Guild Wars 2

In an effort to ensure that good discussion and ideas don’t get lost, I’m going to start a thread for the proposed changes I have issue with. Hopefully, these will be congregating threads that the devs will see that stand out as opposed to ideas getting things lost in the sea of other profession stuff. It would be ideal to use the same standards/rules in this thread established in the main December patch proposal. (e.g., concise, constructive, etc…)

Zeal XII – The proposal is that this will do 13% instead of 10% conversion.

There isn’t much to say here. Even as someone who has extensively used burning on Guardian, the proposal isn’t significant enough for me to consider spending more trait points in Zeal to get. Consider the following numbers:

I have about 2000 power. The proposal buffs the burning DPS to 15 … this amount is LESS than the variation I get from a regular hit. In otherwords, it’s less than the noise I get from my direct damage. Even for someone with a dedicated burning build, this trait is not considered

For the proposal to have an impact on someone using a dedicated burning build, I have two suggestions:

1. Add more damage. This one is obvious but not very interesting. It’s been discussed that a trait like this requires about 30-50% conversion to be attractive as a GM trait and to make up for the loss of other more effective and cheaper traits. This would still be weaker than most damage-focused builds and still have the weaknesses associated with access to single conditions. This suggestion would be of limited impact in PVE.

2. Add a condition damage defense. In addition to the buff for given damage, I can imagine a similar reduction for taken damage, again based on power. The conversion can be modified to an appropriate amount as well. I can see this kind of condition damage reduction being attractive in all aspects of the game.

The funny thing is if you take this skill and use the signet of wrath we have some of the highest potential condition damage (as a stat) of all the professions. Its like they gave us the worlds most powerful gun, with no ammunition.

Indeed, the ability to bury conditions is what’s lacking. You put an insane amount of burning on a target but it’ll get cleansed just as fast and then you’re left with nothing.

Mightymealworm.8409:

The funny thing is if you take this skill and use the signet of wrath we have some of the highest potential condition damage (as a stat) of all the professions. Its like they gave us the worlds most powerful gun, with no ammunition.

We really should get some condition that does damage instead (like Necros Dhumfire). Maybe even a new one.

It’s not even worth discussing. The idea behind the trait is sound, the problem is that in practice it’s completely worthless because it doesn’t give you enough DPS to warrant taking it, and 3% more isn’t going to change that. If this were a Necromancer trait I would be horrified, because it would be an absolutely disgusting increase in damage for them, but we aren’t Necromancers. The best we can do is burn everything in the room, and we have to work really hard to do that. Burns alone don’t make 200 extra condition damage for your average Guardian a worthwhile investment.

I mean, for the sake of bludgeoning this point home in case Anet is reading it, look at it this way. For a 2k power character, you’re spending 30 trait points for 58 DPS per target you are capable of burning at 13% conversion. To a 3000 DPS character, that’s a drop in the bucket. No one cares. Specced correctly you can burn a nearly limitless number of targets but it doesn’t matter, because PvE doesn’t have that many targets and PvP doesn’t reward dribbles of damage, it rewards spikes. Guardians don’t provide “condition pressure” so that’s not an excuse either.

The only time something like this is rewarding is when there are so many targets near you that you can’t cleave all of them with your direct damage attacks, because with Permeating Wrath and lots of burn duration you can theoretically be damaging things way beyond your cleave limit. But there’s no gameplay to support that kind of tactic.

Guardians specced into condition damage are extremely weak anyway unless they become able to maintain 20 stacks of bleed, burning and poison at the same time.

Mightymealworm.8409:

The funny thing is if you take this skill and use the signet of wrath we have some of the highest potential condition damage (as a stat) of all the professions. Its like they gave us the worlds most powerful gun, with no ammunition.

There’s plenty of ammunition. You just need to think outside the burning box you guys have kept yourselves in.

Dirame.8521:

Mightymealworm.8409:

The funny thing is if you take this skill and use the signet of wrath we have some of the highest potential condition damage (as a stat) of all the professions. Its like they gave us the worlds most powerful gun, with no ammunition.

There’s plenty of ammunition. You just need to think outside the burning box you guys have kept yourselves in.

While we do have access to runes and sigils to aid us in applying multiple conditions, we should not need to rely on these things as a major source of conditions. Other professions use them as supplemental aids to their DPS, and we should too. Creating a condition build dependent on items that other professions kind of need, but can do well without, isn’t a good thing. It cripples us from being able to have full control of our builds. Not to mention the fact that the sigils and runes that do apply damaging conditions pale in comparison to skills used by other professions that apply the same conditions we are currently needing.

