Guild Wars 2

Have a big long post in the general forums about all the trait line stat synergies, and I just wanted to come back to my chosen profession and throw it out there:

Radiance has bad stat synergies.

Beyond taking radiance for the obvious benefit of precision and a few traits of choice, it has horrible synergy because it gives us condition damage.

Ours is the only class that suffers from a lack of meaningful conditions on crit.

At most we get a 5 second Chill on crit every 30 seconds when using hammer….but that does not do condition damage, more so, condition duration would assist that to try to scrape together as long of a chill as possible.

So we have condition damage and precision which help each other none, and force us to throw away a stat since we can only get 4 stats maxed out with a 30/30/10 setup.

If you take radiance to max out precision, then you would want crit damage and power as well.

But crit damage is with toughness in valor and power is in zeal with condition duration.

So we would have to pick which stat we want to have suffer. You can make up for a lot of lost precision with gear, but it is harder to make up lost power and crit damage with gear, thus radiance may be the one you choose to sacrifice.

(not that we are seeking condition damage for now)
If you go down radiance for the condition damage, you get precision, but no condition on crits. If you go down power you have “some” synergy by having power convert to condition damage and you also gain condition duration.

so we can max condition damage and condition duration, but it is seemingly pointless without any survivability traits as burning takes a long time to ramp up damage and it is easy to cleanse.

So I am just throwing it out there, our stat synergies are wonky.

I would argue that Zeal is the only guardian tree that is “bad.” There are a few choice traits at 20, but even they are fairly mediocre compared to our other trees. The 25 passive and the 30 options are really uninspired.

Zeal does its job as far as trait selection (all damage) but it seems to focus on symbols too much.

It is a bland trait line for sure, but it satisfies its role at ramping up your raw damage.

Our offensive stat setup is flimsy and spread thin.

High precision and crit damage do nothing without good power.

High power is never going to achieve the heavy hits without good precision crit damage.

Full P/Pr/CritD makes us more glass than other classes because of a lack of survival traits in those trees and extremely low HP.

Arguably PvE can survive without those survival traits though, but for arguments sake, it is not very pretty on paper.

What’s not good about aoe blind spam, 15 percent crit and percent damage?
Now if only our 1h weapons didn’t suck…

If you read a little closer I was trying to indicate that the stat spread was bad, and not trying to discount the trait selections within the trees which add utilities which are actually good.

CMF.5461:

Beyond taking radiance for the obvious benefit of precision and a few traits of choice, it has horrible synergy because it gives us condition damage.

By going down that tree we gain precision but lose out on power and crit damage and vice versa for the others. Versus a profession that gets crit damage and precision in the same tree.

it’s one of my favourite lines right now actually. though i will agree, not a lot of synergy amongst traits itself, and the condition damage you get with it. although, i don’t mind at all. if i’m going down Radiance all the way, i’m most likely goign for RHS and using one handed weapons – and if i use both sword and scepter, both with a lot of multi or fast hitting attacks, i benefit from proccing VoJ a lot more, which condition damage benefits from.

when foofad first posted his Pyroclasm thread, i had a a build that was 10/30/0/0/30 and it worked REALLY well in PvE. when yuo take it into other areas where you’ll need to be able to survive a little, then the build obviously fell apart for obvious reasons. so i see where you’re coming from. it’s moreso the fact that if you go full Radiance, you’ll want power and crit damage to augment the crit chance. but if you wanted to utilize the condition damage, you’ll be giving up so much direct damage and/or sustainability. my thoughts that came to mind first.

I understand the displeasure with condition damage as second stat in Radiance, but tbh, where would you put it otherwise? Both condition damage and duration are pretty useless for the vast majority of our builds, but they need to be put in some trait line (unless the whole stat system is changed) and no matter where they end up, a lot of people will be kitten ed.

actually I’m glad with situation as is…
I picked 20 points in radiance to have a burn on spiritual weapons atack, and actually that 200 condition damage is helpfull for that (since spiritual weapons uses OUR condition dmg) and 200 in precision is actually for greater survivability (that may sound funny) because I have 8 seconds of Vigor (thanks to the +60% boon duration) on each crit with 5 seconds cooldown… so I can dodge n’roll with nice AoE healing in the middle time

with that duration I agree – its something like 100% or nothing – every other option is just waste of stat…

Zeal and Radiance are mostly terrible, and I doubt many would argue against that. Luckily, our other three lines are amazing, so just take them for the traits, and use more offensive gear to balance things out. Pretty simple solution, really.

