long to give all the things I change around at different times. Also GS can be very useful for clumping things up. And, Sword isn’t bad if you have no group fury.

Forgot to say, I would not bring that to Dungeons though, at least not with a half decent group. With the power creep of HoT things just die WAY too fast to validate healing, just burst the crap out of bosses and watch them die in seconds while you use Aegis and Reflects to prevent them from ever really retaliating.

Jerus.4350:

There is a video out there by Ren where they ran 10 guardians

You got a link to that all Guardian Raid maybe? I tried searching around for it but came up with nothing.

Guardian’s Healing is pretty good even in healing minor gear and it does very nicely in fights that have groups stacking up a lot.
The things we are lacking though is range and a wanted class specific boon.
Its wholly viable but unless you got a nice Guild dont expect to be a healing guardian in any PUG raids.
In fractals it kinda doesnt matter what you do. Healing is always nice to take stress off people… or add to it because they get anal about you not being balls to the wall DPS but either way.

Thanks Jerus! VERY helpful! Seriously. Basically confirming what I thought DPS with the support you mentioned for Raids and esp Fractals which ppl told me DPS is it really, I’ve never done Fractals. And I DO love Guardian DPS. It still offers good support, just I wanted to make support primary over DPS.

And Cleric over soldiers I was debating that; coming from WvW where vit is key for the front lines. Yeah I’ve never done fractals yet; I know even explorer Dungeons don’t need dedicated heals/support really, but I’ve only done a few dungeons and mainly Ascalon to get Monk runes which I believe is the only way you get monk runes?

Your build, other than gear is literally what I was currently getting/running in Open World/Guild Raid.

I have a Druid; I just love Guardian playstyle/look/weaps more. Tho Druid is the epitome of what I’m looking for no doubt, perhaps I need to simply use that for what I want. And I get it, when you have ranged Druid/Ele to heal/support, why get risky with basically melee Guardian for heals, and lots of things need more DPS than focused support/heals.