Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQRArf5flsApZolDxSI8DNR8Ql9Y0izY1BwE8oXtDA-TxhAABws/A0nAgE1Pcq6PSqEEgHAgYK/IEwk1A-e

Hi fellow guardians, recently i have been playing around with my tanky knight build and it works just sweet. But i wanted to try something new, something that is more unique.
A burning build. Basically this build focus in, and only burn to take down your enemy. I don’t know how this build works in pvp/wvw , but this is what i’ll be trying in pve.
First of all i have considered to go full offensive, but it doesn’t work quite well(I die alot, especially in dungeon, which i don’t really like it). So i have decided to go with Dire armor (+Condi +Toughness +vitality).

Secondly, i will try to buff our passive virtue(Virtue of Justice) as much as possible to make it more consistent rather than focusing on weapon skills and utility.

There’s some highlights in this build which will be:

1. Virtue of Justice(buffed)-which will now deal 2,074 burn damage in 2.5 sec in a blast radius of 240 every 3rd attack. Which somehow equal to a power-based build hitting 1k/s. The different over these 2 are direct damage is reduced by armor while we are doing 1k/s pure damage. While, i also want to keep our burn duration as short as possible(or reasonable), to prevent burn capping(ignore world boss), and to prevent others to cure conditions.

2.Valor traits allow us to lose condition every 10 second which provides more survivability. Otherwise, if you want to go more on offensive play, i will switch the traits to Radiance III.

Overall : High toughness, Reasonable vitality, High condi damage, low direct damage(which our symbols will make up for it abit) , and Hot , hot .

Please share your opinion of this build or will it works well. Thank you.

There’s nothing wrong with running a burn build like this in PvE. That is, if you’re running solo.

Just know that burns cap at 9 stacks. If you run with a class like an ele, engi, etc, your burns may fall on the lowest stack and not do any damage for a few seconds. Or worse, the 9 stack cap will be reached and you won’t apply any burns at all. (Notoriously on Boss fights)
It’s one of the reasons why HoT is completely changing the Burn and Poison condi mechanics. In HoT we’re going to be 3x as useful!

Like Saiyan said, in solo situation condition isn’t bad at all, but compare to a direct damage build in group, you gonna only have less than half the dps. The problem is how condition work for now. We’ll see how it will perform with HoT.

Now for your build specifically.

1) If you have a torch on both set you already gonna have perma burning with the F1. No need for judge intervention at all.
2) Your gear is super defensive. No problem if you need some training wheels, but that’s not a good choice if you want some performance out of your build. Sinister will be far superior or at least Carrion.
3) Runes of Baltahzar. Again you already have perma burning no need for more. Rune of the Undead could be better for you, especially if the additional toughness allow you to use Sinister gear. Alternatively you could take keep Runes of Baltahzar and remove some burning ability from your trait instead. Another option could to take a rune that give general condition duration or bleeding duration and use a sigil to give you more variety with your condition. Burning alone is a huge limiting factor.
4) Sigil of bursting is a good choice, but it’s expensive for a unoptimized build, while the sigil of burning is something you could remove with the quantity of buring you already have. Sigil of Agony + Sigil of Earth could make some better use of your condition damage. Sigil of Corruption is also a good choice for open world pve.

You over did it on the burning. Once you reach perma burning (which is the easiest thing to do with a guardian), each burning duration, trait, sigil or rune is a complete waste. You need to balance thing out to reach just perma burning with a little breathing room, but not more. The rest can go to either direct damage or other condition. You also have a terribly tanky build that handicap your already weak dps. It’s ok if you like playing like that, it will be easier, but also far longer.