Guild Wars 2

When I first played with the torch, I just liked it, despite the silliness of breathing blue fire out of my mouth. So I’ve stuck with it, ankitten earing 80 and WvW time.

For those who do use torch in WvW, how do you get the most out of it? I do have +20% to burning foes from 10 Zeal and 25 Radiance. Are there other things you like to run with torch (teleport to foe?) or things you do in battle to make your torch more effective?

I have it paired with scepter for the ranged option and the immobilize.

Have any torch tips? Thanks.

burning condition is timed so just burn more enemies rather than breathing down 1 guys neck. Its possible to achieve very high burning uptime to a group of people if specced for burning but ultimately im not sure guardian condition focused build is that good. Conditions for guardian seems only effective for me when you pepper it onto whatever your doing.

If I am not mixing guardian with other classes.. then the power trait tree is also condition duration? if that is true you can do a burning retaliation build since you can have longer burning time with retaliation that does more dmg since it scales with power. * If I am mixing guardian with anotehr class then oops* ..

Running a 10/30/30/0/0 Sword(Scepter)/Torch, full meditation, full knight build myself I rarely let #4 to just burn. Even in group fights or zerg fights I prefer to throw it at the enemy. With high crit chance+power you can hit for really high amount of damage. The DOT simply seems to be too slow to me and the rather short radius doesn’t help much when the chaotic nature of team fights comes into calculation.

I use #5 only when my enemy is just outside my autoattack range and I simply have nothing else to use. I think it doesn’t have enough range to be used for the condition removal part.

Althalos.6734:

Running a 10/30/30/0/0 Sword(Scepter)/Torch, full meditation, full knight build myself I rarely let #4 to just burn. Even in group fights or zerg fights I prefer to throw it at the enemy. With high crit chance+power you can hit for really high amount of damage. The DOT simply seems to be too slow to me and the rather short radius doesn’t help much when the chaotic nature of team fights comes into calculation.

I use #5 only when my enemy is just outside my autoattack range and I simply have nothing else to use. I think it doesn’t have enough range to be used for the condition removal part.

You can actually get both ticks of burn AND the throw off #4 if you time it right. You need to time it so that you throw the flame and are in the throwing animation at the same time the “buff” is ending and the second tick of fire is applied. As long as your in the animation when the second tick would happen, you’ll still get it and still throw the flame.

My favorite combo for torch is hit them with scepter’s immobilize, followed immediately by smite then cleansing flame. While cleansing flame is channeling I queue up torch #4, then as soon as it’s done I press #4 again to throw the fireball. Tons of incoming damage from multiple skills while they’re stuck in 1 spot, and even if they blink / condition cure out of the smite / cleansing flames combo, torch #4’s second activation almost always pegs them for huge amounts of damage (I’ve seen it crit for 6-8k)

mainly use torch to “burst” if you will. i play Scepter/Focus + Mace/Torch most recently. learned this from Silven’s PvP guides. and it translate well into WvW as long as you’re fighting ZvZ. though it might have it’s place too.. i think it’s more suited for roaming or 1vN fights.

queue Shield of Wrath, JI port, insta immob, torch 4 double tap, mace’s Protector’s Strike usually downs most, except for bunkers. drop smite if you have time. smite condition instant cast if you took it for extra damage. most of the time, reactionarily (word?) they will hit you back, this setting off Protector’s Strike. so you’ve got 2 big AoE blasts (both shields) as well as Zeaot’s Fire/flame from the torch for HUGE burst.

cleansing flame i mainly use for mowing down low health fleeing enemies or those who are downed or lumped in a group. mace symbols are good for that too. this combo nets you up to 4k+ 3rd mace auto attacks and 1k+ symbol crits. fun stuff.

even with scepter and torch, i play them as melee and never ranged. ://

Torch 4 is fantastic. The burn isn’t great unless you have a lot of cond damage. I run a bunker support and the burn provides me additional damage. The throw is a fantastic spike skill esp for bunkers with low damage. And its great to get people trying to run away!

Torch 5 has great dps but is pretty hard to get a decent amount of hits in unless you imobilise first as I find its so easy to dodge. BUT, its a fantastic cleanser of conditions in group battles.

I usually run in with the zerg, apply torch 4, thorw, and use torch 5 to hit enemies / cleanse conditions.

one thing about torch 5 is the duration as well. some could argue that over the same period of time, you could do more damage auto attack with say, the sword. or even scepter now if you’re in close quarters. but regardless, it’s fun to play with and i think it still sort of has the intimidation factor when you’re up against newer players. :PP

for condition cleansing, does it cleanse multiple? just one per ally that it hits ya?

The new scepter + Torch 4, with a mid-battle Wall of Reflection can lead to a surprising spike in WvW.