Guild Wars 2

For the sake of theorycrafting, I was looking to see how condi damage could make up for the loss of direct damage, and going full condi results in less damage done in all the scenarios I ran.

Closest I could get were these two test builds:

Power
Condition

With averaged out damage via crit chance here is the break down in whirling wrath differences. A small sample, but just to showcase initial looks:

Power / Condi
DmgMod : 2.383821 / 2.255367
Damage: 3388 / 3234
Hits: 7 / 7
BurnDmg: 579 / 579
DmgDone: 8076 / 7293
Burns: 579 / 1158
Total 8655 / 8451

The “condi” build has 100% burn duration, so it resulted in double ticks. What this does not take into effect is fight duration and other applications of burning, such as procing VoJ and having longer sources of burning, or using things like purging flames or torch.

It also does not take into consideration, other players burning, condition caps, time to burn, multiple condition applications from weapon sigils, and so on. This was just a preliminary look to get an idea of how close to direct damage burning is.

So burns can get “close” but not there per say. Unless someone wants to plot out better builds and better combat breakdowns.

What I did notice is that a loss in precision and/or ferocity exasperated the gap between condi and power builds, so the extra condition damage did little to help condition build damage. If you go burns, hybrid is the way to go.

I don’t think he meant that he won’t use the cookie cutter builds, but simply he wanted to know “why” behind the cookie cutter builds so that he can come up to the same educated reasoning that the original build developers did.

He wants to play with knowledge and understanding instead of simply just imitation. Is that so bad?

As far as why to not push for boon duration: Boons duration will not extend long enough to become permanent on self reliance.

Group utilization of combo fields such as blasting fire will provide enough multiple applications of the might boon without extending the duration of the might boon itself.

Think of it as 20 seconds of might versus 30 seconds of might.

You gained 10 more seconds, but you can re-blast the field to maintain might again way before that 20 second window is up.

Other ways to apply might via groups with banners/shouts/procs of weapons and so on.

So extending the boon in essence gets you nothing, especially while grouped.

As you are gaining next to nothing out of boon duration, you might as well apply those stats to power precision ferocity.

As previously mentioned, healing power typically scales badly unless heavily invested and using support skills, but then you lost drastic amounts of damage, to the point where you typically hinder the group and not help.

Condition damage again is less than optimal in pve, hand in hand, so is condition duration.

This leaves toughness and vitality.

With proper utilization of blinds/blocks/dodges, you won’t need those two stats either. It will take some experience with the fights to learn when to dodge and get the timing into muscle memory, but overall you will be fine. A down or two won’t matter too much as long as things die before you perma down.

the idea is it is a midway between warrior shield and engineer shield. half black (protection boon 33% dmg reduction) and projectile block with knockback, with guardian heal flair added to it. We are the hybrid apparently.

it has a “decent” burst heal, but I think they need to up the heal it does.

As many ask for, a blast finisher on it would be nice as well as providing aegis on shield 4 possibly.

At least the devs are tracking that it is suboptimal as they have tried to buff it recently with shorter cooldowns, but that is still not enough.

Because of the games emphasis on active defense and no tanks or healers, other gearsets are at a disadvantage.

PvE content can be completed by maximizing dodges, blinds, blocks to prevent big insta kill damage (no amount of tank gear will let you live long enough to face tank typically, and you don’t have reliable agro mechanics even if you wanted to try).

So that is left with the most damaging of stat combinations.

power precision and ferocity work in synch with each other, while toughness power precision has 2 dps stats and 1 defensive stat that is needless if you are dodging everything anyway.

Condition damage builds are less optimal in pve because of condition caps and damage modifiers. Direct damage builds can push out more damage in a shorter span, thus shortening the duration of the fight better than condition damage builds can, so that negates any condition gear emphasis.

Knights and celestial may be nice to learn the fights as it gives you 1 or 2 more hits you can soak up, but you are still dropping to 50% or lower in life if you face tank a dungeon boss’ hits.

Now in WvW and sPvP, this can be a different story, and celestial builds maintain “decent” damage while having great sustain, thus outlasting most zerker builds…but that’s pvp, not pve.

So PvE – Zerker
PvP – Mid way zerk, but still emphasis on damage with some survival. Conditions much more useful here.
WvW – wider range of flexibility, support builds are welcome, but someone still needs to bring the damage. Conditions also good here.

right now, you don’t have access to a lot of the things that make guardian good. Just play as you like for now and understand the mechanics as you gain new skills.

I will say you should get renewed justice and inspired virtues to help increase survival as well as increase your damage while doing open world fights. Each kill will refresh Virtue of Justice. Every time you use Virtue of Justice you blind/stack 3 vulnerability on nearby targets, and give you and allies 3 might. In a big fight with lots of trash you stack on might/vulnerability quick and you avoid a lot of damage due to spamming blinds.

so when you get the points go x/3/x/x/1

The next thing that is going to increase your damage will be Fiery Wrath (2 into zeal) which will increase damage on burning targets by 10%. Since you are spamming Virtue of Justice, you will be have burning on your targets consistently enough, which is another damage increase.

