Guild Wars 2

Hi folks,

I’ll begin by saying I played my Guard for quite some time, but have shelved it recently to play my Thief. Though, with the upcoming traits patch I was looking to possibly try out a burn Guardian for WvW primarily.

Here is what I’ve managed to come up with so far

This build focuses purely on pumping out the Burn condition for extremely high damage ticks. We all know that Burn is one of the top damage conditions already, with the upcoming patch we are going to see a +33% in damage!

Through this build, we have several means of applying the Burn condition. I have attached an image below for reference.

Without 25 Stacks of Corruption our burn deals 841 Damage per tick.
With 25 Stacks of Corruption our burn deals 908 Damage per tick.
With the 33% increase in burn damage, burn deals 1207 Damage per tick.
With 33%

With 25 Stacks of Corruption and +33% Burn Damage our Burn ticks for 1207.
Furthermore, using Empower on Staff (12 Might) and Virtue of Justice (3 Might) Burn ticks for a whopping 1381.

Shimmering Defense looks beautiful in this set up.
When struck below 25% health you burn up to 3 targets in a 240 Radius for 14 seconds.
With the upcoming Grandmaster Trait this will tick for roughly 16,900 damage.

Pros

• Excellent Condition Damage.
• Somewhat tanky stats.
• Two teleports.
• Virtue of Justice spam in heavy fighting areas. (AoE blind spam too)

Cons

• Sadly no +25% movement speed here.
• Little healing power.
• Only one Stun Break
• Only one Condition Removal.

The reason I’ve set the build with Exotics, is because realistically that’s what most people (including myself) will be using.
I feel like this build could do with some improvement in terms of survivability. If anyone has any changes they think would work, please let me know.

I’d also like to point out, I’ve never really made a proper thread for a build before, so excuse this one looking messy. I’m simply looking for some pointers in what people would change to suit themselves. I’ll definitely be trying something along these lines when the new patch hits.

EDIT: Please note, the image below only shows the passive effect of Virtue of Justice. Activating it triggers 8.5 seconds of Burn and is renewed everytime you kill an enemy. It’s perfect in zergs where it’s spammable for AoE blind, AoE Might and applying 8.5 sec burn to you and your allies next attacks.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQNAR8dlsApZoVCxdI8DNRYV4fVPiX9Aw1DF6wGC-zUCBoOERz0CJjkGi6Am8AITqIas1gFRjVJjIqWpELAACAzcmzcmzcmlCYRpRA-w

My build. No stun breaker. Mostly because I like to live dangerously. But you can replace the signet with SYG if you so desired.

It would have survivability and good damage. Not the same durations and damage you have but my build wouldn’t need to hit the person to kill them.

Huh? Did you mean to paste the same link I did on original post? :O

Zach.3264:

Huh? Did you mean to paste the same link I did on original post? :O

No I did not lol. It’s been edited now

Dirame.8521:

Zach.3264:

Huh? Did you mean to paste the same link I did on original post? :O

No I did not lol. It’s been edited now

Aha. I was looking through it thinking this looks awfully familiar :>

EDIT: Your build looks good, but I’m a tad confused by the Greatsword and why you have Monk’s Focus traited with only one Meditation?

Get rid of the signet. It’s just not worth it. Having Stand Your Ground would improve your survivability dramatically, as well as increasing your group utility. The 180 condition damage isn’t worth the utility loss. It will also give you more use out of Vengeful which is completely not worth having without a source of longer duration Retaliation.

Instead of Staff, swap to Greatsword. This will give you additional mobility which you’re going to need in order to kite and counter kiters while your Burn ticks. You’re never going to have an opportunity to drop Might in combat consistently, except for in groups. Because Burning takes advantage of your Condition Damage that you have right when it ticks, rather than when it was applied, even if you might up before you engage you’re not going to get the entire boost through your burns. Additionally, Binding Blade is a Condition Damage ability. It scales almost as hard as Burning does, and is uncleansable.

In terms of how much DPS you’ll get out of a build like that, it’s not bad. I don’t have time to run the exact numbers, but to give you a rough idea: You’re getting roughly 30% of the damage of an unbuffed, straight DPS build, which equates to about 800 dps from autoattacking plus the burn damage which is 1207/tick for a total of about 2000. Add Binding Blade and you get about 2500. Now you’re getting somewhere.

