Guild Wars 2

Radiance Minor Adept: Justice is Blind – Virtue of Justice causes Blind.
Radiance Major Adept: Healer’s Retribution – Gain 5s Retaliation when using a Heal.

Radiance Minor Master: Renewed Justice – Renew Virtue of Justice when you kill a foe.
Radiance Major Master: Retaliation gives 10% damage and 250 Ferocity.

Radiance Minor G.Master: Radiant Power – Attacks vs. burning foes have +10% Crit Chance
Radiance Major G.Master: Righteous Instincts – Retaliation gives +50% Crit Chance and Might.

Honor Minor Adept: Gain vigor when you critically strike.
Honor Major Adept: ?

Honor Minor Master: The end of your dodge roll heals nearby allies.
Honor Major Master: You and nearby allies gain might when you land a critical hit.

Honor Minor G.Master: Your Virtue of Resolve passive effect also regenerates endurance.
Honor Major G.Master: Allies affected by shouts have conditions converted to boons. Shout abilities have their recharge reduced.

Weapons: Greatsword + Sword/Torch

Heal: Litany of Wrath
“Save Yourselves!”: w/ Honor, converts condition to before absorbing them. 10s Retaliation is the reason we want it.
“Stand Your Ground!”: Stability 6s, Retaliation 5s
Bane Signet: Increased Power Passive and Knockdown for break bars.

“Feel My Wrath!”: Fury and Quickness = more crits!

So, with all of this, you have:
20% Fury Critical Hit chance.
50% Retaliation Critical Hit chance.
10% vs. Burning Foes Critical Hit chance.

That’s a whopping 80% CRITICAL HIT CHANCE
Does anyone else have anything to refine this build? I’d post more, but I’m on break at work and don’t have time to refine this. I’ll come back when I’m home!

I assume this means we can trade ’Zerkers for something that gives Toughness or Vitality, and focus on Power + Ferocity + Tanky? Any suggestions? Is Retaliation 100% up time possible with planning?

I’m gonna assume you are talking about PvE.

Why would you want something that gives Toughness or Vitality in PvE? If you’re going to gear for anything in PvE and you don’t need to keep aggro on a raid boss, damage will always be the way to go unless you’re trying to heal people.

Yobculture.5786:

I’m gonna assume you are talking about PvE.

Why would you want something that gives Toughness or Vitality in PvE? If you’re going to gear for anything in PvE and you don’t need to keep aggro on a raid boss, damage will always be the way to go unless you’re trying to heal people.

To be clear, we’re talking about a situation here where you’re overcapped on precision. If you can keep retal uptime, it is actually a good tradeoff to use Valkyrie instead of Berserker. Before the utility changes it used to actually be strictly better since the extra vitality would convert to extra power, though with modern sharpening stones that’s not the case as the extra precision can give you a (very small) amount of power. Regardless, even when you’re going for max DPS, having more health means more survivability which means more DPS uptime and less chance of losing Scholar buffs, to say nothing of solo play where the extra health can be the difference between dying and not and the couple percent difference in DPS isn’t a concern.

Yobculture.5786:

I’m gonna assume you are talking about PvE.

Why would you want something that gives Toughness or Vitality in PvE? If you’re going to gear for anything in PvE and you don’t need to keep aggro on a raid boss, damage will always be the way to go unless you’re trying to heal people.

Considering that you’re (easily) 80% Critical Chance as long as you maintain Retaliation on yourself and Burning on the enemy. I’m still debating on what the best Specializations would be for this class….

Radiance 3-3-3 is required for this build to work. Heal skills give you 5s Retaliation, Retaliation gives 10% Damage Increase and 250 Ferocity (about 16.5% Crit Damage increase), and 50% Critical Chance. Alternatively, Radiance 1-3-3 works to give Fury when you strike someone above 3 stacks of Burning, for a total of 70% Crit Chance.

Virtue’s Minor Master is nice, causing Retaliation when you activate a Virtue (I’ve found myself almost always activating Justice to give my allies burning for my Fury stacks), but I just can’t justify any of the other abilities on this track. Maybe 2-2-3 or 2-2-2, but I don’t see it. Hammer isn’t used to much on this build, but maybe someone can make it a compelling Argument for hammer, then 2-3-3 or 2-3-2 would work too.

Zeal is also really good, with 2-2-3, with that you deal 23% extra damage reliably with your Greatsword, 13% when you’re waiting for your 4 skill to recharge. Also, Symbols burning enemies and dealing more damage while standing in symbols is extremely nice. Also adds 13% of your Toughness to Power.

Valor is… not needed for this build.

Honor 2-3-x leads to mass aoe crit stacking when you use Greatsword 4 into Greatsword 2. Honor 2-3-1 gives Shouts reduced cooldown and Honor 2-3-2 gives symbols longer duration and radius. I’m still debating which one is better, but if you’re using Save Yourselves!, 2-3-1 would be the best to use.

Dragonhunter, can traps critically hit? Either 1-2-3, or if you’re going with the Greatsword/Hammer build, 2-2-3 also works. What do you think?

