Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS5elYgqCnFyvDf4ESmCRCBxegReUHdpwheIA-jUCB4hCyIjJjaIQ0HwJoFRjtyqIasqZER16kYGxFRrWGAztA-w

This is a build I have been working on to roam with a Thief that is more or less a “two man zerg” style of play. That being one tanks a substantial amount of players while the other kills them off one by one. The primary purpose of this build is to stay alive and mobile. This is achieved by sacrificing all offensive options to gain maximum survivability.

I don’t know of anyone that has run this variant of a bunker but if you do, or have ways of making it more tanky/have more sustain I’d love to hear it.

EDIT: same build. just a couple polishes.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS5elYgqCnFyvDf4ESmiVCBxegReUHdpwheIA-jECB4hERzUDDRj+AOBtIasVWFRjVNjIqWnEzIuIa1yAYuFA-w

Right now it has Master of Consecrations for adept Virtues – I assume that’s just a mistake? I assume you want that to be Vengeful to maximize retal damage.

Oops that was left over from a previous iteration. MoC had been on for Contemplation of Purity as a mass condi burn. However CoP doesn’t cure allies so 3 shout heals is used as default. Thanks for pointing that out, and yes, for basic roaming I would opt for Vengeful. However III, V, & VI can be substituted as needed (mainly for group fights).

Do you think this is tougher than putting 10 more points in valor for AH?

Hi. It looks like you are trying to make a variation of healway but your are making a few mistakes.

1. S/F is much better than M/S.
2. I would personally use GS over Hammer.
3. Do 10/30/30 instead of 20/30/20 (stability is crucial).
4. Why not full cleric?
5. Change your food to 40% endurance regeneration.
6. Get a dedicated stacking set and put Accuracy on your 1h, Energy on your 2h.
7. I prefer either 6x Traveller or 4x Rage + 2x Traveller.

Good luck with your roaming.

I actually have run Healway extensively in WvW, and while I like it, that is not the goal here. My reasonings:

1. M/S gives +250 healing power with trait and I like shield for defence over focus
2. Hammer has better control options than GS also near perma protction from H1
3. Both trait layouts are good. I have run both. Never for this. Both will be tested.
4. Guardian has relatively low health pool. 20K health is good health while still being able to get +1500 Healing power
5. Interesting suggestion. Will try it out.
6. Dedicated stacking was assumed. Only room for 2. I usually run with about 8.
7. Travelers wouldn’t be bad for this setup, but there is better. Rage would be useless.

Thanks for the input.

DaedSaint.6190:

I actually have run Healway extensively in WvW, and while I like it, that is not the goal here. My reasonings:

1. M/S gives +250 healing power with trait and I like shield for defence over focus
2. Hammer has better control options than GS also near perma protction from H1
3. Both trait layouts are good. I have run both. Never for this. Both will be tested.
4. Guardian has relatively low health pool. 20K health is good health while still being able to get +1500 Healing power
5. Interesting suggestion. Will try it out.
6. Dedicated stacking was assumed. Only room for 2. I usually run with about 8.
7. Travelers wouldn’t be bad for this setup, but there is better. Rage would be useless.

Thanks for the input.

But this is healway, and trust me when I say this: You won’t have much success by relying on facetanking.

Happy I could help, and good luck again!

I feel like not a lot of people realize how great Mace & Shield set is, defensive wise.

Anyway, back to the build. Can I ask why no precision at all?

If solo, mace and shield is good for fighting melee that has to go toe to toe with you but falls apart against anyone that kites or uses ranged damage. Mace and shield is good for a group since it brings some utility.

Sword is good against both melee and ranged and gives you an extra escape tool when you get zerged, and you will get zerged. For that reason alone, I see sword as a must have for WvW.

Mobility is king in WvW. You can avoid a ton more damage with sword 2 than with mace in the end actually making it the better “defensive” weapon, IMO.

@xFireize: Good to see someone else appreciates M/S. But no precision because this is a niche build. It wont be used to solo roam. It will be used to roam with a thief who is the primary source of damage. Therefore, for this particular scenario, this build does not require any damage output. On the topic of crits that take advantage of traits, I simply found that either I did not like that particular setup, or I had to give something up that I did not want to.

@Oozo: You are correct in stating that the mobility granted by S2 is a fantastic defensive option. I have thoroughly enjoyed using it to move around in a 1vX or small group fight. However for simply facetanking something, M/S is better since the only advantage gained from S2 is from mobility. (And that is mobility assuming there is something to target) However, as stated in a previous post, I usually carry about 8 different weapons with me so I requip as the situation calls for. Astute observation though.