Skarloc.2569:

Zeal and Radiance are mostly terrible, and I doubt many would argue against that. Luckily, our other three lines are amazing, so just take them for the traits, and use more offensive gear to balance things out. Pretty simple solution, really.

Except it really is not. You are still not getting the damage you would get by going into honor and valor that you would going into zeal and radiance. 100 power + 10% damage to burning foes is going to give you more of a damage boost than you are ever going to get in the honor tree for example.

I do not think that the issue is that radiance is actually a bad trait line, the issue is with how guardians work as a whole. Condition damage has to be somewhere, and half the time it is with precision. The issue is, we only have one damaging condition. Lets look at the full picture though.

5: Justice is Blind: When activating Virtue of Justice, nearby foes are blinded. Very good defensively, also works very well with blind exposure
15: Renewed Justice: Virtue of Justice is renewed when you kill a foe. Very good for PvE, decent for pvp if your getting a good amount of kills. Works well with blind exposure and the 5 point virtue trait
25: Radiant Power: Deal more damage to foes inflicted with conditions. 10% extra damage whenever any condition is on an enemy. so pretty much 10% free damage.

10 Healer’s Retribution: Gain 3 seconds of retaliation when using a heal skill. This one is junk except with the healing breeze bug, also does not make sense in a crit/condition based build, Fury for 5-10 second would make more sense.
10 Signet Mastery: Signets recharge 20% faster. pretty good, brings our biggest heal to 32 seconds, also helps our CC with 2 signets
10 Shimmering Defense: Burn nearby foes when your health reaches 25% (60-second cooldown). This one is complete junk and needs an overhaul. Would like to see something like “Burns 3 conditions from you when your health reaches 25%” or something.
10 Inner Fire: When you are set on fire, you gain fury. Situational but VERY strong. In pve it is lackluster, PvP/WvW it is almost free perma fury with the condition heavy meta.
10 Searing Flames: When you apply burning to an [sic] foe, remove a boon. This effect can only trigger once every 20 seconds. Like the Idea, CD is stupid though. 5 Seconds would most likely be a good idea, just because we have alot of issues with bunkers simply because we have no condition damage variant, and have to suffer breaking through buffs.
10 Blind Exposure: Applying blind also applies 3 stacks of vulnerability (10 seconds). Awesome trait, synergy with sword/focus/GS/VoJ and also with Radiant power due to the length of the duration.

20 Radiant Fire: Torch skills recharge 20% faster. All burning durations are increased by 20%. Pretty decent after the buff, the big bonus is not that it gives extra burning ticks on skills, but more that it keeps fiery wrath from zeal active 20% longer.
20 A Fire Inside: Spirit weapons cause burning. Needs to be moved to a different tree. I still cant understand why they threw some random spirit weapon traits in random trees.
20 Inscribed Removal: Using a signet cures a condition on you. Pretty decent when using a signet based build, but somewhat situational as only 2 of our 4 signets are defensive in use. But in the condition heavy meta, any condition removal is good.
20 Powerful Blades: Sword and spear damage is increased by 5%. straight damage boost for sword and spear, would like to see some improvements like they did with torch and GS but its good for any 1h sword based build.

30 Right-Hand Strength: Critical-hit chance with one-handed weapons is increased by 15%. Amazing damage boost for any 1h weapons. This trait is also great for helping proc our on crit traits in honor, and also any on crit food or sigils we have.
30 Perfect Inscriptions: Signet passive effects are improved. Signet passives are increased 20% except for resolve, which goes from 1 condition every 10 seconds to 2. Pretty good if your going to be using any signets with 2 hand weapons. I do think this could use a buff to 50% though, as you are only looking at 36 extra points worth of stats per signet, and 2% less damage from judgement.

So we have 3 great minor traits, 3/6 good adept traits 3/4 good master traits (powerful blades really needs something extra added to it imo) and 1.5/2 good Grandmaster traits (giving signet mastery .5 just due to how nice 2 conditions every 10 seconds is.)

