Guild Wars 2

It’s good to be a Champion of the Gods Guild Wars 1…

So… I switched from AH Crithammer to this build. The survivability is way better. Dmg is lower, but people crash and burn after they burn all their CDs on dodge rolls and shields X)

Can’t wait until I finish the exotics in set lol.

Btw what food do you use? Have you tried the HP regen foods? ~88/s ontop of Resolve is pretty decent. Or maybe the 40% endurance regen/100% might on dodge?

I use Mango Pie (the regen+vital food). I plan to try the 40% endurance regen food when I have the funds available though. Would love it if someone that has money to blow could compare them and let me know how it goes.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I use Mango Pie (the regen+vital food). I plan to try the 40% endurance regen food when I have the funds available though. Would love it if someone that has money to blow could compare them and let me know how it goes.

I’m running an identical build, with those consumables and I love them, I do however use 2 parts (chest and boots) with power-toughness-vitality because I wanted to stick to 15k health. All the rest of the gear is cleric’s and sapphire. I used to run 100 power 70 vitality food, so this makes up for that lost health. I used some napkin math to check if major runes of sanctuary were worth using but only the regen from focus #4 and hold the line gained an extra tick, I dont think the extra second on the boons you get from save yourselves is worth sacrificing 100 healing power.

Thanks for inspiring me into using a healing setup again, I tried it a long time ago and didn’t like it, but I was too green with the guardian class and couldn’t get it to work, I tried to use the symbols too much for healing and didn’t focus enough on the dodges and boons. After that, I’ve been running with tanky crit builds and I always used a staff in at least one of my setups. I now only swap to staff when I’m out of combat for swiftness, I really dislike swapping out stand your ground for retreat, it almost feel like I’m wasting a utility slot :<

Ive been running this build since I saw it a couple days ago. Use to run a hammer crit build but for some reason the last couple times i played just seemed like i was going down so fast. So i saw this and holy cow is it a beast!

Awesome front line fighter. Decent mobility with gs #3, sword #2, and JI. I mean it isn’t great for running long distances but it is more then enough in a normal fight.

Have had a couple Engineers able to burst me down, dont know really why never played an engineer and know nothing about them, so I’m sure that doesn’t help. Good thieves can kill me, but not all that quickly. Nothing else really seems to be much of a threat. Dont get me wrong I die, everyone dies to people who play better then them. But on the whole there is no one class that makes me go Oh CRAP!!

I personally only have real trouble against dedicated boon rip necros, but those are pretty gimmicky and rare. Glass cannons of each profession take some learning to get used to taking down, but once you get it, it’s a done deal.

I’m glad so many of you are finding this build to work well for you.

just another small question here. just looking to broaden my horizons in terms of weapon play for the Guard.

have you ever considered the mace with this build? i feel it’s not not as versatile / mobile as the sword and less “burst” and block (sword #3), but the healing factor could be great for group play?

Reset my traits tonight and bought all exotic cleric’s gear. Tried it out in WvW. I probably have a lot to learn and practice with this because I’m getting dropped like a rock. Head into battle 1v2 or 1v1 and my health will stay up for the first 10 seconds and then I’m dropped over the next 10 seconds.

akamon.2769:

have you ever considered the mace with this build? i feel it’s not not as versatile / mobile as the sword and less “burst” and block (sword #3), but the healing factor could be great for group play?

Sure, it could be useful in small group situations. I might actually give it a shot with my guild sometime soon, but I feel the loss of burst and mobility would really just balance out the additional heals and blocks in a way.

nalenb.1425:

Reset my traits tonight and bought all exotic cleric’s gear. Tried it out in WvW. I probably have a lot to learn and practice with this because I’m getting dropped like a rock. Head into battle 1v2 or 1v1 and my health will stay up for the first 10 seconds and then I’m dropped over the next 10 seconds.

It’s certainly not a face-tanking build. The most I can recommend is to go over some of my videos. :/ This build is pretty reliant on situational (not a word ><) awareness and fluidity in knowing when and how to dodge/block/etc.

