Guild Wars 2

So, I have somewhat of a penchant for weird builds (I run a tanky, toughness + power-based engineer [rifle/flamethrower] as my main), and I decided that I want to base my new Guardian (level 40 as of now) on critical damage and condition duration (specifically burns). I’m gearing (and with my traits) primarily for precision and power with just enough vitality and toughness to not be completely glass cannon (you know, have some sort of survivability). My weapons of choice are greatsword and scepter/focus.

My question is: Does this kind of build make any sense what so ever? or am I just going to have to respec as the content actually gets somewhat challenging.

P.S.- So far, my only deaths have been in WvWvW and PvE that is 3-5 levels above my level. I don’t SPvP

I’m the same way

I actually leveled my guardian in somewhat odd build like that (at least, from what I was seeing on the forums), and quite enjoyed myself. I ran a sword torch 30 Radiance 30 virtues 10 tough build focused on VoJ and burning+crits, + turning the sword from single target to pbaoe. I felt like I killed things no slower than anyone else, even with a single target focus. Its not super crazy, and should easily be manageable even if people think you’re weird in a matter of speaking).

I’ve thought of a Healing/support build for my Engi that is a perma wvw toon, and a toughness/stealth build for my thief (although I’ve since reworked that idea to also include some other things).

Condition duration is pointless, for starters. Burn stacks in duration, not intensity – and since we already have a million ways to apply burns, duration is rarely an issue. Burn is not worth relying on heavily at all for damage (i.e. don’t bother with condition damage) because so many classes can apply it and all it does is make them burn longer, thus wasting most of that potential damage.

With that out of the way, most Guardian builds involve crits. Not involving crits would be the strange choice. The baseline critical chance most people shoot for is 40% before sigils and traits and whatnot. Greatsword and scepter/focus are fine choices in PvE, though your mileage with scepter in WvW will vary greatly and you’ll probably want to swap that for staff instead.

Generally speaking, if you don’t have at least some critical, you’re missing out on a ton of damage. Especially when you start factoring in things like sigils and traits that operate on crits. Right now, Guardians have an amazing synergy with critical hits in the form of Altruistic Healing and Empowering Might which gives might on a critical hit. Essentially you heal yourself on crits, and it’s lovely.

So yes, you’re doing fine. Though I would advise against building for burns specifically.

Crit based works. You just need a lot of crit damage and precision to compliment each other.

Be careful though, because crit damage is not worth as much as precision and power. Crit damage is a compliment but shouldn’t be mistaken for a primary stat.

Due to the fact that we don’t know how power scales. But let’s assume that it scales in linear (like others such as experience, crit chance, etc…).

Valor vs Zeal (30% crit damage vs 300 power):

In my current exotic berserker gears with only 25 points in Radiance (0/25/0/0/0), I have 3136 attacks and 53% crit chance. So if I go in Zeal for the 300 power, it would be an increase of 9.6% (from 3136 to 3436). On the other hand, if I go 30% crit damage, I would gain around 15.9% overall damage.
So let’s say I don’t spec in Radiance anymore (41% crit chance). That would be 12.3% damage gain with 30% crit damage from Valor.
Now with no precision gears and 25 points in Radiance (16% crit chance), I get around 4.8% damage off 30% crit damage.
This is not counting in Retributive Armor from Valor (0.9% damage for 3% crit in gears with no toughness).

So yeah, crit damage becomes much more powerful the more crit you have. Like a lot more powerful.

Crit-based builds are perfectly viable. Especially if you intend to pick up Empowering Might (Honor Tier 2; procs 5s of Might to allies and you on Crit). However, you might want to rethink your weapon loadout. If you really want to focus on crits you might want to use two one-handed weapons to make use of Right-Handed Strength (Radiance Tier 3; 15% Crit Chance when using one-handed weapons). Especially since you pick up Renewed Justice and Radiant Power along the way.

15% is a lot in case that wasn’t obvious. It’s the equivalent of 300 Precision at level 80. Just from picking one Trait. And you get another 300 Precision just getting there. Mix in some Toughness with your gear (via, say, Knight’s gear which also adds Precision) and pick up Retributive Armor for another 100 Toughness via Valor, where each 400 points in Toughness adds another ~1% Crit Chance. It’s not a ton, but it’s free, and Valor also adds Crit Damage.