I think the issue that people have is that Radiance is situational to your build, in that it focuses on 1h weapons and signets where as honor and valor, are pretty fluid with almost any build and weapon set. I honestly have no issue with that as it makes sense to me at least. The issue with condition damage being a stat to it, is just that there wasn’t any other place to put it, but that is also a flaw with the fact that we only have burning as a condition. Even looking at the traits, only simmering defense, and radiant fire are the only traits that actually cause/effect damaging conditions in the first place, where as any of the other ones are based on non damaging conditions, or are giving you modifiers due to conditions on a target.

agreed. Guardians traits seem very confused at times. (Example)To use spirit weapons effectively is just a mess of traits to invest in for weapons that get instakilled in any dungeon or pvp AoE area.

They could change Powerful Blades (X) to apply vulnerability on critical hits and change Healer’s Retribution (I) to vulnerability cause condition damage (something simililar to Necros Terror).

Right now the cond build on guardian is just useless. And if I do a cond build (that can work on PvE), I will go for virtues line…

Bash.7291:

Skarloc.2569:

Zeal and Radiance are mostly terrible, and I doubt many would argue against that. Luckily, our other three lines are amazing, so just take them for the traits, and use more offensive gear to balance things out. Pretty simple solution, really.

Except it really is not. You are still not getting the damage you would get by going into honor and valor that you would going into zeal and radiance. 100 power + 10% damage to burning foes is going to give you more of a damage boost than you are ever going to get in the honor tree for example.

If your sole goal is to accumulate as much damage as possible, with no regard for your own survivability, you are correct. However, that’s not exactly a great way to be real successful in this game. Between armor, runes, consumables, and stacks you can play with your stats enough to not have to place too much of an emphasis on your trait lines to get your stats to a target number. Now while they certainly do help, you’re better off suited at picking traits that benefit you as a whole, rather than taking a narrow-minded focus at a particular stat or area of focus.

As has been mentioned several times already, the problem with Radiance and Zeal is that most of the traits are fairly average, and for some reason is tied to condition damage and duration. Since the Guardian can’t really toss out a ton of conditions, it’s rather pointless to focus on either stat, and is essentially a wasted one. Yes, 100 power is nice, but I’d rather have 100 toughness and 10% critical damage. Not only that, but I’d rather have those traits instead of doing 10% damage to burning foes. I understand the fact that through those lines you could accumulate more damage, but it’s not much damage, and it’s far less useful than most damage lines for classes, and is especially inferior to our own defensive lines.

You’re more than welcome to go heavy into Radiance and Zeal, but where does the defense come from? If we’re talking PvE, it doesn’t matter, because it’s all mindless easy junk anyways, but in PvP, you’re really going to suffer from taking very average traits over much more useful ones like AH and Pure of Voice. I’d rather go heavy into Honor and Valor with Beserker gear than to go heavy into Radiance and Zeal, and having to rely on my gear for survivability. It’s a blatantly easy decision for me. I can get enough damage from my gear, so I think I’ll take traits that are actually useful instead of praying that no one is capable of cleansing my mighty 5 seconds of burning.

Unless you’re not talking about pvp in any form this thread is ridiculous.
Radiance is a really strong line for RHS and Justice is blind for DPS builds. Burst Guardian builds are viable in tpvp and do use 30 in Radiance, if you don’t think you have enough survivability you really just aren’t spec’d right.
You have perma Vigor, problem solved.

Also to address another topic above:
The only buff we need to make condition builds 100% viable is Radiance X to give all 1h sword skills 1 stack of bleeding per hit (only on auto-attack may work with higher bleed durations) and that would give you a perfectly viable Guard condi dps build and Condi Bunker build.
Which would be really cool for the game, ANet does not like cool things and it won’t be considered.

Jax.5261:

Unless you’re not talking about pvp in any form this thread is ridiculous.
Radiance is a really strong line for RHS and Justice is blind for DPS builds. Burst Guardian builds are viable in tpvp and do use 30 in Radiance, if you don’t think you have enough survivability you really just aren’t spec’d right.
You have perma Vigor, problem solved.

Also to address another topic above:
The only buff we need to make condition builds 100% viable is Radiance X to give all 1h sword skills 1 stack of bleeding per hit (only on auto-attack may work with higher bleed durations) and that would give you a perfectly viable Guard condi dps build and Condi Bunker build.
Which would be really cool for the game, ANet does not like cool things and it won’t be considered.

Or give guards a unique burning condition, it is BLUE fire after all. There, no more overlap with every other class’s burning damage.

Bash, that list is spot on.

Reading this thread I’ve come to realize I will absolutely never understand PvE.