Also, make sure you’re using the superior sigils of energy…those are extremely important.

nalenb.1425:

Reset my traits tonight and bought all exotic cleric’s gear. Tried it out in WvW. I probably have a lot to learn and practice with this because I’m getting dropped like a rock. Head into battle 1v2 or 1v1 and my health will stay up for the first 10 seconds and then I’m dropped over the next 10 seconds.

It takes getting used to, but trust me it works. And for those that say guardian has no escapability, I did lead about 5 enemies on a merry chase from Titanpaw to between Arah’s and Dreaming Bay before they finally got me (because I screwed up).

Setis.4390:

It takes getting used to, but trust me it works. And for those that say guardian has no escapability, I did lead about 5 enemies on a merry chase from Titanpaw to between Arah’s and Dreaming Bay before they finally got me (because I screwed up).

Yeah, I think getting the gear and traits was by far the easier part. I watched all the videos a few times to make sure the build was going to be okay, i.e. not taking on 3 up leveled guys, not fighting against a bad server, etc. Now I’ll have to watch them again slowly to see what he’s doing compared to what the enemy is doing.

Last night I went in with kind of a tank mindset. Thought I could stand in the middle and just using every ability would keep me alive. Today I started slower and took on the sentries alone to watch for retaliation, blocks and blinds. Might have to go to Orr for a bit to practice too. It’s hard to get 2-3 mobs alone in WvW to practice on. Either get ganked or teammates show up to help.

I really wish there was a detailed combat log to look at afterwards. Looking forward to working on this setup some more.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Also, make sure you’re using the superior sigils of energy…those are extremely important.

Well I ran out of money so I bought the major sigils of energy thinking there wasn’t much of a difference between major and superior. I should have checked the descriptions. Superior gives double the boost that the major does. Guess I’ll be saving up for those now, heh.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I use Heritage weapons. The FDS is great, but I’m working towards a better skin for my GS.

Oh, another questions. So you bought the full Cleric’s set and the full cultural tier 3 set and transmuted it? So 100g for the 5 pieces of cultural but you keep those when you transmute and the Clerics set is lost? For instance if you wanted to run full knights next, you would buy the Knights set for maybe 20g and transmute those stats onto the existing cultural set? Then you change back to Cleric spending another 20g for that set and the knights is lost in the transmute?

If that’s right, then I’m guessing you have to be pretty happy with an armor set to transmute it, i.e. if you weren’t happy with Cleric then you wouldn’t transmute yet.

Just asking because the draconic set looks okay, but the cultural stuff you have looks pretty awesome. I might have to gender change too.

How well does this build hold up in dungeons?

nalenb.1425:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I use Heritage weapons. The FDS is great, but I’m working towards a better skin for my GS.

Oh, another questions. So you bought the full Cleric’s set and the full cultural tier 3 set and transmuted it? So 100g for the 5 pieces of cultural but you keep those when you transmute and the Clerics set is lost? For instance if you wanted to run full knights next, you would buy the Knights set for maybe 20g and transmute those stats onto the existing cultural set? Then you change back to Cleric spending another 20g for that set and the knights is lost in the transmute?

If that’s right, then I’m guessing you have to be pretty happy with an armor set to transmute it, i.e. if you weren’t happy with Cleric then you wouldn’t transmute yet.

Just asking because the draconic set looks okay, but the cultural stuff you have looks pretty awesome. I might have to gender change too.

I had the Draconic Cleric’s transmuted to Heritage armor while I saved up. Then I just transmuted the t3 skins onto the Cleric’s exotics.

If I wanted a separate set of armor for an entirely different build, I’d probably just put Heritage on it. For instance, I’m slowly building a glass cannon set just to see what it feels like. Just gonna’ put Heritage on it. Or Orrian…we’ll see.

jerhog.2814:

How well does this build hold up in dungeons?

