Guild Wars 2

cymerdown.4103:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

The only thing that was wrong with the post was assuming that one can’t win fights or stand one’s ground against competent players (or groups of them) with the build, at least to enough of an extent to be productive via delaying reinforcements, delaying caps of or all-together saving camps, or something as simple as saving some allied pugs.

Well, I didn’t say that. I just said it will be hard to kill competent players 1v1 with it (as in, if they end up eating too much damage off your retal and such, they will be able to back out and you don’t have the spike or mobility to prevent that). Bunkering and supporting you can do, but arguably better with different weapons.

Honestly, any build/profession will have it hard in this situation. You’re reasoning in the above, bolded/italicized quote is irrelevant.

I’d also argue that the GS/ Swd&Foc weapon choice for solo use is quite viable as well, but I don’t want to get into that.

just chiming in on weapon choice. i LOVE the hammer guardian. and i have a build different from the Healway but with a focus on high healing as well as symbols and when i’m in 1v1 or small fight situations? the GS excels quite a bit. and even though it’s more of less branded an offensive weapon, it works defensively as well. WW is almost a guaranteed force dodge out of most players, and hey, if they don’t dodge? all the better. symbol of wrath —> more retal, etc etc.

i want to say the Healway, at least when i play it, is not meant to be playing solely the support role, or a healing role, not by far. it’s actually been more of a battle of attrition for me, messing with your enemies heads and taking them down chunk by chunk. so the weapons i feel are definitely suited. though of course, it depends on the player as well. : )) i played hammer + mace/shield healway for a bit and absolutely loved it as well. that was more geared towards support.

Heya! I’m mainly an elementalist with existing preconceptions of guardians being slow, boring. Your video totally changed that for me! Thanks to you, I’ll be making a guardian in the near future and, of course, using a variation of your build.

I really loved the gameplay video but I was kind of lost with the discussion video as I am a deaf person. I don’t wanna be a burden but could you consider adding subtitles or at least some notes to go along with what you’re saying? That way, deaf players such as I would fully appreciate your thoughts in your videos.

Anyway, thanks again for an exciting take on the profession!

This is EXACTLY the kind of hammer support build I was looking for! Bookmarked

Azunai.5974:

I really loved the gameplay video but I was kind of lost with the discussion video as I am a deaf person. I don’t wanna be a burden but could you consider adding subtitles or at least some notes to go along with what you’re saying? That way, deaf players such as I would fully appreciate your thoughts in your videos.

Anyway, thanks again for an exciting take on the profession!

I will definitely keep you guys in mind in the future. :> I hope the OP here provides enough information to make up for it for now.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Azunai.5974:

I really loved the gameplay video but I was kind of lost with the discussion video as I am a deaf person. I don’t wanna be a burden but could you consider adding subtitles or at least some notes to go along with what you’re saying? That way, deaf players such as I would fully appreciate your thoughts in your videos.

Anyway, thanks again for an exciting take on the profession!

I will definitely keep you guys in mind in the future. :> I hope the OP here provides enough information to make up for it for now.

Holy kitten! That’d be fantastic. I’m glad to see someone making it easier for us. Reminds me of Riot in league of legends. Anyway, looking forward to future videos by you. Thanks again!

:DDD those last few posts made me happy.
that is all.

This is going to sound crappy, and I don’t really mean it that way as I’m just curious. Is the Heal Power really worth it for Guardians? Do we actually have enough sources of healing(modified by HP) for it to be that beneficial?

The reason I ask is because I’m really looking for something different outside of my AH/crit/zerk setup as it seems to be an “all-in-one” kind of build that so far has been effective for everything for me. I don’t really play my Guardian in WvW because I prefer my other classes but I don’t want to invest in all of the gear unless this build proves viable.

I did some brief testing in the mists with the NPCs just to see how survivable I was and I’m not quite sure how they are set up vs PvE mobs but I was still taking quite a bit of damage. I really want to try something else desperately, but I want it to be effective you know?

PvP is considerably different than WvW due to all the healing and boon duration nerf’s we recieved.

Go look up Rurik Armor on the TP, its considerably cheaper than Clerics.

