Showing Posts For Ultramatum.5162:
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Signet is probably the best “heal skill” since it passively removes conditions and scales at 125% healing power. However, it can be interrupted.
I think Shelter is second, since the block is very nice. The Warrior changes aren’t too big of a deal. It’s a smaller heal than Signet but the 2 second block is extremely helpful in WvW, especially if you’re in the middle of a zerg.
Healing Breeze is decent, but it’s hard to use to heal allies, and Signet is superior to it for self healing.
Sigil of Generosity – transfers a condition onto your target with a crit hit. Very nice for WvW.
Sigil of Fire – AOE flame blast on crit, great for extra damage, better than lightning in my opinion. Especially with scepter and staff.
Sigil of Life – good for extra healing if you’re low on it.
Sigil of Force/Accuracy – to buff up your damage if you need it.
Sigil of Energy – good if you need to heal a lot when dodging.
I wish BG would keep that up. But I think it’s going the BG way. They win a week and all of a sudden 90% of the population disappears and will never be seen again. After a while SoR uses BG as a doormat until new guilds get recruited from T2 and T3 servers which flood the wvw for a week and get BG another victory and the everything starts a new.
I don’t know whats wrong with BG. They should easily have the numbers to compete against SoR and JQ in all time zones, but it seems they playing 100 hours a week and need to go to sleep a whole month after that.
Burnout Gate.
Wow, you really have no idea what you’re talking about, my friend.
Our new brother and sister guilds haven’t even finished transferring over yet, but our server isn’t doing anything special this week. We’re not burning the midnight oil or pushing anyone to try and maintain coverage. Everyone’s playing like they normally do, but now we have coverage across all zones whereas before we had large gaps.
It just seems like we’re playing 100 hours a week because now your SEA and Oceanic guilds actually have some opponents instead of empty maps to steamroll. You’ll see the truth next week when we’re just as strong if not stronger across all time zones.
Time for JQ to stop coasting off their SEA guilds and actually put up a fight.
(edited by Ultramatum.5162)
You have to factor in might, condition damage, crit, and 101% crit damage into those numbers. Remember, might increases both damage and condition damage.
Agreed with the other posters. Mace is a support oriented weapon, it’s not meant for damage dealing. The right build to use for a mace is a Regen build to help buff your group. You would need to trait Battle Presence and Absolute Resolution, as well as stack boon duration and healing power (minimum 1300) to take full advantage of the Regen boon you can dish out with the mace. When you combine the mace with another weapon that offers group protection, such as the shield, you are able to mitigate a lot of damage for your group.
I’ve found the mace + shield combo is great for WvW where damage mitigation for your allies is much needed. But for Fractals, you won’t notice much of a difference. It will just take you a really long time to kill stuff with the mace. Sword is the best one handed DPS weapon the Guardian has so its best to build a Fractal spec around that.
Unscathed Contender is actually a skill many DPS guardians trait into for PvE purposes. It stacks well with high damage and Fiery Wrath. Essentially, with this trait, virtue of courage and Retreat become burst damage skills, upping your damage output by 10% whenever you want. In WvW it’s hard to use because you’ll be getting focused a lot but for dungeons it’s a great skill.
Honestly, I don’t have a real problem with movement on my guardian. With 50% boon duration you can use staff #3 only for permaswiftness. Mix in Retreat and you never really have to worry about not being able to get anywhere. If your goal is to play a WvW guardian, you should always have a staff equipped anyway (or at least one in your inventory you can equip when you want to.). And it’s easy enough to switch out at least one shout for Retreat. There is also food for boon duration increases, which you can pop until you meet up with your Zerg.
I’ve played other classes in the game, and honestly, I feel the Guardian is easily the most mobile class I’ve played.
I love, love, LOVE tome of wrath in WvW. It’s an amazing high damage skill that the Guardian doesn’t really have a lot of. Yes, the tomes do leave you a bit exposed during their use, but the spammable #1 ability of both make it an excellent burst damage/heal ability that can really have a huge influence during a battle.
