Guild Wars 2

Hey, folks. As someone who’s not very in the know about builds for Guardians, or even the relative value between stats in this game, I’ve got a question. I read a lot about berserker’s armor being generally superior if you want to put the effort into dodging well on a consistent basis, but if you wanna be more lax, you can get good results out of knight’s armor or soldier’s armor. Looking at the stat lineups for those, I couldn’t help but wonder if Zealot’s would be an alternative as well – like, would the increase in healing allow the guardian’s regeneration abilities to pull the weight in place of the added toughness that the knight’s set would offer? Because, if so, then it oughta be a bit better at dealing damage since power is its primary trait, yeah?

I guess my big question is, then, how big is difference between added healing allowing the player to recover damage more quickly via regeneration versus damage that wouldn’t have been taken by virtue of a higher defense stat? Is it small enough to warrant trying Zealot’s armor instead of Knight’s?

SilverGarmore.2089:

Hey, folks. As someone who’s not very in the know about builds for Guardians, or even the relative value between stats in this game, I’ve got a question. I read a lot about berserker’s armor being generally superior if you want to put the effort into dodging well on a consistent basis, but if you wanna be more lax, you can get good results out of knight’s armor or soldier’s armor. Looking at the stat lineups for those, I couldn’t help but wonder if Zealot’s would be an alternative as well – like, would the increase in healing allow the guardian’s regeneration abilities to pull the weight in place of the added toughness that the knight’s set would offer? Because, if so, then it oughta be a bit better at dealing damage since power is its primary trait, yeah?

I guess my big question is, then, how big is difference between added healing allowing the player to recover damage more quickly via regeneration versus damage that wouldn’t have been taken by virtue of a higher defense stat? Is it small enough to warrant trying Zealot’s armor instead of Knight’s?

Zealot’s armor is new… Can you even get it yet?

Well, I’ve got it craftable in my window, but I don’t have enough supplies for it. I’ve only got about 20 gold, so I can only make one armor set, which is why I have to be dead sure that it’ll suit the way I wanna play : P

@Anthony, as long as you have the receipes, why couldn’t you get it? They have been released.

@SolverGarmore, healing power and toughness go hand in hand. If you’re going to build healing power, you should build toughness because it makes the healing more effective. Just some food for thought.

That’s what I was wondering, good to know.

Its so new its hard to tell if it will work or not! There are entire builds that can be built around it and the new healing skill, for example. Who knows?

Try it and let me know if it worked.

I don’t see serious reasons to take zealot’s in PvE. It’s basically a zerker with less damage and the same chance to be oneshotted. It might help in some instances where you receive only minor damage which you can outheal, but then knight/valk or even zerker will probably do the job, too.

you could probably make some wvw healway dps build with it but for pve it really doesn’t increase your survival rate enough to be useful

SilverGarmore.2089:

I guess my big question is, then, how big is difference between added healing allowing the player to recover damage more quickly via regeneration versus damage that wouldn’t have been taken by virtue of a higher defense stat? Is it small enough to warrant trying Zealot’s armor instead of Knight’s?

There are some benefits to Zealots that no other armor has.

1. It’s a BEST compromise between full zerkers and …. anything else. OK, well, Assassin perhaps fits in there but the point is … it balances the best DPS making stats with a defensive one in case someone insists on running a defensive stat in their gear.
2. Guardians will get the most benefit from this defensive stat (that’s my opinion); it doesn’t have diminishing return like toughness, it compliments damage reduction stats and effects, I think at this point, all of our healing effects scale with healing power (how much is still a delicate point).
3. With the incoming ‘fix’ to crit damage removal for ferocity, I anticipate something like this armor being a very effective balance of damage and defensive stats; it will certainly give a finer control over tradeoffs over a knight’s/zerker mix for instance (and I think Valk will lose it’s luster).

If I didn’t run dedicated groups as infrequently as I do, I would make a serious consideration of this gear.

I just crafted a set of this armor and here are my findings so far.
(before this I ran alternatively with a set of Clerics armor and a set of Zerker armor. I have full ascended Clerics trinkets, because I enjoy healing)

With zerk I do more damage, of course, but my healing feels a little sub-par compared to what I’m used to.
With clerics I do very little damage and I never crit, but I can full heal myself with more than 4 skills.

So far with Zealots I notice I damage like a zerker (when I have fury) but I also have plenty of healing. With things like symbols and other passive healing effects, I feel like I’m getting the best of both sets.

