Guild Wars 2

OK, so I recently reached level 80 on my Guardian.

My Tank build, however, has me stumped. This is the trait and skill setup I have going, and they work very smoothly in a mechanical sense. The gear, however, is what I’m having trouble with.

Here is my build.

The build focuses heavily on two things: Smite Condition and Retaliation. Smite Condition, with the traits selected, is an amazing skill, bordering on what I would call OP. It’s a 16-second cool-down heal/condition remover/damage dealer that works through crowd control. So good. Retaliation, with the traits I have selected, is nearly always on. Virtue of Justice renews on kill, and when activated it applies burning, blinding, removes a boon from the target, and gives me retaliation and might. Using Mace/Focus gives me a wonderful assortment of heals, regeneration, blinds, and retaliations (mechanically in the form of Protector’s Strike and Shield of Wrath, which also gives retaliation if used in Symbol of Faith’s Light Field).

So… gear. The way I see it, I have to prioritize for the most common element of my build first – Retaliation – which needs Power to increase the reflected damage and Toughness to survive the hit. Smite Condition also needs Power, but it also needs Healing.

So, this should be easy, right? Cleric’s gear has all that I need: Healing as the Major, and Power/Toughness for the Minor. The first issue I have with this is the lack of vitality. I’m only just breaking 10k health with this build, and even with roughly 3200 armor, I am unsure if this is enough health to tank effectively.

The other issue I have is with runes. I like the runes of the Fighter, Defender, and Monk. They all meet the requirements I have as far as attributes and bonuses: Fighter synergizes with Might of the Protector in order to keep a few stacks of might running, Defender is nifty with the amount of blocks that I perform, and Monk is nice for the boon duration and the second source of team aegis.

So I guess the TL;DR would be this: Do I need Vitality if my Toughness and Healing are so dang high, and which runes would synergize best with my attributes and needs? Maybe some I haven’t listed?

Thanks for your time.

I’d say 10k is way too low. You could try using Soldier’s (PVT) armor with 2 Monk, 2 Water, and 2 Dwayna runes to give you a combined +150 healing power with +30% boon duration (helps Retaliation) and +20% Regeneration duration.

So something like this? Or should I be losing something else (in order to get down to 150 Healing)? It does pop me up to 13k health, so I suppose that is a lot better.

Your armor setup with runes looks good, as far as I can tell. Adding Omnomberry Cookies will bring your healing up to 841 and your health up to 13,745. I’d also drop a Bloodlust from one of your weapons and replace it with something else, maybe Energy to give you more sustain with your dodge heals.

I can’t comment on how effective your overall build is, but if you’re trying to improve your base Vit/Tough/Heal stats, I think the above suggestions might work.

try:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQNApdRlYgSD3GyIEf4ESmiVKBxUURf01DI6haIA-jADBoNDRkCEkgAh+IQZRDZNNKiltht6KalXBR1ATpiIq2loIa1yAwsAA-e

i tried messing around with the armor as well. : )) i will say, i would do the same as Amins did and move 20 into Honor – a great line if you’re investing in Healing Power. I would personally have taken Larger Symbols (III) and Healing Symbols (X) like Amins did. but just cause i’m a huge symbol fan. GS + Mace/Focus is a good set up for symbols as well. in additino, with high healing, which scales 1:1 with Selfless Daring (dodge heals 15 into Honor), you get even more sustain that way for you and those around you.

that being said though, i don’t want to drastically change your build, so here’s some gear changes. and i DID add food and stones for buff it up a bit more.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQNApdRlYgSD3GyIEf4ESmiVCBtUQQA01DIKiaIA-jAzAothISQSI9JQZRBx0oyadLsV3oVeDiqBTpKkqVjsLpIa1CBgcMA-e

i took Blind Exposure instead of Searing Flames since you’ll be blinding quite a bit with GS 3 Focus 4 and F1 spam. vulnerability adds damage for not just you but anyone else hitting the same target. so you can make up for some damage there for the loss in power.

retaliation while very strong, i personally don’t build around it and see it is passive/ additional damage. even with lower power, you’ll still be hitting for around 300 per retal.