Jax.5261:

Radiance is a really strong line for RHS and Justice is blind for DPS builds. Burst Guardian builds are viable in tpvp and do use 30 in Radiance, if you don’t think you have enough survivability you really just aren’t spec’d right.
You have perma Vigor, problem solved.

I totally agree. I’ve played with members in my guild and many others who main Guardian, and currently use RHS w/ scepter/focus and sword alt. Going 30 in Radiance is going to work for those spec’d correctly, using 1h wpns and adding pts in the Honor trait line for perma Vigor. It’s viable in PVE, as Jax states above, it’s strong in DPS builds. I use a 20/30/0/20/0 build currently with the extra dmg for scepter, RHS & Empowering Might and have no problems surviving in dungeons runs. Again, tpvp and wvw are different areas of play and may require allocating pts differently.

Bash’s explanation and breakdown of Radiance a few posts above shows how useful the trait line is to Guardians. I’d go as far as saying if you’re not adding pts to Valor for AH, toughness or crit. dmg then Radiance, Honor and Virtues is absolutely worth it depending on what the player wants to achieve. I only spec in to Zeal for the Scepter trait and the extra power for my current build.

Radiance isn’t bad even though I understand the point of the OP.

If you have to rely on your traits to give you the stat points to increase your damage… I think you need to rework your build.
Traits should never account for stats, their main purpose is to adjust your play-style accordingly, and the stat boosts should be taken as a supplemental boost. Nothing more.

At least, that’s how I’ve always taken it.

I don’t agree with that abou spiritual weapons
most of their traits is not just “random throwed” – a Fire inside trait have much sense as it gives burning to spiritual weapons and many more traits in that line are burning-related – so I don’t understand why burning trait should not to be in burning trait tree.
Zeal is have spiritual weaps traits that are afecting direct damage aspect of them, and Virtues have just longer duration – as for me it seems legit.

and You DON’T have to have all the spirit weapons traits toa have it effective – I use only two of them and they are making it good enough – at fractals I AM using it and nobody have problems with that.

PS. and seriously I don’t want trait that these weapons are not dissapearing upon command – actually I could be vary glad if it woud dissapear properly when I ask for it

PS2. @TriggerSad Yeah I agree with You but I’m rather glad that these trait line I’m using are boosting those stats that they are – for example I have 20 point in radiance to “a fire inside” trait and I am glad that it grants me additional 200 condition damage for those burning be better and 200 precision to have better that perma vigor :P

To be fair 200 condition damage is only another 50dps on burning.

Wouldn’t adding a superior earth rune to the weapon solve the problem ? The relatively high crit chance which can be provided by the 15% boon of the Radiance line makes it probable to trigger causing said bleeding and working in synergy with the increased condition damage.

First off, I’ll be honest. I worded in a way to spark some conversation.

I do not think “radiance is bad”. There are tons of reasons to go down that tree, pve and pvp reasons.

I think Bash’s list is VERY comprehensive and has tons of good insight.

The core idea that prompted me to do this was when I was compiling a list of traits and stats from every profession in the game and I came to realize we are the only ones that don’t have a condition damage on crit effect. (I don’t count hammer chill condition damage).

Every other class has bleed/burn/vulnerability on crit if not more effects.

Would burning on crit be a satisfactory addition? The only other on conditions that would gain benefit from condition damage would be bleeding, torment, and poison….I guess you can throw in confusion as well, but I REALLY don’t think that is a condition that guardians need or should have…I’m on the wall about giving us bleed.

Poison also I don’t think is a condition we need, but torment is a viable on crit condition we could gain.

Additionally they added torment in small bits here and there and advanced that to giving Warriors torment in the last patch I think it was? or it was changed, something about torment and warriors happened…too lazy to go look it up right now.

That said, if they are expanding torment to more classes as they test and adjust things, we may be on the list to gain a new condition in torment as well, I hope.

I actually went running around in spvp with runes of earth on my weapons and I tried either maximizing bleeding duration (85% to bleed duration I think I got) or maximizing my crit chance (90+%). Both of them I could only maintain about 3-4 stacks of bleed, but the bleed duration provided the most stable 4 stack bleed which would drop to 3 only for a couple of seconds.

It wasn’t enough though, but bleeding+burning did augment each other fairly well, just wasn’t enough pressure or survivability to maintain. Maybe I didn’t have the build right, because I was just testing the mechanics, not really trying to find a build.

Torment on crit, thoughts?