It’s a fun build and probably the most troll build we have. You can kite people around for quite abit. Just don’t expect to be burst’n anyone down w/ a flurry of huge dmg spiking!

So could you say you can use this in PVE effectively also? Is just going the straight clerics effective? or is the damage gonna be that bad that there is no point. Im trying to find a nice supporty build for PVE. All input helps

it’s doable, and it will work and you’ll probably never die, but like you’ve pointed out already, the damage will be quite low. and in PvE, where argubly, DPS is king, you may be better off goign with knight’s or zerkers or a mix. even OP himself i think mentions for PvE he’d go with something more offense oriented. since you know what to expect any given encounter in PvE (though some may require trial and error), you can afford to sacrifice survivability through gear / traits to achieve more damage, where killing faster is better in most, if not all cases.

that’s my take on it. : ))

[edit: i will add though, i’ve heard a few Guardians to play in full cleric’s at high level Fraactals with success]

Can you help me understand why you didn’t go 0/0/30/30/10?
Did you think 30 in virtues was better than AH even with all that healing gear helping AH? I don’t really get the point of the virtue line, aren’t the passives better than the actives anyway?

fadeaway.2807:

Can you help me understand why you didn’t go 0/0/30/30/10?
Did you think 30 in virtues was better than AH even with all that healing gear helping AH? I don’t really get the point of the virtue line, aren’t the passives better than the actives anyway?

You’d need at least 20 in Virtues to get the trait that improves the regen on the F2 Virture. Guess it might be possible to go 0/0/30/20/20 to get AH, EM, and Absolute Resolution, but then you’d need a lot of Magi gear and keep your crit near 50%. You would also lose 10% boon duration too though. Interesting point however.

It’s impossible to have both PoV and AR and still be able to pick up AH. I just greatly prefer PoV and AR over AH.

Whether the passives or the actives are “better” depends on how you’re traited and what the situation is. In most builds you’ll see these days, popping Justice will at least do something besides just cause burning, whether it be AoE blind/vulnerability or area Might, or both. Add that to a 20-30% reduced cooldown and the fact that it also gives you Retaliation with 15 in Virtues, and by most bets VoJ becomes better activated on cooldown than just letting it sit.

Absolute Resolution buffs Resolve’s passive heal by 25%, which really adds up when you’re stacking Healing Power. AR also affects Battle Presence, so your allies are getting healed for more if you decide to run that instead of PoV. Obviously, it also gives the activation effect a triple condition removal. So, Resolve is very strong when activated with 20 in Virtues and some HP to back it up, especially considering the active heal scales at 0.75 per HP.

Not to say you should just spam Resolve unless it’s an emergency… same thing with VoC. What makes it so strong with 30 in Virtues is the clutch stability (3 seconds base, affected by boon duration) and the fact that it can be made to proc every 30 seconds instead of every 40. Assuming the activation isn’t needed, you’re getting 6 Aegis over the course of a 3-minute fight as opposed to 4. Doesn’t seem like a very big deal, but it does help. I’ve been saved at crucial enough moments that it led to a total comeback because of that proc.

Thanks for the detailed reply.
Wouldn’t ar only increase your ticks by about 50? I think you would get more hp from ah, but like you said it doesn’t have the short term benefit of the active effect or the possibility to share with allies.

I suppose this is more for keeping allies alive during the bursty moment two gvg groups clash with active virtues compared to valor/honor focusing Mr on keeping the self alive.

After playing with AR for a while, it becomes frustrating to pop my VoR and still have conditions on me. Even worse, if I’m not traited in virtues at all and I don’t even get regeneration.

As Chris said, the already high healing power stacks up quickly with it, and it is not reliant on other players nearby.

The transition into group play and sharing VoR with teammates is probably less useful than Pure of Voice, but if there are already a good amount of condition cleanses, then it is just icing on top with an easy switch to Battle Presence.

Bottom line though, the condition removal on virtues, which frees up utility slots for other abilities is a god send.

@Christos or anyone really.