I’m thinking either:
- Radiance 1-3-3 / Zeal 2-2-3 / Dragonhunter 1-2-3
(or)
- Radiance 1-3-3 / Honor 2-3-1 / Dragonhunter 2-2-3

Weapons: Greatsword + Hammer
Skill 6: Litany of Wrath /or/ Shelter
Skill 7: Procession of Blades
Skill 8: “Save Yourselves!”
Skill 9: “Stand your ground!” /or/ Signet of Justice
Skill 0: “Feel My Wraith!” /or/ Renewed Focus

Honour doesn’t really offer anything that good, even Pure of Voice is meh, because Hallowed Ground is a better source of retaliation than Save Yourselves.

Virtues on the other hand gives some nice %damage, and another source of retaliation. With firebrand, we get a spammable heal for retaliation and aegis uptime.

I’ve been running Zeal, Rad, Virt on one of my guards and its been fantastic.

Good Points @RabbitUp, I hadn’t thought of that. Mainly because the tool tips never mentioned retaliation on Consecrations. Only problem I’m seeing with Retaliation Crit Guardian is that it really wants three Specs, so Elite Specs is really hard to push into the build without losing something that feels important…

Radiance (1-3-3) or (3-3-3) gives players 50% Crit Chance, 10% Damage Increase, and 250 Ferocity (+16.5% Crit Damage) while under the effects of Retaliation. Each stack of Retaliation gives 1 stack of Might, and you gain 10% Crit Chance against burning foes. Alternatively, (2-3-3) gives you another 15% Crit for one-hand weapons, so if you’re able to get fury from somewhere else, that’s 95% Critical Chance WITHOUT Precision. Problem being, w/o Greatsword, you loss a big source of retaliation.

Virtues are almost a necessity now with that Concentration clarification. I’ll probably be more supportive with this, going (3-2-2) for my F2 Passive skill, otherwise (3-3-1) also works if you’re wanting to Crit Hammer, but you’ll end up losing 15% Crit Chance.

Zeal (2-2-3) is almost core for this if you’re using Greatsword or Hammer, but you might be lossing the 15% Crit Chance for one handed weapons. (cryface).

Any other thoughts on how to best make use of this 80% Crit or 95% Crit?

Virtues is not really needed as a source for retaliation. Remember activating VoJ procs 4 seconds of light aura which will proc retaliation on hit. Plus VoJ is renewed after kill which will pretty much make it spammable since things will be melting all around you. This means you can easily substitute another trait line for your 3rd choice.

Hallowed ground is better retal uptime.
GS4 then leap through it for light aura (2s retal per hit / retal from symbol)
Use DH and f2 through your light fields for more light aura.

If you are in a raid, just ask the chrono to trait chaos and use their heal (chaos storm → retal) before they boonshare. They can maintain retal uptime 100% if they are good.

I haven’t seen mention of this, and I’ve been gone for a while so I don’t know what is meta anymore…but:

How come no one is using the might and vulnerability stacking from Zeal 3/1/x?

That combined with Inspired Virtues allows for a fairly sustainable 25 stacks of might and vulnerability.

Since Radiance provides 50% crit chance on retaliation now, I dropped all the precision off my gear for what ever (mixed toughness/vitality because I couldn’t find a good ferocity mix that didn’t have precision).

With that I took:
Zeal 3/1/1
Radiance 1/3/3
Virtues 2/2/1

or

Zeal 3/2/3
Radiance 1/3/3
Virtues 2/2/1

The idea was to use spirit sword for vulnerability/fire stacks, which in turn assist crit dmg/chance and stack retaliation with greatsword abilities and virtue of justice spam/resets.

The remaining utility abilities were a kind of toss up, didn’t know what to take besides Sword of Justice and Stand Your Ground.

The crit chance and damage were good, power is well off, but the condition cleansing was lacking.

Is there something I’m missing, as far as no need to stack might and vulnerability anymore?

@CMF – I think they’ve ended up changing the Zeal mechanic a little more than you think. Zeal 3 is nice and all, but the might only stacks when your Justice passive triggers (and gains 2 might when you wield a scepter instead). Combining my Radiance’s Righteous Instincts (1 might per retaliation) and Empowering Might (me and allies gain Might 1/second each time I crit), I normally get to 25 Might with one spin to win 2. But I might look into that (3-2-3) Zeal build when I replace my Honor Specs. But then you’re missing out on 7% bonus damage.

I’m probably going to finalize my build with Zeal (2-2-3), Radiance (3-3-3), Dragonhunter (2-2-3) or Virtues (3-3-3), Radiance (3-3-3), Dragonhunter (2-2-3) for my Guardian character with Greatsword / Hammer. Retaliation uptime is extremely easy for raids, and I can almost always guarantee burning on enemy, retaliation on me, and fury on me, for a total of 80% Crit. Signet of Accuracy = 87%, 94% with 1150 Perception (Spotter on my ally), meaning I only have to get Zerker gear up for the remaining 6%, then start making Valkery Gear. Looks like fun tbh.

Zeal 3 was providing me with good burst stacks of 20+ the last few days, I just don’t know if it was not worth it due to solo vs group might stacking, or some other mechanic was more important.

Try it out, with the justice passive triggers and virtues x/x/1 (3 hits justice proc) and the greatsword 2 on a group, it stacks up really quick.

Maybe not effective in the long run, but it provided some impressive numbers at first glance.

As you mentioned though, this does nothing for group might stacks, only solo. So maybe that makes it less useful because it is selfish, not group oriented.