Sorelus Imperion.3469:

Wouldn’t adding a superior earth rune to the weapon solve the problem ? The relatively high crit chance which can be provided by the 15% boon of the Radiance line makes it probable to trigger causing said bleeding and working in synergy with the increased condition damage.

I’ve played around with condition Guardians A LOT.
The only small and simple change that you could currently make would be to make Rad X give bleeding per sword skill, even with earth you only get 3 stacks which doesn’t nearly do enough pressure. If running condition you also need a doom sigil or 2 doom sigils to put the pressure on once they’re down (or 2 for throughout the fight).

can we talk about what else could be added to Rad X?
or in general of course. but since it was mentioned Rad X needs some extra oomph as per the other weapon damage % increase traits. with bleeding per sword skills.. would that be too OP? perhaps with a balance between duration of condition applied and CD.

we could play around with Torment as well, CMF. with the right CD and duration, we would be able to stack a decent amount so that foes with it will be weary and actually choose to not move around as much (which helps with keeping our foes near us), while not being to the point where we can stack 25 in 2 seconds.

not sure where to get that balance though. not doing hard math, but maybe something like 3 stacks of Torment/Bleed for 7s, 5s CD, on sword crits. is that too much? lol i’m terrible at coming up with stuff like this.

Thank you for the complements on that write up guys. I think I am actually going to go through and do a list like that for each trait line, with the pros and cons of each trait, and start a serious thread to discus what might be some good ideas to fix our “dead” traits, and also what steps could be taken to make trait lines work better towards a set goal (such as radiance how it is currently based towards 1h Critical builds, or signet builds.)

As far as conditions go….I would love to see torment on sword, as it would help deal with some of the “escape artists” classes, considering we are pretty much a full melee class.

Something else that I thought of, which would honestly make a bit of sense looking at radiance traits. Why isn’t condition damage switched with zeal’s condition duration? We only have 2 actual traits that help cause any conditions in radiance. One of them is absolutely horrible no matter what build. And the other is generally only useful in Spvp, and really needs a new trait line home anyways. However we have several traits that already would apply conditions that would make more sense with extra duration. (blind on VoJ, Vuln on blind, Radiant power, Combining with torch to make burn duration extremely viable). It is just really weird that they put power/condition duration together on every single class.

would LOVE to see that list/thread, Bash.

and you bring up another good point. i guess at least in the Guardian’s case, it may have been a we don’t want Radiance to be a MUST HAVE line for Guardians. although i don’t think even if Condi Duration was paired up with Radiance, it would be that game-breaking. would certainly make trying to come up with a conditions/burn build slightly easier. like yuo said, burn duration becoming more viable, without having to spread your points too far apart. actually, i would love to have duration with Radiance. or at least, matched up with the traits that do give conditions.

Something that is universal with all profession trait lines is that Power is always combined with Condition Duration. I don’t know why….

That said, I don’t think they would move condition damage into power any time soon.

I think condition damage and toughness would be a good combination, since burning requires time to do damage, and toughness prolongs time. Also down the valor line you have might and burn on block….while we don’t have a frequent enough rate of blocking to make it the core of a build, that synergy works well.

At that rate crit damage could move up to precision and complete that P/Prc/CritD trinity…but they moved crit damage away from precision for a reason, so I don’t think they would be keen on that move either.

Condition damage could also go with healing power, since if we go down the honor tree we may be lacking in power and precision, which would give us some defensive damage via retaliation and burning.

Just some thoughts as we play “dev”.

haha, if they switched condi dmg and vit, CMF, that would really switch up our x/x/30/30/x builds. XDD

Skarloc.2569:

If your sole goal is to accumulate as much damage as possible, with no regard for your own survivability, you are correct. However, that’s not exactly a great way to be real successful in this game. Between armor, runes, consumables, and stacks you can play with your stats enough to not have to place too much of an emphasis on your trait lines to get your stats to a target number. Now while they certainly do help, you’re better off suited at picking traits that benefit you as a whole, rather than taking a narrow-minded focus at a particular stat or area of focus.

As has been mentioned several times already, the problem with Radiance and Zeal is that most of the traits are fairly average, and for some reason is tied to condition damage and duration. Since the Guardian can’t really toss out a ton of conditions, it’s rather pointless to focus on either stat, and is essentially a wasted one. Yes, 100 power is nice, but I’d rather have 100 toughness and 10% critical damage. Not only that, but I’d rather have those traits instead of doing 10% damage to burning foes. I understand the fact that through those lines you could accumulate more damage, but it’s not much damage, and it’s far less useful than most damage lines for classes, and is especially inferior to our own defensive lines.

