8 replies to this topic

[Aodan]

Support/Tank Guardian (BWE1/Stress)
[Make sure to read the Info at the bottom]

This is to discuss the overall improvements or changes that people feel should happen to either bring the Support Guardian more Support, Control, or Offense.

Here I will outline the basic build/play style. Please comment on what you think Anet should do to shift Guardian as "Support/Tank" as this is their most efficient build. Our only weakness in this type of play is Conditions.

Support: focuses around giving boons, and controlling damage for not just you, but your team as well. You should come to understand that you as a Support Guardian want to optimize your team. Our support comes in two forms: Offensive and Defensive. We are more heavily Defensive.

Support Offensive: Blinds, Knock Back, Wards, Control (Immobilize)

Support Defensive: Shouts, Wards, Consecrations are almost all defensive and semi-reaction based support. You can premeditate your uses, as you learn to read obvious attempts for burst or laying damage.

Tank: Focuses on the overall durability of you in absorbing damage, as well as mitigating it. Luckily, majority of your Support affects/helps achieve this but also what runes/sigils and trait stats make a huge difference in being just a "support" and not a "tank".

Role/Priorities in sPvP: Your job is to help clear points, by this, I mean that you want to keep opposing players off the point to either keep it from getting Neutralized or to further your own Capturing. Of course you want to be there buffing and helping your team, but the maps are Objective based, thus you want to own/control the Objectives. If you can absorb, take damage for your team, you should at any chance you can (body blocking or using your SoW to take a projectile)

Edited by Aodan, 15 May 2012 - 05:35 AM.

[Amityy]

Cool build, I would suggest that you could pick something better than Binding Jeopardy though, such as one of the shield traits. The reason I say this is that you don't really have anything else in the build to either boost the effectiveness of vunerability (condition duration) or being stacked for damage so you can fit your burst window in the duration. Did you get a chance to try it out during the stress test and/or have a video of it?

[Aodan]

Amityy, on 15 May 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

Cool build, I would suggest that you could pick something better than Binding Jeopardy though, such as one of the shield traits. The reason I say this is that you don't really have anything else in the build to either boost the effectiveness of vunerability (condition duration) or being stacked for damage so you can fit your burst window in the duration. Did you get a chance to try it out during the stress test and/or have a video of it?

Video:
although this isn't the exact same build, this was a much earlier build on the first day of BWE1

The reason for Binding Jeopardy is the again apply vulnerability, as this is a support guardian, this is not aimed at MY burst window, but more of keeping up increased damage on the target/focus. Many other profession can and will apply vulnerability onto the target, this just helps continue the trend and to increase their damage more then mine, as I'm the Support/Tank Guardian, not the one responsible for burst/etc. Esp in burst cases, any stacks of vulnerability will help more then a small increase to my own damage.

I would only switch it out for Firey Wrath or Shattered Aegis, SA is too unreliable unless I bank on it after popping Virtue of Courage. Fiery Wrath is good, but again the point is not to increase my own damage, but to further stack vulnerability with other professions. Also one of the Sigils suggested for the Scepter is Peril which is 10% duration on Vulnerability ( 0.5sec)

To combat the issue with a Support Guardian not having any boons that really increase damage apart from Swiftness, that Stand Your Ground! Shout should have Quickness added to it for a duration of 2-3 secs, to make it a more viable choice over Retreat! or give you a more offensive (support burst) shout.

Edited by Aodan, 15 May 2012 - 05:56 AM.

[doooknoookem]

Is there a reason you chose Sword-Shield and Scepter-Focus? When I was playing, I felt that Sword-Focus and Scepter-Shield was a bit easier to use. With Sword and focus on the same set, you get both blinds without need to change weapons, while the 5 skill (makes a shield that absorbs 3 hits or blows up) seems to compliment sword well due to being in the fray and the blink strike (2 skill on sword) makes it synergize nicely. Scepter-Shield also lets you continue autoattacking from within the shield bubble. I completely agree with your choice of support abilities (retreat, hold and sanctuary) as I found those to be always useful.

[Aodan]

doooknoookem, on 15 May 2012 - 06:02 AM, said:

Is there a reason you chose Sword-Shield and Scepter-Focus? When I was playing, I felt that Sword-Focus and Scepter-Shield was a bit easier to use. With Sword and focus on the same set, you get both blinds without need to change weapons, while the 5 skill (makes a shield that absorbs 3 hits or blows up) seems to compliment sword well due to being in the fray and the blink strike (2 skill on sword) makes it synergize nicely. Scepter-Shield also lets you continue autoattacking from within the shield bubble. I completely agree with your choice of support abilities (retreat, hold and sanctuary) as I found those to be always useful.