I’m not sure what people look for in most explorables since I don’t do them often, but I’ve used the build to exceptional effect in several runs. It also holds up well in fractals. You definitely have to get some agony resistance and know how to avoid damage, but it’s certainly tanky enough and hits harder than most popular defensive builds.

Something you might try as well if you feel your health is a little low, I think someone else mentioned this as well, I replaced my cleric chest and legs with the Aurora set pieces. Might save you some gold too since these are 42k karma at the temple of Melandru. You gain a little power. Loose a around 150 healing power. But gain around 120 vit.

Puts your health around a little more comfortable 16k ish. Also with the change I felt my health was high enough to stop using +vit food and went with the +40% energy regen.

Which is nice for the extra dodging. And also can double as a life saver since dodging restores somewhere around 1500 health.

jerhog.2814:

How well does this build hold up in dungeons?

Very well, I’ve run a few dungeons with it like Arah, AC, TA, CoF and CoE and it went smooth. You have to walk out and dodge back in sometimes to heal your allies with Selfless Daring but compared to the Crithammer build for example you bring a lot more healing and things to the group! For some fights I use the scepter, I sometimes swap out the Hammer or mace, it’s very versatile!

I’ve also ran with it in small group WvW and in Bigger group organised wvw and both were awesome! I love to play my Guardian to actually guard and support my allies and I think this build does that best and there’s lots of things working for this build. High retaliation uptime, very good heals, fairly decent mobility due to double swords, the damage is meaningful, medium at best burst, counter-burst abilities, condi removal, stability, etc.

I did have a hard time switching out of my Staff (which I only use for out of combat swiftness now) and out of Empowered Might, but I really don’t miss it. The thing with those might stacks is, that you can’t consistently predict when they burst and when that might has the most impact and you need to stand still and channel for 4 seconds to give it to them, while they have to be close enough to get it.. The staff itself is very weak in meaningful damage, the area denial is nice but a big niche.

Anyway /rant off, thanks again for the build! If I was a hat-wearer, I’d def tip it to you!

I may be swapping to it here tonight. I picked up the armor finally and sword/focus. I already have the pvp sword and hammer (also torch/scepter – lol). Anyway just waiting on a few bids to make it through (fingers crossed) on accessories. Once I have those I’ll pick up the sigils and try it.

Only draw back, and I really hate to admit this, is I only have the water runes. I haven’t run the dungeon yet for the other 3. I’ve never gone into those so no idea what to expect and my story isn’t even complete. So outside of a bid for accessories and the last 3 runes I’m good to go.

Oh – and still finding / looking for some nice weapon skins. Lots of karma to burn since no legendary has fallen from the skys

My problem with this playstyle is my allies are not worth guarding. Most are up levelled toons with pve builds who run from a stiff breeze. But I enjoyed your video and it seems you were very effective within your group. Well done.

It’s meant to be a pretty selfish build; it just has the fortunate bonus of being a reasonable support build as well.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

It’s meant to be a pretty selfish build; it just has the fortunate bonus of being a reasonable support build as well.

I think it’s support capabilities are more than reasonable tbh, I think the typical altruistic healing builds are more selfish :P

Hah, that may be. I’ve only ever played AH builds for about a day just to see what they’re like. This was actually the first build I ever tried and continues to be my mainstay.

It’s also quite ridiculous when you have several guardians with it working in concert

Setis.4390:

It’s also quite ridiculous when you have several guardians with it working in concert

Yes it is, you shouldve seen this fight we had last night. Hopefully Chris will post it soon xD

I sort of run this build at lvl67 and got to say i live pretty long in WvW against geared 80’s. I can’t wait to try the full force of it.

Are the superior runes of water the same as the monks?

They look the same and I’m trying to find an alternative so I don’t have to dungeon crawl

They’re the exact same, Crapgame. 6 Water isn’t the same as 3 Water and 3 Monk though.