Oozo.7856:

If solo, mace and shield is good for fighting melee that has to go toe to toe with you but falls apart against anyone that kites or uses ranged damage. Mace and shield is good for a group since it brings some utility.

Sword is good against both melee and ranged and gives you an extra escape tool when you get zerged, and you will get zerged. For that reason alone, I see sword as a must have for WvW.

Mobility is king in WvW. You can avoid a ton more damage with sword 2 than with mace in the end actually making it the better “defensive” weapon, IMO.

To each his own. I prefer Mace #2 because it gives a very high boost of AH self-heal, making it the better defensive weapon. Hmm, you must think GS is also the better “defensive” weapon, compared to Hammer.

DaedSaint.6190:

@xFireize: Good to see someone else appreciates M/S. But no precision because this is a niche build. It wont be used to solo roam. It will be used to roam with a thief who is the primary source of damage. Therefore, for this particular scenario, this build does not require any damage output. On the topic of crits that take advantage of traits, I simply found that either I did not like that particular setup, or I had to give something up that I did not want to.

But you can do up to twice the amount of dodge heal if you have some precision.

Mace is why I originally asked if he feels the 10 points in valor for AH aren’t needed.
Surely the symbol ticks give you an insane amount of hp in return.

@xFireize: I must be missing the connection between precision and dodgerolls. Elaborate?

@fadeaway: I am still torn between 30 in valor for AH and 20 in virtues to boost Virtue of Resolve. For this two man play I settled on the 0/0/20/30/20 because AH simply doesn’t give as much healing as the 20 in virtues. However for any engagement larger, AH starts out healing that real fast. So while I don’t feel that 20 in virtues is “better” per say, it performs better in this particular form of fighting.

DaedSaint.6190:

@xFireize: Good to see someone else appreciates M/S. But no precision because this is a niche build. It wont be used to solo roam. It will be used to roam with a thief who is the primary source of damage. Therefore, for this particular scenario, this build does not require any damage output. On the topic of crits that take advantage of traits, I simply found that either I did not like that particular setup, or I had to give something up that I did not want to.

@Oozo: You are correct in stating that the mobility granted by S2 is a fantastic defensive option. I have thoroughly enjoyed using it to move around in a 1vX or small group fight. However for simply facetanking something, M/S is better since the only advantage gained from S2 is from mobility. (And that is mobility assuming there is something to target) However, as stated in a previous post, I usually carry about 8 different weapons with me so I requip as the situation calls for. Astute observation though.

Okay I will attempt to steer you away one more time.

If you are unaware of your vigor trait then you are sorely lacking in knowledge about the Guardian. This is why Rage is good. +~400% chance of gaining a critical hit, means you will have almost perma vigor with your boon duration. In turn, this means you can dodge roll twice as much, healing for another ~2,000 health (and evading thousands more) every 10 seconds.

This is why you also run sword. You say that it’s only good for kiting? Look at the other abilities. Two attacks that hit very rapidly (up to 15 times per autoattack chain, 8 times for Zealot’s Defense) means a ton of chances at getting a critical hit.

Trust me when I say this: Facetanking route is never the way to go. Kiting, blinding and evading is the proper way to play a roaming guardian in such a small team.

DaedSaint.6190:

@xFireize: I must be missing the connection between precision and dodgerolls. Elaborate?

check out Vigorous Precision trait!

No offense, your so called “unkillable” build only works on fair fights(let’s say with your thief friend, a 2v2). However, there is never fair fight in WvW when roaming. Your guardian will still be melt quickly when you face 5+ ppl which is very popular situation in WvW, and most importantly you have no ability to escape as your thief friend does.
If you want to play 2 men duo style with your thief friend, you better reroll a troll warrior (e.g. GS/S+X build), you guys can still have a great chance to take some fools down even if you are facing a 20+ zerg and the worst case is that both of you just run away.

DaedSaint.6190:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS5elYgqCnFyvDf4ESmCRCBxegReUHdpwheIA-jUCB4hCyIjJjaIQ0HwJoFRjtyqIasqZER16kYGxFRrWGAztA-w

This is a build I have been working on to roam with a Thief that is more or less a “two man zerg” style of play. That being one tanks a substantial amount of players while the other kills them off one by one. The primary purpose of this build is to stay alive and mobile. This is achieved by sacrificing all offensive options to gain maximum survivability.

I don’t know of anyone that has run this variant of a bunker but if you do, or have ways of making it more tanky/have more sustain I’d love to hear it.

