Guild Wars 2

Introduction:

The idea behind this build is to capitalize on the way the trait lines of the Guardian are laid out, which is similar to other classes (such as the necromancer, ranger, and warrior). The key to doing this effectively is going to depend upon a lot of synergy between the 30 point trait in Radiance giving you an additional +15% critical chance with a one-handed weapon, sword and torch to apply fast and powerful burns, as well as a Superior Sigil of Earth to stack lots of bleeds from your near 100% critical chance.

Traits:

You’ll start by investing 30 points into Zeal and Radiance and your remaining 10 points into Valor in order to maximize your condition damage as well as your chance to proc critical hits.

In Zeal, you want to take Fiery Wrath (10% improved damage versus burning foes), Shattered Aegis (burn foes when aegis is removed), and Kindled Zeal (add 10% of your power to condition damage).

In Radiance, you want to take Inner Fire (when you are set on fire, apply burning to foes), Radiant Fire (torch recharge speed, also improves burning), and Right-Hand Strength (add +15% to one-handed critical chance.)

In Valor, you can take whatever you want, but I prefer Defenders Flame (100% chance to burn foes while blocking) because it works well with the overall theme of the build (applying conditions and bursting).

Utility:

For your utility skills you can take whatever you need depending on the situation. Utility skills are not going to enhance or degrade the effectiveness of this build all that much. Some compliment it well, such as Judge’s Intervention or Signet of Wrath (because we will be doing a lot of condition damage), but these are largely a matter of preference and you should not feel as though you must adhere strictly to a specific set of utility skills for this build. For your healing skill, this will depend on whether or not you use the 10-point Valor trait Defender’s Flame. If you do, I recommend you use Shelter for the 2-seconds of block, as this guarantees a proc of burning on your foe every time you are hit while healing.

Gear:

For gear you will need to balance yourself because by taking both Zeal and Radiance you will not have a lot of survivability from traits. For this, I recommend to wear Knights gear, in order to greatly improve your toughness (which allows you to mitigate damage) as well as your precision and power (precision is important for improving critical chance, which is the primary focus of this build). With enough Knights gear, as well as the inherent durability of the Guardian profession itself coming from virtues and heavy armor, you should be able to improve your survivability enough to get by easily.

However, we also need to to bring Rampager’s gear to improve condition damage and precision as much as we can in order to capitalize on burning and on bleeds from Sigil of Earth. To do this you will have to figure out exactly how much precision you actually need on your gear. Because there is no point in exceeding 100% critical chance, and because your 30-point Radiance trait Right-Hand Strength improves sword critical chance by 15%, that means that you only need enough precision to have at least 85% critical chance. Anything more than this is not necessary. Therefore, it is up to you which items you will wear to improve condition damage and precision. Personally, I use trinkets for this, while my body armor is of the Knights variant.

Runes & Sigils:

For runes, I recommend you take Superior Runes of the Undead in order to further improve your condition damage and your damage mitigation from toughness. Both of these traits will help you stay in the fight long enough to burst lots of conditions.

Finally, as I mentioned at first, the key point of this build is to take Superior Sigil of Earth on your main-hand sword and torch, as your very high (100%) critical chance rate means you will proc the bleeding effect from Sigil of Earth.

PART 2

Exposition:

The base chance of a 5-second bleed from Sigil of Earth is 60%, and since your base critical chance with a sword is 100% from precision and traits, that means you will stack a bleed on your foe with at least every other blow. In addition to this, Virtue of Justice procs every 5 attacks, and your basic auto-attack with the sword hits five times in a row. This means that every single time you auto-attack, every blow will proc a critical hit, and so you will stack at least two bleeds and one burn on your foe. With Zealot’s Defense, you gain a 3-second block which has a 100% chance to proc another burn from Defender’s Flame (if you take it), as well as 4 bleeds from Sigil of Earth and another burn from Virtue of Justice because it hits 8×. I simply cannot stress enough how absolutely devastating this is to single-targets.

Your off-hand torch brings even more damage, capitalizing on all your condition damage and high critical chance rate to stack more bleeds and burns on foes. If you use Zealot’s Flame to set yourself on fire, this will proc Inner Fire and give yourself fury. This will cause your critical chance rate to well exceed 100% if it is at least 85% to begin with. If you use Cleansing Flame immediately following this, it hits 10x, and thus it will stack 5 bleeds and two burns on your foe by itself.