Rock on Christos and thanks. I thought 3 2ould net me the same so that is what I’m going to do Yeah, go me! I don’t have to run a instance

I am actually running the build as of last night with everything except the 3 runes – lol. I’m not sure honestly because some fights I’m doing ok and others I’m not. Not even close. Part of me thinks the players I’m facing are just 10x better than me (probably true) and destroy me. Yet earlier today I was facing a up scaled 80 and a real 80 in a 2v1 situation and came out with 2 kills.

I have to say even missing 3 runes it is a fun build. I did swap 2 handed sword to staff earlier for some ranged world pvp. I also miss wall of reflection a ton but also know you mentioned in the video that it is optional and ok to switch as needed. I always forget to do that based on what I’m doing. Jump puzzle fighting is different that open field and I forget we can swap those around

Thanks again and I have to save the spec and gear is fun. All I need now are a 1 handed sword and focus texture I actually like Sea Shells by the sea shore are not very epic feeling

I actually use WoR a lot more often than not lately. I don’t roam quite as much as I participate in zerg warfare these days.

What about 2 Superior Runes of Water with 4 Superior Runes of Altruism? Would that be a workable alternative? It’s what I have right now, but I haven’t tried this build yet (just found it today). It would basically be a trade-off of 50 Healing Power for 3 stacks of Might to nearby allies when using a healing skill (10s cooldown).

That’d work. The whole point is to have two sets of +15% boon duration.

nice build, I was wondering if you could post your stats with your current set up.

thanks!

Thanks for showing this awesome build

I was debating whether to go for knight-zerker or full cleric, and after a few days of testing I’ve found that knight-zerker can get you decent stats such as:

3000ish attack,
3200 toughness,
30%-50% crit chance/40-50 crit damage,

but in the long term the healing-way build is so much better for survival, although the stats are not as good-looking as knight-zerker.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I personally only have real trouble against dedicated boon rip necros, but those are pretty gimmicky and rare. Glass cannons of each profession take some learning to get used to taking down, but once you get it, it’s a done deal.

I’m glad so many of you are finding this build to work well for you.

Once I am done moving and whatnot Im going to finish my necro that i started building to fight you

So a solid several hours with this build now coming off the AH/Hammer build. Knights Cleric + accessories + runes and sigils now. Got the final water runes this morning. Barring the fugly Cleric focus and sword looks I have to say it is a rather fun build.

Me and a elementalist paired up this morning taking supply camps. Outside pulling too many (I always do this for whatever reason) the two of us took camp after camp after camp with ease. Yeah, I was able to before hand but the interesting part of this is when we started to get the standard camp guards + a roamer or two enemies checking out supply status and also engage. Before I’d do OK but more often than not the hammer was just too slow with many people around and I’d die quick.

Today I didn’t have that issue. Couple cases it was 2 v 7 and we’d last a long long time taking out several before we lost in the end. Other times it was 2v2 or 2v1 + guards, etc. The build worked and I seemed to stay up longer than before. Has the day progressed and I learn the build when to do what, I actually think I was doing better. Solo and duo sword/focus and 2 handed sword work best. Swapping for burst is really key. Zergs though I find that I go back to sword/focus and staff or sword/focus and scepter/shield. Scepters range and CC is really key. The shield 5 is just too good of a tool to pass off when you are trying to push people back.

Its a good build and gets better as it ages I think. Thanks.

mann, i still do not have my full set ready to go yet lol. holidays soon over! which is almost ironiic when i get less play time, with less time at work haha. regardless, good to see so many people picking this up!

@Chris – had the honor finally facing up against you in battle (i think). over the weekend, i had a bit of time on SoR BL near BG’s spawn. Owl was there too. (was still running my own knight’s and AH build).

@all – in regards to runes, what about a 2x water, 2x monk and 2x major water? (i originally ran 2x major sanctuary but thinking of switching to 2x major rune for the extra little healing). vs 3 water and 3 monk, the trade off would be gain 10% boon duration, but lose 85 healing power.

