Guild Wars 2

Okay, here’s a build that I’ve arrived at after a few hundred tournaments bunking as a guardian:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeWlUgqCXGSPEf4ESmCRCBxUwRf01DHiiYIA-TsAA1CtIMSZkzIjRSjsGNaY9x8DA
If you have any questions I’ll gladly explain why I chose specific things, but I’m just wondering if there is any way to optimize my build? I feel like I’ve hit the ceiling on bunker guardian tankiness. Should I just slap on a Cleric’s amulet + Mercy Runes and become a full support guard? I could spec for Battle Presence, but I really don’t want to lose AH, and without the boost to Virtue of Resolve in the virtues tree it’s not quite as great. I’ll take any suggestions, thanks.

Not sure if this is for yoloQ or for tpvp so I’ll try to cover both.

First, not sold on the scepter choice. I prefer the mace, personally, for the extra combo field, block, and auto-attack heal. Shield works but focus could be great too. Mace/Shield or Mace/Focus, pretty much up to what you are more comfortable with/what the map is. Staff – solid choice so not much to say on that one.

Standard Bunker Builds:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApdWlUgyC33xKEfIFRuAbBYPwIH741DH+QGC-TsAgzCoIySllLLTWyssZN+Y9xsBA
or
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApdWlUgyC33xKEf4ES2jVCBTQsHYEH1RXFcIA-TsAgzCoIySllLLTWyssZN+Y9xsBA

The first one is my preference when I’m in tPvP since I will be able to call for help and receive it in a timely manner. It will struggle a little more vs condi spam but it can still buy plenty of time for a rotation. The second build will lose the AH heals but will gain extra condi clear and you should be able to hold off for help to arrive. Both builds are viable for tpvp/yoloQ it’s just your preference as to which you prefer.

Now for your build, it can work but I think you should consider the condi clear potential for yourself and your teammates. Your build is slightly greedy in the fact that the only condi clear you have is Purging Flames (which is a good choice vs some comps and I will swap it in from time to time in the above builds). With soldiers runes and PoV traited, you will be able to sustain vs condi better and help your team sustain them too (runes/PoV = 2 condi cleared per shout). Give the builds a go and see what you think. You will definitely be more support with these builds but that shouldn’t be a problem assuming you’ve got some dps packed in your team comp.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Silven-s-PvP-Guardian-Build-Guide/page/5#post3548198

I have a thread here which gives you all the information you’ll need.

This is my current tpvp build. Ahh, meant to pick mace, my bad. AH + symbol heals + mace 2 = yum regen. Yea I guess I am getting pretty greedy. I’d rather my team win than constantly being called the best bunker they’ve ever seen while they drop like flies around me. I still think healing power is useless though.

DanPowers.1096:

This is my current tpvp build. Ahh, meant to pick mace, my bad. AH + symbol heals + mace 2 = yum regen. Yea I guess I am getting pretty greedy. I’d rather my team win than constantly being called the best bunker they’ve ever seen while they drop like flies around me. I still think healing power is useless though.

wot…

DanPowers.1096:

This is my current tpvp build. Ahh, meant to pick mace, my bad. AH + symbol heals + mace 2 = yum regen. Yea I guess I am getting pretty greedy. I’d rather my team win than constantly being called the best bunker they’ve ever seen while they drop like flies around me. I still think healing power is useless though.

I’m really not understanding your mindset. If you want your team to win, you’re better off dropping AH. AH doesn’t benefit anyone but yourself. Also Healing Power is extremely important to your survivability and your teams. If you’re using mace and staff you need cleric not soldier.

If your running with your team you’re better off going 0/0/10/30/30 or something of the sort. If you’re just doing soloq or not running with your set team then going AH is fine.

^

Jax.5261:

DanPowers.1096:

This is my current tpvp build. Ahh, meant to pick mace, my bad. AH + symbol heals + mace 2 = yum regen. Yea I guess I am getting pretty greedy. I’d rather my team win than constantly being called the best bunker they’ve ever seen while they drop like flies around me. I still think healing power is useless though.

wot…

Well, I’ll give the 0/0/10/30/30 build a shot. It’s just always seemed so lackluster to me. I do get a lot of compliments on my bunking though. Although I may have exaggerated the “best bunker they’ve ever seen part” :P. I’ll try 0/0/10/30/30 again, and let you guys know how it goes.

