Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow Guild Wars Guardians,

Currently I am busy revising the functionality of a condition damage Guardian for high level fractals where toughness scales into play or pve casual adventuring, and it came across that although they have a large amount of traits that manipulate burning, said traits are not as strong as other classes. I would like to explore as to why this is so?

I understand that burning is a powerful condition, so “Amplified Wrath” is only a 15% increase unlike Rangers and Thieves gaining a 20 – 30% bonus on their conditions, but “Kindled Zeal” (10% of Power to Condition Damage) seems weak compared to the Necro’s “Target The Weak” (13% of Precision to Condition Damage).

“Supreme Justice” also seems under-performing, besides its reduced attacks to trigger the virtue, as it only adds one second of Burning to the base, meaning it cannot be increased by Condition Duration effects.

Is this meant to be as it is a balance issue?

Tl;DR: I want to blaze up some Mordrem, where is the balance among professions so I can set fire to the plants?

Thanks in advance for all feedback.

The Mole that Rolls

Seeing as burning is the only real condition Guardians can stack, I don’t see a problem in making it possible for them to make a condi/hybrid build out of it. This would however open up a channel for those burn guards to make a appearance in pvp again which people will QQ about , buuuuuuut im all for your idea bruh.

Remember vulnerability increases condi damage now and Guards can stack a lot of it.

I don’t play a burn Guardian so I could be completely wrong, but the disparity between Kindled Zeal and Target the Weak makes sense if both the Guardian and the Necro are switching to Viper armor instead of Sinister. Since power is the major stat of viper while precision is a minor stat. Also Supreme Justice seems like it’s design for all Guardian specs, to allow the Guardian to keep up burning easier allowing better synergry with other traits that give +7% damage, 10% crit, long lasting fury (which for guardians makes up for the smaller crit chance on Viper).

1) Burning is naturally much more damaging than Poison or Bleeding. The disparity is inconsequential
2) Kindled Zeal is a Master trait while Target the Weak is a Grandmaster. The percentages for stat increase traits are normalized across the entire game
3) Supreme Justice is built around passive procs as opposed to the active. You’ll deal much more Burning without activating VoJ, especially once you combine it with Permeating Wrath
4) Guardians can already stack obscene amounts of Burning. When put together in a cohesive build, your Burning damage is a significant amount of the total.

In extreme cases you could be looking at something like Glass Burn Guard

A) Run DH with supreme justice and permeating wrath
B) Take the DH traits that Cause vulnerability on cripple, and the trait that adds cripple to VoJ’s passive
C) Place the whirl trap in a group and walk away like a boss.

Ghotistyx.6942:

1) Burning is naturally much more damaging than Poison or Bleeding. The disparity is inconsequential
2) Kindled Zeal is a Master trait while Target the Weak is a Grandmaster. The percentages for stat increase traits are normalized across the entire game
3) Supreme Justice is built around passive procs as opposed to the active. You’ll deal much more Burning without activating VoJ, especially once you combine it with Permeating Wrath
4) Guardians can already stack obscene amounts of Burning. When put together in a cohesive build, your Burning damage is a significant amount of the total.

In extreme cases you could be looking at something like Glass Burn Guard

Thanks for the feedback Ghotistyx,

1) I agree with the disparity here, no problem.

2) Understandable, their’s is a GM Minor as well as adding an extra effect (the crit chance).

3) Yes I will never activate this ability sans before a boss fight to give the team a quick burst so that its passive is ready when we start. However my issues is it adds 1 tick of burning to that which cannot be increased by burn duration. Seem strange to me, I would rather prefer a more active effect, such as the effect being able to hit x times instead of once per player or increase the stacks it applies. Just my opinion.

4) Yea Burning is the guardians forte when it comes to conditions, although it is their only damaging condition. Would prefer if you could spec for this a little better. I.E: if you don’t take Zeal, Radiance and Virtues you can’t burn anything for an extended period, and when you do it doesn’t feel consistent. Maybe i just need to tweak the build a bit.

That burning build is very similar to the one I am working on, once again thanks for the feedback!

Just saying with Kindled Zeal you should take into account that it converts power which will be a higher number than pecision in the first place, and will get scaled by might.

Also changes to the glass burn guard build for higher damage:

Hammer Spirit Weapon instead of signet.
Sigil of Air/Fire.
Condi duration food and utility buff.

Sinister gear with zerk weapon is fantastic choice for armour for burn guardian. I run my own build that is hybrid of damage and burn: http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vVUQJARTnsABNdiddCWCBEEhlBiS+6z+z3KAq21MrATwGE-TxSBABTqEsl9HoW5XEXAgoV%2FBFdNgcIBm4AEoxBQAgnAQeHIASBAzEA-e

WOULD love to hear feedback

Mallis.4295:

Hammer Spirit Weapon instead of signet.
Sigil of Air/Fire.
Condi duration food and utility buff.

