Guild Wars 2

I checked out this build on Noxxic for Guardian damage… and I would love some feedback on the damage viability of this build.
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http://www.noxxic.com/gw2/guardian/damage/pve/stat-priority
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http://www.noxxic.com/gw2/guardian/damage/pve/core-build-and-traits
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Apparently it says the stat priority is:

Condition Damage > Condition Duration > Power = Precision = Critical Damage.
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I’m assuming then that I should gear with the Carrion Draconic set and get some condition damage runes… not sure what the suggesion would be for sigils… but, does anyone have the math behind these stat weights?

I always assumed that the burning was just to put up the debuff so my white attacks could hit harder and therefore gear for Pow/Precision/Crit… apparently I’m doing it all wrong?

Feedback is appreciated.

Jasher.6580

Condition Damage > Condition Duration > Power = Precision = Critical Damage

Will check the link in a bit, but that is utter, utter BS.

Guardians’ main Condition is Burn. There’s some Vulnerability, some Blind… I think that’s it from Traits. Might be some in Skills I’m not thinking of right now. There is no point in upgrading the duration of Blind. Burn is plentiful and already stacks in duration. Condition Duration has a place. But it’s nowhere near the top. Especially if you run a build where you have Spirit Weapons applying Burn to stack its duration with your own Burns. You don’t really need to have 10s of Burn left over when the enemy is dead.

As for Condition Damage… Well, kitten, I’ll leave someone else to address that cause I’m not nearly as opposed to it as some other posters on here. However, let me restate that Burn stacks in Duration only. Meaning you only ever get one tick of Burn damage per second (per enemy). Bleeds can get five times the bonus out of this.

Now if you did something exotic like a high Precision build with a Sigil of Earth/of the Geomancer, then Conditon Damage might be more worthwhile. As it stands… well, not so much. Definitely never a top pick.

As for the build itself… Healer’s Retribution is BS. Wrathful Spirit even moreso. If you don’t get a high uptime of Retribution, you want to be able to pick when it happens. Not when you need to heal, not when you randomly proc Aegis and lose it to the next hit. And that’s all the tactical options this build really allows for.

Otherwise, I’m personally not a fan of Spirit Weapon builds cause recasting them in longer fights is a pain in my eyes, but they do work. But this build paints itself into a corner so hard it’s not funny anymore.

Schakal.6091:

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Condition damage increases the damage of the burn ticks though doesn’t it? So I’m assuming that this build is bolstering the burn DoTs instead of focusing on the white damage. I don’t think it has anything to do with the duration… or does it? I’m not sure anymore.

Yes and no.

Yes, Condition Damage improves the size of the damage tick from Burn.

However, you have to understand that Burn stacks in duration, not damage. What I mean is, if you apply kitten Burn to your enemy, and your Spirit Weapon also applies kitten Burn, you get a 10s Burn on the target, not two 5s stacks of Burn.

This means that Condition Damage is not potentiated by the sources of Burn you have. Yes, you’re doing more damage, but the Burning from your Spirit Weapons just adds to the length of the Burn. If/when this setup reaches a point where the Burn stack lasts longer than the enemy is alive, you’ve essentially wasted some or a lot of your damage potential by concentrating on Burn as a source of damage.

Did that make more sense?

I don’t think you understand what I’m saying… I don’t care about burn duration. Condition damage increases what each tick of the burn does. Therefore I’m wondering how viable this condition damage build is…

Does increasing the burn damage through condition damage with gear, traits etc… outweigh a power precision build… the theroycrafters on that noxxic site apparently thinks so.

I would really love to know the math behind their decisions though.

Might be interesting to play around with in PvP/WvW, but I highly doubt it’ll be effective in PvE. Building that way just severely hampers your ability to multi-role in a dungeon, especially since other professions are already building towards multiple condition damages. Since burning will (I believe) apply the highest damaging burn first, if you’re constantly spamming Justice then you might not even be the “owner” of the burning condition on the enemy.

I’d say you’d be better off spec’ing for Power/Toughness for retaliation damage and to actually take a few hits for said retaliation, and let those around you whose classes are better suited to condition damage take up the charge.

TL,DR: Focus on surviving to spread burning potential to your allies, not the actual damage. Radiance is great for this.

Draeka.5941:

Might be interesting to play around with in PvP/WvW, but I highly doubt it’ll be effective in PvE. Building that way just severely hampers your ability to multi-role in a dungeon, especially since other professions are already building towards multiple condition damages. Since burning will (I believe) apply the highest damaging burn first, if you’re constantly spamming Justice then you might not even be the “owner” of the burning condition on the enemy.

I’d say you’d be better off spec’ing for Power/Toughness for retaliation damage and to actually take a few hits for said retaliation, and let those around you whose classes are better suited to condition damage take up the charge.

TL,DR: Focus on surviving to spread burning potential to your allies, not the actual damage. Radiance is great for this.