You’re more than welcome to go heavy into Radiance and Zeal, but where does the defense come from? If we’re talking PvE, it doesn’t matter, because it’s all mindless easy junk anyways, but in PvP, you’re really going to suffer from taking very average traits over much more useful ones like AH and Pure of Voice. I’d rather go heavy into Honor and Valor with Beserker gear than to go heavy into Radiance and Zeal, and having to rely on my gear for survivability. It’s a blatantly easy decision for me. I can get enough damage from my gear, so I think I’ll take traits that are actually useful instead of praying that no one is capable of cleansing my mighty 5 seconds of burning.

See, the issue is that you can still go say, 30 into radiance, 10 into zeal (BTW never ever think that someone is going full zeal the traits are broken we know), and you still have 30 points to put into whatever you want. You act like you lose out on things like AH or pure of voice just because you put points into other trees. Also, there is no difference between gearing for damage and and getting the defensive trait bonuses and gearing for defense and grabbing the offensive trait bonuses. (the ONLY exception is that stupid crit damage from Valor, as 1:10 point ratio is the best you can get outside of jewels.)

Overall, the difference is really just that you give up some defensive traits for other offensive traits, or vice versa. Which is the same old risk/reward we always have, but it is foolish to assume that someone that has traits into radiance/zeal lose all of their defensive capabilities, as there are honestly plenty to get enough with guardian.

Also, regarding condition duration, it is actually a very good stat to pick up on a guardian, since every one of our conditions are time based. Immobilize, burning, blind, and vulnerability all benefit greatly from duration. Also, Radiant power becomes even stronger due to better up time. As far as praying someone doesn’t cleanse burning for fiery wrath, we have multiple sources such as torch #4, VoJ procs, VoJ activation, Judges Intervention, Purging flames, Defender’s flame, shattered aegis. If you want it is very easy to keep burning on a target, and have constant sources of reapplication. And the best part is, that you only need 1-2 of those to keep it constant. With my current build, torch #4 and VoJ are enough to keep it on a significant amount of time.

CMF.5461:

Something that is universal with all profession trait lines is that Power is always combined with Condition Duration. I don’t know why….

That said, I don’t think they would move condition damage into power any time soon.

I think condition damage and toughness would be a good combination, since burning requires time to do damage, and toughness prolongs time. Also down the valor line you have might and burn on block….while we don’t have a frequent enough rate of blocking to make it the core of a build, that synergy works well.

At that rate crit damage could move up to precision and complete that P/Prc/CritD trinity…but they moved crit damage away from precision for a reason, so I don’t think they would be keen on that move either.

Condition damage could also go with healing power, since if we go down the honor tree we may be lacking in power and precision, which would give us some defensive damage via retaliation and burning.

Just some thoughts as we play “dev”.

Crit damage to zeal to buff it as THE physical damage line, condition damage to valor, since as you stated, takes time to do damage, condition duration to radiance, as I mentioned before. Checkmate.

Bash for president/king/seat on the council/what have you!

CMF.5461:

Something that is universal with all profession trait lines is that Power is always combined with Condition Duration. I don’t know why….

That said, I don’t think they would move condition damage into power any time soon.

I think condition damage and toughness would be a good combination, since burning requires time to do damage, and toughness prolongs time. Also down the valor line you have might and burn on block….while we don’t have a frequent enough rate of blocking to make it the core of a build, that synergy works well.

At that rate crit damage could move up to precision and complete that P/Prc/CritD trinity…but they moved crit damage away from precision for a reason, so I don’t think they would be keen on that move either.

Condition damage could also go with healing power, since if we go down the honor tree we may be lacking in power and precision, which would give us some defensive damage via retaliation and burning.

Just some thoughts as we play “dev”.

From a PvP point of view, that might sound like a reasonable idea. However, on the PvE side it is, imho, a pretty stupid switch which just threatens the rest of build diversity out there. The typical DPS builds are already the way to go (and they are in a pretty good position, compared to most other classes), while the proposed stat switch would be the final deathblow to any AH build.

Actually that is pretty insightful as to why the trait lines may have these stats. Everything might have been based off of the idea of defensive offense, via Altruistic Healing.

