Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Selfless daring

 Selfless Daring, which heals all nearby allies whenever the guardian dodges. In its base form it heals for 129, which is not that impressive, but the trait has a very impressive 1:1 scaling with Healing Power. What does this mean? It means that if you have a high Healing Power, each of your dodges will heal all allies within 600 range for 1.5k health. This alone inspired me to see how far I could push the guardian support capabilities.

I will be referring to this build from now on: http://gw2skills.net...4lwLbXuukdt/Y B 

The formula for calculating the health return of Selfless Daring is ‘Healing Power+129’. This means, that if you stack the highest possible amount of healing power (currently 1373), the trait will heal for 1502 health. The endurance it takes to dodge is 50 (half the bar), which takes 10 seconds to recharge. This means you can dodge 6 times every minute for a total healing of 1502*6=9012/min. That’s not very impressive on its own. But what happens if we equip Sigil of Superior Energy on both of our off-hands? This means that every time we swap weapons, we get a free dodge. The amount of dodges we can perform each minute is now 12, for a total of 1502*12=18024 healing/min. It’s getting better.

With 30 points into the honor line, we can pick up the trait Battle Presence, which makes nearby allies gain our Virtue of Resolve as well. With our healing power of 1373, our passive virtue heals for 166 (Formula: 0.06*Healing Power+84. The virtue ticks every second, which totals 166*60=9960 healing/min. With the trait Absolute Resolve, this is further increased by 25%, which sadly only is applied to the guardian himself. One cool thing though is, that the virtue is still applied to allies even though you activated it and have it on cooldown.

It’s getting better yet. With the mace as main weapon, every 3rd auto-attack hit heals all nearby allies for 582 (Formula: 0.18*Healing Power+335). The auto-attack chain takes 3.25 seconds to perform, which means you can perform it 60/3.25=18.5 times every minute, for a total of 18.5*582=10767 healing/min. The mace auto-attack actually hits harder than the scepter's auto-attack, and you have a few traits to increase damage as well. Elusive Power (10% when not full endurance) & Power of the Virtuous (1% extra damage per boon).

The mace also includes this skill called Symbol of Faith that places a symbol which pumps out regeneration every tick. Even though the duration is 4 seconds, it actually ticks 5 times. With your +60% increased boon duration, this means that you get 8 seconds of regeneration on an 8 seconds cooldown, which allows you to maintain almost permanent regeneration, except for the 1 second cast time the symbol has. You can easily fill this with “Hold the Line!” though. It’s With 1373 healing, your regeneration heals for 302 (Formula: 0,125*Healing Power+130) each tick for a total of 302*60=18120 healing/min. With the Writ of Exaltation trait, you symbol is 50% larger, which allows you to dodge inside of it and makes it much more beneficial for you allies to use.

Putting those four together, you have a total of 18024+9960+10767+18120=56871 healing/min for you and your allies. Now, I understand that this number is not very relevant: You want be able to use your auto-attack and Symbol of Faith at the same time, it’s unlikely that your allies will fully benefit from your Symbol of Faith and you can’t use any skills while dodging either. The actual number is probably closer to 40k/min, but that’s still quite impressive considering all of it is AoE and you are dealing damage while healing.

The healing from these 4 methods is just one of the many useful things you can bring to a team. I’ll once again be referring to the build above:
  • 50% upkeep on protection through “Hold the Line!” and Shield of Judgment and a 8s protection on Virtue of Courage.
  • 33% upkeep on stability through “”Stand Your Ground!” .
  • 67% upkeep on retaliation through “Stand Your Ground!” and Virtue of Justice (with Virtue of Retribution trait).
  • Tome of Courage(30 seconds thanks to Elite Focus): Spammable 1687 AoE heal, 16 seconds of AoE protection and regeneration on a 15 second cooldown, x2 3 second dazes and of course the full heal.
I know some people will be worried about the low health pool, but I honestly don’t think that will be much of an issue. With 3000 armor, you are very resilient to direct damage, and you have enough stability and stun breakers to counter those heavy burst builds. The passive condition removal from Purity and Signet of Resolve along with the on-demand condition removal from Contemplation of Purity and Virtue of Resolve should also be enough to handle most condition pressure, except if you have multiple necromancers, engineers and rangers on your back. Your dodges make it very difficult to effectively chain anything on you to take you down fast, and honestly, with the heals you can end up having much more than 20k health, depending on the length of the encounter.

This turned out to be more of a guide than I had originally planned, but oh well. I will see if I can get some tournament footage in the next few days, as I’m curious as to how the build performs in such an environment. Thanks for reading, let me know your own thoughts/ideas on this. 

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