All right guys. I tried the builds you’ve suggested extensively, and I just get focused too much for it to be worth losing all the survivability that AH gives me. All right I’ll lay out the ideal situation with 4 teammates standing incredibly close to me. Drop mace 2, swap to staff, staff 3, “Stand your ground”, staff 4+virtue of justice, then finally detonate staff 2 for funzies.
6 ticks of 155 regen from mace 2 for a total of 930 hp,
5 ticks of 122 symbol healing on mace 2 for 610 hp,
25 ticks (5 ticks on 5 people, incredibly unlikely, but you can increase the symbol size for a better chance of this happening) of 71 AH for 1,775 hp;
then here comes the fun with staff, 2,385 hp from symbol of swiftness (healing symbol+AH),
142 hp from “Stand Your Ground”,
7,380 hp from Empower + virtue of justice (empower heals for 1,700+16 boons*5 people),
then a measly 1,219 hp from a detonated orb of light.
That’s a total of 14,441 hp over the course of about 6 seconds, and the longest CD you have is 20 seconds on empower.

0/5/30/30/5 uses AH…

And I think you’re missing the point that being a bunker doesn’t just mean you don’t die. You’re there to support your team (you have awesome condi clear for your team so trait for it!) not just be the last man standing after your team succumbs around you then lose the outnumbered fight you are left in.

Side note: I hope you don’t pop stand your ground just to staff 4…you will want that for stomping or reviving.

Learrrrrrrrn to doooooooooodge
pleaseeeee

Everytime somebody tells me this and sends me a video of their gameplay or asks me to sit in on a Custom match they’re just terrible at dodging.
Regardless of how decent you think your dodging is, if you feel like you don’t have enough survivability it’s way under par. Practice dodging important skills before throwing away the best bunker build currently available for an easier one to play.

No that was just the ideal situation when I can burn stand your ground for fun, I do save it :P. Ok Chaotic, I might have just tried the triple shout build you suggested, but I’ll try the other build with my team tomorrow. Silven, I’ll practice dodging important skills, but with 2-3 people attacking me is it really going to help? I guess that’s the part where my team would come in, but what if my team is horrible at responding to my calls for assistance, or we’ll be more likely to win if one of my teammates back-caps far while I stave off death? Should I make an Asura so I don’t get focused like crazy in team fights? Have you ever tried a build similar to mine? If so, how did you fare? Can we have a bunker duel using your standard bunking build? My teammates dropping like flies around me usually only happens late in the game when the enemy has given up on killing me, but I’m almost always their first target; perhaps I’m simply playing against bad players. So the positives of your “Control Bunker” is that once every 24 (if you use your stability for condi removal) to 28 seconds you cure 1 condition, and convert the other to a boon, with no control over which conditions are cured, and which are converted, also in comparison to my build you get almost 4 (!) extra seconds of stability on a 70 second CD. Don’t get me wrong having more condition cleanses for my team is awesome, but I can also have them run Lyssa runes if they’re Warrior, Necromancer, or Thief. They’ll clear significantly more conditions than I ever could, even if I was hyper-vigilant when it came to watching my screen for their conditions. There are 12 conditions in the game, with a triple shout build we cleanse a maximum of 9 conditions within 600 range, 3 outside of 600, which is where most dps stand if they don’t feel like being killed by aoe. If they’re running Lyssa runes, I don’t even have to worry about them being within 600 range for my shout to save them from that burning that’s ticking for 700 damage.

I think I ran something like 0/0/30/20/20 back when the condi meta didn’t exist like it does now and I didn’t need to rely on Pure of Voice and could get away with only the virtue to remove conditions and purity (maybe even signet heal at the time I don’t remember). But like Jax said, dodging is crucial. You have energy sigils on both sets (hopefully) so you will have lots of dodge potential for the big skills you don’t need to get hit with. Plus that dodge heal never hurts. As for condi clear on your teammates, while lyssa runes do it great, they also rely on their elite skill and the cooldown of that. Once they use their elite, they are sitting ducks and should swing by you or you swing towards them to clear off that huge stack of bleeding/poison/burning/whatever.

