Guild Wars 2

I’ve read and I’ve seen alot of Guardians picking this trait and saying how awesome it is, but I fail to realize why.

The Virtues is something I’d rather never use, unless I really need the effect.

Virtue of Justice passive effect deals more damage in the long run than popping it’s active effect everytime.
Virtue of Resolve heals me for 6000 every minute, if I use it I get a 1600 heal.
Virtue of Courage gives me 2 Aegis during 90 seconds, if I use it I get only one.

Now, I understand it’s effectiveness go up if you pick Inspired Virtue, but it still doesn’t seem worth using them at all.
Justice’s Might has 3 stacks and lasts for 5 seconds. That’s enough to time to hit once, maybe twice since everyone runs away from Guardians.
Resolve’s Regeneration is 5 seconds and heals for 150~, granting a 750 health heal.
Courage’s Protection is 5 seconds, and is the most useful in my opinion because this boon can really save you when used right.

I also understand it’s value go up if you use it with Altruistic Healing in large groups, Renewed Justice or Renewed Focus, but to me it doesn’t mean this trait is essential, but the other way around.

Am I missing something here?

Danicco.3568:

I’ve read and I’ve seen alot of Guardians picking this trait and saying how awesome it is, but I fail to realize why.

The Virtues is something I’d rather never use, unless I really need the effect.

Virtue of Justice passive effect deals more damage in the long run than popping it’s active effect everytime.
Virtue of Resolve heals me for 6000 every minute, if I use it I get a 1600 heal.
Virtue of Courage gives me 2 Aegis during 90 seconds, if I use it I get only one.

Now, I understand it’s effectiveness go up if you pick Inspired Virtue, but it still doesn’t seem worth using them at all.
Justice’s Might has 3 stacks and lasts for 5 seconds. That’s enough to time to hit once, maybe twice since everyone runs away from Guardians.
Resolve’s Regeneration is 5 seconds and heals for 150~, granting a 750 health heal.
Courage’s Protection is 5 seconds, and is the most useful in my opinion because this boon can really save you when used right.

I also understand it’s value go up if you use it with Altruistic Healing in large groups, Renewed Justice or Renewed Focus, but to me it doesn’t mean this trait is essential, but the other way around.

Am I missing something here?

Ret paladin mentality. You realise the effect on use applies to your whole group right?

Right. If solo, I use Justice if I really need a blind or Courage if I’m on my bum and about to take a whoopin, but otherwise I leave them off cooldown. In groups though these can be amazing.

Empower + Justice on a group of people in WvW just melts things.

Yes, that’s why I mentioned Altruistic Healing.

Like I said, aside from the obvious effect, why is it so high rated among Guardians? I still can’t see why people comment so highly about it.

When you PvP, dungeons and champion bosses, I’m surprised that you don’t pop these. Virtues are there as a burst option, not just for you, but for allies around you. This is insanely powerful with any build with Altruistic Healing and the boons you get are also granted to everyone else. During a fight, you’d want everyone to be doing their maximum and being able to grant boons so effortlessly plus the efforts of the virtues is a no brainer.

In the long run, using your virtues should not be an issue if you have renewed focus. When the cast finishes, the passives automatically refresh. You also need to look beyond 5 points from the virtues line. There are traits that grant virtues stun breakers, condition removals and stability. That is a a lot for doing so little and there is little doubt that the sacrifices to the passive effects are well worth it.

Other notes regarding inspired virtues

- 3 Stacks of might for everyone is fantastic. Placing points in virtues also increases boon duration. Have you seen how long Save Yourselves can last for if you fulling trait into virtues? People running away is not an issue and it is up to you to time these boons well.

- Regeneration + The instant heal + Altruistic Healing. The total amount is quite respectable. Heals are not very big in this game. Guardians however have plenty of small healing pocket abilities which you should be using to your advantage because of our small health pool.

- This is about activating Courage as a whole. The point of activating this is to prepare for a potential large attack that may either take a large chunk of your health off or knock you down. For example a giant is about to stomp the ground. Pop it right before he does it and you just saved yourself and your party the damage plus the knock back.

I’ll play devil’s advocate here:

Inspired Virtues is not mandatory. Yes, it’s good. There are some builds that it helps immensely. That doesn’t mean that it’s worth it for every single build out there. If you have no focus on virtues or buffing, there may well be another trait that gives you more utility. If you’re solo leveling, it will rarely pay for you to use it. If you’re using altruistic healing or have the points to go around, awesome, but otherwise weigh your options before taking it.

