Quick question about conditions
Bear in mind that I haven’t played guardian since HoT launched, but I’d guess that the burning is applied when the attack hits and the pulses are just for vigor and/or direct damage.
If you’ve traited into Zeal then the symbol has a chance to apply burning on each pulse so that could be averaging out at 1 stack from symbolic power and the initial 2 stacks from the skill.
That makes a lot of sense thanks for clearing that up