Guild Wars 2

Elusive Power is really not worth investing 5 points in just for it. If you’re going 30 Honor anyway, there’s no complaint; but putting in 25 is really pointless. You’d be much better off putting that in Zeal, Radiance, or Virtues.

Shelter is going to remain the best PvE heal no matter what Litany does. Absolutely nothing beats another block. In PvP I can imagine Litany taking over, especially for people traited Meds. I’m actually a little disappointed, frankly.

Aza.2105:

foofad.5162:

Aza.2105:

fadeaway.2807:

I believe it to be our top dps weapon now, and the 15/15/0/20/20 build is even more fantastic. More prot, more dps, more vulnerability.

I’d go so far as saying 15/25/0/20/10 could challenge greatsword/1h users for the crown.

I’ve tried both of these builds, both are good. I like 15/25/0/20/10 the best though.

I want your perspective, do you feel putting 25 points into zeal for the extra power and +10% extra damage on symbols? 25/25/0/20/0

I suck at math, can you hook up some numbers to see how they two builds compare?

You can do it yourself very easily. Use GW2Buildcraft to generate both builds, and compare the effective power difference. One divided by the other will tell you the % difference between the two.

Does it take symbolic power into consideration?

Nope, but unless you need to know exactly how much of a damage increase it is, you don’t really need to know that; You just know that your damage increase is whatever the percentage difference is between the two effective powers, plus +10% on top of that when it comes to your symbol.

If you do need to know precisely how much it is, the coefficient for a tick of Symbol of Protection is .55. Damage is given as the formula damage = [coefficient * power * average weapon damage]/armor. Tooltips use 2600 as the armor value. So you’d figure that out, then multiply by 1.1 to include the Symbolic Power increase.

Aza.2105:

fadeaway.2807:

I believe it to be our top dps weapon now, and the 15/15/0/20/20 build is even more fantastic. More prot, more dps, more vulnerability.

I’d go so far as saying 15/25/0/20/10 could challenge greatsword/1h users for the crown.

I’ve tried both of these builds, both are good. I like 15/25/0/20/10 the best though.

I want your perspective, do you feel putting 25 points into zeal for the extra power and +10% extra damage on symbols? 25/25/0/20/0

I suck at math, can you hook up some numbers to see how they two builds compare?

You can do it yourself very easily. Use GW2Buildcraft to generate both builds, and compare the effective power difference. One divided by the other will tell you the % difference between the two.

Ludus Rex.1562:

Painbow.6059:

Shelter is pretty perfect for me

Check out the spreadsheet. Shelter is one of the weakest heals in terms of health per second, and the only trade off is 2 seconds of block. Have I used Shelter because I like it compared to our other options? Sure. Is it numerically inferior to the heals of other classes? Heck yes.

We don’t deserve to get shafted on heals just because of Virtue of Resolve. We pay for that with our low health pool. I really hope we get something viable with the new heal.

Fortunately, Shelter’s healing scales with the amount of damage you block. Proactive healing versus retroactive. Shelter is one of the best heals in the game.

I’d kill for a healing consecration that works something like Well of Blood.

Yeah, I’m not sure why you thought that it wasn’t possible. As far as I know there’s no such thing as a player skill that can’t be used in specific places, barring underwater.

Between the startup and the aftercast delay, it’s not very bursty at all. It does about the same amount of damage in about the same amount of time as just plain autoattacking.

I love the Krytan hammer skin, and the Guild hammer. Those two are my favorites, moreso than Genesis and Entropy.

You’d be better off just going ahead and using SY immediately after PF. You’ll take more damage but you also aren’t tied to the spot for the full duration of PF. You can go ahead and move out of it if you need to.

I would go to the PVP lobby, ask someone to fight the Necromancer or Ranger test dummy, and then do your combo. Have them take note of the duration of the conditions on them when they’re applied, and when they are removed by you. Then you can compare.

Incoming conditions only. It works exactly the same way as -% foods. The bleed will last the full 15 seconds.

Incoming conditions from Save Yourselves is a good question though, you should be able to test that. If it applies as a “new” condition, then yes. If it forces the new condition to last just as long as the ones you withdrew from your allies, then no.

Despite Svarty’s completely off topic condemnation of it in PvP, I must insist that it’s an excellent skill in any environment due to the low cooldown (28 seconds), high number of conditions cured, and synergy with Fiery Wrath.