This was the point of the Guardian.

You decide if you should activate the virtues for the greater good or keep them to yourself until you find the time fitting for them to get activated.

Boss is charging a huge attack, do you use Virtue of Courage to help your allies?

Your allies got hit by AoE, do you use Virtue of Resolve to heal them?

It’s time to burst the enemies down, activate Virtue of Justice to make all of your allies making more damage.

Giving virtues up is always a good thing, I never keep them to myself.

Danicco.3568:

I’ve read and I’ve seen alot of Guardians picking this trait and saying how awesome it is, but I fail to realize why.

The Virtues is something I’d rather never use, unless I really need the effect.

Virtue of Justice passive effect deals more damage in the long run than popping it’s active effect everytime.
Virtue of Resolve heals me for 6000 every minute, if I use it I get a 1600 heal.
Virtue of Courage gives me 2 Aegis during 90 seconds, if I use it I get only one.

Now, I understand it’s effectiveness go up if you pick Inspired Virtue, but it still doesn’t seem worth using them at all.
Justice’s Might has 3 stacks and lasts for 5 seconds. That’s enough to time to hit once, maybe twice since everyone runs away from Guardians.
Resolve’s Regeneration is 5 seconds and heals for 150~, granting a 750 health heal.
Courage’s Protection is 5 seconds, and is the most useful in my opinion because this boon can really save you when used right.

I also understand it’s value go up if you use it with Altruistic Healing in large groups, Renewed Justice or Renewed Focus, but to me it doesn’t mean this trait is essential, but the other way around.

Am I missing something here?

You’re missing a couple of things, some of it technical, some philosophical.

First: Most of our traits, especially between Adept and Master, don’t give us particularly strong bonuses. Getting 3 stacks of Might or some Regen out of our Virtues is pretty much in line with what a lot of our traits grant.

Second, Inspired Virtue is really not so great solo and in a vacuum. But that’s not Inspired Virtue’s fault. Activating your Virtues is rarely ever a good idea when solo, with or without traits. There are some exceptions.

Inspired Virtues works great with 15 Radiance, which resets VoJ after every enemy kill. This is a readily available, leveling-friendly combination and one of the first examples of powerful trait synergy a Guardian gets. If you’re leveling solo or in a group, getting 3 Might after every kill is a big deal. If multiple enemies die simultaneously (and this happens often in DE’s and while leveling), you get multiple stacks of Might + lots of burn.

But the biggest draw for Inspired Virtues is that it’s cheap. It’s just five trait points. Nearly every build can pick it up, and it’s useful to nearly every build. For five trait points, it’s well worth the investment.

Edit: It also works great with Virtue-mashing —> Renewed Focus when you’re in a party. Since Renewed Focus is probably our most popular Elite, it’s a good investment.

TL;DR – You’re looking at Inspired Virtues in a vacuum. There isn’t a single Guardian in the game who plays 0/0/0/0/5. You have to look at 5 Virtues in relation with the rest of the lines, in which case it’s a cheap, efficient investment that works great with a lot of builds and has a great deal of synergy.

Eveningstar.6940:

But the biggest draw for Inspired Virtues is that it’s cheap. It’s just five trait points. Nearly every build can pick it up, and it’s useful to nearly every build. For five trait points, it’s well worth the investment.

[…]

TL;DR – You’re looking at Inspired Virtues in a vacuum. There isn’t a single Guardian in the game who plays 0/0/0/0/5. You have to look at 5 Virtues in relation with the rest of the lines, in which case it’s a cheap, efficient investment that works great with a lot of builds and has a great deal of synergy.

This is exactly how I think.
What I was questioning is that I’ve seen a couple of posts (in the forums) of people claiming it to be the must have trait for all builds. And I don’t see why.

That’s not the must have. In my opinion, Altruistic Healing, Renewed Justice, Empowering Might and such are the ones who are on a must have list. Inspired Virtue is just something that enhances these already awesome traits.