It seems only really viable in competitive play if you are excellent at applying and timing blinds and dodging. Traiting into Fury w/meditations seems almost required to keep your dps up. I’d recommend Rage runes. With that set up at least you can give yourself a lot of flexibility with a zealots armor set.

That being said, it still has some issues. I can not kill anything quite as fast as I did before, and I can’t tank something out quite as long either, but overall the fights are shorter and a little more exciting.

roachsrealm.9284:

I just crafted a set of this armor and here are my findings so far.
(before this I ran alternatively with a set of Clerics armor and a set of Zerker armor. I have full ascended Clerics trinkets, because I enjoy healing)

With zerk I do more damage, of course, but my healing feels a little sub-par compared to what I’m used to.
With clerics I do very little damage and I never crit, but I can full heal myself with more than 4 skills.

So far with Zealots I notice I damage like a zerker (when I have fury) but I also have plenty of healing. With things like symbols and other passive healing effects, I feel like I’m getting the best of both sets.

It seems only really viable in competitive play if you are excellent at applying and timing blinds and dodging. Traiting into Fury w/meditations seems almost required to keep your dps up. I’d recommend Rage runes. With that set up at least you can give yourself a lot of flexibility with a zealots armor set.

That being said, it still has some issues. I can not kill anything quite as fast as I did before, and I can’t tank something out quite as long either, but overall the fights are shorter and a little more exciting.

Was worried that it would be an attempt at getting the best of both worlds, but failing at both. From what you described it isn’t a complete flop, but may be an increase in difficulty level for some. Thanks for that.

I have crafted all trinkets, armor and also ascended chest and legs.

My opinion so far is that they are really nice with toughness and/or protection. So valor or virtues for traits and hammer, hold the line, protection duration and ofc honor line for dodgeheal is nice.

I have over 60% critchance without fury and with close to 100 % uptime on protection i dont miss toughness even in zerg wvw in a 0/5/30/30/5

Absolutely worth the investment.

I currently have 2 sets of armor on my Guardian. A knight set for when I run my Altruistic Healing build and a Berserker set for when I run my burning DPS build. Between the 2 builds, I think my DPS build if more fun to play, but I have better survivability with my AH build. I could see running an AH build with Zealot gear because the healing power buffs your AH heals. However most AH builds run in melee and the reduced toughness might not be worth it.

If I was to use Zealots for my AH build, I’d change the traits to use meditations instead of shouts and use the Rune of Rage that was suggested for the increased fury duration. Increased fury will also proc your Empowering Might, increasing your damage and granting boons to your allies, which heals you. The synergy is really great with this. Another thing to consider for an AH build is the trait lines are the same, whether you want to do meditations or shouts, so you could switch your skills/traits around on the fly depending on the situation.

AH doesn’t benefit much from healing power, the scaling factor is horrendous. If stacking healing power, healing symbols, skill 6, Empower, regen, Virtue of Justice (and its party-shared version) will benefit. If running AH, damage reduction via toughness will be more significantly more effective for sustain than the pathetic increase via healing power.

AH requires 69 healing power to increase its heal by 1%. In comparison Empower requires 15, VoR requires only 14, writ of the merciful requires 14, regen requires 10.4, etc.

Buffing healing power to increase AH is even less productive than buffing condition damage for a permburn guard build.

Hayashi.3416:

AH doesn’t benefit much from healing power, the scaling factor is horrendous. If stacking healing power, healing symbols, skill 6, Empower, regen, Virtue of Justice (and its party-shared version) will benefit. If running AH, damage reduction via toughness will be more significantly more effective for sustain than the pathetic increase via healing power.

AH requires 69 healing power to increase its heal by 1%. In comparison Empower requires 15, VoR requires only 14, writ of the merciful requires 14, regen requires 10.4, etc.

Buffing healing power to increase AH is even less productive than buffing condition damage for a permburn guard build.

Dodge heal only needs 1.29 in pve, double that in pvp.

Starts out really low though, that’s the other part of the equation.

OMG I want this set in spvp, it would open up so many builds on so many classes!

I use zealots armor and weapons in wvw. I used to run 0 0 10 30 30 cleric armor wep, soldier trinkets. I got tired of hitting like a wet pillow. I replaced my armor and weapons with zealots and switched to 0 0 30 30 10 to make up for toughness lost. With bloodlust, food, and guard stacks, my autos on hammer hit for 2 crit and my mighty blow hits for 3 to 6 k depending on en enemy toughness

the problem is that ascended zealots armors and weapons recipes cost 50 gold on the TP, and cannot be obtained from anywhere else.
also good luck buying 500* infinity sprockets for each item.