Not a bad idea. +1

Without going too heavily into the math (I’m technically working right now…), you’ll find that over time the increased power/low critical chance set will have a more “reliable” damage application versus the more spiky low power/high critical chance set. But both will work out to about even in the end in terms of DPS, it’s just that one will operate more predictably and the other will tend to spike higher. The contrast to this is that if you can reliably open with a crit, high crit (which is to say, high spike damage) stat allocations always have improved DPS over shorter fights. If you can’t reliably open with crits, then you may end up with short fights where your low power and lack of luck with spike damage actually hampered you compared to the reliable set. The longer the duration, the more it evens out. Find a DPS spreadsheet or build one yourself and you can test this with autoattacking.

In the above example though, I actually was comparing knight trinkets with Berserker gems, not Berserker trinkets. I thought you were talking about a complete set of Knight gear. Knights with Berserker trinkets will definitely edge out the spread that I listed. So the above paragraph applies less to that, although the bit about being unlucky with crits in short fights still applies somewhat.

swiftpaw.6397:

foofad.5162:

swiftpaw.6397:

snip

Buying a full set of Knight’s is a bad idea. While it does have Precision, the lack of Power on the set is really noticeable. While it’s true that the spread I posted will have less critical chance, the increase in power will actually yield the same or slightly increased DPS on top of the Vitality from the Soldier gear giving you tons more effective health. Also, it’ll be cheaper in the long run, because as you improve if you decide you want full Berserker armor for dungeons you only have to replace a couple of pieces, instead of an entire set.

Examples:

Knight’s

Soldier/Berserker mix

Personally I find ‘tons of extra health’ to be detrimental. It creates a reliance on a health cushion. The power lack with knight’s is annoying, however this is a training wheels set that once you’ve gone through will also be useful later on if you so choose to do high lvl fractals and run as the sole guardian with the hammer build. When I started out I just ran 6 pieces of knights armor and full zerker trinkets, didn’t really cost that much and you can still get use out of this set if required. I suppose I was not entirely well explained when I said knights, just the armor should be enough.

I don’t particularly see the need to deliberately handicap yourself to make the game more challenging unless you find the game boring from the outset. If you can get the same damage, and better health to boot, there’s no reason not to do so. Ultimately it won’t make much of a difference. He can probably learn to adapt to losing 2-3k health when he switches gear.

swiftpaw.6397:

snip

Buying a full set of Knight’s is a bad idea. While it does have Precision, the lack of Power on the set is really noticeable. While it’s true that the spread I posted will have less critical chance, the increase in power will actually yield the same or slightly increased DPS on top of the Vitality from the Soldier gear giving you tons more effective health. Also, it’ll be cheaper in the long run, because as you improve if you decide you want full Berserker armor for dungeons you only have to replace a couple of pieces, instead of an entire set.

Examples:

Knight’s

Soldier/Berserker mix

You aren’t going to be doing much damage with only 1400~ power. Get it up to 1800 at least, before consumables.

Pure of Voice is also very weak in terms of condition cleansing, although your Soldier runes to make up for some of that. If cleansing is your goal, you’ll want 20 in Virtues for Absolute Resolution and Master of Consecrations -> Purging Flames. 28 second 3-condition cleansing for all allies in the ring, and 33% condition duration reduction on all future conditions while the ring is active. Absolute Resolution is another 3 conditions removed on Virtue of Resolve. The two of those combined are far better than Pure of Voice in terms of condition removal, and that will open you up to being able to use damage runes, which will improve your DPS considerably.

The main thing holding you back is your points in Valor. Valor is the most “selfish” of all the traitlines, and unless you plan on doing a Meditations build it’s something you’ll want to avoid if you like support.

Personally I’d do something more like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUUQNAR8flYgKDXFyvDf4ESODRCBtPAQYPwI4LjA-jQyAoLBZCCERAO5VEN22QR0Y1LYqykqLFk9GFRrGA-e

That’s assuming you want the defensive stats for whatever reason. An extra 300 healing power isn’t going to really do you any good, especially when your weapons are GS/S+t. The traits ensure you get the major Virtue of Justice synergy + Radiance blind improvements that every GS/S user needs. Dropping Valor gives you more flexibility. Keeping Honor keeps your support going. And you won’t hit like a wet noodle.

(Srsly, 1400 power is really bad!)

Lol, that’s just a little hyperbolic, don’t you think?

CombatMod doesn’t need autotargetting. At least the one I use doesn’t. You can still untarget someone and use a leap to get out of harm’s way, etc.

I think I use ICM.

Do you use Writ of Persistence? That’s what changed.