The reason I chose Sword-Shield is because, although Sword/Focus would give you access to two blinds, most of the time apart from focusing a target, you oftentimes use Flashing Blade to either close the cap, or reassert yourself on the point to follow up with SoA, to clear the points. I've done this tons of times on Clock Tower and Fortress and found it to give people WTF moments as they scramble to either get back on the point or reassert themselves in the situation.

Also the damage output with Sw/Sh is a bit higher then Sw/Focus. Also with Sh, I'll often use SoJ before/after Hold the Line to keep good up-time on protection for me/team.

The reason for Scepter/Focus is that gives me more "range" with my whole weapon set. True you can use the Scepter to spam 1/2, but even in SoA if you start attacking with your Scepter, unless your talking about a bug, SoA will drop as it's a channeled skill, thus making shield even more unpractical to use with how spam-y scepter is. Also this gives you a higher ability to apply more invul stacks as you have both Chains and Ray to use at a "range"

[Amityy]

A figured as much, and I agree that the support paradigm has that offensive aspect such as boosting allies damage and weakening foes. My point was more along the lines of efficiency, vulnerability on enemies is a good option, but is there any other way to achieve the same thing with better results hence the suggestions. You could also pick up Pure of Voice, where all shouts remove conditions, could be quite effective but I'll leave that up to your discretion. I enjoyed the video (Y)

[Aodan]

Amityy, on 15 May 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

A figured as much, and I agree that the support paradigm has that offensive aspect such as boosting allies damage and weakening foes. My point was more along the lines of efficiency, vulnerability on enemies is a good option, but is there any other way to achieve the same thing with better results hence the suggestions. You could also pick up Pure of Voice, where all shouts remove conditions, could be quite effective but I'll leave that up to your discretion. I enjoyed the video (Y)

As far as I know, Pure of Voice is a good option but doesn't stack with Runes of Soldier, which should be the Runes you use for a Support Guardian (It does the same thing) if it ever does stack, then defiantly would be swapped out over Battle Presence. (Runes and Sigils are mention on the builds page)

If you know a truly better way to optimize the guardians debuffing potential beyond this build, please enlighten me.

Edited by Aodan, 15 May 2012 - 06:47 AM.

[Brutaly]

Nice thread.

I played around with with focus on area domination on control points and this is what i ended up with.
http://www.gw2tools....abaa;dWce;ZiRhY

I choose to go sword/focus and mace/shield and got it to work really nice tbh. Originally i had scepter/focus in this one but i found that i liked mace more and it also has nice area "control" thru traited symbols and protection/block/kb, the last one is beyond awesome in crowded situation. If you use it and then put down mace symbol people dont go in there, it is a simple as that.

I used pow/vit/tuf wich gave me really nice non crit dps.

I balanced this with stones in my jewelry and weighed in at 20055 in hp. After that i added runes and 5% crit sigil in each weapon and topped it off with endurance sigils in the offhand. What i will do next bwe is to test how the sigils that tap life on crit work, as a dark templar in age of conan i know life tap can be just superstrong and add even more survivability.

Think i had about 21% critchance and an other 15% from traits and most of the time, thru swapping and critting, i could do 4 straight dodges, which is super imo.

This hit hard also, 2k hits from the 3rd step in the chain on sword and even more with the mace. Focus hit for 3.9k when crit, The reason why i thought damage is/was interesting was that i would like to have the ability to scare people of as well and so i did.

What i would like to be changed?

In this particular setup i would like to see the casting time on the mace symbol to be just as fast as GS symbol and that cd on shield of judgement and ray of judgement decreased to 20 sec. These three small changes would do wonders to our weapons as support tools.

I used sword as my main weapon when when fighting equal numbers or if we outnumbered them and mace when outnumbered or i wanted max support on the team.

As utlility i choose to focus on meditations and this setup was enough to keep me relatively free from conditions and also gave me more aoe and mobility. These arent as good in buffing your team but tbh i cant find any other setup that gives me as much survivability. I am thinking of switching one of them for retreat to get a bit more potential when it comes to groupbuffs.

To sum it up, i cleared points and defended points, its not as sturdy as OPs build but it can definitely handle a 2 on one for minutes and if i add retreat i get a groupbuff and ofc the ability to run out of dodge.

Edited by Brutaly, 17 May 2012 - 08:52 PM.

[Amityy]

Ahh I missed the Soldier Runes part. I went through rune list and I don't see a better alternative which would allow you to move Shout Condition removal to traits and pick up something else. Maybe Shimmering defense over Binding Jeopardy, that way you can get a blind on them during a crucial time which will also turn into vunerability. Alongside that, you get renewed Justice which syncs up with your Justice is Blind (giving further opportunity for vulnerability), Inspired Virtues and Virtue of Retribution (not that retaliation counts for much)

Looking through this build I wish they gave better options for booning allies though. Would love see something like the effects of Martyr but castable on an ally, most of what we have is based around retaliation and protection.