Have you given the following a try for WvW?
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|1.1k.h1j|c.1k.h1j.d.1k.h2|1c.71g.1c.71g.1c.71h.1c.71h.1c.b1g.1c.b1g|21l.e13.31l.e15.21l.e13.21l.e13.31l.e15.2u.e13|0.f6.0.u29b.p29|5r.1|w.18.19.16.1i|e

I’m new to Guard class and just returned to recently. Leveling my guard to give it a go WvW.
With the current cond meta I thought this would give a great combination of VoR up time for condition clearing and ability to spam blind and vuln on enemy zerg. Allowing me to reserve my shouts to support the friendly zerg and keep conditions off them.

Rest of the game play seems like it would be basically the same, I do lose 100 toughness and an Aegis at 50% but the blind spam might make up for it. Thoughts?

Has anyone attempted to turn healway into a condi bunker yet with something like this?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAsdRlUgyCXFyvDf4ES2jVCBVwqCxD2DMKj6IA-jgyAYNBRaBI9JQ5xioxWyiWxLsV4goZwUrER1elioVLFAETjA-e

maintains a majority of the healing, I think about 100 less, swaps out the power for condition damage and you still maintain some retal damage at around 280 damage a tick (I think with all clerics you will be around 350ish?). Double up on burning duration to reach 2 seconds and you have 1051 damage every 4-5 attacks. With whirling wrath and sword auto attack, that should be plenty of sources of burn.

Not spike damage like you can do with bleeds condi set up, but with the long survival of healway, it may help push the damage a bit.

^^
If you are going to attempt a condi build with a guardian, which is borderline insane but I guess makes a modicum of sense if you are going to be a zero dps healway build anyway, I’d say you should probably at least use sigils of geomancy or earth for some bleeds or maybe sigil of genoristy and possibly a rune set that lets you apply some sort of condition. If you are lucky enough to be a sylvari, take root might not be a terrible idea for your ultimate, since the turrets use your condi stat and apply 10 seconds of bleeding base per hit. (can easily get 15+ stacks on a single target with the turrets, but it has to stand fairly still.).

Amins I believe either has, or is, toying with a Condition build or so I thought.

Geomancy wouldn’t work because healway relies a lot on the dodge roll heals for survival and that would conflict with that cooldown, and sigils of earth require crit rating that we wouldn’t have without putting some magi gear in there, which again is fairly low chance even with it, unless you sacrifice a lot of apothecary which would then drop the condition damage.

If you don’t want to 100% your burning duration and get 2 ticks out of it, then you can change the giver’s weapons to apothecary and maximize condition damage, but getting 2 procs of burning doing 525 each (1051 a second), will get you more damage out than going for another set of apothecary giving you more condition damage putting the burning up to 558 and just shy of 2 seconds, causing it to only do 1 tick. If you have a multi hitting ability you could round up those fractions of a second, but that wouldn’t happen on sword auto I don’t think…on whirling wrath it will though.

All going apothecary does is make you lose power stat, which is already low, and not a source of damage, and then you gain condition damage. Retaliation does 344 with full clerics (not ascended) and power food/sharpening stone.

Apothecary will have retaliation doing 280 damage a tick, 64 less damage, but you gain 230 burning damage, which, theoretically will be consistent up time with sword auto and whirling wrath bursts.

Add in 100% burning and you get 1051 burning, which is 493 more burning damage than pure clerics.

All this while maintaining a majority of the healway build, and keeping healing power above 1200, which I think chris said was his bare minimum and anything lower lost a lot of survival.

This by no means is a condi burst build, and people can still run away from you, but it may give you more offensive pressure along with your defensive retaliation pressure to shorten fights and cause people to back away from you sooner or die without realizing how much burning is going on.

Too often when I play a defensive build, I realize just how much ignoring me defeats my whole strategy. Putting some burning damage on your attacks gives you more umph and makes you a little bit more threatening if being ignored.

This would still be a healway playstyle, just with burning added.

Amins, if you have done this or something similar, I would be interested to hear the feedback of how it went.

Ok, I found his thread (Amins that is).

Page 2, If you can’t be them, join… is the title, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/If-you-can-t-be-them-join-them/first#post2691278

Not sure if that is what we are talking about or even relevant. I’m sorry if not.