Painbow.6059:

Ignore what anyone else who doesn’t agree with me has said because its wrong.

I hope you don’t mind if I immortalize this in my signature.

It’s a better choice for damage because it’s a power-primary set. There are plenty of builds that use Clerics in various amounts that are fine though. Unless you’re in a guild zerg in which case it’s a moot point because you should run whatever composition they tell you to.

No, I’m just refuting the notion that unless you’re in full Berserker gear, you’ll never proc VP/EM. Because y’know, it isn’t true.

Sword of Justice is great for low levels. On top of 0/15/0/0/5, I recommend getting 5 points in Honor immediately for Vigor on critical hits, which will let you dodge much more.

I leveled my second guardian primarily with Hammer/Staff plus Sword of Justice. Worked great.

You don’t need to sacrifice support for damage. You can achieve very high damage numbers while still having all the same support traits; EM, Absolute Resolution, Pure of Voice, and so on.

Kain Francois.4328:

Use Berserker in PvE. Ignore any recommendations telling you to go PVT, because Guardian NEEDS Precision to activate traits like Vigorous Precision, which give you more dodges.

Which you can get from food, traits, and so on. Rule of thumb is that strictly speaking you only “need” about 30% crit in order to reliably proc VP and EM just from autoattacking. Add in symbols and other AOEs, cleaving, and so forth, and 30% is way more than enough.

If you don’t have the money to invest in multiple sets, I recommend this spread for being able to do both: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7;9;9;9;9;9;9;3QClvkF;5j-w0t12Z3_Ea9g0Q70HV8aNX8aK

That way the only thing you ever have to change is your traits. The split between soldier/berserker is laid out in such a way as to give you the best Critical Damage for the investment; different slots have different Critical Damage amounts relative to the other stats, so it’s possible to accidentally be inefficient with how much you get.

Your traits will then be the largest determining factor for how much damage you do. If you need trait build advice there are dozens of threads here.

I don’t like the Torch personally. While #5 does cleanse conditions, you’re better off using something like Purging Flames which doesn’t have such a strict positioning requirement. Nor does Purging Flames ruin your personal DPS while it’s active like #5 will. The exception is that #4 can be used as a decent burst attack in PvP and WvW, but in PvE it’s very close to useless.

I do wish it were a better weapon, but it suffers pretty badly compared to other options. Hopefully it’ll be revised at some point in the near future.

I guess I should clarify, I really wish that the Guardian was in a state where a condition build like this could be effective. There are too many factors against it though and I think that’s a failing on Anet’s part. Hopefully one day that’ll change. I don’t think that day will come this year, but maybe early next.

username.4932:

There isn’t, a heal combo fest is always more efficient than a dedicated healer.

A thousand healing power nearly doubles the heal combos. They are affected by healing power.

colesy.8490:

Interesting. Dub and haviz make a thread with a terrible build and they both get removed and yet this one stays. The Druid build was demonstrated by the Lupicus video to work while this has zero credibility. Gotta love this forum.

It wasn’t removed because it was a bad build. It was removed because of the trolling. Stop trying to martyr yourself.

Anyway, @OP: The problem with a build like this has been and always will be that the extra DPS that you gain from Burning and even Burning + Poison will never equal the extra DPS you could have gained by simply investing in Power instead of Condition Damage. The only time that even remotely begins to stop being the case is when you can hit more things with conditions than you can cleave with your Power-based attacks. The opportunities for that are slim, however – and you aren’t using any skills that allow you to take advantage of that fact.

It used to only give one second, instead of two as it’s supposed to.

I say “supposed” to, but it wasn’t actually always intended for that to be the case. It used to be that the trait increased Symbol duration by 50%, rounded down. So a 4 second symbol would last 6 seconds, but a 3 second symbol would last 4, which is what the Hammer would do. And eveyone was okay with that, because it made sense. Then when they redid the trait tooltips to tell you exactly what it did, they switched it to say a flat two second increase. All of a sudden Symbol of Protection was “bugged” but I don’t think anyone really noticed because no one expected any differently.

Obtena.7952:

If the symbol lasts longer than the frequency it can be applied … what happens? Do you get double ticks while it’s duration overlaps?

Yes. And that’s exactly what happens. You’ll notice now with the trait, that the cadence for the autoattack chain is swing, swing … swingpulse, pulse, pulse, pulse, PULSEPULSE, swing… etc.

It’s ridiculous and wonderful. The symbol stays down permanently as long as you keep swinging.