I switch between Tome of Wrath and Renewed Focus constantly. Love them both, since they have lots of different uses in different scenarios.
Darek,
Thanks for taking the time to break down that build. It’s definitely interesting. If I ever get around to grinding out extra ascended gear, I’ll definitely test it out. :-)
From a theorycrafting perspective, it definitely seems like a pretty good damage/survivability build. I’m willing to bet it’s especially good for PvE.
Hi Darek,
Then please help me understand the build he’s running, because given the information you’ve shared, its impossible to reach those stats you mentioned without a triple signet build.
In wvw this build is actually insanely good. If anyone is in the T8 matchup I know of someone who runs this and dominates most people simply because of his stats (his skill isn’t even that good)
He basically runs berserker armor with divinity runes and celestial-ascended trinkets. His crit chance is 50%, crit dmg almost 110%, armor rating at somewhere around 2600 and power at like 2.xk (don’t remember). He has 900 healing power with full sigil of life stacks.
Basically he’s as tanky as the rest of us but can instantly down people with 1 whirling wrath. Honestly if I had the patience I’d farm fractals for the gear so I would literally become the immortal-destroyer Guardian (lolol) and easy mode through everything but that’s just too much work!
I don’t know if I share your views on your friend, Darek. In order to reach those stats with the armor/runes/trinkets you’ve referenced, you basically have to run a triple signet build for the passive stats, and never activate them. Thus, you are basically missing out on 3 utility powers, have poor condition removal (which is a death sentence in WvW), and are running with a lower health pool and lower armor rating than most AH/EM builds for essentially a slight boost in damage output over that build.
That’s based around this build:
(Copy and paste into your browser window to view. Clicking on it will get you an error message.)
So yeah, you have a good all-around build, but you miss out on a ton of utility and a good amount of survivability. I think a more tanky build with some berzerker trinkets mixed in would be better for a WvW damage build, and it wouldn’t require grinding out a ton of ascended gear to make viable.
Anyone reading this, think long and hard before investing your laurels/whatever into celestial gear, since it may not be the best for your build.
Kharel, it really is a difference between a “jack of all trades” build and a specialized build. With all-stat accessories, you miss out on a great deal of things, even though you get a general “all around” buff. You’ll never do as much damage as you potentially could with other accessories, and you’ll never do as much healing or damage mitigation either. If your playstyle requires certain stats over others, celestial won’t actually help you, it will simply kitten you.
For instance, a regen Guardian would need at least 1300 healing power to be optimally effective. A tank Guardian needs 3000+ armor. Certain builds require the highest crit chance possible. It all is dependent on how you play.
If the celestial stats work out for your playstyle, that’s great. But if you specialize in stats towards a specific style of play (DPS/Tank/Heal), then go with something else.
Yes, I prefer Staff as the off-hand since it makes traveling the map easier and gives you burst heals and good damage buffs. I find you get way more use from the staff as an off-hand than any other Guardian weapon.
Well, you can trait Pure of Voice to get the same condition removal as Soldier Runes. I guess it depends on how you want to play. If you enjoy the Soldier runes you have, keep them. If you want longer boon duration, switch them out. It really depends on your trait layout and playstyle, so it’s hard for me to give you advice without knowing the details.
If you are happy with your survivability, you can slot Berzerker trinkets with your pvt armor to give a boost to damage output. Ascended berzerker trinkets have the best stat increases in the game. You can also switch up your runes to 2xMonk, 2xWater, 2x minor water for increased boon duration. This way you’ll still have a great deal of armor and health, but with a bit more utility and higher damage output.
Guardian is definitely viable. It’s actually one of the more balanced classes in the game, with the least skill bugs. You can spec a Guardian into DPS or Support so you’re always welcome in dungeons and WvW.
