Guild Wars 2

Massive revision in progress, please be patient while the thread is updated.

While you wait, take a look at some of the burn-conscious build threads people have been coming up with since the update:

messiah.1908: Why hybrid is the new you

Power-Melting Guard

Blasino.3128: Blasino Burning Build

Sammpo.2763: Condition Guardian PvP Build

Massive revision in progress, please be patient while the thread is updated.

Massive revision in progress, please be patient while the thread is updated.

Massive revision in progress, please be patient while the thread is updated.

Massive revision in progress, please be patient while the thread is updated.

Massive revision in progress, please be patient while the thread is updated.

Massive revision in progress, please be patient while the thread is updated.

If this is open to commenting:
First, thank you for this thread. I usually don’t peruse too many build threads but this is exceptional.
Second, I am switching to permeating wrath immediately. I’ve been running a heal / burn Guardian (Mostly for fun, I wasn’t pretending to get maximum effectiveness out of it) that relied a lot on Torch for AoE burning. But seeing a full breakdown on Permeating Wrath and comparing it to Zealot’s Flame makes me pretty sure I should ditch torch and just get a more supportive off-hand.

Very nice work man!
Ill try it out as soon as possible but i have only a question:
isnt a build based only on a condition (burning) weak against classes with condition removal?

Very interesting breakdown. I will be watching for the update regarding supplementing Cleric builds, as I’m looking to move off of the healway/AH build concepts and onto something a bit more interesting (and damaging, particularly for Fractals).

The idea that this can boost Staff also perked my ears. Its the primary weapon I run with, and has worked out well for me even in WvW.

6 piece bonus of Superior Rune of the Guardian adds 1 second of burning on block. I dunno if that would be useful for a burning.

heh, this is pretty funny. i actually just put together a set for messing around with Permeating Wrath. given i haven’t been in WvW yet (will be soon tonight hopefully), it’s been working out so far. however, i haven’t detailed all the specs yet and have been deciding between condition dmg, or condition duration. since i feel this does largely depend on if you’re fighting alone most of the time, with a group and if they have access to burning or not, and if in a large group.

re: condition removal. true, they can get rid of burning with one cleanse, but remember as Guardians we have more than a handful of ways for applications and we can do it fast too. and we don’t have to waste CDs to apply burning as well. so at least, in a 1v1, etc, watch their conditions, watch their cleanses, and keep pressuring.

just a quick note re: Staff and VoJ. i read somewhere, most likely Wiki saying that one attack that hits multiple enemies won’t count kitten hits, but rather 1 hit. which is what i assume the Staff #1 is. so it’s worth testing though. if not, symbol of swiftness traited larger / longer can do the trick, similar to the hammer mentioned.

will keep experimenting and thanks for the thread. good to see some form of organized thought and numbers. : ))

I was curious on the effect of -condition duration food. If it were to drop burning to under 1 second does that mean damage does not apply?

Blasino.3128:

I was curious on the effect of -condition duration food. If it were to drop burning to under 1 second does that mean damage does not apply?

Correct, any time your duration drops below whole seconds you lose a tic due to it only applying at the end of every second.

I think the biggest issue with burning builds in WvW would be the people running condition duration reduction, such as myself. since I run 56% most guardian’s VoJ procs would not even have time to tick on me, and would require some sort of burning duration increase to actually make it worth it. However my question since i cant really test it out now. How does +condition duration and -condition duration work. Do they just cancel each other out until one is + or -, or does it up the condition duration being applied first, and then if you hit a target it lowers it by the % they have (which would actually lead to a net loss in condition up time)

akamon.2769:

just a quick note re: Staff and VoJ. i read somewhere, most likely Wiki saying that one attack that hits multiple enemies won’t count kitten hits, but rather 1 hit. which is what i assume the Staff #1 is. so it’s worth testing though. if not, symbol of swiftness traited larger / longer can do the trick, similar to the hammer mentioned.

I don’t know what it may have been like way in the past because I didn’t start really using staff until probably January, but VoJ always counts off of number of enemies struck and not individual attacks made. Staff is included in this, and if you hit 5 enemies with the autoattack you’ll 100% proc VoJ every time. Just double-checked in the mists.

It almost doubles the DPS of staff sometimes, depending on your condition damage.

I just started using this build with 100% burning and was pretty impressed with the kill speed increase over my normal build this is in full clerics armor. I just swapped runes food and sigil. It is a combination of retaliation and burning for small are AoE damage. I left some slots empty because this is what I felt was most important. If you are already running full clerics this is a cool way to play with burning. For now these runes and sigils are pretty cheap. And yes I do mis pure of Voice but Smite Condition + switching Absolute Resolution in for Supreme Justice helps get around that.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-9;4NFk40J3cF-90;9;4J;0JT16;518-18AE;5pKMSjKrQ30ka0;5V208XC2HZN_U58aV8F0J-9cV19cV;9;9;9;9;9;3V6s5n

Nicely done foofad.