AH is in the Valor line which gives Toughness/Crit damage

Now you can build a defensive or offensive build based off of AH. Want damage, up power and precision to supplement the crit damage you already have. Want defense, up healing power and vitality to supplement the toughness you have.

I just hate how centralized a lot of our builds are on AH. A healing power build works perfectly fine, but now you have to ensure that you have a steady flow of regeneration, which forces us into shouts and the Honor line.

But you go down there and you are already setting the path to a defensive build as you ditched out most likely 30 points down the tree to maximize healing power and shouts, so if you want offensive stats you can only choose between power, precision, or crit damage…but not all 3.

I would argue a lot of precision can be made up with gear, and pick power/crit damage at that rate. Crit damage is something that is difficult to not get if you want damage…but you still need that power or the crit damage still isn’t enough.

My break down of the stat synergies on the general forum got ignore…but here it is if anyone wanted to look at it and explore our stat/trait lines more in comparison to the other professions.

It creates a lot of questions as to why we are the way we are I think.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Problem-With-Stats-on-Gear-and-Trait-Lines/first#post2524941

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

To be fair 200 condition damage is only another 50dps on burning.

that is additional 50 damage on each hit of my spiritual weapons :P
and additional 50 damage AoE of each trigger of VoJ passive…..

I really don’t like that idea of giving condi duration to radiance instead of condi damage – You know that traitline is at least partially focusing on the burning – and our most burnings need to have 100% condi duration to have any difference…
and also that would make much more sacrificing for me to reach my condi damage cap – really mine build have NO interest into condi duration.. (ok maybe if some mob is atacking so extremely slow to have blind expires before It will atack)
and in this way it is I have free 200 condi damage which let me have less focus on condi damage with the gear to something else usefull

Well TBH we aren’t bound to AH. It’s just that it’s the easiest to use. You can go to where ever you like and make it work. It’s just how hard are you going to work doing that. So honestly if you have other builds in mind go for it. And not care what anyone says about it. Long as you make it work and ride or die with it.

If they gave us better healing options in Honor tree besides selfless daring we might be able to avoid Valor tree more. The stats available are just really needed for the way guardians were designed.

I would rather see:

Power/Cond dmg
Prec/Crit dmg
Tough/Healing power
Vit/Boon duration
Virtue/Cond duration

Also, instead of making these random options to "synergize" with other trees, make it linear. Crit based traits and abilities come from Radiance. Boon related traits and skills from Honor. Defensive traits and healing down the Valor tree. Allow these trees to be more oriented towards their underlining purpose will let us pick. Example being AH or MF. Keep them in Valor but when it comes to shorter durations place both Superior Aria and Meditation Mastery in the Honor tree since both these traits relate to a healing trait.

My logic is a little confusing if I had time to really build a spreadsheet and narrow down what I thought would make sense. I kinda see Anet’s issue now. lol

If searing flames removed three boons with a 20 sec cd, then it would be perfectly fine.

Shattered Aegis could use a buff, maybe after applying burning at 25% hp, it can make you become immune to conditions for 10 seconds.

Aza.2105:

If searing flames removed three boons with a 20 sec cd, then it would be perfectly fine.

Shattered Aegis could use a buff, maybe after applying burning at 25% hp, it can make you become immune to conditions for 10 seconds.

The guardian class doesn’t have issues with cleansing conditions. You have to really try hard not to get any cleansing abilities.

If they did anything to radiance X it would have to be something other than damage. At 5% it’s really strong right now in pvp. If they upped that to 10% they would have to either A) change the way damage is calculated ornerf us in another way.

Radiance X could get something like a “increases chance to proc crit effects by 10%” or something, but any damage increase would be too much.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

If they did anything to radiance X it would have to be something other than damage. At 5% it’s really strong right now in pvp. If they upped that to 10% they would have to either A) change the way damage is calculated ornerf us in another way.

Radiance X could get something like a "increases chance to proc crit effects by 10%" or something, but any damage increase would be too much.

Meh combine Powerful Blades and Zealous Blade in to one. Attacks with your Greatswords and Swords deals 5% more damage and heals you. Change Radiance X to: 33% chance to cause 1 stack of torment for 5 seconds when you apply burning to your target.

Radiance is balanced so Guardian DPS does not become excessive. It is the same reason why Rangers, Mesmers, and Thieves aren’t super DPS machines despite having precision and crit damage in the same lines, and why Warriors are able to output good DPS despite having the same overall stat spread as Guardians do.

