Guild Wars 2

Here’s the burning build I’ve been working on. I’ve seen huge success with it so far. Out of well over 50 Unranked Arena games, I’ve only seen 4 losses. What do you all think? I have a little bit of trouble with a few specific builds, but I haven’t found anything that hard counters the Incineration Guardian.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VBg-3l;0NFF3093oGV90;9;4ONQ;0046157236;4E7o210;05NV05NV01H

Gonna try it. Any tips?

Yeah, only use Justice when you’re pinning someone. Don’t put it on cd, because it’s where most of your burn comes from.
Also, don’t forget to whirl in your fire fields.

Oh my god. I tried the build you sent for condi-guard… 11,083 on Purging Flames…

Tried this, the burst is insane but how do you survive past the initial burst in a team fight. Maybe I’m just not good enough to play a glassy burst guard but it seems like the survivability of this build is non-existant.

Julie Yann.5379:

Tried this, the burst is insane but how do you survive past the initial burst in a team fight. Maybe I’m just not good enough to play a glassy burst guard but it seems like the survivability of this build is non-existant.

You’re right. The sustainability is terrible. If you’r really struggling, you can swap out the torch for a focus, which will keep you up a little longer in fights, but will drop your dps when you swap away from GS.

Typically, I try to burst someone down then slip away if there are too many enemies present. Keep in mind that Permeating Wrath will allow you to absolutely decimate groups if they don’t focus you quickly. Often times, one or two more swings with your GS auto attack (or even Whirling Wrath) on multiple targets means throwing out three or four more stacks of burning on everyone present, which is far more damage than they could do to you in that time. So, it’s a judgement call. Sometimes I find that it’s very worth it to get downed in order to down four of my enemies with me.

Also, just a fun little thing. If your Justice isn’t on cool down, you can throw Smite on a downed enemy and they’re almost guaranteed to die off just that. Especially if you wait for them to try to pop their heal (so you can cancel it).

Why no zealous Scepter?

you are going for kindled Zeal in the zeal traitline so the 7% damage modifier is kinda of lost on me if you are going for the highest burn number possible. Torch 5 got an extreme damage boost. and on top can dish out 5 mights stacks easily even against one target.

I would question the Sigil of bursting. yes it ups the burn tick but damage and utility wise i feel that there are better options.

- Sigil of fire: additional hits for passiv VoJ
- Sigil of geomancy: additional hits and condi damage

and again:

For condi burst Mad King Runes seems better to me. although I can see that going for 100% burn duration instead of 50% has its merits.

burning guard as much as i loved to play it before this patch become so worng

30-40 burning stacks can down any zerk class in 1 sec

messiah.1908:

burning guard as much as i loved to play it before this patch become so worng

30-40 burning stacks can down any zerk class in 1 sec

Yeah it will be nerfed, don’t worry, I just hope they don’t overnerf it so it becomes too weak again, I really loved burn guard being a thing and his burns be feared instead of only having a few people running burnbuilds and people blatantly ignoring stuff like Purging Flames or Guardian burns on them in general

messiah.1908:

burning guard as much as i loved to play it before this patch become so worng

30-40 burning stacks can down any zerk class in 1 sec

yes.

But guardian can not achieve that in a realistic scenarion so this is actually not the problem. I really do not think the problem is the number of stacks (building them up is is fun) but the damage tied to it – or the other end of it the relatively low HP on every class. tone down one up the other and find a good balance. remove/balance some of the “broken” mechanics (I only see two at the moment) and guadian is in “good spot”.

i dont think burning need a nerf rather every class aplication skills

with guard the gave 1 sec icd on block with make now only 1 stacks of burning instead of 5
so with concertration maybe also icd of burning needed or only if you croos inside and not every time you pass it (50% nerf)
with torch put icd of 1 sec for each enemy get hit

thus you burning will get around 10 stacks which is nice 4k dps

I think you should be able to be rewarded with more then 10 stacks for smart play or stupid play on your opponent.

