Guild Wars 2

What does “burst” mean? I have seen skills and talents that reference burst but I haven’t seen skills labelled as burst skills.

That is a warrior mechanic, burst skills are the ones you spend adrenaline to use , the F1 skill each warrior weapon have.

EDIT: check this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burst

Sounds like you’re playing a warrior. Adrenaline is the mechanic unique to warriors, and the skill you use when you have adrenaline is your burst skill.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burst

EDIT: D’aw. Ninja’d.

In general to ‘burst’ something means to output high dmg in a short interval. For instance warrior hundred blades—numbers like 42k in 3.5sec. Warriors are very good at burst dps which is probably why they have a wiki entry for ‘burst’ which also means to expend all adren in a single blow (F1 for us usually).

As well as the warrior’s F1 skills you might occasionally see players talking about burst damage as a general type/strategy.

This isn’t an official term so I don’t think you’ll see it used in-game. It’s also called spike damage and means doing a lot of damage in a short space of time, as opposed to ‘damage over time’ which can be done from things like conditions or simply spacing attacks out.

Some players will set their character up specifically to do burst damage, which has the advantage of being very hard to defend against through healing or regeneration because it all hits at once. The downside is that you can’t keep it up. You hit one target or area and then have to wait for your skills to recharge or other cooldowns to end before you can do it again.