When you’re making a statement high numbers look prettier than what might actually be more effective.

That being said, I don’t know why thy food and utilities didn’t show up. Armor should also be Viper’s instead of Sinister for ~105% condition duration

Ghotistyx.6942:

Mallis.4295:

Hammer Spirit Weapon instead of signet.
Sigil of Air/Fire.
Condi duration food and utility buff.

When you’re making a statement high numbers look prettier than what might actually be more effective.

Not sure what you mean.
Hammer Spirit Weapon adds much more overall DPS than the condi signet. 90 ticks of burning and ~7000 physical base plus blast finishers iirc.
Sigil of Air/Fire count as hits for VoJ passive and are much larger DPS increases than any other sigil for burn guard. Fire on a single target is like twice as good as bursting.

Actually thinking about it Sigil of Geomancy does count as a hit for VoJ so I wonder if Earth does. Would be better for STDPS than Fire. Fire is amazing for AOE though.

Any opinion about Mischief sigil? I know it’s on swap but a guaranteed f1 + blind might wort it on a weapon set what has no blind to start with….

What about Incapatitation sigil on a DH’s support weapon? Do you think keeping up the vulnerability-cripple-damage boost traits worth a sigil slot?

Thank you!

Hello everyone,

thanks for the awesome feedback, I better understand the burn guardians style of play and what is required of it. I really like seeing all these build for guardian, especially the hybrid variations! Thanks to all of those who shared their ideas and insight.

Now down to business. I have made my own burning build for dungeons (more so fractals) and general free roam. I realised I hit the burn duration cap quite some time ago and changed some sigils and armour pieces out. Which leaves me wondering…

Can anyone tell me if Sigil of Earth counts as a strike towards VoJ proccing?

If so it would help immensely. If not maybe Geomancy can take its place.
Build is as follows
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAsfRlsAhqgYzQwSIQQEHxDVNA2yBwuBvwjmTxWcGB-TRCFAB+rShH7PEwTAoYlfAcCAcXfgAHCghVXRLlgkCAm1AA-e

Kind regards and thanks again!

Rollmole.4567:

Hello everyone,

thanks for the awesome feedback, I better understand the burn guardians style of play and what is required of it. I really like seeing all these build for guardian, especially the hybrid variations! Thanks to all of those who shared their ideas and insight.

Now down to business. I have made my own burning build for dungeons (more so fractals) and general free roam. I realised I hit the burn duration cap quite some time ago and changed some sigils and armour pieces out. Which leaves me wondering…

Can anyone tell me if Sigil of Earth counts as a strike towards VoJ proccing?

If so it would help immensely. If not maybe Geomancy can take its place.
Build is as follows
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAsfRlsAhqgYzQwSIQQEHxDVNA2yBwuBvwjmTxWcGB-TRCFAB+rShH7PEwTAoYlfAcCAcXfgAHCghVXRLlgkCAm1AA-e

Kind regards and thanks again!

it does not. it applies the effect when you crit without dealing an additional hit.
geomancy does work twords it.

however at the moment I would not recommend on or the other. From what I see you are going for 100% burn duration which is nice as is. basically geomancy will offer you only on additional stack of burn. thats quite low. and other options could work better imo. Forget sigil of earth I would rather run sigil of malice, or fragility(sp?), or even sigil of Air/fire on both weapons. Fire sigil is actually better when it hits more targets. so I take that any day over sigil of air.

Also I think the SW GS is not that good of a choice. I use it sometimes myself and with the change to damage taken its not half bad but in most situations its just too slow of an attack speed. in addition the swings of the GS do NOT count twoards F1 passiv proc which sucks.

otherwise it would be awsome! It still is a quite sustainable dps boost and with FMW the choice is overall solid. The downtime just aggrevates me.

Bash.7291:

A) Run DH with supreme justice and permeating wrath
B) Take the DH traits that Cause vulnerability on cripple, and the trait that adds cripple to VoJ’s passive
C) Place the whirl trap in a group and walk away like a boss.

This is your typical 1 trick pony situation that started with GS. The GS + Supreme + Permeat was very OP after HoT… until pugs finally got smart, players stopped stacking together, and people learned how to play.

If you can land these AoE damaging skills in a group then by all means. But trap burn guards definitely don’t out perform power DH unless you can hit multiple targets together at once. That said, core burn guards virt/rad/val is the second best guard spec imo.

Asmodal.6489:

Also I think the SW GS is not that good of a choice. I use it sometimes myself and with the change to damage taken its not half bad but in most situations its just too slow of an attack speed. in addition the swings of the GS do NOT count twoards F1 passiv proc which sucks.

Air/Fire are the highest DPS increasing sigils for condi guardian. Fire on single targets and air in AOE. Also spirit weapons don’t count as hits for VoJ but they apply 6 sec of burning per hit which is crazy good.