[edit: oops mathfail]

I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try if you’re into it, but I’d rather 85 healing power than an extra 0.5-1.5 seconds of boon duration personally.

it’s not a straight comparison i guess. on one hand, boon duration helps with any and all the boons i give out to myself and allies. though it’s also partly because it’s easier for me to attain right now with my limited time. i’ll give it a shot and report back when i can.

Didnt the heal on guardian got limited to 5 random targets (due turtlings), and if you have a party/team boons might go to other players instead the players you want to protect?

Ive being playing with hight armor 3.3k and arround 1.8/1.9 in healing power and ~16k health, arround 2.6atk, on pve (Arah)sometimes when bored try to agro the max veterans and champs i can see for some fun, a roll heals almost half of my hp bar, but in w.w.w is another story, where damage and high HP is what it matter, at the momment im changin to soldier stats armor.

Pretty sure boons prioritize targets in your party before affecting other nearby targets.

Shouts do prioritize party members. I also think it’s better to be providing boons to 5 people than to none in group combat, but that wasn’t really the idea when I start playing with this anyway. The shouts were mostly for myself because I enjoyed the protection and regen uptime, but they happen to work well for group support as well.

akamon.2769:

@all – in regards to runes, what about a 2x water, 2x monk and 2x major water? (i originally ran 2x major sanctuary but thinking of switching to 2x major rune for the extra little healing). vs 3 water and 3 monk, the trade off would be gain 10% boon duration, but lose 85 healing power.

I’m not entirely sure about this, but the way Condition Duration works is that it rounds down to whole numbers, so if for example a bleed you put up lasts for 5 seconds and you add 60% boon duration to that, you come to 8 seconds duration. Adding another 10% to that would give you 8,5 seconds duration but considering the game rounds it down, it would still be at 8 seconds and you would only see result in having 20% more, making it last 9 seconds.

If I’m not mistaken it works the same with Boons and considering most boons didn’t get an extra second from getting +10% extra Boon duration over 60%, except for the boons from Save Yourselves and the Regeneration from Focus #4 and Hold the Line. Considering the nigh permanent uptime on Regeneration we have already, I went for the healing bonus instead with 3 water / 3 monk.

As for using 2x water and 4x altruism runes, that should be perfectly viable! The trade-off is basically 50 healing vs 3 stacks of might to nearby allies when using a heal skill. The might boons last for 10 seconds, 16 seconds with 60% increased boon duration. So around 50% uptime if you cast your heal on every cooldown, giving an average of 50 power and condi dmg to everyone affected.

I might actually swap to that on my elementalist, as I like using Ether Renewal (heal) which has a 15 second cooldown and I run with +50% boon duration atm, giving it a very high uptime..

Boon amd condition duration do count the partial seconds. The issue is that condions like burning and boons like regeneration only tick once per second. So even if you had it for something like 8.9 seconds you would only get 8 ticks. Where the extra time becomes relevant is when you have more sources of the boon/condition if you added on something like 3.5 seconds you would get it to 12.4 seconds and get the extra tick instead of just 3+8.

Also traits like our own 25 point radiance where you do more damage when enemies get conditions gets a boost because even if you dont get an extra tick, the condion still stays on long, giving more time for the trait to be active.

akamon.2769:

@all – in regards to runes, what about a 2x water, 2x monk and 2x major water? (i originally ran 2x major sanctuary but thinking of switching to 2x major rune for the extra little healing). vs 3 water and 3 monk, the trade off would be gain 10% boon duration, but lose 85 healing power.

[edit: oops mathfail]

Major runes don’t stack with superior runes. At least, when I tried this with major and minor, adding major runes gave me only the benefit of the major ones, and not the minor.

@Nalar / Bash / RoyHamon – thanks for all the replies. that’s some good analysis and to be honest, i didn’t know about the rounding down, for one and other related mechanics but what i’ve read make sense. will look into this more but at the moment it’s what i’m running with. can add food as well to get it up to 90% boon duration total – but then i’d be giving up other sources of healing power or other stats that could be gotten from food.

one thing i found weird is when Roy you mentioned that major runes don’t stack with superior runes. will test this too. ah, Roy, i see what you’re saying. as in major and superior runes of the same kind don’t stack? i.e. if i had 2x sup monk + 2x sup water + 2x major sacntuary, the boon duration would stack?