Oh, yeah, his wasn’t a healway set up, but a confusion/interrupt build based on asuran racials and wards with runes of perplexity.

He said he had a non-asuran set up, but hasn’t posted it yet as I think he was rounding out the edges.

Thanks for this build Chris. I’ve been running around on my recently built Guardian in WvW and I’m having a blast just…not dying. Last night I ran into another guardian and we had a 1v1 fight that went on for about 15 minutes. After we were still both at full health, we called it a stalemate and ran in different directions.

Question: With the changes to the runes of the traveler, they now give boon duration and +10 to all stats. Would you recommend this as a feasible option to sub out for runes of the monk for us non-dungeon crawlers? I bought three last night before the price jump just in case. Right now I’m running 3 water and 3 soldier. Thanks again, this build is awesome. I’ve been running around with my warrior buddy, and he’s amazed at how long I stay alive, even against small groups.

Glad you’re enjoying it. I don’t see why the new Traveler runes wouldn’t be a feasible replacement for Runes of the Monk if you really don’t want to grind AC for them. You only give up about 55 Healing Power for it and gain 20 extra Power, Vitality, and Toughness. Minimal, but useful.

I’m actually going to give them a try only because I’m wee bit over 1450 in healing power and thing the speed will be cool when I’m not using staff. Although I’m usually wearing it during solo play I really don’t has much I guess.

We’ll see on what I end up with and overall cost.

Thank you Christos for posting this Build.

In zergfight? it’s awesome…
solo? it’s awesome…
smallscale? it’s awesome…

You only have to change few traits and it fits every situation!

And how often this build saved my whole group!

Greetings from Germany!

Goody.9035:

Thank you Christos for posting this Build.

In zergfight? it’s awesome…
solo? it’s awesome…
smallscale? it’s awesome…

You only have to change few traits and it fits every situation!

And how often this build saved my whole group!

Greetings from Germany!

it really doesnt do enough damage for small scale and zerg fights. but then u can just play more of a support role for your friends with hammer/staff.

Can’t exactly put an empirical value on “enough” damage for a single build in WvW because of how many possible variations there are of any conceivable situation — number of allies, number of opponents, your team builds, their team builds, player skill, are any of them up-leveled?, how much practice you’ve had with the build, etc.

That said, the point is support and group sustain when playing with others anyway. If it were meant to be a DPS/front-lining build it would matter more whether it “did enough.”

Can a rune of the monk and a rune of the water be replaced with two runes of the traveler. It now gives +10 to each stat, 2% crit dmg (1) and +15% boon duration (2). Is this maybe a better option? I think it might be overkill on the duration and you lose about 100 healing power, but you get more toughness, power, vitality, etc. I’d love to hear your opinions about it.

mistsim.2748:

Goody.9035:

Thank you Christos for posting this Build.

In zergfight? it’s awesome…
solo? it’s awesome…
smallscale? it’s awesome…

You only have to change few traits and it fits every situation!

And how often this build saved my whole group!

Greetings from Germany!

it really doesnt do enough damage for small scale and zerg fights. but then u can just play more of a support role for your friends with hammer/staff.

Hammer is especially great ’cause of the CC it provides letting your friends train on people.

Chris does this work with a scepter/focus?, in the moment im using sword/focus but i think the only purpose of using a sword its because of the blind, am i right?
I have 2 skills with blinds and with scepter i have the chance of immob the target.
Have you already test it and didn’t like it and went to sword or is it viable?

Thanks =D

Sword is also a gap closer.

Trust me, P.E.T.A is all up in arms because the never ending mindless slaughter of innocent white bunny rabbits, raccoons, and owls that die daily due to sword number 2. Sad sad sad day. Yes, it is.

I actually used scepter before I decided I liked Sword. It works great. I just enjoy the teleport/blind and ZD.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

When playing with a full group of players or more (5+), it may be best to transition to a more supportive variation of the build. Something along these lines:

Hmm, is it possible that you miss one link to the calculator in the first post? If so, it would be very helpful when you can add the missing link. Thanks! I love the Healway Guardian.

