Guild Wars 2

http://tinyurl.com/cys8xwu

This is the build I’m running on my 80. Gear is a combo of knights and clerics (maybe one or two berserkers for crit).

I mainly PvE, but may start dungeoning soon. In group fights, about halfway, I use all my focuses and then hit renewed focus.

Hmm, gw2build editor won’t save, it looks like. (edit: now it seems to work, but here is what I’m running:)

Greatsword
Shelter/Retreat/Purging Flames/Contemplation of Purity/Renewed Focus

30 Shattered Aegis/Greatsword Power/Zealous Blade
30 Searing Flames/Shimmering Defense/Blind Exposure
5
5
0

Wow, my build is so amazing it has left everyone speechless!

Armor
Knight armor generally is for damage related builds and Cleric for healing, though that should be obvious. Look at your build. You have no healing related traits or utilities. Zealous Blade does not get more powerful with healing power. It will always be 25HP. If you’re using a Staff to heal yourself or others, you’re better off aiming for a stronger supportive build. With your build, I would focus on a combination of Knight and Berserker until you find an area that can survive well in combat and deal a lot of damage.

Traits
You have a 30/30/5/5/0 build, which is okay. Vigorous Precision (with Knight armor) will allow you to maintain Vigor for the most dodges you can have. It’s a good method for some added defense in an offensive build.

However, Searing Flames is not a good PvE ability. Yes, it removes a boon every 20 seconds. However, mobs rarely have a removable boon that greatly affects their difficulty. Without changing your secondary weapon, there isn’t much else to support your build in Radiance, so it’s probably the best last resort.

You appear to be focusing heavily on applying burning for that 10% damage bonus. However, you can just as easily get an additional 10% damage in Zeal if you drop Shattered Aegis. The effect lasts 2 seconds (about 2.25 with 30 points in Zeal). The other two in Zeal are good enough to support the rest of the build.

Upgrades
Now, you don’t mention runes or sigils. You could always pick up Runes of the Flame Legion for an extra 5% damage to burning targets, Runes of Stength for 5% more damage under the effects of might,or Runes of the Scholar for 10% more damage while above 90% health (rare). If you’re thinking, why might? Try swapping to 30/30/0/5/5 as Inspired Virtue applies 3 stacks of might when you use Virtue of Justice (which you are obviously using a lot).

If you’re looking for a good sigil, try Sigil of Blood if your critical hit rate is decent (around 35-45%). It may not heal for very much, but it does damage the opponent as well. I would recommend Sigil of Fire, but I can’t find any evidence that it applies burning.

Utilities
I can see why you’re using Retreat. Aegis (which in turn burns) and Swiftness makes it easy to move through combat and chase enemies. Purging Flames applies burning and cleans conditions (should you need it). It also cures conditions every second of the duration. However, I don’t see much use in Contemplation of Purity. Yes, it breaks stuns and converts conditions, but PvE combat rarely has that many negative conditions on you at once. I’d recommend Judge’s Intervention instead. It effectively gets you into combat faster and starting with that main effect you desire, burning. It also breaks stuns, so you can keep that ability.

Shelter is a good choice. If you find yourself actually needing some condition removal, you could always take Healing Signet instead and swap your traits to Perfect Inscriptions to removal twice as many. That, of course, is optional. Renewed Focus is also your best bet for an Elite skill.

I hope this helps you out. It sounds like a very solid damage build.

Alright, I’m not going to pull punches here: there are a fewthings that could be done better. Don’t take this as a personal insult (it’s not intended as such). Guardian has a lot of traits that look awesome on paper, but in practice generally don’t play out well, or have other limitations that interfere with them; you’ve unfortunately managed to select quite a few of these. Here’s a few basic critiques, starting off with the good:

The Good

• I see what you’re doing with a burn-focused build, and you can certainly do it effectively. You have the potential to set a given target on fire and keep it burning until it’s dead, or nearly so. You also get to do 10% extra damage to the flaming enemies, and you can back that up a bit further with what will probably end up averaging about 5 stacks of vulnerability, for an average of 15% extra damage, plus the 5% extra from greatsword power for a total of around 20% bonus damage.
• Virtue of Justice refreshes on kill, causes 6.5 seconds of burning on next hit from each ally, blinds enemies in an AoE, and causes 3 stacks of vulnerability per use. Very strong.
• Symbols are fairly strong, with your trait setup, and you’ve got a couple of them.

The Bad

• Shattered Aegis’s burn lasts for two seconds. That will get two ticks of 403 damage off per aegis pop, given your base 300 condition damage. You have between 4-5 procs of Aegis over a fairly long fight, maximum, causing (in a best case scenario) around 4030 damage, likely spread across multiple targets. Considering the tougher mobs in dungeons tend to have HP scales well into the tens or hundreds of thousands, using a major trait to gain a very situational maximum of 4030 damage to a single target every 60ish seconds is not ideal.
• Zealous Blade’s heal is tiny (25 health per hit at max level), and doesn’t scale at all with healing power. In fact, it’s so small that it might as well not be there; it would take something like 40 hits to heal one autoattack’s worth of damage from even the weaker PvE enemies. By the time you get 40 hits in, a fight will likely be over (or close to it). You can get a far superior version of this effect with foods, even the cheaper varieties of them.
• Searing Flames is pretty nice, but the 20-second cooldown is painfully long. As far as I’m concerned, this trait wouldn’t be overpowered if it had a 1-second cooldown instead of 20; as it is, it’s less useful than other traits in the line.
• Shimmering Defense is quite lethal, given its ability to apply 7 seconds of burning in an AoE, for 2821 burning per target on up to 5 targets. However, it has a 60-second cooldown, bringing its total maximum DPS with your gear down to 47, and that’s assuming it triggers exactly every 60 seconds. It also only triggers at 25% health—a situation you’d rather not be in, most of the time in dungeons. In dungeons, being at 25% health means you’re going to die the next time a baddie decides you’d be tasty with ketchup.
• You have only one stunbreak on a 60-second cooldown, and no stability. A lot of dungeon enemies have a tendency to incapacitate you and then use the Skill of Ultimate Player Obliteration on you. The more stunbreaks and ways of avoiding the incapacitation and/or followup damage you have, the more likely you’ll be to survive such things.

Conceptual Critique
I like where you’re going with the build. However, I don’t think it plays to the Guardian’s strengths particularly well. Other classes can apply burning; two or three of them can do it significantly better than we can.

I notice you’ve gone with somewhatdefensive gear, and offensive traits. However, the Guardian’s most powerful traits are actually in the defensive and class specialty lines. Altruistic Healing (Valor, 30 points) is an utterly amazing trait; it makes Zealous Blade look like a sick joke. Heck, you actually heal more when using greatsword attacks with Altruistic Healing than you do with Zealous Blade. Likewise, Pure of Voice (Honor, 30 points) is completely amazing, and with the other traits in its line can be used to nearly completely negate the effects of conditions party-wide (and believe me, in many dungeon scenarios this is of crucial importance!). I would recommend taking more defensive traits, and using gear to shore up your offensive abilities.

The 5-point Virtues trait is so amazingly powerful that it’s almost never worth giving it up. Consider, even in your build, that instead of taking Zealous Blade (almost entirely worthless), you could put 5 points into Virtues to make each pop of Virtue of Justice give you and your party 3 stacks of might, for a total of 105 power and 105 condition damage.

Anyway, just some general thoughts and critique—feel free to use or not use as you like. I can link you to my own build if you’re so inclined, or you can take a look at the Altruistic Healing build that’s stickied in this forum for another great idea.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll be making some adjustments now. I figured my build had some issues.