I’m one of those who usually advocates against using conditions based builds, but I’ll have to admit that you’ve peaked my interest.

Just a note, a lot of the analysis is still preliminary – I’m working on more, better metrics to compare builds against. Just comparing DPS doesn’t cut it.

Bash.7291:

I think the biggest issue with burning builds in WvW would be the people running condition duration reduction, such as myself. since I run 56% most guardian’s VoJ procs would not even have time to tick on me, and would require some sort of burning duration increase to actually make it worth it. However my question since i cant really test it out now. How does +condition duration and -condition duration work. Do they just cancel each other out until one is + or -, or does it up the condition duration being applied first, and then if you hit a target it lowers it by the % they have (which would actually lead to a net loss in condition up time)

Condition duration modifiers cancel each other out directly: If you have +40% and your opponent has -40%, you’ll deal the regular duration.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-duration-vs-Condition-duration/first#post2209855

You point out 100% burning duration increase and how it helps. For those looking to increase burning:

Food:
Bowl of Fire Meat Chili (15% burning)
Rare Veggie Pizza (40% condition duration)
Bowl of Garlic Kale Sautee (40% condition duration)

Sigil:
Sigil of Smoldering (10% burning)

Rune:
Rune of the Forge x 2 (15% burning)
Rune of Flame Legion x 2 (15% burning)
Rune of Balthazar x 2 (15% burning)
Rune of the Baelfire x 2 (15% burning)
Rune of the Elementalist x 6 (20% burning)
Rune of Lyssa x 2 (10% condition duration)
Rune of the Mad King x 2 (10% condition duration)

Traits:
30 points in Zeal (30% burning)
Radiant Fire (20% burning)

The above will net you 100% burn duration with a few different pairs of the runes or sigils of your choice.

Defensively, if you want to increase your burning by 100% with a single trait or set of runes you can use the following.

On block:
Superior Rune of the Guardian x 6 (1s per block)
Defender’s Flame (1s per block)
Shattered Aegis (1s on Aegis block)

Previously I had used the above defensive combination to cause 2 second burning on blocks and 3 second burning on Aegis blocking with some degree of success early in the game.

Very good points about enemies running reduced condition duration negating our unbuffed condition time.

Aiming for 60% increase in burning should provide us with maximum burn potential against reduced condition duration players.

Great write up, i will follow this one and see where it goes.

A very long time since i tried conditionbuilds but as i recall it permeathing wrath is self centered, and not around the target, which requires you to be very close , practically in the center of a zerg to make stuff burns en masse.

And when i ran conditionbuilds i was always forced to invest in radiance and zeal to get the highest burndamage in the group/zerg so it wasnt overwritten and 30 points in virtues, making me have 0 points in both valor and honor which wasnt favorable in wvw at least.

But i might remember incorrectly, i tested conditionsbuilds like a year ago and decided to roll a ranger and a warrior for conditiondamage.

Imo permeathing wrath is just stretching the build to much.

Also if i remember correctly i wasnt that impressed even when i got it to work, the dps was lower than a direct damage build and i had to give up almost every defense i had to get it. Even with burns ticking for 600.

But as i said it was a long time ago and it would be really cool if OP came up with something different.

Your experience is still valid. I’m not quite to the point where I will directly advocate a build yet, but my thoughts so far are that condition damage is a bad idea for Guardians and you’re better off not gearing for it. Instead, I think the goal should be to increase duration for various reasons.

Also yes, Permeating Wrath is an AoE centered on the Guardian and not the target. This makes it a bit strange to use with Scepter, and slightly awkward with staff, but since Staff is practically a melee weapon anyway it’s not as noticeable.

You know, there was a build that I put in a build calc but I was not sure how well it would work, I may have to go get the gear and try it out. it is essentially a AoE condition support build with apoth gear. I never really thought to try staff with it, I will have to re-calc it and see what is possible with it.

@Jon Peters
Nice sticky, there are a couple of other threads in these forums that deserve to be sticked as well.

Foofad has one about skill coefficients that worth it and Jax has written one about pvp builds that are definitely worth making stickies out of.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Skill-Coefficients-List-Partial/first#post2309051
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Silven-s-PvP-Guardian-Build-Guide/page/3#post2244947

@foofad
Will be interesting to follow.

I see your point regarding duration and aoe but the issue is that ele/engi/etc covers our burns and when i played around with burning you had to max burndamage to see those number flickering by. In short i dont think its enough with duration.