True, but his question was about putting 5 more points into Valor to increase Shelter’s heal. My point was that Shelter would probably benefit more from a different trait, unless he’s going a full 30 in Valor.
When farming trash mobs, the difference between the damage output of Knights and Berzerker is almost negligible. At least in my experience. The damage mitigation when you have large groups of mobs hitting you, however, is a big difference.
That’s just been my experience. I kill things plenty quick with Knight’s gear when you factor in sigils and runes, plus berzerker trinkets. I agree with you about AH not helping much while solo, but it doesn’t hurt you either if you aren’t going to swap it out for a different trait.
Hey Guanglai,
As I said, not badmouthing your build. You certainly have a well-thought-out spec. But I would address your points since I’ve played both specs…
1. Points in Valor is not worthless, though it is definitely not the strongest trait line we have. You do get +200 toughness and +20% crit damage from the tree. Honorable Shield is more for the reduced cooldown on shield #4 so you can keep the protection boon applied consistently, thus upping your and your group’s damage mitigation and increasing your survivability. If you’re playing with a shield that is equipped most of the time, this is a pretty good major trait to have.
2. The Guardian has lots of ways to buff might other than empowering might. Virtue of Justice plus Empower gives you 15 stacks of might. And as you said, most groups will ensure full stacks of might are always applied. So you don’t really need empowering might to be effective. Plus, you’re actually applying Protection and Stability to the group, which is not easy for other classes to reliably apply.
3. You can swap out powers to suit the situation. Sometimes you slot more shouts, other times you put in consecrations. it depends on the fight. I think most of his utilities in that build are just general placeholders. I tend to run double shouts most of the time, even triple shouts, and swap out consecrations and the signet when needed. (The signet is best kept for boss fights where the extra passive damage reduction is more valuable) In WvW, a triple shout or consecration + 2 shout layout can be better. It’s all situational.
4. Well, to be fair, his build is a support build, with high DPS. Not a DPS build. I made it clear before your build is better for damage output, but I would die super quick when using it, whereas with RedFalcon’s build, I would not die often at all. Again, this may reflect more on my skills as a player than the build itself, but RedFalcon’s build is more forgiving of mistakes than your build is.
The idea that you can have 4600 effective power on a support build is amazing, since most support builds have effective powers of around 2000-2500.
Well, keep in mind Signet of Resolve scales at 125% of your healing power, while Shelter just scales at 70%. So any amount of healing power in your build other than zero is going to significantly increase SoR’s heal number. It will always be the better heal than Shelter, even with the +10 second longer cooldown.
Not that I’m bad-mouthing Shelter. I think it’s a great heal, especially for when you are fighting other players, because it brings some much needed damage mitigation into play.
I’m not sure that the extra might it gives is worth the use of a Major Trait, though. That’s my only concern. Frankly, the Guardian has so many ways to quickly buff might, it seems like this would be a waste of a Major Trait slot. I actually think that Defender’s Flame has better synergy with Shelter since you’re actually damaging opponents while you’re blocking instead of stacking might, which relies on you to hit others for it to be effective.
With altruistic healing, your health gain is dependent on how many people are attacking you – the more attackers, the bigger the heal. One attacker hitting you 2 times during your block will at most net you about 140 extra health, so unless you’re being focused fired by numerous enemies, the healing doesn’t scale well. But with Defender’s Flame, you’re doing the same amount of damage no matter how many people are attacking you. So in that respect, Might of the Protector has too many variables concerned with it to make it a reliable Major Trait.
Just my opinion.
Actually, Knights gear is best for farming for a Guardian. It ups your damage mitigation for better survivability against multiple mobs, while giving you good power and precision stats. You can supplement your missing crit damage from berzerker gear by slotting ruby jewels or divinity runes.
But an Altrusitic Healing build with Knights armor & weapons, and berzerker accessories is probably your optimal farming spec.