In order to bring some much needed AoE, long-ranged firepower, and excellent support to the table, I recommend Staff for an off-hand weapon, with either a Superior Sigil of Earth to go along with the main focus of the build, or a Superior Sigil of Corruption to stack up even more condition damage from kills. Staff will also be your go-to weapon of choice in WvWvW play, as it is hands-down one of the best weapons in the game for it. An effective strategy here is to mainly rely on your staff in large groups, and switch to your main-hand sword and torch in order to pick off single targets that get separated off and isolated.

You can also bring a Greatsword and a Scepter in your inventory and swap either of those for Staff whenever you need it. If you do this, I recommend you switch the Zeal trait Shattered Aegis for Zealous Blade, to improve your damage and add a bit of healing to your attacks with your greatsword – or Scepter Power if you use a scepter instead. If you bring a scepter, I recommend you put a Superior Sigil of Earth on it.

One added benefit of an auxiliary scepter is that it will gain the 15% critical chance bonus from Right-Hand Strength, making it a very viable ranged alternative to staff against single targets. This means that Smite (which hits 15x in an AoE) will proc 3 burns from Virtue of Justice and at least 7 bleeds from Sigil of Earth. This is an excellent opening attack before a fight. Simply cast smite, and then swap into your sword and use Flashing Blade or Judge’s Intervention to teleport to the target, apply a blind, and start bursting conditions.

Is this an elaborate troll post? I’m asking this seriously.

DeathPanel.8362:

Is this an elaborate troll post? I’m asking this seriously.

No.

Basically, I got bored of always running your standard builds like AH, so I decided to do something fun and crazy and it worked. Keyword here is “works” – it’s not the best, it’s just “okay.” I won’t say it’s better than your standard builds though, because it’s not. Full zerkers is definitely better. In fact, a lot of builds are better, but I made this for fun not to top charts.

I just really like being able to stack almost 25 bleeds on a foe… as a guardian. It’s funny. If you party with a venom share thief it’s even more silly.

So, here’s the thing. If Sigil of Earth has an internal cooldown of 2 seconds, how do you apply four stacks of Bleed on Zealot’s Defense when it only takes about 2 seconds to cast?

I’m not saying there isn’t some viability to the build. I just don’t see how it adds up.

Yeah, that ICD really screws with the sigil. With your condition duration you’re looking at four or five bleed stacks max.

Oh.

Yeah I just noticed that.

Well, kitten.

/thread /build I guess. Would’ve been awesome though. I guess there’s no way to salvage it.

Try this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAsd7flUgiD33xKEf4ES2jVCBVQrHBEC5PVFiHA-jEyA4sBRTVCN5JQ5wioxWFLiGrqmIqWZjZzLiWtQALWAA-w

I’m sure the gearheads around here can make it more optimal. But I’ve ran this a bunch of times, ti’s fun. It’s a variation of my Scepter/Torch build and it will focus more on Retal/Bleed/Burn..

You should be able to keep up 5-6 stacks of bleed, perma burn and retal. It will have a couple condi wipes (VoR + Lyssa) and boon duration is nice…. I can’t figure a way to get might stacks in it though….

EDIT:
1) You’ll have Condi Stack weapons for the 250+ Condition damage… putting you over 1300 condi dmg.
2) Carion Coat will put you at 15.5 health.
3) http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|b.1h.h1k.f.1h.h16|c.1h.h1k.d.1h.h16|1b.7i.1b.7i.1h.7i.1b.7i.1b.7i.1b.7i|211.0.211.0.311.0.211.0.311.0.1h.62|a2.u47b.0.0.u19b|30.7|w.18.19.13.1i|e
4) If you’re an asuran – Radiant Field.

I think that’s the best we can get for the amount of access to Condi.

Geomancy and Earth are mutually exclusive due to shared cooldown. You won’t have access to Earth for 9 seconds after every swap.

foofad.5162:

Geomancy and Earth are mutually exclusive due to shared cooldown. You won’t have access to Earth for 9 seconds after every swap.

Yeah, just realized that after reviewing the vid