Guild Wars 2

Hello all, out of all 8 classes, guardian and necro are the only ones I don’t have a lv80. Basically I’m bored of the usual crit dmg build and want to see if cond build is any good.

So my build idea:
-full carrion gear and trinkets
-30/30/10?/?/?
-focus on burning – off-hand torch, burn on block (defender’s flame), virtue of justice
-maximize cond dmg via signet of wrath and kindled zeal

Am I being completely noobish or is it a good idea?

You can effectively aoe farm with permeating wrath. Outside of that, burn builds are pretty terrible.

Defender’s Flame and Torch are basically incompatible for obvious reasons; you don’t have any blocks beyond Aegis and Protector’s Strike if you run a mace.

Unfortunately even with 100% burn uptime you will never pull more damage with condition gear than you would with direct damage gear. I highly recommend that you stick to direct damage and use burning as an incidental aspect rather than primary damage. Burning does open up possibilities for greater AoE damage than standard but you have to be burning about fifteen things at once.

If you do like burning I recommend considering Permeating Wrath in Virtues – there are lots of really neat things you can do with it. The utter lack of meaningful damage and unwieldy condition clearing on Torch 5 makes it kind of lame, though 4 is a good burst damage skill… Which admittedly doesn’t help you much in PvE.

If you are interested in burn builds there’s lots of good discussion in the Pyroclasm sticky.

You really want to get 100% condition duration to make those burns count and you want to apply burn an as many enemies as you can. Purging flames and Judges Intervention paired with Torch and Scepter I’d say. That being said, I have tried very, very hard to make my Burning Guardian work. I have a full exotic set of Condi gear and its a lot of fun to play, but I wouldn’t say its especially great as far as damage.
The trait set up you posted seems viable. Getting that 10% of Power becomes extra Condition damage is decent.

It’s not noobish but it’s not what most people consider a competitive build, primarily due to the poor stat-to-damage conversion on burning. Unfortunately, that’s not an unreasonable thing in this case because burning is supplemental; we have to expect that sources of supplemental damage aren’t comparable to direct damage. The advantages to using burning aren’t as tangible as damage or damage reduction stats.

The Pyroclasm thread is a great source of information. It doesn’t recommend this particular approach for using burning but if you are still interested in a build as you are suggesting, you can check my signature (i think it’s updated).