Power builds with your level of EHP typically get about 60% of a full damage setup. With a Sword AA that’s about 1600 DPS. But that’s unbuffed. So on the face of it you’re doing well, but then there’s the question of actual real-world Burning uptime, physical time-on-target, and so on. I don’t have those kinds of answers right now. Those numbers are also based on the current Berserker build and critical damage – with the update, you’re going to do comparatively more damage with respect to a Berserker. There are also going to be who knows how many other smaller changes, so it will be more helpful to evaluate this kind of build post-update rather than now. We’ll just have to see.

Zach.3264:

…

I’m really looking forward to the patch and trying out a condition Guardian. Although, I got to admit that it is mostly due to the Sigill and Rune changes.

Two things which struck me with your build:

You lack cover conditions.
That is extremly bad because your main focus is on a powerful burn. It will be extremly hard to actually benefit from your burn as long as you can’t protect it with other conditions. My suggestion:

• Switch Shimmering Defense with Blind Exposure so your Sword will also be able to apply Vulnerability. You got enough sources of burn anyway.

• Optional: Consider changing Torch for Focus to get more blinds for Blind Exposure. Torch #4 is pretty nice damagewise but you still got two utilities with very long burns. Torch #5 is rather useless as long as your are not using on-crit sigils. In this case get Focus Mastery instead of the fall trait. You will still have one more free trait in Radiance.

Revisit your sigil/rune/food choice.

• It might be better to get a Toxic Focussing Crystal. This would free up one sigil slot. You could use it for an additional condition or for condition removal.

• Alternatively, consider Runes of Balthazar. They will grant you +45% burning duration which puts you at 100% burning duration with your Virtue trait and the Zeal stat bonus. You then could use a different food with +condi damage or Lemongrass to be less vulnerable to conditions yourself.

I personally will try this trait set up. Klick!.

I’m not so sure about the runes/sigils and will have to wait for more information. But the aim is to frequently reapply burns with the sword and keep Retaliation up as much as possible. Blind Exposure covers the burns. I will have a lot of Regeneration and at least some Protection. The only thing I’m worried about is movement speed. I’m also still considering getting Tome of Wrath instead of Renewed Focus.

Depending on the new runes/sigils I’ll try to get 100% burn duration plus one additional damaging condition. If the investment for the 100% burn duration is too high – since I don’t got 30 Zeal – I’ll settle for one or two additional damaging conditions instead. Note: I might be playing PvP so food might not be an option.

foofad.5162:

Additionally, Binding Blade is a Condition Damage ability. It scales almost as hard as Burning does, and is uncleansable.

I didn’t know that, thanks! My build just got even more appealing.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUQQNAR8dl0ApIoVBxSI8DRRkVglWKIY/qesP5BgrCOE-zECBohCy0CAk3wUHQ5QFRjtuuIasqbY6YER1kCAilVA-w

Edit: I didn’t notice the OP was about exclusive use of Radiant Fire. My apologies, but if I were to take a burn build, here’s how I would do it and IMO it’s not worth the 30 points.

I am not sure about the heavy investment in zeal, since you are speccing condi damage the direct damage is low and thus fiery wrath isn’t too effective due to the low direct damage. In addition, you only have 1 reliable symbol (symbol of speed?), unless you fall on people for another symbol, but vulnerability isn’t good unless you spec direct damage too. Condition duration is also questionable since fire is for quick bursts as you can expect cleansing to happen soon. I just don’t see that new GM trait being that great even if I want to utilize burn.

It also depends on where you’re intending to take this. I’m assuming you’re running with a party of 5 or such?

Personally, I would mix it with other sources of damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQRArf8dlsApcoNDxVI8DRhkpQkQQrHAEC5PYFworCQEA-zUCB4MDiG1JZ0CJj8IQUBhOFqIaslhFRjVJjIqWpEjUAwMGA-w

This build lacks the epic burn damage although the burn damage per second is weaker but does noticable direct damage since RHS makes the crit rate 40% and I threw in geomancy sigils to take advantage of the condition damage. There’s a lot more utility. You can of course take SYG instead of Contemplation of Purity.

I haven’t actually tested it out though and have to leave now so obviously the numbers aren’t min-maxed.

This is what I’ve been using in Spvp for the past year. I’m a slow study, so it took me that long to make it work, but now it works like a charm. It’s pretty simple to set up, pretty easy to pick up, and absolutely murders the unprepared.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQNAs/dlsApaodDxcIEENRY9AgI0fVFi31DIqwGC-T0AgyCqI4RxjjHDPSes8MWYHyJkZIPBA