What stats should i stack for a Guardian that can DPS but survive?
Toughness is an excellent ‘hard to kill’ stat combined with utility skills that remove conditions (as those ignore armor/toughness).
As far as offense goes, power will help with the hits of your sword, but condition damage helps a lot too with every 5th hit causing burning (along with other abilities you can have to set stuff on fire). Consider that among conditions, burning damage is affected the most by condition damage (as it does not stack, but applies its damage instantly and ignores armor/toughness).
For highest possible dps you need to mix the right amount of precision with as much power as you can since due to the way probability works it will incur a diminishing return the higher you get, personally (though im thief but that does not really matter for this) i try to get enough precision for about 50% crit, yes that is every 2nd hit in general that will crit after that imo i don’t think you gain a lot more unless you can somehow reach 100% or very near it, but that would take INSANE amount of precisions. On the other hand since a crit is a multiplier of your dmg precision is useless if you don’t have enough power to back it up (or later on you can get some +critical dmg stuff as well)
edit: Shimond where you get the burning applies dmg instantly from? burning being a damaging condition is dmg over time http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning
(edited by GummiBear.2756)
What I mean is unlike bleeding for example you do not have to ‘ramp up’ the damage for it to hurt. Burning damage instantly hits as hard as it is going to hit when it ticks. Yes it is a damage over time…damage per second. Conditions hurt, very badly, very quickly in this game…when you build for it. Sword/Torch for guardian is an extremely fun and powerful (single and ae) damage spec.