EDIT: same build. just a couple polishes.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS5elYgqCnFyvDf4ESmiVCBxegReUHdpwheIA-jECB4hERzUDDRj+AOBtIasVWFRjVNjIqWnEzIuIa1yAYuFA-w

@xFireize: Somehow missed that one. Will have to play around with that. Thanks for pointing that out.

@ CRrabbit: I use the term “unkillable” loosely. Obviously lol. But you are mistaken when it comes to only working against fair fights. I have run with this same thief with far less tanky guard builds against 5-10 enemies many times. Can’t win every time but we have a high success rate. So, no offense, but if your solution to making a build more tanky is re-rolling a troll warrior, that’s some pretty narrow thinking my friend.

DaedSaint.6190:

I have run with this same thief with far less tanky guard builds against 5-10 enemies many times. Can’t win every time but we have a high success rate.

Well I can hardly imagine 2 VS 5-10 you still have a high success rate. This is basically highly broken in balance if this is true no matter what class you played or against. Skill wise, good player/team can handle 2x number of players (extremely good VS bad), this is the limit, If you can win 5x number — it means the game is broken.

The team play you are talking about is easy to kill, I have done so many times, any player who knows what they are doing is going to see what is going on and target the DPS (glass cannon easy kill) most times first, and then the tank is the only thing left and it does crappy dmg, so it is not much of a worry, zergs work with this better because of a type of redundancy, and the fact it is not depending on one person to do all the DPS.

As I said, I have seen this combo, guard/whatever tank rolls in then out of no where a thief, but all you have to do is counter for a very short time as in most cases they blow everything at once to try and burst you down and after that, they are nothing but a walking loot bag. People who fall prey to this kind of tactic, were probably easy kills to start with. And these are in cases where it’s 2vs1 in their favor, as for the most part it depends on the other player being clueless, as only one of them is really doing anything while the other is just a distraction.

If you constantly find yourself facing more then your number, then a low precision is fine. Why? You will get enough crits to trigger vigorous precision simply through the amount of hits you trigger with symbols. Switching your utility food for +precision and making sure the thief has Bountiful Theft would do wonders as well.
I (would, currently convincing guildies) run something very similar to this in zergs. Mace/ shield is so underrated.

CRrabbit.1284:

DaedSaint.6190:

I have run with this same thief with far less tanky guard builds against 5-10 enemies many times. Can’t win every time but we have a high success rate.

Well I can hardly imagine 2 VS 5-10 you still have a high success rate. This is basically highly broken in balance if this is true no matter what class you played or against. Skill wise, good player/team can handle 2x number of players (extremely good VS bad), this is the limit, If you can win 5x number — it means the game is broken.

You probably haven’t seen just how bad players can be.

Bump but after an unexpected hiatus, I returned and finished this build. It looks odd and it was not my favorite during theory crafting, however, after playing with it, it is amazing. Provided you know how to play guard of course.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASWlYgyCXFyvDf4ES2jVCBTQsHYUG1RXFcIA-j0BB4hDRjaIZ0HBKBtIaslRFRjVNjIqWnETGAztA-w

Variations:
-stacking weapon with Superior Sigil of Life
-3 shout as default but swap Hold the Line for: Contemplation of Purity, Wall of reflection, and sometimes Judges Intervention as needed.
-Can run shelter however I recommend sigil.
-Tome elite as needed. If you don’t know or dont feel confident using them, keep RF as default and just keep popping virtues
-Can swap Purity for Strength in Numbers as needed when in groups
-While it shows hammer/staff, that is for group play. GS/sword-focus for small group.
-Mango pies or a 40% endurance regen depending on style of play
!! I used ascended armor just to max this toon. Exotics work fine !!

Thanks to those who contributed on the forums and in game. I hope this build helps if you were looking for an awesome bunker build (or just perfect your own) and the variations will let you tweak for your own style of play.

A few points:

• Vitality is still pretty bad. Now, if you wanted the major Power from PVT I could have let it slide for 2-3 armor pieces but Clerics is still objectively better.

• Shelter is better than Sigil although you seem intent on keeping it on your bar for whatever reasons.

• You are running massive amounts of condi clears but you still pick up Soldier Runes? I would seriously advice against that.

• I would like to hear your motivation for running Tome when you are so heavily invested into Virtues.

EFWinters.5421:

A few points:

• Vitality is still pretty bad. Now, if you wanted the major Power from PVT I could have let it slide for 2-3 armor pieces but Clerics is still objectively better.

• Shelter is better than Sigil although you seem intent on keeping it on your bar for whatever reasons.

• You are running massive amounts of condi clears but you still pick up Soldier Runes? I would seriously advice against that.

• I would like to hear your motivation for running Tome when you are so heavily invested into Virtues.