10 stacks only happen right now if you blow everything. Scepter#2 +torch#5 + JI + PF and oly if you trait supreme justice which comes as we all no wit a big trade off in trait selection.

yes you can ramp up insane ammounts with Mad king runes but there are counters to it even if it is disengageing or simply dodging twice or block or whatever.

Radiant fire is a bit broken and I think this could be toned down to two stacks.

I thinkit is fair to say that all the fuss about the burn on block nerf was a bit unjustified seeing what we can do now without it. yet nobody will admit to that in fear of the nerf bat.

Asmodal.6489:

Why no zealous Scepter?

you are going for kindled Zeal in the zeal traitline so the 7% damage modifier is kinda of lost on me if you are going for the highest burn number possible. Torch 5 got an extreme damage boost. and on top can dish out 5 mights stacks easily even against one target.

I would question the Sigil of bursting. yes it ups the burn tick but damage and utility wise i feel that there are better options.

- Sigil of fire: additional hits for passiv VoJ
- Sigil of geomancy: additional hits and condi damage

and again:

For condi burst Mad King Runes seems better to me. although I can see that going for 100% burn duration instead of 50% has its merits.

I think you’re right with the trait change to Zealous Scepter. But, I fail to see how Mad King runes fit into this build. I"m not using bleeding at all. Unless these ravens I summon every 30 seconds are dropping mad burning stacks, I’m missing out on a lot of dps.

Does this build convert well over to PVE like world and dungeons bosses? Also I know people vary a bit on armor, from Carrion to Sinister, to just keeping their original berserkers.

LCV.7245:

Unless these ravens I summon every 30 seconds are dropping mad burning stacks, I’m missing out on a lot of dps.

They do but they are situational. The way you described your playstyle they might actually be fitting.

If you jump in a fight with three target (or minions, companions, clones) the elite activation will cause 3x hunters cal which summons 3 birds attacking each target 16 times. if they are close together its a 16 stacks of burn on each target IF they do not block move away or whatever.

Since you are on speed and they are too its not very likely.

you sacrafice 50% burn duration however. so its really a question of playstyle and preference.

Linfang.1087:

Does this build convert well over to PVE like world and dungeons bosses? Also I know people vary a bit on armor, from Carrion to Sinister, to just keeping their original berserkers.

I think in dungenos you wouldnt need the vit at the moment. Thinks die so fast you can go full offense and should be fine.

build works well in dungeons I believe – but again anythin works these days.

Asmodal.6489:

LCV.7245:

Unless these ravens I summon every 30 seconds are dropping mad burning stacks, I’m missing out on a lot of dps.

They do but they are situational. The way you described your playstyle they might actually be fitting.

If you jump in a fight with three target (or minions, companions, clones) the elite activation will cause 3x hunters cal which summons 3 birds attacking each target 16 times. if they are close together its a 16 stacks of burn on each target IF they do not block move away or whatever.

Since you are on speed and they are too its not very likely.

you sacrafice 50% burn duration however. so its really a question of playstyle and preference.

Ah. I see now. I’m going to do some testing with this later tonight to see how it works. Thanks for the explanation.

Asmodal.6489:

Linfang.1087:

Does this build convert well over to PVE like world and dungeons bosses? Also I know people vary a bit on armor, from Carrion to Sinister, to just keeping their original berserkers.

I think in dungenos you wouldnt need the vit at the moment. Thinks die so fast you can go full offense and should be fine.

build works well in dungeons I believe – but again anythin works these days.

I haven’t tested this in PvE at all. However, I know that burning DOES do well in dungeons, as my incineration ele is doing insane dps right now. With that being said, I know that there’s some crazy build I saw on Reddit yesterday that has significantly higher dps than this build. It’s some sort of a Concentration build using Hammer and GS. Saw it used with 4 other identical guards and each player was doing like 11k damage on each hit in a lvl 50 fractal. So, I expect that that build is better…. BUT, burning is moar fun imo, so… yeah.

