Guild Wars 2

How many condition removals do your guardians typically run in PvP? For example, do you find that Virtue of Resolve with Absolute Resolution/Renewed Focus is usually enough, or do you typically add more (Shouts/Meditations/Purity etc.)?

As a side note, can anyone comment on the usefulness (or lack-thereof?) of Signet of Judgement (-10% dmg) in PvP?

Guardian have low hp making them vulnerable to condition. Most build if not all of them, bring a fair amount of condition removal.

Medi Guardian will bring Absolute Resolution, Smite Condition and Comtemplation of Purity.

While Bunker guardian will bring pure of voice with 2 or 3 shouts.

As for the signet of judgement, you only have 3 utilities so signet of judgement just seem like a waste of a good utilities. You want to take utilities that bring you something special that you can’t get from somewhere else. Less incoming damage can be achieve by numerous ways (amulet, runes, boons, active defence, etc).

Don’t use signets plz.

Thanks for the Response Thaddeus.

A guardian taking 3* shouts with PoV, Soldier Rune, and Superior Aria can clear ~0.19 conditions per second (C/s), whereas a guardian taking using VoR and Absolute Resolution with Renewed Focus can clear ~0.10 C/s, so about half. My specific question: is that enough, or are Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity critically important? Note that adding these two utilities with Meditation Mastery would bring that ~0.10 C/s second to a minimum* of ~0.19 C/s (*because CoP can clear more than 1 condition at a time), exactly the same as the Shout Guardian estimate above.

*(2 shouts is ~0.11-0.15 C/s, and 3 shouts with just PoV is ~0.1 C/s)

As for the Signet of Judgement, I guess my question is this: why is it considered a waste of a utility? Damage mitigation can be gained through other means, but it’s importance can’t be stressed enough: for a low hp class, it effectively increases the usefulness of any heals/regens. While the -10% damage isn’t much, it might not be something to sneeze at, either. Perhaps more important is the active effect, which allows guardians to apply aoe weakness (600 range) . Although guardians have no shortage of protection (e.g., HTL/VoC/SY/Hammer symbol), weakness should be considered simply another means to the same end.

To quantify this, lets take the nominal case of an enemy with 40% precision, and 200% ferocity. For round numbers, lets say the enemy makes 10 attacks, each doing nominally 1k damage. Without any boons/conditions, we would expect to receive 14k damage (4 of the hits are critical). With protection, we receive 66% of that damage: 9.3k damage. If, rather than us having protection, the attacker had weakness, 50% of the attacks will do 50% damage (and remove the critical damage if it had any), we would receive 9.5k damage. In equivalent terms, this is taking 68% damage, which is comparable to protection. This 68% value is relatively insensitive to precision and ferocity: a 150% ferocity drives it up to 70%, while a 250% ferocity drives it down to 66%. Likewise, with 60% precision and 200% ferocity, it reaches 75%, and the result is the same for 0% precision because the absolute damage is lower.

If we compare this to the commonly used HTL, Signet of Judgement active is essentially offering:
-1 second more aoe protection
-3 seconds of aoe retaliation
-a stun break
-reduces opponent endurance regen
in return for:
-6 seconds of aoe regeneration
-An aoe condi clear if you have PoV or Soldier Rune
-~70-350 hp if you use AH.
It seems like these two active abilities are already fairly balanced, and even have comparable CD if you take Superior Aria . Weakness’ minor disadvantage compared with protection (less triggering of AH) comes with an opposing minor (and more situational) silver lining: it will mitigate opponent damage on NPCs like Svanir (not a huge deal by any means, but something to keep in mind. On that token, does anyone know if boons can be applied to the Lord?).

Based on this alone, HTL is probably still in the lead. Adding in the passive ability of Signet of Judgement, however, makes me wonder if the scales shouldn’t tip towards the signet. You can probably start to see where I’m going with this. If we make the assumption that VoR with Absolute Resolution provides enough condition removal (a big if) so that we don’t need to rely on shouts for condition removal in a shout guardian build, switching out a shout with Signet of Judgement could be advantageous, even accounting for the fact that it wouldn’t synergize with any traits (because wasting traits to buff the signet would be stupid).

You’ll notice that my comparison is restricted to HTL. I don’t see the point in comparing the signet with SYG (because it’s virtually irreplaceable in a shout build). I’m not really comfortable comparing Signet of Judgement with SY, either, but then again, I wouldn’t want to compare HTL with SY either. I suppose this comes down to the question of minor team-wide boons versus massive self-boons.

Thoughts?

Sorry but I quit reading at your third paragraph.