For now look towards those synergies and after you learn them better you can come back and explore other mechanics of the guardian.

think I said “zerker” i.e. berserker gear (dps)

This isn’t wvw focused, was trying to give you a healing dungeon build with some damage still.

yeah I have tried a few different combinations and my most successful one was a symbol heal based build while still building for damage.

Maybe you could try something close to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR5dlsApUo9CxZI8DNR8gUbgG4+s7lH7B-TRRBABXt/o87UdDpq+DAPBAzUCGA4AghHe4hjUARMMC-e

Self healing is around 500 heals per second with persistent symbols, and burst healing while double layering symbol of wrath with symbol of faith gets you about 700 self healing.

This will also heal allies in melee range with you for a lesser amount as they do not of virtue of resolve ticking on them as well, so they get about 400-600 on your symbol rotations.

Damage, whirling wrath will do about 8k without counting might/vulnerability stacks.

and symbols will tick for about 1.5k each, doing 3k combined. So a burst rotation with double symbol and whirling wrath will do about 11k damage every 20 seconds (assuming all crits, not always that high).

After that you get 1 more whirling wrath off, then swap to symbols for two rotations. Whirling Wrath and symbol of wrath should both be ready again.

Shield of wrath will let you blast might on your purging flames. Also purging flames helps cover your light fields a bit so your party can still stack might if needed.

You still maintain block/blind rotations with greatsword/retreat/protector’s strike/virtue of courage/shield of wrath.

You can also drop some points out of honor and put it into radiance to obtain blinds on virtue of justice and refresh on kills (less healing/damage with mace as well as less crit damage, but good utility).

This will put you at “decent” damage and “decent” healing. Still play like a zerker and dodge/block things…don’t try to face tank.

(I still advise to run meta or close to meta if you want to be optimal, but trying new things isn’t bad if you don’t want to)

low damage, loss of dps while stacking might, wall is usless against champs and trash is unneeded.

Right now your weapon synergy is not matching up with what you want to maintain, which is boons and healing while doing damage.

Sword provides little to no boons. At most you can trait to obtain might on crits and synergize sword with radiance and 1h strength to easily obtain good crit percentage. This will not net you any healing though.

The only way to obtain healing out of sword would be to also take altruistic healing as well. This will provide you with some decent sustain, but you are often better off with a symbol based weapon as it has more reliable boon application, such as hammer or mace.

Staff is good for support and quick self burst healing in groups when linked with altruistic healing, but in general pve it is lack luster. The best use of staff is in zergs for tagging and swiftness application.

If you want to do damage, you have to sacrifice healing. Our sustain abilities do not rely on healing stats overly much, which are monk’s focus and altruistic healing. The downside is, you typically don’t need these in pve and are seen as wasted traits and stats.

If the problem is you want travel speed, you may be better off investing in runes of speed and dropping staff for something else.

If you want to utilize blinds/vulnerability a lot, then sword/focus/greatsword are great for the plethora of blinds along with virtue of justice.

Healing is probably best done with symbol based weapons, and you can advance that to your allies with writ of the merciful which will layer even more self healing on top of regeneration/altruistic healing. You can invest in symbol based damage which does ok in pve as target tend to stay still. You won’t be doing crazy high damage but by layering two symbols on top of each other (mace and greatsword are good combinations) you have a form of burst via double ticking symbols.

Going back to your comment about boon duration/application, this is best done with a shout build, which again leads you more towards support…which takes away from damage. Also, enhancing boon duration does little in the long run, and better off with frequent application than 1-2 extra seconds of boon duration.

If you “need” healing power, don’t go much higher than 500-600 then invest the rest into power/prec/ferocity. Anything past that you lose way too much damage.

Boons you probably should only care about might, vigor, regeneration, and protection. Stability can be swapped in when needed by shouts.

This will lead you to taking empowering might and probably mace or hammer depending on the situation.

Remember though, if you are going deep into symbols you are screwing up your parties ability to stack fire fields and might, so try to mask your light fields after a fire field and/or bring a fire field yourself.

tldr: a whole lot of words to maybe let you make your own decisions (ie I said nothing)

I would like a targetless forward blink at shorter distance (500?) for both merciful intervention and judges intervention. With a target it would retain the 1200 range blink, both functioning at full capacity (aoe heal or burn at the 500 or 1200 range blink).

Changing MI to a ground target while maintaining close range combat is restrictive in view as you are often closed up so you can’t even see 1200 range away unless you turn your camera down horizontal (in melee I tend to aim camera in an isometric to get a birds eye view of combat. it gauges my positioning better in melee).

being able to drop target and JI away would be nice, and being able to blink forward at 500 range with MI or 1200 range if ally is infront of you is nice.

Targeting allies makes it an issue though, which is why I suggest only forward blinking and closest target in visible cone infront of you (kind of like how zealot’s embrace works, just rolls forward on ground till it hits a target)

hated the tonic change, even less people use town clothes now, I"m all for bringing back functionality and diversity of town clothes.

the trick for condition damage padding direct damage (at least for guardian) is to not sacrifice damage that you would normally do while specing for direct damage.