The posts I’ve mentioned might be old (I can’t find them), but the latest one that made me think “Am I missing something here?” is the one found in the Crit Hammer build guide:

“Inspired Virtues, to be honest, if you’re not traiting this, in any build in the universe, then you actually missed the whole point with the guardian!!! What this does is that it gives you the same benefits as 1.5 extra utility slot so it’s basically 1,5 extra shout on a 60s cd with huge aoe, teamwide, not squadwide. Trait it and stop making a fool of yourself, it’s as simple as that.”

So, I thought, if there was something terribly useful about it that I haven’t noticed… I’d might go and rebuild my Guardian to get at least 10 in Virtues (I absolutely love Master of Consecrations, but I can’t spare any points… not if the gain isn’t better than what I have already of course).

Another thing I don’t think anyone mentioned, there’s a couple of traits that any guardian planning on doing DPS should have, and those are Fiery Wrath (10 into Zeal), and Radiant Power (25 into Radiance.) Combined these traits make you deal a whopping 20% extra damage to any enemy that’s on fire, and even if they’re not on fire you do 10% more to them when they just have any given condition on them. Going this far into Radiance will also give you Renewed Justice by default, which will bring Justice off CD once a mob dies, so combine this with Inspired Virtue just running around solo killing stuff can go SO much faster. Run up to mob, pop Justice, you blind the mob, gain 3 stacks of Might, deal 20% extra damage to the target, kill it fast, then when it dies you have Justice back and can do it all over again. And THEN, if you grab the Radiance trait that makes you apply Vulnerability when you blind someone, that Justice will also add that on top so you’re doing 21% extra damage in total along with the additional burn damage.

And then it’s great in groups too, since burning stacks in duration you can put Justice on your whole group, so it’ll last a whole lot longer on a boss. If you just keep Justice on CD the whole time you won’t get very much burn time out with the 5 hit proc. To take full advantage of the 20% extra damage traits the mob needs to be constantly burned, and using Justice is usually a great way to do that.

This is exactly how I think.
What I was questioning is that I’ve seen a couple of posts (in the forums) of people claiming it to be the must have trait for all builds. And I don’t see why.

I see your point. That’s a fair concern.

I don’t think it’s a must-have. At the risk of sounding dodgy, I don’t think any Guardian trait is an absolute must have. Inspired Virtues is just one of those traits that fits easily into just about every build ever conceived that, in retrospect, it almost seems essential.

It’s not an essential trait; it’s a ubiquitous trait.

Eveningstar.6940:

I don’t think it’s a must-have. At the risk of sounding dodgy, I don’t think any Guardian trait is an absolute must have. Inspired Virtues is just one of those traits that fits easily into just about every build ever conceived that, in retrospect, it almost seems essential.

I agree. I don’t think any trait we have is mandatory. But some traits (like Inspired Virtues or Justice is Blind) are pretty hard to pass on. They’re only 5 points for a pretty decent effect.

This is exactly how I think.
What I was questioning is that I’ve seen a couple of posts (in the forums) of people claiming it to be the must have trait for all builds. And I don’t see why.

By all means, if you see nothing in placing points in virtues. Don’t. Traits are there to supplement your play style. You will also be picking traits based on what you do most often. Most players pick it up because it has great synergy with the other guardian traits and is very easy to work with in most builds and situations.

I don’t think it’s a must-have. At the risk of sounding dodgy, I don’t think any Guardian trait is an absolute must have. Inspired Virtues is just one of those traits that fits easily into just about every build ever conceived that, in retrospect, it almost seems essential.

Mostly agree. For the most part you’re picking one good trait over another good trait. The only ones I do feel are semi absolute is a choice between Monk’s Focus or Altruistic healing. Unless you plan to go full glass cannon, both these 2 master traits grant so much survivability in both pvp and pve that it is very difficult to pass them up.

Polle.6908:

The only ones I do feel are semi absolute is a choice between Monk’s Focus or Altruistic healing. Unless you plan to go full glass cannon, both these 2 master traits grant so much survivability in both PvP and PvE that it is very difficult to pass them up.

I really think Pure of Voice is really underrated in PvP.

I started using it as a swap from putting 15 into radiance, very much worth the choice.

My Primary reason in WvW: Invulnerability.

You combine this with Shelter + SYG and you have an incredible escape mechanic for 10s. This gives you ample time to get out of the zerg you just broke w/ JI + SY.

Top it off w/ Protectionx2 and 2 1600 heals, it makes for a nice bursty defensive trait.