Wow… I didn’t know that burn (along with other conditions) worked that way… so basically, if you have a group with 5 fire DoT elementalists, the condition damage will only be recognized by one of them… and the only other damage recognized by the mob is the initial hit from each spell?

Condition damage builds suck then… why did they make conditions work like that? Not worth it at all, even if this build did have superior condition damage.

They don’t suck, they can be used as a main source of damage, but it works best solo than in groups.

Also, I don’t think a Condition Damage build can even get close to the damage of a Power/Precision build, no math done. If you just test around the Mists swapping Amulets, you’ll see that your burning damage is… meh.

The ideal, though, would be to have alot of Condition Damage, use a fast damaging weapon (Swords or the now defunct Greatsword) that can cause multiple hits in quick succession, because a less than 1 second burn will tick once and it’s done.
If you can get multiple sources (Spirit Weapons) to do this, you might have a decent damage, but still not as great as a Power/Precision.

Also remember that Condition builds suffer of:
- Enemies immune to conditions
- Buildings
- Conditions are easy to get rid

Yeah… true… they are fixing condition damage on objects though… so I’m assuming they are fixing all creatures “immune” to it as well. And mobs don’t generally get rid conditions either. This thread is more about PvE than anything else.

I cant see how that can be good.
Not only in pve groups there will be other sources of burning, making yours getting overide quite often, but also burning only gets 25% of your condition damage (spread towards its duration).
That said, you’ll get far more advante with power than condition dmg. Also, power affects secondary status and will affect retaliation.

On solo play, I can see it working, to some extent, but you are missing a lot of “defensive” needs to survive the solo aspect of this game at 80 (many, many mobs that hits hard)

Reihert.1509:

I cant see how that can be good.
Not only in pve groups there will be other sources of burning, making yours getting overide quite often, but also burning only gets 25% of your condition damage (spread towards its duration).
That said, you’ll get far more advante with power than condition dmg. Also, power affects secondary status and will affect retaliation.

On solo play, I can see it working, to some extent, but you are missing a lot of “defensive” needs to survive the solo aspect of this game at 80 (many, many mobs that hits hard)

I understand… what’s the highest viable damage build for explorable mode dungeons have you found? And what gear type, runes, sigils and dance moves do you use generally?

Well pretty much any build can be viable, even glass cannons. If you know what you’re up against, a few thousand health points won’t make much of a difference.

However, I like having a decent damage, decent support build.

I use mainly a Greatsword/Staff build: Zeal 30 (Extra 10% Damage to Burning, +5% Greatsword Damage, Greatsword heals you), Honor 30 (Symbols are Larger, Symbols Heals allies, 2 Handed CD reduction), and Valor 10 or Virtues 10.
I use Valkyrie Gear, and Berserker Greatsword (+5% Critical Sigil), Cleric Staff.

That’s about 15% Crit Chance, 72% Crit Damage, 19500~ Health, 3100+ Power. The crit chance is low, but that’s for the extra health compared to Berserker’s gear. You hit as hard as any other Power build, but still got a decent Health / plenty of self/group heals with Symbols, but don’t crit as often though.

Provides Vulnerability, AoE heals, Retaliation/Swiftness/Protection (if you use Hammers).

Another one is my One Handed build, which is similar: 30 Radiance (Signets Reduced CD, Torch Reduced CD or Sword/Spear +5% Damage, 15% Extra Crit for 1 Handers), 30 Honor (Shouts Reduced CD or Aegis Heals or anything else, Allies gain Might on Crit, Allies gain Virtue of Resolve Passive), 10 Valor (Meditations Reduced CD, Purity or Extra Precision).
I use this with Valkyrie gear as well, and a Sword/Shield or Torch - Scepter/Shield or Torch. You get 15% base Crit Chance with Berserker Weapons, 15% from Radiance and 15% from 1 Handed Strength. I swap a ring or two to get above 50% sometimes, or just food. That maintains a 2~4 stacks of Might constantly to the group with a Sword, has a better AoE heal (since people don’t like to stand on Symbols for heals) and it’s a slightly better damage than the other build, and can provide better Support with Shouts, but the self healing is worse.

Provides more Blindness, Might, AoE Passive Heal, and Shouts boons.

For Runes I use Dolyak since my main build is the Zeal/Honor one (I lack a bit of Toughness and I get extra health regen), but I’d use Strength one for the Radiance/Honor.
Or, if you want to focus on boons, 2 Water/2 Monk/2 Strength to grant 8 seconds of Might every Crit and greatly improves other boons (I just wouldn’t pick Virtues 10 over Valor 10 because there’s no good "passive" Major Trait compared to Valor, since you’ll be using Shouts for group boons).

I think these two are my favorite, they aren’t as glass cannons as a pure Berserker, but they can still deal decent damage while having a good defense/health balance (and group support!).