Not the build maker, but here’s my advice.

• For zerging the vitality is a hair low, but otherwise it should be fine

• Shelter is infinitely better than SoR. Signet is a PvE heal; I agree with you 100%.

• Condi meta is only getting stronger over the next few months (ty short-sighted nerf to power builds) so you can never have enough condi cleanse

• High healing power builds benefit far more from Book than RF, so I understand their logic

That said I hate overly bunker builds because they’re inherently self-limiting. PvE gearing allows for so much diversity with the Guardian class, especially when it comes to balanced builds. I can’t quite understand why people would waste it by running an sPvP-esque bunker.

Boonprot.6274:

EFWinters.5421:

A few points:

• Vitality is still pretty bad. Now, if you wanted the major Power from PVT I could have let it slide for 2-3 armor pieces but Clerics is still objectively better.

• Shelter is better than Sigil although you seem intent on keeping it on your bar for whatever reasons.

• You are running massive amounts of condi clears but you still pick up Soldier Runes? I would seriously advice against that.

• I would like to hear your motivation for running Tome when you are so heavily invested into Virtues.

Not the build maker, but here’s my advice.

• For zerging the vitality is a hair low, but otherwise it should be fine

• Shelter is infinitely better than SoR. Signet is a PvE heal; I agree with you 100%.

• Condi meta is only getting stronger over the next few months (ty short-sighted nerf to power builds) so you can never have enough condi cleanse

• High healing power builds benefit far more from Book than RF, so I understand their logic

That said I hate overly bunker builds because they’re inherently self-limiting. PvE gearing allows for so much diversity with the Guardian class, especially when it comes to balanced builds. I can’t quite understand why people would waste it by running an sPvP-esque bunker.

• He’s stated he’s going to duo roam. In that environment Vitality is near useless compared to healing power.

• What you fail to realize though, is that most of the time, conditions are going to be cleansed, not expire. The 25% reduction in Condition Duration is useless everytime he cleanses those conditions. There are much better runesets available when looking at his build.

• Again, Book might be good in your 15-20man GvG zergs, but for a two man team? 1) It’s going to be completely useless, and 2) He’s gonna eat dirt within a few seconds against anything even mildly coordinated if he brings out that Book. In a duo his partner will rely on him to CC, deal damage, heal and maintain boons. There won’t be another 20 players around him to pick up the slack in the areas he can’t maintain while using Book.

Regarding your last point; Permanent retal uptime, good power which allows for strong autoattacks, lots of both soft and hard CC, massive healing, comparatively high mobility and good might generation for the group are some things which makes Healway coupled with a DPS probably the strongest Guardian build for running a 2-man group.

I found traited SoR is more rewarding than Shelter if you already can sustain your HP well without a healing skill. If you’re having trouble saying alive while swimming in an enemy zerg, than yeah I agree Shelter would be useful, but definitely not “infinitely”. When you don’t need to use it, it gives a small reward but when you actually need heal after getting burst-ed, you can rely on the big heal it gives.

I’ve found most players, or at least smart ones, catch on really quick that the Guardian is supporting/diverting attention while player number 2 is picking people off. So what happens is that they just ignore the Guardian (no DPS anyway) and take down the other team mate.

That is what I do at least. I’ve found DPS to add more value in a duo or trio out in WvW. More so if the other two are skilled and have some options to reset the fight which then means I’m beating feet out of town or taking one for the team.

It seems a couple clarifications are needed.
-I prefer SoR because I can manage my health well in fights. If you can’t or simply prefer shelter by all means use it. I am not putting it down. I do like it for GvG/zerg play.

-Not sure what was meant by picking up soldiers runes. This particular build doesn’t use soldiers runes.

-As far as elites are concerned, RF if the only choice in <5 man fights. However the variation was there for group fight or highly coordinated 5 man havoc teams should they want to run it. I personally run RF all the time except when a commander/driver asks for them.

Hope that clears things up a little.

DaedSaint.6190:

It seems a couple clarifications are needed.
-I prefer SoR because I can manage my health well in fights. If you can’t or simply prefer shelter by all means use it. I am not putting it down. I do like it for GvG/zerg play.

-Not sure what was meant by picking up soldiers runes. This particular build doesn’t use soldiers runes.

-As far as elites are concerned, RF if the only choice in <5 man fights. However the variation was there for group fight or highly coordinated 5 man havoc teams should they want to run it. I personally run RF all the time except when a commander/driver asks for them.

Hope that clears things up a little.

soldier runes+trait =2 condies cleansed per shout?
also try saffron ice cream converts toughness and vit ino healing power