Guild Wars 2

Hello, bored at work today, thought i’d share my new video and put together some kind of guide. I’ve been making guardian vids since beta with a variety of styles and for a long time I’ve been mainly interested in small group healing. In pve I’m full zerk, in spvp usually more bunkery builds and solo I play meditations dps with traveler runes.

I do realize this is not a popular way of playing and I don’t usually bother to promote my videos. I just like to make and watch em when I have time. I am always hoping small group wvw gets more popular but I think it can be too punishing and a lot of people who try it get frustrated with all the siege and angry zergs that teleport and catch up and corpse camp.. I am always hoping to inspire guardians to try this kind of approach out with some friends as I and my group mates find it exciting and much more fulfilling than blob fighting.

Here is the video link if you want to watch before reading or don’t care about the wall of text. Hammer Staff healing:

Video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIaoI3_biR4

Build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWl8ApXotCxWI0ENRCBl9M+fOw+DhoEXFAA-TlhXwA1UCqSXwR1KMqqCg9HQo8jMALTA-w

Build philosophy:

The approach is mainly about running around in WvW supporting some focus firing high dps players looking to disrupt large groups and take them on and take towers/camps.(helps to have at least one non-squishy heavy in the group though) ideally 2 to 5 man group – on voice comms – it does not work solo at all and only duo with someone with high damage. In zerg fighting I see no problems but that is not my thing so no comment.. we just like to distract or waste zergs time baiting and stretching them and cutting off waypoints.

The point of this build is to maximize healing output and keep squishy teammates topped off as much as possible and turn things around with tome of courage. In my videos you’ll see a lot of green numbers and seemingly wasted heal cooldowns. I believe if you keep squishy people at high health through taking a lot of damage it causes confusion and target switches especially if you’re fighting unorganized people which is usually the case. If you do fight a hard team who do focus fire well the idea is to blow all cooldowns to keep that person up then switch to tome and really let some heals fly… Hiding your squishies squishiness?

Focus fire their squishies and lock them down with CC, BOON STRIP stability with a mesmer and have a thief/mesmer for stealths to reset/retreat.

It isn’t an easy build to play. I’ve been playing variations of it since the olden days and I’m still improving at it. I used the elite focus trait and healing breeze long before their recent buffs. I even used hallowed ground over wall for a time before the ranger infestation so I could reliably play out my tome of courage at a pivotal moment (elite focus trait now grants stability). Stuff like burning cooldowns consistently and knowing when you shouldn’t and also doing damage/cc while keeping an eye on who you could dodge heal next is tricky. There’s a steady stream of heals available to you and while fighting there’s always someone taking damage.. have to really see the field. Pulling Tome of courage out a little too early or a little too late can make or break a fight.

Trait breakdown 0/0/2/6/6:

Valor – Strength in numbers – an obvious choice, lots of toughness for the party.

Honor – Superior aria – Shout cool down reductions an absolute must for hold the line and stand your ground.

Two handed mastery – Very important, hammer staff, no brainer.

Battle presence – to me this is far far more important for outnumbered group fights than shouts converting condis to boons, this really adds up and if you don’t know it keeps ticking heals on allies even after you’ve activated your virtue of resolve – essential.

Virtues – Master of consecrations – full zerk Rangers are now everywhere and they’re basically moving ballistas, your wall of reflect needs this trait.

Absolute resolution – no brainer with so much healing output, I burn this early and often for condi clears, don’t let them bury their big opener condis with trash ones, soon as I see 3 or more on some teammates I slam this right away.

Elite focus – I’ve used this for a long time for 30 second tome but now it is much much better and to me the ultimate trait for turning the tables in a tough fight with stability being granted for tome.

Utilities breakdown:

Stand your ground – most important utility for a small group, let your team know when they get stability and unload focus fire.

Hold the line – I can’t see not using this when healing a small group, short cool down huge boons, get near as many teammates as you can in a fight and burn it right away, protection is a big deal when healing outnumbered.

Wall of reflection – use it or wipe, currently Rangers jumping into an outnumbered fight from far away will end everything, spot them, get a wall up and everyone must focus fire them, try to put a line of warding behind them before your bursters get on him. Regardless of Rangers, projectiles are everywhere and this is crucial.

Healing breeze – anything else is insane, with this gear setup it puts out a ton of healing, practice aiming it and stay away from Shelter when supporting friends.

Gear and sigil/runes:

I mix Magi(prec/vit/healing) with Clerics(pow/tough/healing) across the board. You may want to try some Nomads(heal/vit/tough) if you can’t stay up while it’s crazy, I like to max out healing power and have some damage.