These traits come down to supplementing what build you are running with. For instance, a Guardian who is running 3 consecrations may want to trait Shielded Mind since they don’t have a stun break slotted on their utility bar. However, if you’re running shouts, especially 2 which also break stuns, then the added stability from Indomitable Courage is preferable, since it will stack with Stand Your Ground, meaning you can run it longer. You really don’t need 3 stun breaks, so taking Shielded Mind with 2 other stun breakers isn’t optimal.
Hope that helps.
All divinity ascended gear isn’t optimal for any type of build because of the reasons stated above. However, 2 pieces mixed with another more specialized set can be helpful in an over-all bump to stats.
I’ve tried Guanglai’s build before as well. It’s great for if you love doing lots of damage, but I tended to die very fast when using it. I don’t think its a very effective build for WvW if that’s your thing, unless of course you are masterful at avoiding damage. (That’s just my personal experience, you may be a better player than I am, lol).
Guanglai’s ultimate build has an effective power of 5123, which is pretty beast for a guardian. But his damage reduction is 19% and his effective health is at 16,144. RedFalcon’s build has an effective power of 4,630, but with a damage reduction of 32% (which is increased to 65% with the Protection boon), and an effective Health of 22,412. So you do slightly less DPS, but your survivability is greatly increased. You also offer a bit more group utility with RedFalcon’s build.
This isn’t to take anything away from Guanglai’s build. It just doesn’t fit my personal playstyle. I’m sure if you are the type who loves high damage, it would be the way to go. :-)
If you run with shouts, Pure of Voice coupled with Soldier runes will give you 2 condition removal per shout. There’s also currently a bug with Hold the Line so that it removes 2 conditions with Pure of Voice, so that shout will remove 3 conditions, making it just as useful as Virtue of Resolve when traited with Absolute Resolution. This means you don’t need to slot meditation skills if you don’t find them useful.
Even if you choose not to use Soldier runes, pure of voice can really help you with your situation. This trait also applies to allies, so your shouts will cleanse those in your party as well. :-)
Oh, and if you utilize Stand Your Ground, that can help keep you from getting CC’d with it’s Stability boon and ability to break stuns when cast.
Hope that helps.
(edited by Ultramatum.5162)
FinalPatriot,
If you enjoy being an “in the thick of battle DPS” player for WvW specifically, I think Guardian would be the better choice. Not only is Guardian more mobile, it is better able to handle conditions.
Meditations like Judges Intervention and Smite Condition can be really awesome, allowing you to teleport to enemies and purging conditions every 20 seconds while adding to DPS. (These can also heal when traited) For the build SuperHaze mentioned, you just need to trait for better meditations and symbols in the Valor and Honor lines.
My main is a Guardian, and I’ve been leveling an Alt Warrior. Though I find Warrior very strong to play in PvE, I feel they are more challenging in WvW. Guardian is very versatile and can be suited to multiple kinds of playstyles. They also bring a lot of group support utility, making them more team friendly than Warriors. And in sPvP, Guardian outshines the Warrior, which is unfortunately kitten in PvP at the moment. So I find my Guardian is easier to play in multiple venues than the Warrior is.
Hope that helps.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Frac40-High-DPS-Support-build/first
Best sword/shield build there is IMHO.
Hope that helps.
Greatsword/Staff is definitely a great combo for leveling. Both have AOE attacks. Both drop light fields. Both help you stack might. Both help you be more mobile (leap and swiftness boon). Both benefit from the Two Handed Mastery trait.
Staff gives you healing while Greatsword gives you damage. Both synergize well with each other. Dropping Line of Warding with staff then leaping through it with Greatsword #3 grants Retaliation. Symbol of Swiftness and Symbol of Judgement both will remove conditions from allies when you use Greatsword #2 and #5. You can stack might with Empower then continue to buff it with Greatsword’s autoattack.
Weapon choice totally depends on your playstyle and preferences, but this combo has been the most effective in my experience.