NOTE: lol if you’re sticking with your build, energy sigils not necessary since you don’t have the heal on dodge trait (15 into Honor).

though health, while a bit higher, is still slightly low for my taste. quick ques – what game mode is this gonna be for? i’m assuming PvE since you had the build on that tab?

Yeah, it was mostly for PvE. My internet connection isn’t stable enough at the moment for reliable PvP or WvW (hopefully that will be getting upgraded soon). I’m really just gearing up for dungeons. But what I’m getting from this is that retaliation isn’t that great?

I played with my build for a bit yesterday when I could, and I changed a few things as well. GS is pretty good with the build that I had, with 3 retaliations in the mix (GS4, GS combo field, and Virtue of Retribution).

But I’m thinking that maybe I wasn’t looking at this broadly enough? I didn’t think that roll heals were that great (mostly because I suck at timing my evasions – possibly due to my bad latency), but I’ve heard from a few places now that they are amazing. Also, I DO put down a ton of symbols, so their utility is pretty obvious… so here are my questions:

1. … is this a better attempt at a trait line-up? If I’m taking the full Honor tree, is there a symbol skill that isn’t as important as the rest (to replace with Two-Handed Mastery)? Maybe Writ of Persistence?

1. … I liked having the Superior Bloodlust on my mainhands so that I didn’t lose stacks when I switched weapons. I’ve never been rich enough to experiment with sigils/runes, so will those stacks disappear if the GS has the Energy sigil instead of the Bloodlust?

1. … seeing as I haven’t been able to do any dungeons yet, I haven’t acquired any Ascolonian Tears, and the wiki says I’ll need 240 of them to get 2 Monk’s runes, which is 8 exploration runs? Would 2 Lyssa’s runes be better until I got the Monk’s?

1. … speaking of being rich enough to get all this stuff, I’ve been persisting off of Rare gear for the time being, and just boggling at the amount of gold/time it would take to get 1) my armor/weapon crafting to 400 or 2) to buy these things off of the trading post. How do I make money? In the other MMO’s I’ve played (EVE, SWTOR, a few others), missions gave a ton of money, and I rarely ever spent any because I got my gear and stuffs from drops in game. It seems like that isn’t the case so much in this game though. Maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text.

EDIT: Just saw the 23rd patch notes, and HOLY CRAP Smite Condition is going to ROCK now!

with 10k health you can be eveything except tanky when people with your toughness and armor value can hit you above 5k per hit.

if the build is for PVE only… anything works! you dont even need traits…

Same as amins only soldier gear;
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQNApdRlYgSD3GyIEf4ESmiVKBxUURf01DI6haIA-jwCBoNDRkCEkgAh+IQZPFRjtsNsVXRr8KIqGYKVER1uEFRrWGAmxA-e

RoyObannon.1073:

1. … I liked having the Superior Bloodlust on my mainhands so that I didn’t lose stacks when I switched weapons. I’ve never been rich enough to experiment with sigils/runes, so will those stacks disappear if the GS has the Energy sigil instead of the Bloodlust?

They won’t. That’s why you only need Bloodlust on one weapon.

If you really want tanking ability while outputting some dips. Roll pvt armor, berserker weapons, and magi armor. Use mace/focus, and for the second weapon set, use whatever you want.

Thanks guys for all the suggestions. I have put a lot of them into the build, and at the same time I’ve been researching other trait line-ups on the forums. I think I’m going to use AH for a bit, since I don’t have a lot of good gear yet, but I really feel that the new Monk’s Focus would be great if I could just figure out a playstyle that I felt comfortable with.

The gear suggestions have been really awesome, though. I see that the majority focus on Toughness/Vitality with Power and Precision being next in line. It will give me a lot to focus on in the future as I start farming for gear.

Now if I could only figure out what to do to get money. I’m going to try and find something on the forums, but I have to be missing some mechanic somewhere.