Healing Power is excellent in WvW. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

The problem with the OP’s build is that you can get 91% boon duration without gimping yourself. Just because you’re “dedicated support” doesn’t mean you have to deal zero damage. I rarely outright say a build is bad, but this is a really bad build. There’s dealing reduced damage due to gear choice, and then there’s dealing zero damage due to gear choice. Zero damage is truly unacceptable, in any content. PvE, WvW, sPvP, everything.

Even with food you only have 1300~ power. It’s tragic. Meanwhile, you can do something like this and have almost the same healing power, lower Toughness, but deal three times as much damage – and still have 95% boon duration, which I think we both agree is essentially the heart of the build. That’s with traits intact.

So eh.

In other news, I love your username, Snackbar.

Guardian healing is great in pick-up groups like the one it seems you were in for exactly that reason. It goes a long way towards keeping everyone alive through content that may be new to someone in the group, or people who aren’t as skilled or aware or lucky or what have you with the class they’re playing at the time.

One healing specced Guardian was probably enough to do that, yeah.

It’s a commonly used trait. It’s not so much of a group comp issue as it is a damage avoidance issue. You just need to know when to dodge. It’s less useful against trash monsters for that reason – sometimes, you’re just gonna get hit, end of story. Against many bosses though it works very well.

Altruism only really works with classes that have super short cooldown heals, like Mesmer’s 15 second one. For everyone else it’s decidedly crap.

Pack works best with boon duration; when it does proc, you want it to be for as long as possible. If you’re consistently getting hit that makes it a pretty good rune, but unfortunately GW2 is a game of trying not to get hit at all, so that’s actually counter to how you should be playing in PvE. WvW is another story; sometimes you really can’t avoid it.

All told, it’s not that it’s an awful idea; It’s just that the benefits aren’t really worth it.

Nike.2631:

After looking at it a bit, I’d like to see Strength in Numbers and Honorable Shield swap tiers.

That would put Strength in Numbers in the master tier, similar to Spotter and Empower Allies, while making the off-hand weapon trait for shields more accessible.

That’s not a bad idea, but I wouldn’t endorse it until the Shield cooldowns were reduced by default to something more reasonable.

I don’t know what to say to that, other than that they’re wrong.

Edit: I’m just throwing this out there, but it might be due to confusion over how the tooltip reads seconds remaining on duration. If the duration of the boon is 40 seconds remaining, and you mouse over it to see the tooltip, the tooltip will read 39 seconds rather than 40. The reason for this being that by the time you mouse over it, the actual time remaining is between 39.99 and 39.00. Even if your mouse is already over that spot it’ll still read that way because it only actually has a full 40 seconds remaining for the tiniest fraction of a second. The tooltip then truncates the number to the nearest whole second. This can be especially confusing when you look at something like, for example, Empowering Might. You might have 110% boon duration and then look at Empowering Might and say, “Wait a minute, the tooltip is only reading 9 seconds instead of the 10 or 11 I should be getting. Boon duration must be capped.” When the reality is that it is in fact lasting for 10 seconds.

MercenaryK.4180:

That’s the thing about the Virtues trait line – notice how a lot of the traits are strictly benefiting/altering the passive effect or its frequency, not the active effect.

I don’t think you fact-checked that statement. Shielded Mind – Turns active into a stunbreak. Indomitable Courage – increases frequency of passive, gives 3 seconds of stability on active. Supreme Justice – increases frequency of passive, duration of active. Absolute Resolution, increases strength of passive and cures 3 conditions on active. Inspired Virtue – apply boons on active.

The preference is toward active effects if anything.

If you’re getting killed by 20k Killshots, you either don’t have Wall of Reflection or you don’t know how to use it. :/

Well, that’s just it. If you aren’t willing to change your traits, you are pretty much out of luck. 0/0/10/30/30 is just not a damage spec. The only damage multiplier it has is Power of the Virtuous, and that’s not much to speak of. Stacking damage multipliers is the definition of damage in this game. The best you can do without changing your traits is changing your gear, but without multipliers you’re not going to get very far with that.

If you’re serious about adding damage, I would start by changing to 15/0/5/20/30. That will keep your playstyle almost exactly the same, but suddenly you have 150 more Power, Vuln on Symbols, and 10% extra damage against burning targets to work with. Then you can start adding in Berserker gear, starting with Accessories and then your Shoulder/Gloves/Boots. That will be a very large increase to your damage, but naturally you’re going to have to sacrifice healing power for it. You can’t have it all. Believe me, I’ve tried.

quaniesan.8497:

40s recharge for a healing slot is rather discouraging.