Altruistic Healing will heal you for a base of 69 HP per boon, with no healing power. If you can get 25 stacks of might off Shelter, that equates to 1,725 health from AH (assuming you can actually get 25 stacks of might). Shelter’s base heal is 4,555 HP, so this bump from Might of the Protector would only net you at most 6,280 healing. That’s still less than Signet of Resolve, but it will make Shelter a better heal, especially if you have a good amount of healing power (700+). This is of course dependent on getting a full stack of might. Less might, the lower the heal.
For PvE, Empowering Might might be better since you can more consistently proc heals with crits than you can with a heal skill that has a 30 second cooldown. For solo healing, a triple meditation build with Monk’s Focus is superior, since 3 meditation skills can heal for a total of 5,880. For WvW, the trait Defender’s Flame is probably superior since you can apply burning to multiple enemies who attack you during a battle.
Don’t forget that if you have Selfless Daring, your dodge rolls can heal you at 100% of your healing power. So if you have 900+ healing power, this minor trait can actually give you a better heal with 2 dodge rolls than the Major Trait of Might of the Protector, freeing you up for another choice.
If you are looking for more healing or survivability, you’ll probably want a more reliable way to make this happen. Look into applying more Protection and Regeneration boons. These will help you mitigate damage better than the small heal Might of the Protector would.
Apothecary armor is not a good investment for the Guardian, since we only have one condition we can apply with any regularity, and that condition only stacks in duration, not intensity.
I’ve experimented with many different builds, and tried every combination of condition damage builds I could with my Guardian, but found them not to be very viable in the long run (though some were fun to play). You can do damage with burning, particularly if you stack condition damage, but you get more long term benefit from Power or Precision, which synergize better with our traits than condition damage seems to.
If you’re looking for armor to invest in, you can’t go wrong with Cleric’s for a Guardian. Next to Knight’s armor, I’ve found it to be the most effective and versatile (not to mention most affordable) option for our class.
And if you enjoy playing with the staff and mace, both those weapons have abilities associated with them that directly benefit from high healing power, but none that benefit from condition damage. All your weapons benefit from the power stat, no matter what you play with, since your damage scales with power. This alone makes Cleric gear the better choice.
I’d personally stay away from any armor that promotes condition damage, since it essentially equates to a wasted stat for our profession.
Hope that helps.
(edited by Ultramatum.5162)
Hi mrauls,
Healing power is a statistic which increases the amount of hit points you receive for healing skills you yourself casts. Healing power scales linearly, which basically means the more healing power you have, the larger your heals are, and the more hit points you get back.
However, different healing skills have different coefficients which affect how much of your healing power you get to utilize. For instance, Signet of Resolve will utilize 125% of your healing power, whereas Altruistic Healing will only utilize 1%. In both cases, the more healing power you have, the greater your healing will be. However, the size of that increase is very different.
The way Guild Wars 2 is set up, there are no real “healing classes.” Guardian healing is really meant to be a “soft vitality” and “soft armor” system. We have the lowest base health pool in the game, but the greatest number of healing skills. This means we can use healing to supplement our lack of vitality and increase our ability to mitigate damage.
Soft vitality basically means that, if you have 14,000 hit points, but can heal 2,000 of those hit points, you essentially have 16,000 hit points – even though you don’t have more than 14,000. But because you can heal for at least 2,000, you have essentially the same survivability as someone with 16,000 hit points and no healing. This is how soft vitality works.
Soft armor comes from damage mitigation, through healing over time effects. Let’s say your armor is able to mitigate 25% of incoming damage. This means an enemy attack for 1,000 damage will hit you for 750 hit points. However, if you have 200 HP passive regen, that’s essentially an extra 20% mitigation to that 1,000 point attack, because it will now only inflict 550 damage.
Healing also brings group utility to a guardian, because others can benefit from his healing abilities, not just the player himself. The Guardian is one of the more group-oriented classes in the game, so he can hand out boons and healing to others with ease. This means that higher healing power not only benefits you, but those around you as well. Vitality is a selfish stat, whereas healing power is group-oriented stat.
