Guild Wars 2

Hello,
I wanted to know if somebody knew how much you gain per boon with this trait. Wiki says 1% but I’ve seen in some threads that it was 2%, which one is right ?

Pretty sure it is 1% – the confusion probably comes from the fact other classes have similar traits which award 2%.

I think this is because guardians can easily stack so many boons at once that a 2% per-boon would be overpowered.

It’s 1% per boon up to 9% as a cap (only 9 boons)

And having it at 2% would NOT be overpowered because of the huge skill point investment you have to make to get there. Doing this dampers your DPS by quite a bit, so increasing it to 2% would make much more sense. Let’s look at Save Yourselfs for example. That gives you 7 boons, that would only be a total of 14%. That’s hardly overpowered.

Really, it should be 3%.

Right, fair point on the trait investment.

I see that both the Ele and Engi have similar 1% minor traits in non-dps grandmaster tiers

Only the warrior gets 2% per-boon with 10 points invested in Tactics

It works well with Save Yourselves for obvious reasons, but aside from that you will almost never see all 9% of it. Kind of sad really because it has the potential to really help out the Virtues line and make it more attractive.

I’d like to see the trait changed to a major trait instead of a minor, so you are actually choosing the damage increase instead of additional support.

It could probably stronger if it wasn’t built in.

Knox.8962:

I’d like to see the trait changed to a major trait instead of a minor, so you are actually choosing the damage increase instead of additional support.

It could probably stronger if it wasn’t built in.

No, it’s good as minor. The two grandmaster majors are pretty decent, and one of them isn’t support based, its offensive based.

I said major, but I didn’t mean to imply that it should be a grandmaster major trait.

Knox.8962:

I said major, but I didn’t mean to imply that it should be a grandmaster major trait.

Oh, you mean as in something worth investing in, like it makes a major difference rather than a minor impact?

I meant that it would be a meaningful choice as a 20 point trait. That would force you to choose between absolute resolution for survival/support or power of the virtuous for damage.

Alternatively, you could stick it as a minor trait in a line like Zeal, where people go looking for +damage traits.

Knox.8962:

I meant that it would be a meaningful choice as a 20 point trait. That would force you to choose between absolute resolution for survival/support or power of the virtuous for damage.

Alternatively, you could stick it as a minor trait in a line like Zeal, where people go looking for +damage traits.

I don’t see a reason at all to put it in zeal, all you would be doing is taking away the synergy from the virtue line honestly, and putting PotV in a line where it doesn’t make sense. Also Zeal is more of a trait line for Symbols and Spirit Weapons.

Zeal is a trait line that Should be directly ramping up damage, but the minor traits are miniscule increases for basically everything, with the possible exception of Hammer.

Hammer is the only weapon that relies enough on symbol damage for those traits to do anything noticeable.

The current major Zeal traits are basically Fiery Wrath, GS power, Scepter power, and a bunch of niche traits that are either not commonly used, or are terrible.

So adding a minor trait that actually increases damage to the line that is ostensibly about increasing direct damage, would be fairly appropriate and a welcome change in most respects.

You could always replace the current one with something more virtues centric, like “do 3% additional damage for each recharging virtue” or something similar.

Knox.8962:

Zeal is a trait line that Should be directly ramping up damage, but the minor traits are miniscule increases for basically everything, with the possible exception of Hammer.

Hammer is the only weapon that relies enough on symbol damage for those traits to do anything noticeable.

The current major Zeal traits are basically Fiery Wrath, GS power, Scepter power, and a bunch of niche traits that are either not commonly used, or are terrible.

So adding a minor trait that actually increases damage to the line that is ostensibly about increasing direct damage, would be fairly appropriate and a welcome change in most respects.

You could always replace the current one with something more virtues centric, like “do 3% additional damage for each recharging virtue” or something similar.

Placing it in Zeal is not a good idea at all. The Virtues line needs some offensive capabilities in there for people that want to go heavy into that path. It just needs a bit more though.

Also, not a bad idea on that last sentence, but rather than replace PoV, replace Unscathed Defender with it.

We’ll have to agree to disagree on the zeal part. That tree needs actual damage modifiers other than fiery wrath.

The virtues line really needs to be able to go either support, sustain, or damage. Right now, it doesn’t pay to go for damage in the tree. Permeating Wrath is situationally useful, but basically forces you to give up using the virtue’s active ability, unscathed contender is too situational to be really useful, and supreme justice isn’t good enough to give up one of the other 20 point traits for.

I think zeal needs some definite improvements. Greatsword Power(Zealous Blade) is a small step in the right direction, but it really misses the mark. I believe increasing the damage to 10% and increasing the heal (either via a flat healing buff, 25-50 hp; or via a reasonable healing power coefficient).would make it a more attractive trait.