Monk runes are what I use(boon duration/heavy outbound healing), they’re perfect for my purposes, water runes are fine too, especially if duo/trio where outgoing healing isn’t as vital and you need more healing on yourself.

Staff:
Sigil of energy: creates huge dodge healing and survivability, using it on both weapons I switch weapons all the time just for this sigils healing.

Sigil of speed: a key to the build you may not expect, when enemies are building up make sure to kill everything with staff out, it will stack up like 4 minutes of swiftness and solve a huge mobility problem when you need to retreat as well as keep you moving to teammates quickly to heal them in the fight… positioning is key and dodge heals are short range.

Autoattack: adds up, procs your vigor, spam it when you can.

Orb of light #2: trickiest Staff ability to master effectively I think, blow it up in your face for an emergency heal or send it at a teammate.

Symbol of swiftness #3: I throw this down in the middle of fights on cooldown mostly for the damage and light field.

Empower #4: tricky to use effectively, tell your teammates when buffing it and hopefully they get near you, I often use this after stand your ground cause it draws lots of cc, huge heal with this build.

Line of warding #5:
This is such a key subtle ability, when someone is getting focus fired put it down and tell them so they can run back and forth over it hopefully tripping up angry melee… Also great for drawing out early stability on an enemy push and trapping ranged runners… Important to learn how to angle your body as it casts for best orientation.

Hammer:
Sigil of benevolence, you could use life instead for more healing on yourself
Sigil of energy for same reasons as staff.

Hammer to me is a tricky weapon to master, to me having a blast finisher on such a short cooldown is amazing, a long range yet tough to aim immobilize is great, a long distance punt never gets old and is super helpful for things like teleport stomps and then ring of warding which is amazing for reasons like Staffs line of warding. Autoattack chain is very powerful too when you can land it in the right places..

I believe for this style of play hammer is far more supportive than mace/whatever offhand, however I think there is also a huge learning curve to mastering hammer and timing it’s abilities… alot of people will think a healing build should include Mace but the problem is when the going gets tough noones going to stand in your heal circle, noones gonna get your protection and noone is going to get your autoattack chain heal pretty much, I wish the weapon were reworked completely but I love hammer anyways.

Virtues:

Justice – I use this while buffing might and whenever else, with the 5 pt virtues trait it gives out some might to people at far range, I pretty much use it on cooldown while we’re doing damage.

Resolve – Huge huge wide range burst heal, i’ll use it early and often, especially when I see conditions pop up as it wipes out 3 off everyone anywhere near you(due to absolute res trait), battle presence keeps ticking so I see no use to save it too long, not that long of a cooldown with 6 in virtues.

Courage – Just like resolve, i’ll use this pretty early in a fight when burst starts to happen, timing it the best is tricky that’s the nature of aegis, the protection is a huge bonus… using this often is part of keeping a squishy looking like a tank on a big push.

Anyways hopefully that’s enough of a mini guide for the build, be happy to discuss it with anyone, i’m sure it will drop to page 2 in no time though but at least i’ll have something to link people in my video description Here are a couple other somewhat recent videos i’d recommend if you liked this one. I feel like my newest clips are getting better, group has gotten better suddenly lately and had more time to play, new video shouldn’t be too far away if you like this one.

Good Stuff Incomingray, as always.

As a side comment, I’d look at loosing the 200 +healing and adding +24% Boon duration by going to exotic accessories and adding +4% Doubloons for the Hammer (blast finish) / Staff set up.

I like the idea, the build seems solid if you consider what you want to do with it but eh… You’re kind of a healing bot without much utility. Since you have no shelter, no renewed focus, only one stunbreak and no AH you could get killed pretty quickly when people realize you’re not as tanky as your healing dodges make it look like.

You can’t really do what guardians in pvp usually do which is rezzing and stomping while being able to facetank all the cleave on the downed body and cleansing teammates. I mean you have the cleanse on f2 and that’s about it. Not having renewed focus means you can’t just reset and use it twice either.

I guess it’s a build for just-for-fun-stuff for wvw so everything is viable anyways but I would not run smth like this in any serious or competetive enviroment.

Nice idea though, Seing green numbers popping up is fun I guess.

Shelter and RF =/= utility. Those are mostly selfish facetanking abilities (not necessarily a bad thing). Which is fine since this is a support build, and it does just that (supporting) perfectly.