So, I’ve done quite a bit of testing with the Mad King runes and they’re amazing. The bleed duration is completely wasted in this build. But, the extra power never hurts and the condi damage and burning duration loss seems to be outweighed by the superior burning application. The only caveat is that you MUST be fighting multiple targets or ganking someone who isn’t ready for you. In a fair 1v1, I’ve found that the Mad King Incineration Guardian rarely has the advantage. However, when fighting multiple targets that aren’t a long distance apart, this Guard eats them alive. So, if running Mad King, look for pairs or more to blow up. The ravens from the elite will make them weep.

Julie Yann.5379:

Tried this, the burst is insane but how do you survive past the initial burst in a team fight. Maybe I’m just not good enough to play a glassy burst guard but it seems like the survivability of this build is non-existant.

That’s what I was thinking. I was gonna ask what you do when someone stacks a bunch of conditions on you. I haven’t used it myself but I wouldn’t think purging flames is enough to keep them off you.

I pretty much can’t go without absolute resolution and renewed focus. they’re too good for condition clearing. I’ve tried using CoP instead, and I still need to play with it more but I have a feeling I’ll just drop the extra burning traits and go back to absolute resolution.

I will give it a go but for me Absolute Resolution and RF or CoP a must. I find myself often in a team fight environment and I cannot see any chance to survive this without at least 6-9 condition cleared. The amount of conditions those newly available pesky condi builds put out is insane!!!

Note: I use a build close to this: Carrion+FlameLegion, meditation… Radiance, Valor, Virtues. Purging Flames, CoP, JI, RF elite.

Linfang.1087:

Does this build convert well over to PVE like world and dungeons bosses? Also I know people vary a bit on armor, from Carrion to Sinister, to just keeping their original berserkers.

i roughly tested a burn guardian in a CoE run with burn-centric traits within virtues, radiance and zeal.

exotic Sinister armor + ascended sinister trinkets (had a zerk backpiece)
Runes of balthazar
exotic Sinister sword+torch, GS on swap
Sigil of smoldering and corruption on both weapon sets

utilities:
JI, purging flames, sword of justice, feel my wrath
my tested rotation was:
Sword of justice> torch 4> swap
JI, purging flames> feel my wrath> GS2
swap to sword/torch> torch 4 x2, autoattack until torch 4 procs

Food:
Koi cake (40% condi duration 70 condi dmg)
Quality tuning crystal (small % condi dmg off toughness and vit)

So the end result was (after the first 1 or 2 seconds ramping up the burn stacks):
Trash mobs melt with 10 to 15k ticks with the GS burst burn stacks
on single target boss mobs, consistent 7k burn ticks remain after the spike from GS.

Auto attacks were doing 800-1.2k ticks on crit (not entirely sure).

Notes:
1) the rough numbers were based on mobs that had 10 to 15 vuln stacks (wasn’t a serious run)

2) I felt it was better to stay in sword autoattack to maintain the burn stacks (more so than any other weapon sets tested).

3) The 15k burn ticks only appeared (once!) when i could stack more than 29 stacks and that is only possible if there’s more than 3 trash mobs (mainly relying on passive virtue of justice procs). i was consistently doing 11k burn ticks for 2-3 ticks on single target bosses before reverting to 7k ticks.

4) Vs the golem after the laser puzzle was a challenge because of the cleansing turret.
I was doing 1k burn ticks with the turret, and 2 to 3k burns when i got it down.

5) While it was a really fun and engaging way to play guardian, i don’t think the DPS was good enough to compete with a standard zerk build/playstyle. Was hoping for game-breaking 20k burn ticks versus single target bosses but that wasn’t happening =/

This is the build I run in the top 1000 branch of PvP.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-BBxg;1RFV10D3BG-90;9;4OnQ;0147147247;9;1aZIDtZID3E

It’s cleric and melandru runes as I can’t get it to work on my mobile phone. The sigil is smoldering on the mace, generosity on greatsword.

It’s a bunker build focused on team support but it haa very deadly burns and reflects. Using signet of resolve will purge 2 conditions, heal you for 10k and grants fury on a 32 sec cooldown.

It’s a very powerful build as it grants 15% endurance regeneration to the entire team, the reflect can stop an entire fight as many classes are projectile based in the meta right now.