Smite condition isn’t a condition clearer, it’s a burst damage skill. Most of the time I wait for a condition, any condition, to appear on my bar to use it for the damage burst it provide. That’s an intant 1.3 coefficient skill with a 360 radius. That’s right what you need to finish off a fleeing enemies or pile up burst damage with Mightblow + Smite or other burst, which is the speciality of a medi guardian.

Keep also in mind that if in theory VoR + Absolute Resolution + Renewed Focus can give you a decent amount of condition clear, in reality you use that only in desperate situation. I don’t know for you, but as a medi guardian, without the passive regen from VoR, I’m extremely vulnerable. So that leave you with Contemplation of purity as your only true on demand source of condition removal with smite condition in a more offensive role and VoR more as a panic button. Contemplation of purity also allow you to convert boons into condition. You won’t use it that way in a stressful combat situation, but when you have time to think you gonna want to convert the right condition into the right boons to improve you stats. Blind into fury and Vulnerability into protection will be your main priority in those situation.

Those 3 skills give me way more capability than a 10% reduced incoming damage. But whatever float your boat man.

Now I won’t go in depth for the comparison of HTL versus the signet because Bunker Guardian are no longer viable in higher end sPvP. But you seem to think that Weakness roughly equal to protection. Weakness is around 25% reduced incoming damage vs the 33% from protection. It’s also harder to remove Protection on a player than removing weakness from yourself. Protection is also more efficient as all enemies attacking you will have their damage reduce, not just those we were there when you use it (that include that Ranger 1500 range away). You also didn’t not consider the boon conversion capability with Pure of Voice. It doesn’t just remove the condition, it give you a boon. A aspect that good players use at their advantage.

Thaddeus.4891:

Those 3 skills give me way more capability than a 10% reduced incoming damage. But whatever float your boat man.

Now I won’t go in depth for the comparison of HTL versus the signet because Bunker Guardian are no longer viable in higher end sPvP. But you seem to think that Weakness roughly equal to protection. Weakness is around 25% reduced incoming damage vs the 33% from protection. It’s also harder to remove Protection on a player than removing weakness from yourself. Protection is also more efficient as all enemies attacking you will have their damage reduce, not just those we were there when you use it (that include that Ranger 1500 range away). You also didn’t not consider the boon conversion capability with Pure of Voice. It doesn’t just remove the condition, it give you a boon. A aspect that good players use at their advantage.

Thanks for the great response. I want to stress that what I wrote above hasn’t ever actually floated my boat because I don’t use signet of judgement (although as you can see, I’m considering it).

Keep in mind that Weakness is only 25% reduced incoming damage if the attacker never critical hits. In my 3rd paragraph above, I show that the crits from a typical zerker build bring that 25% up to 32%, roughly equivalent to protection. Good point about the ranger and condition/boon conversion though.

Thanks!

Thaddeus.4891:

Guardian have low hp making them vulnerable to condition. Most build if not all of them, bring a fair amount of condition removal.

Medi Guardian will bring Absolute Resolution, Smite Condition and Comtemplation of Purity.

While Bunker guardian will bring pure of voice with 2 or 3 shouts.

As for the signet of judgement, you only have 3 utilities so signet of judgement just seem like a waste of a good utilities. You want to take utilities that bring you something special that you can’t get from somewhere else. Less incoming damage can be achieve by numerous ways (amulet, runes, boons, active defence, etc).

That’s assuming everyone is using a meta build which was designed around a specific team comp.
There are actually decent alternatives to it with other strengths/weaknesses if your willing to experiment, that one just works best for the team comp the user had.

Don’t get me wrong VOR+ absolute resolution is nice for the group 3 condi clear but virtues is kinda meh as a trait line.

So if your group already has good condi clear there are other options

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Thaddeus.4891:

Guardian have low hp making them vulnerable to condition. Most build if not all of them, bring a fair amount of condition removal.

Medi Guardian will bring Absolute Resolution, Smite Condition and Comtemplation of Purity.

While Bunker guardian will bring pure of voice with 2 or 3 shouts.

As for the signet of judgement, you only have 3 utilities so signet of judgement just seem like a waste of a good utilities. You want to take utilities that bring you something special that you can’t get from somewhere else. Less incoming damage can be achieve by numerous ways (amulet, runes, boons, active defence, etc).

That’s assuming everyone is using a meta build which was designed around a specific team comp.
There are actually decent alternatives to it with other strengths/weaknesses if your willing to experiment, that one just works best for the team comp the user had.

Don’t get me wrong VOR+ absolute resolution is nice for the group 3 condi clear but virtues is kinda meh as a trait line.

So if your group already has good condi clear there are other options

Please. I’m answering a specific question with specific build. You can give an answer that will cover all possible build ever use in the history of gw2.