Hey everyone. So first of all, I ask you to bear with me and please read through this post if you’re interested. It’s going to be a little long winded with three different builds, but I could really use the help. So if you’ve got the time, please take a look and offer your opinions. Anyway, let’s get right into it!
So obviously this build no matter how you slice it is designed as pure support. I realize this isn’t exactly optimal in GW2, but it’s the playstyle I’ve always enjoyed in other games and I want to try to replicate it to some extent in this game. Besides, from what I’ve seen it’ll be amazing in WvW even if it suffers from doing low damage in PvE. I also just wanted to mention that while healing power definitely isn’t one of the greatest stats, it’s scaling isn’t as terrible as people seem to think. (Empower has a 1 to 1 ratio.)
NOTE: All of these builds have the same traits and skills. These are different armor setups, trying to maximize the potential of this build. Also, a term that I’ll be using a lot if you’re unfamiliar with it is EHP. This means effective hit points, how much damage you can take in full with your damage reduction from armor taken into account with your hit points.
This is pretty much the middle of the road build. Damage is obviously low, and healing power is as high as possible with modest survivability. By mixing magi and clerics, you gain the highest possible EHP at the cost of some power. The reason for using magi armor and cleric trinkets instead of vice versa? Simply enough, there is no magi ascended gear. So if I ever wanted that option for this character, this would leave it open for that. Also, going full clerics (Trinkets and armor) isn’t really ideal from the math I’ve done. The power you gain isn’t worth the amount of EHP you lose by mixing the two.
This build goes a different route, sort of.. By stacking magi gear, you’ll notice that power drops even more, but EHP goes up by quite a bit. Also, we start to get into a decent crit range considering the kind of gear we’re using. The question here really is does the 32% crit chance make up for the big damage loss? Does that combine well with having higher EHP, allowing you to survive longer for more healing? I don’t know, so help! =3
This is the one that I expect most of you to vote for. It has the highest EHP and damage, but sacrifices some healing power. It’s more of a question of, if my damage is already this low, is getting some power worth it when I could just get a little more healing power? Would the above build be superior with the higher crit as a replacement for power, while maintaining healing? I believe it really comes down to the last two builds, but I could be wrong, that’s why I posted it here.
Lastly, you’ll notice I stuck a shaman crest in the sixth slot of the armor instead of the last rune. I figured that the three stats that it gave really compliment my needs well, and as far as I’ve seen and heard the sixth skill for water runes (While conceptually awesome) kind of blows. It only works on self heals as far as I know, and since I use healing breeze that means it would only come into effect every forty seconds. So please, offer your opinions! Help me make these builds better, help me choose the one you think is best and tweak it. Thanks for reading.
(edited by Aidoc.4205)