[GW2] Crest Economics

At the moment I'm rocking all Explorer's armour. As a guardian, that means that my health is relatively low - ideally once I've managed to get my legendary weapon I will switch to using something a little more useful - probably Clerics (Power, Toughness, Healing Power), but I'm debating over what runes I should be rocking.  Having looked through them I can see a number of attractive options for a healing-focused guardian such as myself:

The rune of the Guardian (with all 5 runes attached) would result in a total 165 Toughness, 50 Healing Power and 1 second of burning on my enemy when I block an attack. An interesting offer, but I'd lose a lot of the power which I have enjoyed even by using my Pirate's runes (which focus power and MF) and whilst I don't plan on focusing on DPS, it is nice to be able to contribute.

The rune of Mercy focuses on giving advantages to aiding downed players - but if I'm having to spend all my time resurrecting people, perhaps I'm not doing my job properly?

There's a number of healing power focused runes on the market, each of which result in a 165 healing power boost in total, with a number of minor effects (boon duration, gaining various boons when you're hit, summoning birds etc). On the face of it, these would look like the most attractive options, but again they don't really jump out at me - I can spam boons so fast that a longer duration isn't particularly attractive (except, perhaps for swiftness in WvW), similarly, with all the boons flying around, what use is one more when taking a hit? Finally, who wants to summon a pesky bird which will just stay in combat when you want to fall back etc? No, no thanks, I'll pass.

So, I've been looking at the severely under-utilised crests. All crests follow the same schema in terms of dealing out stat points (bar Magic Find): +20 for the main stat, +14 for two minor stats.

The stats break down as follows:

• Magi - Healing, Precision, Vitality
• Rabid - Condition, Precision, Toughness
• Shaman - Vitality, Healing, Power
• Soldier - Power, Toughness, Vitality
• Traveler - Magic Find, Power, Precision

As a guardian, I'm not hugely interested in Condition damage, so I'll exclude Rabid straight away. I'll also eliminate Traveler as I'm moving away from Magic Find.

Having eliminated those, it becomes a toss up between Magi, Shaman and Soldier. I'll break down the stats below as if I had a crest on each piece of armour:

• Magi x5: +100 Healing Power, +70 Precision, +70 Vitality
• Shaman x5: +100 Vitality, +70 Healing Power, +70 Power
• Soldiers x5: +100 Power, +70 Toughness, +70 Vitality

So, when you slot Crests over Runes you sacrifice +65 on your main stat and the various secondary effects, and instead you get the 2x +70 on the minor stats. Seeing as there aren't really any of the secondary effects which jump out of me - currently going for a crest set-up is looking quite attractive.

Does anyone actually use these things? They're a pittance on the trading post. Once I've finished my legendary weapon and bought T3 human cultural armour, I'll be completely skint and I'll probably only be able to afford the crests - which, looking at the stats above, might not be such a bad idea.

ps. Information liberally stolen from Tasha - who I'm sure won't mind...