I hope that cleared some things up for you. Good luck!
^^ what he said.
I’ve found that running 5 pieces of Knights gear with a Magi chest, and full cleric’s accessories with the Magi guild backpack gives you a good balance of toughness, vitality, crit chance, power, and healing power. With the right runes and food buffs, you can run at 3200 armor, almost 17K health, and 1,000 healing power, with a close to 50% crit chance. Perfect for an Altruistic Healing build.
Remember, you don’t always have to go full one way or the other. You can mix and match to balance out your stats as necessary. I happen to like having a decent amount of healing power for a bit more group utility with an AH build, so that’s what I strive to achieve, without gimping on armor or hit points.
What a great night in SoR Borderlands. So much fun running with the ICoa crew! Our commanders are truly amazing. Props to SoR and JQ for all the great match-ups throughout the night. I have a feeling we’ll be back to our “Blue” ranking soon enough. ;-)
Great job on the other maps too, server-mates! Keep the pressure on! :-D
Well, then guilds will have to transfer to get the server populations equal to make it count. Right now, you can have 1 or 2 aussie guilds on a server that play against other servers that lack coverage and essentially steal first place. Wouldn’t you rather have a challenging match-up than an unbalanced one?
Well, only during off hours. During normal hours points apply as normal. The idea is to only make points count in off-hours when there is decent enough coverage from all the servers to ensure fair point distribution. Do you think it’s fair to have one server control all points on all maps just because the majority of the other two servers are sleeping? All a server needs is one good guild from another time zone to ninja first place while the majority of other players are sleeping. If those in other time zones want their efforts to be worth something, then they should play on their own servers and not the north american ones.
It would be 10pm-7am Server Time, which is PST for North America servers. This translates to 1am-10am EST. I think this is a good compromise for off-peak hours. Anything between 7:01am and 9:59pm counts towards PPT, no matter what the map populations are.
Why not have a system where factions are assigned randomly on a weekly basis, and points are totaled by faction as opposed to by server?
For instance, you have 3 factions – green, blue, and red.
Each week on reset, guilds are assigned a faction randomly. What faction an individual player has is based on what guild he’s representing at the time of reset.
Points Per Tick are faction-wide. So guilds across all servers apply their points towards the point total of their assigned color.
This makes it red vs green vs blue as opposed to server vs server vs server. Gives multiple people opportunities to come in first and play with different people on a regular basis. Evens out the coverage gaps. Helps smaller guilds to group with larger guilds. All sorts of cool stuff.
I think it’s pretty awful that servers without off-hour coverage can get so taken advantage of in WvW. I’d like to see a solution to the “coverage gap” that so many servers suffer from. After all, the winning servers can exploit this to get unfair point advantages.
Why not make it so that on off hours, say between 10pm-7am server time, points are only awarded on maps that contain a reasonable number of players? So during those times, points only count if there are 40 or more players on a map from each server?
I think this would be fair and help balance out a lot of the exploitable coverage issues in WvW.
If you want to play a support role, check out my Guardian Support guide here:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/72582-ultra-guardian-support-guide-pve-wvwvw/
I don’t think so for this trait. It seems to only affect allies and not you. If you target someone near you, you’l see a blue icon that when you hover over it, will tell you that they’re benefiting from the effect. I’d like to know that if you have a full 5-man team of guardians using this trait in WvW, will that mean all nearby allies get a 150 point boost to toughness?
Try stacking Vitality in WvW. It’s night and day over Toughness. I think Vitality is a far superior stat for increasing survivability in World v World situations, because with increased Vitality you can survive conditions longer, and full exotic armor at level 80 offers enough damage mitigation that you don’t need to stack Toughness. Plus, the vitality ratios are better. 1 point in toughness just ads +1 to damage mitigation, while +1 in vitality adds +10 to your health pool. So you actually get 10x more benefit from vitality than you do from toughness.
