Guild Wars 2

As the title implies, I’m looking for advice on how I should build up my guardian for wvw. I enjoy staff/hammer the most, but obviously will switch out when the situation calls for it, and my traits are set up at 0/0/10/30/30.

Major traits:

-Strength in Numbers
-Writ of Exaltation
-Two-Handed Mastery
-Battle Presence
-Master of Consecrations
-Absolute Resolution
-Elite Focus

Looking through traits, these are what I thought would be most beneficial for what I’m looking for, though am willing to be flexible on trait allocation.

So at this point, I’m pretty much just looking for where to put my stats from armor/weapons/jewellery into, if I should go P/V/T Soldier’s gear, or maybe a mix of that and Berserker’s for a bit of precision as well. I just don’t want to end up putting too much into defense, since my trait allocation is already biased towards that, and end up not being able to attack worth a kitten but I do like the support my traits offer, and I don’t want to go full berserker in WvW and end up getting steamrolled before I can do much anyway.

I have enough badges of honor for any armor set offered by the WvW vendor, and gold isn’t really an issue, so no need to recommend a budget setup (though I wouldn’t be all that thrilled about spending 54g on a divinity rune set if there is a decent alternative, if you are going to recommend them anyway).

Low toughness, not GM healing skills, looks to me like a mid range Guardian playstyle.

With your traits how it is, your not going to be doing fantastic damage of any kind. Might want to go for clerics armour and be a Support guardian.

If you want specific builds for WvW you have to ask yourself. What is my role? what do I want to do in WvW? once you know this you will be able to build it accordingly.

I’m running staff/hammer pure-support guardian in WvW, and loving it (when I do get bored, I have level 80 warrior/ranger/thief as well … so I can pick and choose how I want to fight that day). Still working on getting gear to exotic levels, but rares are actually doing well enough.

I’m doing 0/0/30/20/20 with:
Purity, Retributive Armor, Altruistic Healing
Writ of Exhaltation (or Superior Aria), Two Handed Mastery
Vengeful, Absolute Resolution.
NOTE: Just starting to test with Superior Aria.

I run full Knights Armor with 4 altruism + 2 water runes (don’t run enough AC to get monk runes). I also have full clerics + sapphires trinkets. I run Soldiers weapons, life stacking on the staff, and accuracy on the hammer.

In case I need additional healing, I have full cleric’s armor (same runes), so I can swap specific armor sets suit how I’m feeling that day.

Skills:
Stand your ground
Hold the Line
Wall of Reflection (Hallowed Ground, Judge’s Intervention, Retreat … depending on my mood/enemies we tend to fight)
Healing Breeze (yes this sucks, but its another AoE heal, and its an ok filler for healing siege users while other heals are on cooldown) – but with Staff-4 and Absolute Resolution, I find I don’t need many heals myself (unless I run into a necro).

With full clerics (everything), I was doing the following:
Staff-4 2.5k AoE heal
Dodge-roll does a 1.2k heal
Staff-2 1.2k heal if detonated (I think, can’t remember exactly)
Healing Breeze – 600 heal

Basically, I just run in to the zerg with my melee and try to stack as close as possible to them, auto-attack everything with staff to tag enough people to get loot, and use staff-4 as much as possible, and self-healing. Staff 2 to do targeted heal when my melee allies get away from me. Staff 3 for swiftness, and to tag a cluster of mobs. Staff-5 to split a zerg. I switch to hammer when the fight starts to dwindle down to a few mobs, so that I can have a little fun. I also switch to hammer, when the team needs to start chasing someone down, or we need a bit of crowd control.

A note about staff-4. With full clerics + Altruistic Healing, each boon I put onto an ally is about 300-500hp for myself. With enough allies around me, I can heal for more hp than I have (I think Staff-4 has a limit of 12*5 stacks of might distributed amognst the people around me. This means its an 18k heal with full clerics. No evidence, but with an AoE limit of 5, and a max stack of might stack 12 being given out, I just assume its being distributed to random allies but still limited. All I know is I can go from almost 0 health to full with a single staff-4 (and enough allies around).

Limitations of this type of build:
1 – With full clerics, I couldn’t kill anyone on my own, but then again 1v1 … its hard for them to kill you too. That’s why I’m moving to Knights. Still don’t know if I can kill anyone on my own, but my damage is MUCH higher than with full clerics.
2 – We are dependent on our allies being close by. If you get stuck alone, or are stranded by melee running away, you’re dead.

kutshotz.8574:

I’m running staff/hammer pure-support guardian in WvW, and loving it (when I do get bored, I have level 80 warrior/ranger/thief as well … so I can pick and choose how I want to fight that day). Still working on getting gear to exotic levels, but rares are actually doing well enough.

I’m doing 0/0/30/20/20 with:
Purity, Retributive Armor, Altruistic Healing
Writ of Exhaltation (or Superior Aria), Two Handed Mastery
Vengeful, Absolute Resolution.
NOTE: Just starting to test with Superior Aria.

I run full Knights Armor with 4 altruism + 2 water runes (don’t run enough AC to get monk runes). I also have full clerics + sapphires trinkets. I run Soldiers weapons, life stacking on the staff, and accuracy on the hammer.

In case I need additional healing, I have full cleric’s armor (same runes), so I can swap specific armor sets suit how I’m feeling that day.

Skills:
Stand your ground
Hold the Line
Wall of Reflection (Hallowed Ground, Judge’s Intervention, Retreat … depending on my mood/enemies we tend to fight)
Healing Breeze (yes this sucks, but its another AoE heal, and its an ok filler for healing siege users while other heals are on cooldown) – but with Staff-4 and Absolute Resolution, I find I don’t need many heals myself (unless I run into a necro).

With full clerics (everything), I was doing the following:
Staff-4 2.5k AoE heal
Dodge-roll does a 1.2k heal
Staff-2 1.2k heal if detonated (I think, can’t remember exactly)
Healing Breeze – 600 heal

Basically, I just run in to the zerg with my melee and try to stack as close as possible to them, auto-attack everything with staff to tag enough people to get loot, and use staff-4 as much as possible, and self-healing. Staff 2 to do targeted heal when my melee allies get away from me. Staff 3 for swiftness, and to tag a cluster of mobs. Staff-5 to split a zerg. I switch to hammer when the fight starts to dwindle down to a few mobs, so that I can have a little fun. I also switch to hammer, when the team needs to start chasing someone down, or we need a bit of crowd control.

A note about staff-4. With full clerics + Altruistic Healing, each boon I put onto an ally is about 300-500hp for myself. With enough allies around me, I can heal for more hp than I have (I think Staff-4 has a limit of 12*5 stacks of might distributed amognst the people around me. This means its an 18k heal with full clerics. No evidence, but with an AoE limit of 5, and a max stack of might stack 12 being given out, I just assume its being distributed to random allies but still limited. All I know is I can go from almost 0 health to full with a single staff-4 (and enough allies around).

Limitations of this type of build:
1 – With full clerics, I couldn’t kill anyone on my own, but then again 1v1 … its hard for them to kill you too. That’s why I’m moving to Knights. Still don’t know if I can kill anyone on my own, but my damage is MUCH higher than with full clerics.
2 – We are dependent on our allies being close by. If you get stuck alone, or are stranded by melee running away, you’re dead.

While I appreciate everyone has to play a build that fits their play style I do not think Altruistic Healing spec is good for a ‘pure’ support build. Your entire Valor tree is about ‘me’ not about support. Lots of great builds with AH, not knocking it, but for ‘pure’ support I think it is a waste of 30 points.