The first character I rolled and the first character I took to 80 is my Charr Guardian. I cycled through so many builds, looking for that good balance between heal and damage, melee and ranged, and offense and defense. I settled for this build.
Traits:
Valor 30, Honor 30, Zeal 10
This gives me + 300 to Toughness, Critical Damage, Vitality, and Healing Power. What do the traits in these 2 trees give me? I have 2 builds from these trait lines that I bounce between depending on the party composition and whatever fancy that takes me.
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Meditation healing:
meditation mastery gives me 20% faster recharge for meditations while Monk's focus heals me whenever I use meditations. The heals from Monk's focus is no joke, when I started this trait line when I was 70s, meditations were healing me for 1k+. Now that I'm lvl 80 with 1400+ healing power, it heals me for 2400+ per meditation.
Utilities:
#7: Judge's Intervention: aside from healing me a lot, it is a teleport + burn + AoE.
#8: Contemplation of Purity: aside from helaing me a lot, it breaks stuns and converts conditions into boons. I often interchange this with "Save yourselves!" but this one recharges quicker and heals faster.
#9: Smite Condition: reacharges in 16 seconds because of Meditation mastery, and cures 1 condition. This skills saved me many times, bringing hp back from the brink because of Monk's Focus.
As a whole, the skills I chose for Meditation healing allow me a modicum of damage while keeping my Guardian free from conditions, and heals him for a lot of HP which enable him to stay in the fight longer. Smite condition also deals AoE damage, stronger when you are suffering from a condition. This is also my go to trait build for WvWvW, because it is a chaser build, conditions remover, and uber heals which makes him very hard to kill and hard to escape from.
This trait line is also has an allowance for what weapon you use. For the 2nd major trait, I often use Retributive Armor, which grants 5% of toughness as bonus to precision. It is not much, but it is a nice buff for more crit, which synergizes with the +300 crit damage that Valor gives at 30. Another option is Defender's flame which grants 100% chance to burn attackers when blocking. It can also be Honorable shield, which grants +90 toughness and 20% faster recharge for shield skills, for when I feel tanky. It can also be Mace mastery that adds 5% to mace damage, or Glacial Heart which adds a chill AoE effect to hammer crits.
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The 10 Zeal meshes with these traits well, because you can trait to add 10% more damage to burning foes (which goes well with Defender's Flame and Judge's Intervention, Virtue of Justice), or trait to add vulnerability when you immobilize a target (Hammer #3 skill, Scepter #3 skill). For when I feel like it, Zeal 10 also gives me access to Spirit weapon mastery, which gives 20% faster recharge for Spirit weapon skills.
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Boon Healing:
Guardians love to buff allies, from shouts, traits, active virtues, and their symbols (will talk about this later). Valor 30 and Honor 10, and if you distribute 5 points from Zeal 10 to Virtue 5 or flat out change it to Virtue 10, will allow the Guardian to apply a LOT of boons. There is a formula for the heals per boon and a lot of other things, I encourage you to search and read them. The key traits to boon heaing are Altruistic Healing (Valor 30) which heals you for EACH BOON you apply to allies (Guardian included, since you count as an ally)and Superior Aria (Honor 10) which grants 20% faster recharge for shouts. I dunno if this is accurate, but I also read that Altruistic Healing doesn't trigger for adding stacks of existing boons, meaning you heal for each NEW boon that you apply, not for stacking duration or intensity of currently applied boons.
Utilities:
#7: "Hold the line!": grants regeneration and protection to allies within 600
#8: "Save yourselves!": grants ALL THE BOONS to the guardian, breaks stun
#9: "Stand your ground!": grants stability and retaliation, breaks stun
The build is pretty, basic. You need healing? Pop a utility skill, usually "Hold the line!", because it grants regeneration and protection, usually followed by "Stand your ground!" which adds stability and retaliation, which totals to 4 boons. You need a lot of healing RIGHT NOW, then pop "Save Yourselves!" which applies 7 boons (which includes regeneration). If it does work for every NEW boon you apply, then it is better to not be redundant with the boons.
Weapon choice is very important for this build, unlike the meditation build which can be used for any weapon. This build shines when used with weapons that grant boons, namely:
Greatsword: chain 3 of #1 skill grants might and #4 skill grants retaliation to allies on the symbol.
Hammer: chain 3 of #1 skill applies a symbol that grants protection and when comboed with #2 skill, also applies area retaliation
Staff: #3 skill applies a symbol that grants swiftness and damages enemies, #4 skill applies might and heals all nearby allies
Mace: #2 skill applies a symbol that grants regeneration and damages enemies
Sword:
Valor's 2nd major trait is as flexible as that of the Meditation Healing build.
Virtue 5 opens minor trait that also grants a boon to allies when using the active skill of the virtue: Justice = might, Resolve = regeneration, Courage = protection. Of course you sacrifice some of the damage synergy, but you open up other avenues for granting boons.
As a Charr, we have a racial utility "Battle Roar" that grants might and fury. I sometimes use this instead of "Stand your ground!" for more damage.
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Honor 30 also has other options aside from supporting the boon heal build with Superior Aria. I often go for the Symbolist build, traiting Symbols last longer, Symbols are Larger, and Symbols heals allies. This meshes so well with Mace, Hammer, and Staff because they have skills that constantly and reliably apply symbols (as mentioned above). This adds healing to symbols which already grants boons and damages enemies. :D
Honor 30, 2nd major trait, can also be traited to grant a 20% faster recharge for 2 handed weapons with Two Handed Mastery, or granting might when you crit with Empowering Might. 3rd major trait can be Battle Presence, that grants the passive regen of Virtue of Resolve to all allies nearby. Honor's 2nd minor trait also heals whenever you dodge, so that is another bonus heal. :D
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With these builds in mind, I geared towards Cleric, increasing my Healing Power, for both my weapons and armors. I usually run with a greatsword, staff, hammer, scepter, torch, mace, and shield in my arsenal so that I can plan ahead or switch weapons when a particular combination does not work, which is very rare, because I often win during battles of attrition because of my insane heals.
If I am more damage minded, I go meditation + greatsword. Support = boon + staff. Damage soaking = boon (which can remove conditions with Honor 30, shouts converting conditions to boons) + mace and shield. It is a pretty flexible build, and I like it very much. :D
» Edited on: 2012-11-02 14:11:31