Guild Wars 2

I was thinking of making my guardian a burn condition guardian…but are burns really an effective condition? They dont stack dmg wise…but do the durations stack or something?

for burns, duration stacks but not intensity.

and as a Guardian, burning is really the only condition we get to work with. i still consider myself relatively new to the game, (haven’t spent enough time researching) but that seems to be the case.

but we have a LOT of skills and utilities that allow us to keep up burning pretty much 100% of the time. and coupled with certain traits, you can add blinds, as well as stack vulnerability at the same time.

Burn does more damage per tick than the other two dots until you have bleeds stacked really high. It stacks duration (as by default it doesn’t last long because of the high damage it does). It can provide us with a lot of damage if you go into conditions with a sword/torch build. Otherwise it’s just a nice plus (conditions ignore armor/toughness).

Burning does significant damage and its easy to apply a lot of it as a guardian. Additionally, Guardians have to traits that increas damage against burning foes and foes suffering from any condition.

The downside is that your burning is pointless if your target already burns. In an event with 5+ other players against a champion the champion is almost guaranteed to be already burning. Yes you add more duration of it but in larger fights there is already enough burning.

The problem with concentrating your build on burn damage is that it may start to feel ineffective and redundant if theres another guardian or elementalist in your party.

However you can make your build use burning as a facilitator rather than the main source of damage.

My build does this, here it is
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUQQNAseRlYgiCnFyvD2NFh1DAeQ/VVIeYKwI8vK4QA;TwAA1CooMyYkwIrROjkGtoYQxmgJBA

You dont have to copy it point for point, it allows a bit of customization as long as you include at least
-10 zeal
-15 radiance
The reason for that is that I use burning to allow myself almost constant +10% damage with the zeal trait II Fiery Wrath
The 15 radiance is so that you get the minor trait Renewed Justice which refreshes Virtue of Justice every kill, allowing you to spam it and burn a ton

Using those i added in the ability to blind when i pop Justice since it refreshes and ability to do vulnerability when I apply blind

A couple of ways I can suggest you ad libbing this build would be
1. Go for a Spirit weapon set up using 30 Zeal and 10 Virtues for the Fiery Wrath, cooldown, duration and command spam traits and then get 20 radiance for “spirit weapons cause burning” then rest is up to you
2. Instead of going 30 radiance for the +15% 1 handed weapon crit you can go 30 honor for -20% 2 handed weapon cooldown if you prefer using greatswords

I prefer the 1h weapon crit boost to make the scepter which is otherwise just an ok weapon into something that hurts pretty bad.