Now, honestly, my primary concern with the zeal tree is the lack of reasons to go in to the tree past 20. The newly added Kindled Zeal is disappointing. Even at obscene levels of power the amount of additional damage granted (4000 power, 400 condition damage) would only increase burning by 100 damage. Increasing the conversion may be a solution, however, it is an uninspired bandaid fix. Zeal desperately needs something as fantastic as Right-Hand Strength or Altruistic Healing to compete as a viable investment.

Start by separating Zealous Blade back into separate traits while greatly improving them in the process.

Choose one master and one grandmaster. (“Active” in this instance means they are not currently on cooldown; they are actively providing their passive effects.)

“Zealous Berserker”
Option #1: Increase damage of two-handed weapons by 10%. Master Trait.
Option #2: Increase damage dealt by 5% for each active Virtue. Grandmaster trait.

“Zealot’s Tenacity”
Option #1: Receive healing equal to 3% of damage dealt. Master Trait.
Option #2: Dealing damage restores 3% of your max HP for each of your active Virtues (5 second ICD). Grandmaster Trait.

This isn’t really the perfect thread to derail in order to express some ideas, but I’m genuinely concern with the lack of strong traits in our 25/30 Zeal branch. I expanded on an idea someone had above. I just really wanna see the Zeal tree have something fun and interesting above the 20 point mark. I also believe the 25 Zeal needs to be improved/changed to something more useful as well, but I could literally list off half a dozen ideas so I’ll save it for another thread.

From an objective perspective, what would you guys think of those as master/grandmaster options? Would that get you to invest 30 points in to Zeal?

It really should be 2%. It drives me nuts that it’s 1%.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

It really should be 2%. It drives me nuts that it’s 1%.

Amen to that brother!

Yeah, definitely, would make the tree much more viable …

It is a decent trait and not drastically behind the other percent damage increase traits:

Fiery Wrath – 10% if tgt burning
Radiant Power – 10% to tgts w/ conditions
Elusive Power – 10% if endurance not full
Unscathed Contender – 20% if Aegis active
Power of the Virtuous – 9% with all boons active (1% per boon)

So it is 1% less than the comparable traits, not too drastic of a loss. The biggest issue is the question of up time.

Do we have the up time of boons avilable to maintain a 9% damage increase?

Burning is sporadic in application but consistent through a fight. Activate it for a few dedicated seconds of burst.

Conditions are plentiful in a fight, so the chances of a target having any condition on it to increase our damage by 10% is high. Much more consistent than Burning, but stacks well with that trait as a double whammy.

In combat, dodging is frequent, but conservative/smart dodging is a sign of good play. I think elusive power is a strong trait for consistent damage increase

Aegis drops very easy in combat, especially in AE combat. Hard to keep it up for the 20% increase. This does have it’s applications with on use burst and initial combat damage if you get the jump on someone. If you start the fight ahead of the enemy you have better chances of winning, so a decent damage increase for burst, but not for “DPS” (PvE bosses you can reliably dodge signature attacks so works well in those situations).

That leaves us with Power of the Virtuous. I see it as primarily as an on demand burst trait.

Throughout the duration of a fight, you will most likely have: Regeneration, Retaliation, Vigor, and maybe Might active (4%).

Periodically you will also have: Stability, Protection, Aegis, and maybe Swiftness (4%).

On demand you can pop Save Yourselves to gain every boon except for Aegis and Stability (7%)

Also since you are down the Virtue trait line you will have Inspired Virtues and Virtue of Retribution which will let you activate virtues to gain: Might, Regeneration, Protection, Retaliation, and Aegis (5%)

You can further augment virtue activation with Indomitable Courage, which will provide Protection with activate of Virtue of Courage for another 1% increase bumping up virtue burst damage to 6%.

Add on top the fact that you get increased boon duration for going down that tree, and boons stacking in duration for the most part, you can prolong the active effects to sustain a good duration of added boon burst damage for at least 20-30 seconds if not more (too lazy to dish out the calculator).

So Power of the Virtuous has a sustained damage increase of 3-4% and a burst damage increase of 8-9%. Not bad overall, just not as good as our other traits which do the same thing.

It is 1% weaker in burst and 6% weaker in sustain. I would love to see it become a 2% increase also, which I do not see as an out of the line/over powered buff to the trait.

This would make it 6-8% sustain (still weaker than 10%) and 16-18% burst (weaker than 20% from unscathed, but more reliable).

In addition to that, other classes can “see” our burst incoming with all the boons appearing, and this causes some counter play, namely from necros and mesmers who can corrupt or rip boons off a target.

…my long drawn out way of saying I concur

That’s actually a pretty good write up CMF. Thanks.