I think it would be more interesting trait if they left it at 10% and then also had it triple/quadruple the effect of condition damage on Burning. In other words, every 100 condition damage would add 75 or 100 damage to each burn tick instead of only 25. If something like this were done, then maybe a part-celestial burn guardian would be viable?

TriggerSad.2597:

Dirame.8521:

Mightymealworm.8409:

The funny thing is if you take this skill and use the signet of wrath we have some of the highest potential condition damage (as a stat) of all the professions. Its like they gave us the worlds most powerful gun, with no ammunition.

There’s plenty of ammunition. You just need to think outside the burning box you guys have kept yourselves in.

While we do have access to runes and sigils to aid us in applying multiple conditions, we should not need to rely on these things as a major source of conditions. Other professions use them as supplemental aids to their DPS, and we should too. Creating a condition build dependent on items that other professions kind of need, but can do well without, isn’t a good thing. It cripples us from being able to have full control of our builds. Not to mention the fact that the sigils and runes that do apply damaging conditions pale in comparison to skills used by other professions that apply the same conditions we are currently needing.

Isn’t that the joy of making a build? Putting together obscure runes and Sigils to find a combination with the right balance of crazy and insance? Seriously, what I’m hearing right now is that you don’t actually want to try. You just want things to be given to you.

The point is, I think the build I currently run as a condi Guardian would seriously become too good if the boost went to 30%. Maybe it can go to 20 or 15 but 30? That’s playing with fire and I didn’t just type that for puns.

Perplexity runes are our only good source of condi application from rune sets due to no cool down. Even then, our interrupts are on long cool downs and application is situational. A couple short stacks of bleed from sigils still does little to add pressure or viability. Sure there are ‘fun’ guardian condition builds, but that hardly makes them competitive.

Dirame.8521:

Isn’t that the joy of making a build? Putting together obscure runes and Sigils to find a combination with the right balance of crazy and insance? Seriously, what I’m hearing right now is that you don’t actually want to try. You just want things to be given to you.

The point is, I think the build I currently run as a condi Guardian would seriously become too good if the boost went to 30%. Maybe it can go to 20 or 15 but 30? That’s playing with fire and I didn’t just type that for puns.

Let me give you an example since you don’t seem capable of understanding the situation condition guardians are in.

Two of the attacks on the warrior’s main hand sword auto-attack chain apply a stack of bleeding each (Sever Artery and Gash). Meaning that the full rotation applies two stacks of bleeding onto a target.
A warrior can then trait 5 points into Arms for the Adept Minor trait Precise Strikes which gives a warrior a 33% chance of applying a single stack bleeding on a foe when hitting them with a critical hit. This trait does not have an internal cooldown, so any and all critical hits have a chance of applying a stack of bleeding.
Additionally a warrior can place a Superior Sigil of Earth onto their sword, which has a 60% chance of applying bleeding on a critical hit. However, this has a 5 second cooldown.

What this all means is that a warrior has the ability of applying 3 stacks of bleeding every 5 seconds with just their auto attack. Not to mention that Sever Artery and Gash cleave. A warrior can effectively can stack 1-3 stacks of bleeding onto any of 3 foes in front of them without much care in the world.

Can a guardian do this? Kind of. They can use a Superior Sigil of Earth to apply 1 stack of bleeding every 5 seconds on a successful critical hit.

You’re not seeing anything wrong with this?

TriggerSad.2597:

You’re not seeing anything wrong with this?

I’ll let you know what a Guardian can do but I’ll keep it to myself until I get the time to put the video together. Right now I’m going to show off a Torment build for the Thief.

Just an aside though, the only way a condi Warrior can beat my condi Guardian in an even fight, is to not hit me.

will be looking forward to your video, Dirame. : ))

though time and again, the “exciting” prospects with speccing for a condi/burn Guard as it stands.. is either go balls deep in Zeal for the extra condi (which i still think is too little); or balls deep in Virtues for the utility of proccing burns (Supreme Justive and Permeating Wrath)… so naturally, the two compliment one another. it’s just that.. when you do that, you have nothing left for sustain.

akamon.2769:

will be looking forward to your video, Dirame. : ))

though time and again, the “exciting” prospects with speccing for a condi/burn Guard as it stands.. is either go balls deep in Zeal for the extra condi (which i still think is too little); or balls deep in Virtues for the utility of proccing burns (Supreme Justive and Permeating Wrath)… so naturally, the two compliment one another. it’s just that.. when you do that, you have nothing left for sustain.

I have a sustain specc for the build I run. It’s just that I love damage and I like seeing big numbers. I’ll trying to show both of them though. I’ve just got to remember how I specced for sustain again heh.