Im really eager to see if you find a solution to it because i didnt and i have been eager to play conditionbased since release.

Keep the god work up.

Brutaly.6257:

@foofad

I see your point regarding duration and aoe but the issue is that ele/engi/etc covers our burns and when i played around with burning you had to max burndamage to see those number flickering by. In short i dont think its enough with duration.

As long as those Eles and Engineers don’t have more condition damage than you do, your burns should take priority over theirs. It doesn’t have to be maxed out, just greater. But it’s very true that they’re an issue; Burning is not a very cooperation-friendly condition, even among conditions in general. I imagine Necromancers and Thieves have the same issue with each other and Poison.

Found a big fat nasty error in my DPS calculations, will be updating the appropriate sections soon.

The majority of the ele builds don’t revolve around condition damage, but most of the popular engineer builds revolve around conditions and might stacking, so engineers are the ones most likely to cause issues. They also have the easiest time getting permanent AoE burning going (9.6 seconds every 8.0).

Hey, can someone mathy (I actually hate math) check this for me?

DPS for autoattack chain is given as the following:
((((Autoattack 1 + 2 + 3)) * (1+(critical damage multiplier * critical chance)))/AA chain total time)+(Burning damage * Burning uptime * AA chain total time)

Seems right but I feel stupid right now.

That’s correct as long as your crit damage multiplier is including the 50% that you start with.

e: That also assumes that you are at or less than 100% burning uptime.

I figured out what I was doing wrong. I was adding 1 to the critical multiplier; saying 1.5 was your baseline multiplier, when in this case it’s not, it’s .5.

Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to show how might stacks change things. Maybe you could compare the numbers at 0, 10, 25 stacks etc.

Eventually I’m gonna make a great big giant table with all of that kind of good stuff, right now I’m working on some other aspects, but right now in that sample build I have a “maximum DPS” listed which also includes full might stacks.

I may have an extremely nice pure hybrid build (Healing, burning damage, pure damage, and condition removal) that might work, it is going to cost me a bit of gold and some testing (which I cant do because of reset night in wvw) but this thread may have sparked me onto something amazing.

great thread as for me
interesting that build posted at the beginning have similar traits as build I’m testing right now

also build posted by Dristig is terribly similar to build I’m testing right now

I’ve been using permeating wrath for months now. It’s an underrated trait. That said, a true burn build—ie building for condi damage—is not worth it. Burning has good base damage and fairly poor scaling with condi damage.

The biggest issue is, increasing burning duration, it will only make it take longer to see results.

Increasing burning damage, makes us suffer the loss of other more useful stats.

The reason to increase condition duration on other conditions is to allow you to achieve higher stacks. If my bleed wears off in 4 seconds, and I can apply 1 stack a second, the highest I can ever get my bleed is 4.

Increase the duration of bleeding to 6, with 1 stack a second, now you can achieve 6 stacks of bleed with that attack alone.

So for stacking in duration is bad for burning itself as a condition, but good for the ancillary effects, such as 10% more damage on burning targets and 10% more damage on targets with conditions (Fiery Wrath/Radiant Power)

Increasing duration should only be done to the extent of how long the fight will take, anything beyond that is a waste and did not help us kill faster. This is practically impossible to determine though.

Going for burning damage has been somewhat alleviated in the loss of stats with this most recent patch, but the primary focus is still raw damage and not condition damage.

Foofad brings up an extremely good point in the sense that, more burning on multiple targets gains the most benefit out of the condition in the sense of damage. If I stack 5 burns on one guy, it will take 5 seconds to see that damage, resulting in exactly the same dps each second.

If I stack 1 burn on 5 different guys, my theoretical dps went up, because all 5 burns ticked.

This alone makes permeating wrath the best way to get more damage out of burning, for the sense of “dps”.

To contradict myself now somewhat, increasing burning duration is helpful to get more “short” ticks of burning, because we can now get permeating wrath to proc more frequently.

This is still inline with my previous statement though, because the burning duration is not being stacked over the duration of the fight, but simply firing off more frequently in short bursts (a sort of 2 for 1).

Coming back full circle, is it worth it? I really enjoy permeating wrath in AE situations if my build is already down virtues.

Virtues is a commonly used trait line already for Boonway/Healway style guardians.

So is it worth it? Well we are already down there, but for different reasons. So Yes, it can be worth it.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “make it take longer to see results” for me? You kind of lost me there. I don’t see any kind of downside with increasing burning duration aside from the obvious ‘you could be using those runes/food/whatever for something else’.

Burning duration in essence gives us another stack of the burn effect since it only happens in whole seconds. That said the damage will take as long as the amount of stacks you have to occur.