Whoops, fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

@ Christos or anyone using this build:

Hi, i want to give a shot at this build, but i would like to ask you , how do you deal with:

- perma poison
- strip boon spam

I find it hard to deal with the 100% poison uptime of some rangers and perma -33% healing doesn’t look very promising.
About the strip boon spam of s/d thieves… We can’t dodge for ever, the skill is unblockable ( i think) and we surely do not have the dps potential to make them pay for staying in meele range. If they take away from you protection and regen i think they nullify at least 50% of the builds essence.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

your healing is so high that poison is not a problem
and i rarely ever see a s/d thief roaming, most just d/d heartseeker spamming

Like Chaos answere’d you will barely notice the bleeds and poison, in sPvP/WvW i only use a shout to remove conditions when bleeds stack at 8+ or when immob also with the stamina regen for dodgin you can use, if im not mistaken, 4 dodges to get 2k of heal each dodge.
In a 1v1 situation you wont get killed since you can heal without using any heal skill and can last long enough for the oponent to flee, on a 1v2 situation if its double team condition dmg then you will have some work to kill them.
The strip boon spam, you can have almost perma retaliation so i dont see the problem there, if he strips your retaliation you can switch to gs and have some more and hope for the thief to be noob and attacks you. Overall its a great great build for holding out and outlasting your opponents ;D

Really loving this build.

Would Rune of Melandru be a good alternative across all 6 pieces if we can’t get Monk?

Seems like healing would still be above 1000 and the added survivability would offset the loss of boon+heal?

I’m wondering if the mix of soldier gear is really needed or if going pure clerics would be just as viable. Namely, I have all 4 (clerics and soldiers) ascended rings, but I don’t want to waste 2 of them just to find out I needed more HP or more healing power. Is soldeirs the purely better option or is full clerics viable?

Full Cleric’s is fine, but you’ll of course be giving up nearly 1.4k health and some Power on an already low-health, relatively low-Power build. Your overall sustain will go up a little, but multi-player spikes and burst professions may be more trouble.

Thanks for the advice, Christos! Much appreciated.

epiq.7084:

Really loving this build.

Would Rune of Melandru be a good alternative across all 6 pieces if we can’t get Monk?

Seems like healing would still be above 1000 and the added survivability would offset the loss of boon+heal?

Okay, this is super late, but… Considering how much condi removal and Stability (plus the two stun breakers) we have access to, Melandru might be a little overkill. I’ve actually taken to more damage-oriented runes myself, though.

Which runes you have now Christos? I have your build, works great, but i depend a lot on my partners to do damage, how can i improve the damage output without losing too much survivability and support power?

I have access to both Guard Leech and Applied Fortitude, so I’m able to make some safe concessions for damage. I’ve been running Knight’s armor with Eagle runes for a few weeks now. All of my weapons are still Cleric’s and my trinkets are still a PTV/Cleric’s mix. To make up for lost staying power, I’ll sometimes revert back to running Life over Bloodlust if I’m fighting/expecting to fight overwhelming numbers.

Thanks Christos!

do you have an updated link to build with current gear, etc?

Sure. Here’s what I’m running now:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7;4NF-40L3RG-90;9;69TT;44;018A189U-k67;1xpMUxpMU40FW0-k7-VYo8wV1X6Y9ZH4M50sVGV350;4F2Coc2Cu;9;9;9;9;7V3-6t

The Staff gets swapped out for S/F when I’m alone or with only one other person. I will sometimes run Mace and/or Shield as well, depending on my mood and how many players I’m running with. M/F is pretty fun, too. All off-hands have Sigil of Force on them while main-hands and two-handers have Energy.

I actually have Sunrise, so the GS hops between Zerker, Knight’s, Cav’s, and Cleric’s depending on how tired I am/how many Bloodlust buffs my server has/how many people I’m playing with. I build either Life or Bloodlust stacks with a Staff before swapping to S/F.

All of my off-sets — whether S/F, Staff, Hammer, or M/S — are Cleric’s. I treat them as my defensive/sustain sets, a la GW1.

Interesting. few questions.

1: Why runes of the eagle? Why not Divinity? Or scholar?

2: Not full clerics Jewelry?

all I can think of for now. I’m gonna give this a try this week.