First of all, thanks. Recent changes made this sort of spec worth a look again. My interest in it is more PvE oriented, but i intend to play with it in PvP as well.
My variation on it started a lot like yours…but in my testing I had NO trouble with 100% uptime, so I started dropping things like Radiant Fire. You could instead use powerful blades for 5% sword damage.
Also Shattered Aegis. It seems redundant. You can’t stack burning on top of burning to any useful effect…so you don’t need all that, imo.
This isn’t me trying to undermine the build…quite the contrary. But if you take out what’s extraneous, you have room for something else complimenting the build.
I’m still testing myself, but my own work revolves around sword crit. Right hand strength and its crit feeds the lovely empowering might and vigorous precision in the Honor tree. I went for shouts, capping my 30 honor with Pure of Voice.
Like I said, I’m still testing. I’m current at 10/30/0/30/0.
I guess my question for you is…if it only takes Zealot’s Fire and Virtue of Justice to keep burning up…why not branch away from skills/traits which simply refresh that same burning?
I love where you’re going, and you gave me a few ideas I hadn’t considered.
Carry on, sir.
You always have to keep in mind, that opponents can remove the burn, or just have aegis up. A Thief, for instance, can simply go into stealth to remove the burn. Also, you’ll want some extra burning for when you engage your next target. That +25% damage makes a difference, so it’s important to make sure you have burn on your target, when using your burst skills. I originally had more burn traits in the build too, but toned it down to what it is now.
Radiant Fire is mostly important for the shorter recharge time of torch. Zealot’s Flame has the hardest hitting burn damage, and Zealot’s Fire is the hardest hitting, single hit, skill, in the build.
Shattered Aegis is for when a foe attacks you first. It applies 2 seconds burning, and sets up your foe so he will take that +25% extra damage. A lot of players likes to attack once they think you’ve used all your abilities, and this is just a nice surprise to have. The build also has four sources of gaining aegis; Virtue of Courage passive, Virtue of Courage active, at 50% health, and when you rally. But mostly, I just like the idea of foes basically setting themselves on fire, just by touching you. You’d be surprised at how many players think they can chase you down as a Guardian, only to find out the hard way, that you’re actually playing a burst build. It’s good fun.
You could remove 10 trait points from Zeal, and put them into Valor, Honor, or Virtues, but that would just be taking away from the damage of the build, to gain more defense. Which is good if you wanted a more balanced build. But this build is aimed mostly towards damage, and so, it’s hard to justify taking away that power and condition duration from Zeal. If I didn’t need the extra toughness, and the precision from Retributive Armor, the build would actually be 30/30/10/0/0 instead, just to get as high damage stats as possible. When playing, I feel like having 2400 power is also a good place to be, damage wise. And I don’t I need more survivability either. I’m usually the one who pushes forward, by running strait into foes, and taking a lot of the damage (mostly thanks to all the boons). That’s not to say you can just mindlessly run into an enemy zerg with this build, though. It will have weaker durability then a “normal” Guardian build, but you can defiantly survive long enough to shatter an enemy zerg. Mostly because, for some reason, when players are on fire they tend to run away…
Glad to be of help ^^
80 Ranger | 80 Mesmer | 80 Thief | 80 Guardian | 40 Engineer
“The learned is happy, nature to explore. The fool is happy, that he knows no more.”
-Alexander Pope
