Guild Wars 2

I want to know what people think of Guardians focused on Condition Damage. At first I was playing a sword/shield Guardian, and it was somewhat fun. Then I went to PvP with a tanky build. I survived long but I did not do much damage. I then switched my shield to a torch in PvE because I was bored and I had a lot of fun with it. So I equipped the 2 burning slot skills and the condition damage signet and had even more fun.

I decided to check online before going to PvP to see how viable it was. Everyone kept saying that condition damage Guardian is terrible because they only use burning and can easily be cured. Those posts I found were either from beta or shortly after release. So I decided to go with it anyways. Much to my surprise, I was actually killing people while I never even got close to downing them with S/D. They might only have fire as the only condition damage, but they can spam it so the enemy will just get burned again after curing it. They got F1’s passive, F1’s active, Torch’s 4, Purging Flames, along with it’s ring of fire, and Judge’s Intervention.

I’ve been able to solo almost every class with condition damage. I was even surprised when I killed a thief who jumped me and took out a chunk of my health before I reacted. I even had people tell me they were glad I was on their team. What I mostly do is burn the guy and play defensively, even the burn is gone or cured, burn him again. I’m not sure if I’ve only fought terrible people or condition guardian is actually good, but I’m pretty sure someone who’s only played the game for a week would have a bit more difficulty playing in PvP.

I tried this last week when I got the game, I was only rabbit rank and between level 10-20. I haven’t tried it this week after the signet buff because I was busy doing PvE, but my guess is that it’s probably even stronger.

Many Guardians have not found the value of using condition damage, especially for PVP. It can be used to great effect because strategically, no one really knows how to deal with it due to how unpopular it is. Be assured that the right Condition damage build is a scourge to tanks and thieves.

Contrary to popular belief, CD works for Guardians because we have staying power and the ability to apply CD very often … more often than any class can remove it.

I absolutely dislike condi damage and I don’t think that will change so soon. The calculation is pretty simple: 1000 condi dmg gives you, in the very best case where you have 100 % burning uptime, 250 DPS and does not scale with anything else. If you invest that stat budget in something else, I’m pretty convinced that it will turn out with some more damage.

CptAurellian.9537:

I absolutely dislike condi damage and I don’t think that will change so soon. The calculation is pretty simple: 1000 condi dmg gives you, in the very best case where you have 100 % burning uptime, 250 DPS and does not scale with anything else. If you invest that stat budget in something else, I’m pretty convinced that it will turn out with some more damage.

Pretty much this for the answer. We don’t provide enough conditions to make Condition Damage a worthwhile spec.

Guardians interested in the burning aspect of the class should focus on the application of burning instead of the enhancement of burning. With a 10/25/X/X/X build, your Guardian can deal an additional 20% damage to targets with the burning condition (or just 10% with any condition). It’s a solid way of making Berserkers even more powerful. Boosting condition damage will just decrease the Guardian’s damage potential too much.

It’s awful. For condition damage to be good, you want at least two types of damaging conditions, and usually one of which stacks intensity (Bleed or Confusion).

I feel like the guardian hits the cap of effectiveness with condition damage too quickly. Since there’s burning and nothing else, once you have 100% uptime on multiple targets (Hint: Torch + Radiant Fire to start) you can’t improve it much.

The extra application can become relevant against opponents that keep cleansing, or where your opponents keep switching, but other than that, a condition build just caps too easily for a guardian.