Support Mace Guardian - Feedback?
Unfortunately, this kind of build will never really make it in pve content due to the nature of how pve works. You don’t need any sustain against open world enemies since they do so little damage, and when they do lots of damage (champions), the burst is too high to deal with, and you’re better off with active damage mitigations. In higher end content, it is even better to use active defense to fend off enemy spikes and to use dps to shorten the encounter— trying to make it a battle of attrition like support builds do only makes the fight more dangerous for everyone. Instead, most use dps builds that also have high support with skills like reflects which will change the outcome of the fight. To put it bluntly, mace doesn’t fit at all. And this comes from someone who would love any excuse to use a mace.
I know you’ll hate to hear this, although…
This kind of build does have a place outside pve though. I don’t play pvp much so can’t really comment on that, but large wvw fights can be a battle of attrition and players don’t spike as much as npcs can typically.
Which offers ok condition removal with quite a bit of stability and healing while still doing some damage.
Focus offhand tends to be the most useful to me, because of the blocks which serve as a blast finisher, and ray of judgement (blind enemies, regen allies) is a nice skill. Shield’s cooldowns are too high for me these days.
Healing power can work will with traits such as selfless daring, which heals 1k+ health per roll with 700 healing power + the mace trait. If you dodged in staff, it’ll still be 850 recovered. so let’s say the average is about 1k. With the abuse of sigil of energy (recharge endurance per weapon swap) you can get more rolls out. Healing power often scales badly with other sources of healing, so I don’t think it’s too great to go overkill on it, and many people don’t bother at all. (Altruistic Healing, for example, scales very badly with it)
Staff is the defacto swap support weapon, and since conditions are deadly, purging flames is usually a good idea. It’s also a fire field.
The damage is honestly low, but you can use sigil of bloodlust to build up some extra power. Absolute Resolution is a great trait, but considering the condi removal already had in this build, I think Indomitable courage for more stability is useful for this particular build. Oil is chosen because the goal isn’t to max out damage but increase survivability by procing vigorous precision more, as well as procs such as fire and empowering might. For these kinds of builds, finding an excuse to bump out power (instead of crit or crit damage) is your best bet. Just find enough crit to let your procs go off regularly, enough toughness/vitality/healing to survive, and the rest should go in power. Crit damage (ferocity) is merely a luxury that IMO only dps builds should really chase.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
(edited by ArchonWing.9480)
I understand. Honestly, I despise the Berserker’s meta of this game. It makes the support inside me sad.
I’ll take all of these things into considering and revisit my idea. I was talking to a guardian friend of mine who also suggested Strength In Numbers over Retributive Armor.
Well, a lot of people feel that way. Though I brought up wvw specifically because that’s where it actually can work well. Zerker meta is really just a pve thing and that makes it hard to balance. It’s just like how the ferocity nerf made many wvw’ers quite annoyed. I understand that wvw isn’t everyone’s thing though.
Strength in Numbers is a pretty good trait too, though you’ll need to get crit from elsewhere to get empowering might going.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
you will not be able to run mace/shield support.
you can try mace/focus.
but hammer is better suited for PVE.
perma prot and abuse f1 blinds, best support ever.
burn always converted to aegis.
So I recently created a Guardian because the class has always looked interested to me. So far I absolutely love it, and I feel like a large part of that has to do with my change of mind when it comes to support in Guild Wars 2. I’ve seen a lot of the guardian support builds out there that run staff/hammer, and I can see why. I am hoping to run a Mace/Shield support build, and would like some feedback and suggestions. This is roughly what I have come up with.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVMQJApel8ApWotCxdI8DNxDBl57nP2TY4Z4yFEAA-e
My goal with this build is to still do (hopefully) moderate damage, while applying boons and providing constant healing to my group. Now, I realize that unless you have obscene amounts of healing power, the stat itself isn’t very good. I am also under the impression that regenerative healing is very lackluster, and given burst in dungeons, is very negligible. Would Honor XI therefore outweight Honor XII? Or should I go for Valor XI and heal myself when I give boons to allies? That trait would synergize better with Staff/Hammer, correct? By doing this, I could also drop Virtues IX and put those points elsewhere as well.
Another question is gear. Would running Knight’s or Cleric’s gear be more productive and efficient? Given that I am receiving precision based on my toughness, both sets would help improve damage with Knight’s obviously giving the better damage output. However Cleric’s would still provide moderate toughness, and therefore decent Precision. Is my understanding of the trait correct in that it gives Precision based on ALL Toughness, not just bonus Toughness?
Looking at my abilities, can anyone suggest a utility skill that would perhaps be better than Merciful Intervention? I mostly put that there due to not liking the recharge time on other shouts, but Retreat could be very useful for obvious reasons.
Also, what offhand weapon should I run? I find pretty much every Guardian off hand to be very lackluster. Hammer would provide the Protection buff, which is always valuable, while staff would provide better aoe and the might buff/heal. Any suggestions or thoughts in that regard as well?
Thank you all for taking the time to read this and share your thoughts!
I am thinking of using a zerker hammer build + traits and the signet to let me have perma 43% damage reduction + have some extra healing/support to allies as well.
The Mace is amazing for getting y’r health back up. I don’t have zerker pve gear yet, still running with a combination of knights and soldiers with very little healing power but I’m still able to heal myself back to full with just a Mace-Focus combo. 2 blocks, 3 heals, 1 blind, blast finisher and support all on one weapon combination. Then I switch back to hammer for the auto-attack protection blast finisher on low CD for more retaliation etc.