And yeah, if the enemy team is focusing you down and not your squishy teammates (unless you run 4 warr/1guard or something) they aren’t doing it right haha. Ideally you want them to focus you over your squishy teammates but once you are higher up, you won’t be the general go to 1st target (unless they see you roll all your skills and know you are sitting with nothing left). They will go for your thief/necro/mesmer/engi over you to get rid of that dmg output. Taking out one of those will benefit them more than trying to beat down a tank while your dps picks one of them off.

If you do use the 0/5/30/30/5 build, you will need to be more frugal with your shouts to clear condi’s. Only clear the major ones while you let that cripple or 2 stack bleeding tick the duration rather than blow a shout – you might need that shout 5 seconds later to clear off that fear/poison stack you just got. Make sure you time your protection/blocks/aegis so you aren’t overlapping a whole lot. Make good use of your mace 3 as well, that can really help alongside the dodging of telegraphed attacks. It’ll have a bit of a learning curve, but once you can play it well, you’ll notice the difference and be quite pleased.

With this spec fighting condi, once you blow your Absolute Resolution and Purging Flames it’s gg.

I get targeted surprisingly often (massive spiky charr tends to draw attention, and my staff auto-attack hits for 1.5k thanks to might and my soldier’s amulet), and I’m usually playing against people in the top 300 for tpvp. I guess I just have to get in the top 5 or something, so no one targets me :P.
Well I suggested Lyssa runes, but most classes have better condition removal than our 4 conditions removed from shouts every 24-28 seconds even without Lyssa, although I’m sure it couldn’t hurt to have more removal.
Warriors can spec for cleansing ire, automatic “shake it off”, and Berzerker stance.
Thieves can spec to lose 1 condition every 3 seconds in stealth, spam sword 2 without a target, or just shadow return to lose 3 conditions.
Elementalists have a heal that cures 8 conditions every 15 seconds, they’re able to spec for condition immunity above 90% hp, and they can spec to lose conditions when they grant regeneration in water attunement.
Engineers can spec for immunity to conditions at 25% hp, and a 15 second CD heal that cures 2 conditions on healing turret.
Rangers have healing spring, and can spec to give 3 conditions to their pet every 10 seconds.
Necromancers are the uncontested masters of conditions with their staff 4, their consume conditions heal, their passive signet that acts as a permanent “Save yourselves” with a larger radius, which can then send all of their conditions to a target, and they can spec to give the conditions they suffer from to their minions.
Mesmers can spec to remove a condition on heal, then run the mantra heal, spec to cast mantras 3 times and remove a total of 8 conditions from their heal, plus an extra 6 from mantra of resolve.
I’m probably missing a good part of the other 7 profession’s cures, but this was simply to remind you all of how independent classes are in this game. Professions can play the healer and the tank solo, or the healer, tank, and dps (in the case of condition builds) without needing any help.

Ah K U T M, I’m glad you brought this up, purging flames synergizes incredibly well with Runes of Melandru. This gives you a 58% reduction on condition duration applied to you for 6 seconds. You can use purging flames three times in the less time than it takes for Berzerker Stance to come off CD, curing 9 conditions on yourself and allies standing near you, granting reduced condition duration to them as well, and ultimately netting a nice 18 seconds of almost 60% condition duration reduction (Plus the 15 seconds of burning you apply to enemies doesn’t hurt either). The difference between a shout-cure build and mine is that they cure one more condition than me every 28 seconds, and for 30% of a 60 second fight conditions roll off of me almost as soon as they’re applied. For example, a 4 second bleed will only tick once, because the bleed duration would be reduced to less than 2 seconds.