Necros deal with the same thing with their Well of Blood. Their party heal is 40s as well. The difference is, it’s a Well – so they can trait it down to 32.

I don’t know how I’d give up Absolute Resolution – the extra condi cleanse is really useful. Not to mention, most people don’t notice this but Virtues have a 1200 range – that makes Absolute Resolution infinitely more useful in WvW where you can’t guarantee people will be in shout range. It also makes it more valuable than Purging Flames for that same reason, although PF nets you a lot more condi cleanse per minute by virtue of its much lower cooldown.

Between the two of them though, conditions don’t bother me as much as they used to. Though they’re still a bit much.

I’m assuming this is for WvW since that’s what healway is supposed to be used in. If you want damage, you’ll have to find a different build. Just swapping out gear isn’t going to be enough to do anything meaningful if you don’t have any damage multiplier traits. If you want to keep the same weapons, you can take points out of Valor (not doing your party any good) and Radiance, as well as pulling back to 20 Honor in order to get 20 Zeal for the Greatsword trait. That’ll increase your damage a lot just with the extra 20 power and the multiplier. Then you can put the last five into Virtues and get Indomitable Courage for the stomp Stability.

Pure of Voice is really bad now that it has been fixed. You’ll want to dump it and get Master of Consecrations so you can use Purging Flames, which is going to massively out-cure PoV.

And don’t use Signet of Mercy. Even post-buff it’s not worth taking over Wall of Reflection.

I haven’t used it in probably a year, so it may be different since they changed up some of the targetting code this past summer. It used to be very frustrating to use in that respect.

I’m struggling to figure out what support 30 points in Valor brings to the team that 10 points doesn’t. Elaborate?

I leveled my second guardian extremely quickly with a Hammer and Staff. You won’t be able to invest points into your middle traits yet until you’re level 40, but I recommend something like this. After you get 15 in Radiance, 5 in Virtues and 5 in Honor you can really just shotgun your traits all over the board and it won’t matter. What that setup does is give you a very basic Guardian trait synergy which is common in a lot of builds, namely spamming Virtue of Justice every time you kill something (Renewed Justice 15 Radiance) which in turn gives you 3 stacks of Might (Inspired Virtue 5 Virtues), blind everything around you (Justice is Blind 5 Radiance), and give them Vulnerability (Blind Exposure 10 Radiance) all from one ability. Between the permanent Protection from the hammer, and the constant blind spam you’ll be churning out, you’ll be very sturdy in PvE.

Your Utilities are pretty optional but I recommend you keep Stand Your Ground on your bar at all times, as it’s one of our better Stunbreaks as well as a source of Stability to prevent you from being knocked around. Very useful against many types of enemies. Spirit Sword also tends to be more powerful in the early levels than it is in the later levels, so now is a good time to get some use out of it. Lastly, the third slot is really up to you but Purging Flames is great because of its low cooldown, 3 conditions cured, and fire field which you can Blast with Mighty Blow for additional might stacks on a long duration.

The staff is mainly for travel and running away, as well as tagging things in events – its autoattack cleaves 5 targets making it very valuable.

Edited to add: Gear wise, just concentrate on having gear that is at your level. You’ll be going through stuff so quickly the actual stats won’t matter as much. Generally speaking though always look for stuff that at least has Power on it, and preferably Power+Precision, Power+Vitality, or Power+Toughness. Eventually you’ll get access to 3-stat gear around level 55 or so, at which point you want to prioritize Power+Precision+Critical Damage, Power+Precision+Toughness, and Power+Critical Damage+Vitality.

I can’t stand the cone. If you’re in melee and attacking a monster, you have to deselect the monster, face an ally you want to heal, and then use it. It’s extremely clunky. IMO it should be omnidirectional, and making it a consecration sounds like an even better idea. Drop it on the ground like that Necromancer healing well. That would be neato.

Yeah I really liked Spirit Weapons back in the day. They did need a change, though – they were super exploitable. You could channel the cast, go through a tower gate in WvW, finish casting outside, and run back in and have 45 seconds of unkillable harassment against anyone attacking the gate. It was absurd and there was no counter to it because it was immune to CC and damage. Nasty nasty. You could also sometimes straight up summon it through walls.

Thankfully the developers are considering a buff to it, reducing the cooldown to 10 seconds for the December patch. But even then it’s not really worth taking.