Currently have 91% crit and 95% crit dmg in WvW. Can’t lose in any 1 v 1 situations and have 1.6k tough and 15.5k life it’s the meta now.

as a Guardian it’s almost hard to not go for crit. not saying it’s a must, but it definitely helps since a lot of our trats synergize like awesomesauce with crits. that being said, i try to go for crit whatever player i play in whatever game i game. : PPP

but definitely more than viable with Guardian. especially if you’re invested in the radiance line. take some time (if you haven’t already) to get to know the traits and different skills. you’ll find a lot of synergies and a few great ones mentioned in this thread already. just learn and figure out how you best want to play. test it out and then eventually you’ll find a build that works for you.

i even switch around quite often. maybe every 2 weeks or so? or even less depending on how i feel. it costs around 3s+ iirc to retrain traits.

@ Trung – thanks for the math there! i have been wondering about crit dmg and if i needed more of it. so i’m trying to spec that with some of my gear as well. not sure if it’s necessary. would be interesting to see what the optimal point would be for power vs crit dmg in regards to any given crit chance %.

I tested out a crit build in sPvP (I should really start writing down my builds) because I didn’t want to go into Zeal, and it worked pretty good.

‘Right-hand strength’ trait doesn’t work for me? +15% crit to one handed weapons scepter or 1 handed sword…. assume this to be a bug as was working before for my char? haven’t played for about 4 weeks though -have bug reported unless i am doing something super dumb?

@Goit: The extra crit doesn’t show up on the hero panel, but it does work.

Nirvash.3018:

Currently have 91% crit and 95% crit dmg in WvW. Can’t lose in any 1 v 1 situations and have 1.6k tough and 15.5k life it’s the meta now.

I assume that is including Fury buff +20% and/or +250precision max stack from the sigil that gives +10precision on kill.
If not how did you manage to get 91% crit chance, I can only get around 75-77% with 30points in radiance,one handed weapons +15% crit. trait and +5% critical chance sigil.
Btw two +5% critical chance sigils do not work.

OneManArmy.5617:

Nirvash.3018:

Currently have 91% crit and 95% crit dmg in WvW. Can’t lose in any 1 v 1 situations and have 1.6k tough and 15.5k life it’s the meta now.

I assume that is including Fury buff +20% and/or +250precision max stack from the sigil that gives +10precision on kill.
If not how did you manage to get 91% crit chance, I can only get around 75-77% with 30points in radiance,one handed weapons +15% crit. trait and +5% critical chance sigil.
Btw two +5% critical chance sigils do not work.

I get a flat 71% with 2-handed weapons at max stacks 250 precision + food + maintenance oil + 1 orb. With 1 handed (mastery + 1 sigil) I get 20% increase = 91%
no fury required.
w/ fury i get over 100% w/ 1 handed
———————————————————————————————————————————-
Gear I’m currently wearing is balanced knight + Valkyrie
Knight gives tough, preci, power
Valkyrie gives vit, power, crit dmg
I run 6 divinity runes
Helm is berserker
Weapons are all zesker

Also with 91% crit chance you have infinite Vigor!!!! if your in combat!
Invest 5 points into trail line Honor!

@Trungalung who I cannot quote for some reason: Almost, not quite.

Imagine 100 hits of 100 damage. Total damage: 10,000. Now imagine half of those are critical hits (50% crit rate) with 50% bonus crit, for double damage total. 15,000 damage total. That’s our baseline.

From there, imagine that you increase your base damage through power by 5%, to 100 hits of 105 damage. 10,500 damage without crits. 15,750 damage with crits now, 750 more than our baseline.

Now imagine 100 hits of 100 damage, but 55% bonus crit damage. Without crits we are at our baseline of 10,000 damage. With crits that becomes 15250.

The reason for this is pretty simple. Power increases non critical damage and critical damage, so an increase of power is more valuable more of the time. This supposes that you are able to get a 5% damage increase worth of power for the same stat ‘exchange rate’ kitten crit damage. In the case of a 50% critical hit chance however, power remains more valuable up until the exchange rate becomes 2.5% power to 5% critical hit, or 1:2. I don’t know off the top of my head what the power to damage calculation actually is, but you can test things out yourself on dummies to get an approximation using steady weapons in Heart of the Mists.

The figures do change based on your critical hit percentage. Power becomes more valuable the less critical hit you have, for obvious reasons – you get nothing out of critical damage if you aren’t critting. The reverse is also true, if you crit all the time the value of critical damage increases.

@foofad

Of course, a straight up 5% damage will be better than a 5% critical damage (2.5% overall damage). The most important thing is that we don’t know how much power will equals to that 5%. It could take 10, 50, 100, or even more power (stat wise). In my case, I assume that attack equals your damage, so with 300 power increase, that’s 9.6% damage increase (3136 to 3436 atack). Also, one % of crit damage equals to about 12-14 stats. So if you spend 30 points in Valor, you’ll get 20-40% more stats comparing to spending 30 points in zeal.