Once I started focusing on Vitality for WvW, I noticed a big increase in my survivability. If you can get to around 17,000 HP, you’ll be in good shape. With Orb bonuses, a Guardian with around 17K HP will be buffed up to around 20K HP, and then you’ll really be sitting pretty!
Hi Witchdoctor Dan,
You can find a detailed breakdown of my build here:
Yeah, it’s 20% increase in duration. It should really be brought up to 50%. Spirit Weapons get an increase in 50% duration, why not consecrations?
Am i the only guardian that think +30% boon duration is a must ?
in Guardian
Posted by: Ultramatum.5162
Correct. Stacks have new boons applied. Boons which stack in duration are just “refreshed.” So technically, the boon is not reapplied.
Permeating Wrath is only applied to the passive trait from Virtue of Justice. When you activate Virtue of Justice with this trait, it does nothing. Tested this out many times and couldn’t believe this was just a weak upgrade to the passive. Real let down.
Hi Leeain – If you want something that’s more of a “heal” spec, this is typically the support build I roll with (along with 2 Major Runes of Sanctuary for max boon duration):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUMQNApeWlcgKD3FyKEm4ES2jRSkQQsHakH9RXFSIA;TkAA2Coo6y4lwLXXrGGbM/A
You’re not going to be doing huge heals, but you will be doing decent heals and good support. Having Superior Sigil of Life and Superior Sigil of Water on your weapons helps maximize your healing potential.
Don’t forget your dodge roll is an AOE heal, so dodging around a lot to heal allies can be really helpful.
Don’t forget to use Symbol of Swiftness to help heal allies too. With this build, it’s a pretty good HoT, healing for around 150 a tick with a full charge of Sigil of Life. If you use Cleric Gear, this will be larger. Also, take advantage of consecrations and shouts as much as possible.
For PvP, this is the build I run with:
I’ve found that for PvP matches you want to be able to kill quickly and have good survivability. This brings more to the group than many of the Guardian’s support abilities. But with Staff as your main weapon, you can still offer support in terms of speed boosts and might stacking.
Try these builds out and see if they’re good for your playstyle.
Hi Leeain,
I’m sorry if you feel Guardian doesn’t fit your playstyle. I personally have never felt useless in a group when playing my Guardian. Perhaps if you shared your build on the forums we could give you some suggestions to help improve your Guardian so you enjoyed more?
I guess if our Tomes get wet, they’re kinda useless. lol.
I never bothered to buy any of our form changes so I didn’t notice they were missing underwater. My only justification would be that your aquatic helm is made for a human face and an animal’s nose is too big so your breather wouldn’t fit. :-)
Hey Tzenjin – I sent you a PM here on the forums. Not sure how messaging works in the game if we’re on different servers.
Leeain, while I agree with you that most support skills need to be refined, I don’t agree that they are all bad. The heal from Orb of Light isn’t all that great, but it’s Damage is actually really good if you spec for it. Healing Breeze is buggy, but it can still heal you and whoever’s in front of you for a decent amount. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have “healers” like other MMOs do. But keep in mind you can spec your character to have other abilities heal – like symbols and meditations and applying boons.
And empower is an amazing skill. I don’t know what you think sucks about it. Boosting everyone around you with 12 stacks of might and heals of over 1k? That’s pretty cool. Plus, Guardian has shouts and consecrations and symbols which can mitigate damage to the group very well.
Sanctuary isn’t as good as it could be, especially with the long cool-down time. But it can be good in certain situations. And under water, it’s amazing.
You may want to take another look at how Guardian fulfills a support role. It’s more about buffing allies and offering group utility rather than being a straight-up healer like you can be in WoW or SWTOR. You’re going to do more for your group dropping buffs and removing conditions than you will by trying to heal them to full. In that sense, I think that’s how Anet intended for support to be.
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