[added: finally sat down and did the math and think i am going to go for 3 monk and 3 water afterall. :PP now i should have some AC tokens left over…]

that being said, i’ve finally gotten the gear to properly test this build out. currently running with hammer and mace/shield and it’s been working wonders so far. extremely survivable and loving the change of pace in play style. will be trying out different weapon sets as well to find one best suited for myself but so far, i’m pretty happy alreayd with the results! still running with PVT chest and pants as well. so this isn’t even having “max” healing power.

will keep growing into this build in more WvW situations as well. thanks again Chris for sharing this and everyone else contributing.

I tried this a bit in sPvP and have to say “I” didn’t enjoy it that much. WvWvW I love this though. I really don’t do shades of mist much so just copied this set up with gear and runes, etc. I’ll probably have to fiddle with it a bit more to see if it was me, the build, or just not knowing WTF everyone is doing or what my job is while in there.

WvWvW though I find this to be a really good set up after additional hours under my belt. Solo roaming is very doable. Only issue I’ve seen is having the wrong weapons at the wrong time. Roaming solo I’m using my staff with sword/focus. While this works for faster movement it lends me to have zero or lower DPS. While I’m able to stay alive it seems 1 v 1 or 2 v 1 I end up losing in the end because I’m not really bursting anyone down. Couple times I’ve got people down and lost because I forgot to use stability and while trying to finish them they pull off a stunt and end up killing me. More learning to do On the other hand when I do have my 2 handed weapon loaded up I can usually hold my own and get the kill. So overall it is a win win.

Small or large group I just end up playing support. Depending on whom I’m with I’ll usually go staff with scepter/shield. Staff for range and speed and sheild for pushing people back or control. Here I’m not getting as many kills but my team mates do. Something I think Arena Net needs to look at is supporting players and badges. They just don’t come with this set up (I find anyway) so I’m a bit sad panda.

Still love the build and really glad I spent a few days to aquire the armor. Funny thing is this though. The last couple of days I’ve been grouping with the same people (I’m usually solo oddly enough) and one night they are like you want to run a instance / dungeon. I’m like, no. Not really. They are like, come on – we’ll do AC (lol). I’m like ok, I at one time needed that for some runes, why not.

Interesting place never the less and this build worked in there too. I wasn’t that great but in the end it was fun and I got some tokens. I just thought that was rather funny

Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of it in sPvP, but I never actually do it, so eh. I figured to increase viability in there you’d have to change out SY and possibly substitute in more soldier’s gear. I don’t really know though.

As far as the dungeons go…it can be a pain with the lower health pool, but I’ve always done pretty well with it in there. I’m starting to replace my rings and weapons with soldier’s pieces though, so the extra health and power is definitely helping. Even if it does mean losing some healing power… /cry

Are you swapping out the rings and weapons also out in world pvp? Or is that only for the dungeon crawl?

They’re swapped permanently. I’m replacing my exotic sapphire rings with the Ascended soldier’s clones and slowly replacing my cleric’s weapons with soldier’s. Everything else is remaining cleric’s and sapphire.

Has anyone used other weapons with this build successfully? What modifications were necessary?

I’d really like to try this build, but I’m reluctant to switch weapons. I can’t seem to get used to the sword, and I haven’t used the focus enough to really appreciate it, either. I used the greatsword extensively through the first month or two, but then I switched to hammer/staff most of the time. I tried the greatsword last night, but it felt awkward to me.

I could probably determine most of this myself, but I don’t know when I’ll have the time or the money. Superior Sigils of Energy are currently ~3 gold each, and Sigils of Life are half that, so a weapon swap would likely cost more than 7 gold in sigils alone.