Guild Wars 2

Like the thread title suggests, I’m building my Guardian as a full support-styled character:

Mace/Shield for heal spam, with Staff on the swap for more heals and buff spam.

Wall of Reflection, Sanctuary, Purging Flames, and “Hold the line!” are generally the skills competing for the utility slots.

However, I can’t decide which would be more useful for a support Guardian: Cleric’s armor or Apothecary’s armor. Both give me the Healing Power I want as well as a defensive stat (Toughness). But since there’s no Healing|Vitality|Toughness set yet, I have to go with either Power or Condition Damage.

The former helps with the constant auto-attacks of course, but outside of the set, I’d have no more income of Power, so I’m not sure if it’d be wasted or not.

On the other hand, Condition Damage helps with the burning from Virtue of Justice, and isn’t needed in as large a quantity as Power since burning hurts enough as is. However, it also feels wasted due to only using one skill that burns, and triggering Justice slowly because of the Mace.

I’ve also looked at and considered a Magi’s set (from the Orrian Exotic Karma merchants) since it still gives Healing and trades Toughness for Vitality (which I find more valuable defensively). But again, I feel the Precision would be wasted since crits aren’t guaranteed, I attack slow, and because there’s no Power backing up the crits in the first place.

Can I get some forum-goer opinions on which would be most optimal among the three please? (And no, I will not consider a Greatsword build under any means. Greatsword Guardians are freakin’ everywhere, and while not necessarily OP, they definitely outclass pretty much anything else available.)

Greatsword doesn’t outclass anything. It has its own strengths and weaknesses just like every other weapon.

Running with absolutely no Power doesn’t help you or your group; it makes you a liability, whether it may seem that way or not. They may as well 4-man whatever they’re doing (dungeon-wise). When it comes to WvW you’re just a rock that can’t do anything but…well, be a rock. A rock can’t exactly hurt you; it’s just hard to destroy until you hit it with enough force (i.e. a zerg). Doing damage is a huge part of this game, even if you play a bunker/support build. You may not die often, but you’re not helping your group any more than you would if you ran something that actually allowed you to do damage.

That said, condition damage is easily the least useful stat to us ever, so Apoth is out. Magi’s is useful if you mix it with some Power pieces. The crit lends itself to more EM procs if you’re into that sort of stuff for AH builds. I’m also going to go ahead and say that it’s my opinion that Toughness is more valuable than Vitality when it comes to survival. Some Vitality is important since we share the lowest base health pool with Thieves, but Vitality without any armor isn’t going to help you.

So, Cleric’s. Maybe with some Magi’s (or Soldier’s) mixed in, mostly for the little bit of extra health. I personally mix in Soldier’s because my build doesn’t utilize EM.

Ignoring the fact that there’re no Soldier Jewels and thus those slots will be “of the Cleric”, would a 4-4 split (3 armor and one main-set weapon) be fair between Cleric and Soldier? (I have no plans for EM either.) Or would it optimally be a more tilted split like 5-3 or 6-2? (Not sure the optimal distribution for the former, but the latter is obviously Armor = one type with weapons = the other type.)

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|9.1k.h6.d.1k.h1j|6.1k.h1j|1k.71g.1c.71g.1k.71g.1c.71h.1k.b1h.1c.71h|1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.68|0.0.a4.u5ac.u39a|0.0|w.0.0.0.0|e

Not sure if you want a build for wvw or pve but, I threw this build together quickly. Heavily based on team support wich you desired.

Mix of cleric and soldier gear to have you sitting at 1.1k healing and even more when you remember to use the mace when you kill stuff. Wvw buffs will have you sitting above 16k hp most of the time wich imo is enough for a healing guardian. Resolute Healer could be switched for Superior Aria if youd want a shorter cd on HtL.

I would also take focus over shield for the additional regen and more blocks.