Spamming Purifying Ribbon on Tome of Courage will cleanse more conditions than a second VoR activation ever will.

Keksmuffin.1450:

I like the idea, the build seems solid if you consider what you want to do with it but eh… You’re kind of a healing bot without much utility. Since you have no shelter, no renewed focus, only one stunbreak and no AH you could get killed pretty quickly when people realize you’re not as tanky as your healing dodges make it look like.

You can’t really do what guardians in pvp usually do which is rezzing and stomping while being able to facetank all the cleave on the downed body and cleansing teammates. I mean you have the cleanse on f2 and that’s about it. Not having renewed focus means you can’t just reset and use it twice either.

I guess it’s a build for just-for-fun-stuff for wvw so everything is viable anyways but I would not run smth like this in any serious or competetive enviroment.

Nice idea though, Seing green numbers popping up is fun I guess.

the reason why WvW guardians run “glassy” support is because they always run multiple guardians for literally “perma” stability and so they can peel for each other as well.

Amins.3710:

Good Stuff Incomingray, as always.

As a side comment, I’d look at loosing the 200 +healing and adding +24% Boon duration by going to exotic accessories and adding +4% Doubloons for the Hammer (blast finish) / Staff set up.

Thanks much Amins, gonna try that out this weekend.

@Kekmuffin, I don’t die much in the group setups I describe, the idea is to have zerky dps mostly and ideally a Mesmer and thief for stealths, we do a ton of teleport stomps also with my banish tho it may not show in the video, they stomp very well.

I really think green numbers are as important as white ones, even if someone’s at 90% health.. Keeping people at high health with regen battle presence and a steady stream of other heals keeps people in the battle instead of pulling out to heal or wait for endurance. Battle presence also counters a lot of residual condi damage.

I don’t see much utility in being tankier or having another stun break, hammer staff and wall of reflection are huge utility.

I should have talked more about tome of courage in my post I realize, tome #2 cleanses and blinds quite well(got buffed to remove more condis) the #3 twice in a trained tome is like half a minute of protection and regen on whoever I get it on, against double your numbers that’s huge huge mitigation. Aoe daze #4 twice in 30 seconds can also be a total game changer.. Big utility at the breaking point of a hard outnumbered push. Resetting the fight with full heal has won so many fights I’ve been in.

In “serious” tpvp I use renewed focus and a diff build for sure..

wvw really is just fun we go around trying to build up hard fights usually ends up being ordinary unorganized people and I feel we have an impact on the playing field for whoever cares about that… We do play very serious though and I feel this setup is very effective supporting my friends who like to be glass cannons for the most part.

Appreciate the feedback

I run a build around this but instead of hammer I run shield / mace. I try not to go over 1400 in healing which raises the point Amins made. Tomb of courage is great but the only draw back is the duration between availability. On that note I’ve only come across one instance whereas we had perfect storm when all three servers zerg somehow managed to meet at a camp. In that case not having the tomb up hurt but we still managed.

On the note someone said about being focused and I find it true. Once the enemy catches on then you can go down pretty quickly but I think that would apply regardless (although I feel death before lighter armor classes is a stupid game mechanic but maybe it is just my build or poor execution).

Thanks Incoming. I use a very similar build but without the hammer Just too slow for me or I just flat out suck at it.

:O

Yay for healing guardians! I’ve been playing one for about a year and I’ve tweaked it to its current state:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVQQNAW5el8ApZotDxVI8DNBEBldJi/8xeBf4CXFAA-TVyDABEqEU7DCQvq/80+DXp8DgHAQe6A0VzAEXBgAAIA7cnBgf+zf+zf+z+5P35P35PLFgTLjA-w

I ran full clerics for a while, but I started using nomads and never looked back! I’m also a big fan of Merciful Intervention. I might be the only one, I dunno. It saves my life so much I can’t justify dropping it for wall of reflection or hold the line!

Also, good idea using Banish for teleport finishes! You think it feasible to try this if your team isn’t on comms?

Biske Von Gottlich.6927 – I use Merciful Intervention also. I actually swap to it depending on what we are doing. Ironically I’ve been accused of hacking a couple times in larger fights due to the recent changes. A lot of ignorant people out there or lack of use, not sure which. It comes in handy when I pusher is moving through the enemy zerg and you use it to teleport to them, turn around, and then use Tomb of Courage as your force moves. Pretty epic really.

Crapgame.6519:

Ironically I’ve been accused of hacking a couple times in larger fights due to the recent changes.

Same. I find it pretty funny personally.