If I have 25 stacks of bleed, in 1 second it will do 25 different bleed effects, increasing damage.

If I have 25 stacks of burning, I have to wait 25 seconds to see the damage happen, delaying damage.

Burning duration is not bad, per say, just depends on what you are trying to achieve. I am running around testing 100% condition duration and voj procs to see if I like double ticks or not regardless.

Innovation comes from experimentation, and I highly appreciate your research!

Ahhh, yeah. I should elaborate on that in the guide that once you hit the point at which you’re getting 100% burning uptime, there’s no reason to increase burning duration; If your rotation is such that you have so many VoJ procs and you’re using things like Purging Flame or a torch, if you’ve got enough individual sources that you burn them 100% of the time it doesn’t matter how much extra time is left on the stack. So you should shoot for 100% uptime, not 100% duration, basically.

And that 100% uptime only has to be during the expected length of the fight; you don’t have to generate a build that has 100% uptime forever.

Normally this won’t ever be an issue with VoJ alone.

If you start using torch, Judge’s Intervention, Purging Flames to supplement burning duration on the target and they can maintain the effect for the expected duration of the fight, the extra procs of VoJ become pointless.

The only other things that VoJ can do at that point is provide blinds and might based off of traits.

Kind of frustrating that our core mechanics can be negated with the game play mechanics like that. But this is all theoretical and normally you will not have a overlap of burning so extreme that you need to worry about it.

Now if we had a trait to have condition damage increased via VoJ procs or active use, then it becomes useful again when you have 100% burning up time on the target without VoJ.

Might on activation sort of addresses that problem in some ways, but very minimal.

I just wanted to contribute to the think tank was all.

I added another sample build. I played around with it for a bit and had a good time in AC and low level fractals. Very bizarre to play though, the style is pretty radically different from the norm. Going to add a defensive pseudo-boonway/healway next.

I’m interested in seeing what you come up with for Cleric’s gear. I’m running a 20/0/0/20/30 build in Cleric’s with 100% burn duration right now and am having a pretty good time. I just need to close the gap on condition removal.

Dropping 10 from zeal to pick up Pure of Voice will probably be a worthwhile trade in cleric gear. You’re doing fairly awful direct damage as it is, so that investment isn’t adding a ton of damage.

Alternatively, you can use purging flames to help with the conditions.

Yeah, I didn’t explain that very well. I’ve been playing with Pure of Voice for months. I usually spec Boonway or Healway. I’m trying to get by with Purging Flames and Absolute Resolution.

Dropping 10 in Zeal would lose the 100% up time. I could change runes again and then drop 10 in Zeal but I’m killing stuff faster than my usual spec with Zealous blade and an extra 100 power.

I love the fact that someone else was curious enough to try these things out and even go so far as write a whole thread on it. It won’t be an insider dirty secret anymore. I’m looking forward to the damage ‘stress’ testing results as well as the approach to other people’s builds with burning. Thanks again for some good quantitative work on this profession Foofad.

foofad.5162:

I added another sample build. I played around with it for a bit and had a good time in AC and low level fractals. Very bizarre to play though, the style is pretty radically different from the norm. Going to add a defensive pseudo-boonway/healway next.

I actually made a partial healway with a might stacking burn base but honestly was not a fan of it. The requirement to use empower ASAP when possible just did not feel right in a zerg setting where I am so used to movement. However you can get almost 1k condition damage just from sigil of battle swapping and empower might stacks. I used GS/Staff, where GS was the more power weapon with burning as a supplement, and staff was the true condition weapon. Also, I may have gone overboard with condition removal, so pure of voice could also be changed to EM to get even more might stacks. But as I said, I just did not really like the play style of the build but others might.

Oh and things to make sure you manual input: 250 power for bloodlust stacks, 80 toughness because of lack of update on strength in numbers, 90 condition damage from signet not being updated.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|1.1g.h1h|6.1f.h1h|1n.79.1c.79.1n.79.1c.79.1n.79.1c.79|1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1c.67|0.0.a6.u28b.u29b|16.d|w.18.19.1d.1i|e

great direction and advancements in the thread! and grats on the sticky as well. good one. ; ))

i will say i’ve been dabbling with this more and find it to be quite fun with permeating wrath and like said, swapping for Absoluet resolution when you feel you need more condition removal.

i’m wanting to tinker with a healing + condition damage build though since i felt going for majority condi was not cutting it in WvW. there isn’t much survival to be had so i’m still working on this. definitely tough though and good points regarding vs -condition duration enemies.. but it’s good timing since i’ev been reworking to add more duration. ; ))

Minor grammar update, apparently I can’t spell.