Guardians already have the second-highest base damage in the game (second only to thieves) despite being an inherently tanky class; a build like 20/30/0/20/0 with no crit damage at all is already outputting massive damage. Putting crit damage in an accessible DPS line would only make them outrageously OP.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Radiance is balanced so Guardian DPS does not become excessive. It is the same reason why Rangers, Mesmers, and Thieves aren’t super DPS machines despite having precision and crit damage in the same lines, and why Warriors are able to output good DPS despite having the same overall stat spread as Guardians do.

Guardians already have the second-highest base damage in the game (second only to thieves) despite being an inherently tanky class; a build like 20/30/0/20/0 with no crit damage at all is already outputting massive damage. Putting crit damage in an accessible DPS line would only make them outrageously OP.

I absolutely agree with you. I don’t see how anyone who’s played Guardian can not agree. As a profession we are naturally tanky, but in a fashion that allows us to go glass cannon and blow people up. There is just no way they could link the precision/crit damage lines without making Guardians insanely OP.

I really don’t understand how people here can’t see that. If they linked the two Guardians would be stupidly strong because we would get massive damage boosts, and manage to be tankier than any other class. While that sounds “fun” on the surface, Anet would have to nerf guardians massively to make up for it. Right now we are a balanced, arguably the most “balanced”, profession. The only thing we need is some tinkering with our traits, and some bug fixes.

All “what if’s” aside, what I would like to see as a true solution to the stat issue at the core of the idea is to give us a reliable condition on crit to take advantage of the tree as it is now.

What condition, is the issue. More burning? Bleed? Torment? Poison?

Bleed or torment would be the most damaging solution, but do we need it?

Poison would cause more capability to kill other bunker classes, so a more strategic condition, but it doesn’t take advantage of condition damage as much.

Burning is already plentiful, and I just don’t see it as advantageous.

Thoughts?

CMF.5461:

All “what if’s” aside, what I would like to see as a true solution to the stat issue at the core of the idea is to give us a reliable condition on crit to take advantage of the tree as it is now.

What condition, is the issue. More burning? Bleed? Torment? Poison?

Bleed or torment would be the most damaging solution, but do we need it?

Poison would cause more capability to kill other bunker classes, so a more strategic condition, but it doesn’t take advantage of condition damage as much.

Burning is already plentiful, and I just don’t see it as advantageous.

Thoughts?

Some would say bleed or torment doesn’t fit the guardian theme, but after seeing necro get burning. I’d say anything goes now. If we had to choose between the bleeding and torment, I’d vote for torment. Since guardian does have mobility issues. I just can’t imagine what skills would give torment…

That is why I was suggesting a “on crit” effect to give guardians the same stat synergy with precision and condition damage that other classes have.

It could be a 60% chance on crit to cause 3 seconds of torment.

Numbers I’m sure can be adjusted to be more optimal but not OP. Would it be a major or a minor trait? Maybe remove Spirit weapons cause burning and replace it with this new conditions on crit trait.

CMF.5461:

That is why I was suggesting a “on crit” effect to give guardians the same stat synergy with precision and condition damage that other classes have.

It could be a 60% chance on crit to cause 3 seconds of torment.

Numbers I’m sure can be adjusted to be more optimal but not OP. Would it be a major or a minor trait? Maybe remove Spirit weapons cause burning and replace it with this new conditions on crit trait.

What about folding it in with powerful blades? +5% damage with sword and spear, and a % chance to cause torment when ever you crit.

Anything is an option. I think sword has decent mobility already due to the fast refresh on flashing blades, so limiting torment (if it is torment we are wanting) to sword is kind of restrictive.

What about 3 second of torment for each application of burning.

If we activate VoJ we only get 3 seconds of torment since that is 1 burn application.

If we let VoJ proc and we do multi hit attacks we can get higher stacks of torment.

CMF.5461:

Anything is an option. I think sword has decent mobility already due to the fast refresh on flashing blades, so limiting torment (if it is torment we are wanting) to sword is kind of restrictive.

What about 3 second of torment for each application of burning.

If we activate VoJ we only get 3 seconds of torment since that is 1 burn application.

If we let VoJ proc and we do multi hit attacks we can get higher stacks of torment.

That sounds neat and it could synergize well with supreme justice and permeating wrath.