DanPowers.1096:

Ah K U T M, I’m glad you brought this up, purging flames synergizes incredibly well with Runes of Melandru. This gives you a 58% reduction on condition duration applied to you for 6 seconds. You can use purging flames three times in the less time than it takes for Berzerker Stance to come off CD, curing 9 conditions on yourself and allies standing near you, granting reduced condition duration to them as well, and ultimately netting a nice 18 seconds of almost 60% condition duration reduction (Plus the 15 seconds of burning you apply to enemies doesn’t hurt either). The difference between a shout-cure build and mine is that they cure one more condition than me every 28 seconds, and for 30% of a 60 second fight conditions roll off of me almost as soon as they’re applied. For example, a 4 second bleed will only tick once, because the bleed duration would be reduced to less than 2 seconds.

Fighting common pvp condi builds you’d have between -28% and -8% reduction of base.

That’s not exactly “sliding right off”.

Hmm yeah, if the team is targeting you as the go to target (especially just if you are a big charr haha) they are going about it wrong. I’m not saying guards are never targeted or anything but they should be going for your thief/mesmer/necro/engi over you unless they watch you blow all your cooldowns and know a hard switch to you will get you down.

Now, I get where you’re coming from and the logic behind it, but the current meta simply doesn’t mesh this way and I don’t think a team comp built around balance for each role can work well. Players shouldn’t spec for condi clear if they don’t need to because the guardian can support them enough so they can swing a teamfight in their favor by using a better skill/trait build. A few things on the condi removal, if a thief is speccing into the condi remove on stealth, he’s wasting a lot of potential. Also, I rarely see mesmers going mantra just for the condi removal. They are better off going shatter so they have greater impact. Now onto more issues with purging flames – since your ranged teammates should be kiting, you running purging flames really wouldn’t help at all since they don’t want to run to the node where you are sitting at. Purging flames is very range dependent and also on player position. So while it may help you individually, the team loses out on some support.

As K U T M said, some common pvp builds take the condi duration runes so while PF may help, mitigate the smaller duration and shout cleanse the longer ones. I only run flames if it’s a very condi heavy team like engi/engi/necro or something like that. Usually if it’s just 1 engi and necro I’ll run the 10/30/30.

If you run clerics amulet and one of the builds mentioned your heals are amazing and the shout support you give is unrivaled. That’s what makes bunker guards cornerstones of every team. They help determine who wins/loses teamfights by the support they offer.

Just dodge the condition applications bro, they’re really easy to see… I jest :P. Surely 3 cleanses and a significant reduction on condition duration is comparable to 4 cleanses with the standard shout build. Let’s say a s/p thief uses infiltrator’s strike to immobilize you, then begins to cast pistol whip; normally you’ll be immobilized long enough to get hit by the PW, but with PF up, you can just dodge away before he finishes casting PW. Whereas if you’ve already used your 2 shouts, and your virtue of resolve cleanse, you’ll take a pretty good chunk of the PW damage before you recover from the stun.

Chaotic, for some reason, whether or not I die at the beginning mid fight is often what determines the outcome of the game. That’s why I came to the forums for a potentially bunkier build :P. I can dodge all day, but I still need to stand in a tiny circle that is constantly bombarded by aoe. I wouldn’t mind losing my consecrations, I hate standing still for Sanctuary, although it’s good for de-capping with a bunker on point (or trapping people on the stairs leading from Tranquility to Gate on ToSS, muahahahaha ;D) without having to use hammer. I’m definitely glad I came here, because I realized during my calculations that symbol heals aren’t really worth it compared to a lower CD on shouts, or a 20% reduction on 2h skills (16 sec CD on Empower, woo).

I guess if it works for ya it works haha. But I still stand by the couple of builds I linked regardless of the amount of conditions or focus you receive from the enemy. In theory, if they go for you, your dps will be taking out one of their squishies and relieving you of that pressure which means you shouldn’t have to soldiers ammy/heavy condi duration reduction and such like your build is. You should just call for your backup bunker to come on node if you receive a spike in dmg that’s too much to handle, then you jump off for a bit to get your cooldowns/health up. With practice, you will be able to bunker with both of the builds better than yours (but it will take practice!). I guess it comes down to what you/your team are more comfortable with (but it may hinder progression at some point so keep that in mind!).

And as to the pistol whip scenario, if he jumps you you pop your protection/regen shout or get some stability then pop your heal to mitigate it then dodge away from the rest :P Just watch your cooldowns and what the enemy is throwing at you.