You want to do equal or better than direct damage, but condition scaling is not as effective as power scaling, so you more often than not lose out unless you can layer multiple conditions (we can not innately).

But remember condition priority and caps will hinder you.

Also you mentioned you PvE primarly, so while it sounds great, burning and conditions are not primary means of damage in pve.

Best reason to take condis right now is to maintain pressure while not in melee range to continue your primary form of damage.

What they say is true, unfortunately.

I want to make something “like” this work:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApVoNDxSI8DNR8Ql9Y0izoVdQ1BQD8oA-TBiAABJcEAAc/BofAAJqLAgLBwpq/IpSQxU+RKgFVWB-e

Idea would be lots of AOE burning, doing somewhere between 947-1280 damage a tick. Burning duration has increased 100% so you get 2 ticks of burning per proc of VoJ

Whirling wrath would proc approximately 30 seconds of burning on a group of 5 (potential 28,410-38,400 burning damage in 30 seconds)

Staff provides might stacks to increase burning damage for “burst”.

Rune of the Mad King does Hunter’s Call on 3 targets in a large range (about 1200 meter radius, with line of sight) striking 17 times each. that is potentially 51 hits, procing VoJ 17 times, providing 34 seconds of burning (32,198-43,520 burning damage).

Those two abilities sound GREAT…on paper.

Then you realize there are condition cleanses and this build is only “useful” in wvw, and even then its a gimick.

PvE conditions are normally not fast enough to matter, sPvP you can’t obtain the stat combination and 2x burning procs without sacrificing the trait points.

The biggest draw back to the condi guardian, you sacrifice so many trait points to obtain this “awesome” power, that you lose any and all survival traits. Your own condition cleansing is weak and you have no sustain via monks focus or altruistic healing. This means you rely purely on your heal skill, which won’t get you too far alone.

Even then in wvw, the mass amounts of retaliation would probably kill you if you tried to pop the elite with mad king. (51 hits * 233 retal damage = 11,883 damage back to yourself).

Until trait points are realigned and trait synergies like these become more obtainable, we won’t see a lot of build diversity beyond pure defensive cleric and pure offensive zerker.

Unless someone has a way to “break the meta”…I been trying with no success

Guardian bunker has fallen to the wayside in favor of more damaging oriented bunkers, such as engies or elementalists. They can hold a point, stay mobile, and maintain self sustain while still doing threatening damage.

Guardian can still bunker, but it is challenging versus the current meta. Conditions will be your downfall, and you will lose the condition cleanse race at the moment.

Staff primarily was used with bunker guardians because of the group might it provided to help push the fight to your teams favor as well as synergy with altruistic healing to keep the guardian alive. Less about the mobility, but it helped some with the severe lack of in/out combat movement speed of the guardian.

If you build bunker as a guardian your damage is abysmally low and reliant on team members. Again you can vastly improve team damage, and can be critical in a team fight, but that is for the most organized settings.

Currently most people are trying to dps guard, since bunkering has become less effective.

If you still want to press with bunker guardian, typically you run 0/x/6/6/x picking up altruistic healing and pure of voice while running a shout build. Soldiers rune for more shout condi removal and clerics. Sigils will be energy on both weapons and your choice of maybe intellect to keep vigor up and continue to dodge roll heal between weapon swaps.

Normally mace/focus for the blocks and staff for the synergy with AH and team fights as I mentioned, but you can also run scepter to help lock down kills with immoblize or run knockbacks with shield or hammer for some points. Sword and greatsword are much less often used.

Torch may be nice for team condi clears, but hasn’t seen the light of day very much. Maybe more with current cooldown changes, yet it does nothing for you defensively. Good source of burning…but low condition damage as a typical bunker.

There are other alternatives to the bunker traits such as going 0/x/x/6/4 to pick up absolute resolution. This provides a bit more condition removal, but you lose out on AH (which is only useful if allies are near by, and if you are constantly alone, it gets less effect). You could try to 0/x/6/x/4, but you lose out on condition cleansing again. meditation heals may be interesting…but never really advertised as a bunker.

TLDR – Guard bunking relies on allies near by and more about team fights and not solo skill. Hard to do in todays meta, but still helps in most unorganized matches.

…rofl at music, but the screaming…my ears

Normally for open world, especially zerging, you want to take staff for maximum kill credit.

Beyond that it is a free for all.

2h mastery and superior aria will give you “perma swiftness” to a fair degree to keep mobile.

Justice is blind, renewed justice, and blind exposure work well in zergs for survival and enhanced damage. If you take these it synergizes well with inspired virtues for fast might stacking to self and allies.

If you are giving out a lot of boons then yes AH works great for survival.

Wearing zerker gear helps keep damage up to ensure kill credit while specing AH, but AH not mandatory by any means. 2h mastery could also be swapped for empowering might for even more self healing if you want (I’m sure you are aware of all of this).

I guess what I’m saying is that tradition AH, as you mentioned, is perfect for zergs. This is because of mobility with staff, self sustain from boons, and “group utility” from repetitive use of VoJ blinds/might.

After trash is dead and you just fighting 1 or 2 mobs, it becomes vastly less useful though, but it is an open world environment so who cares?

If you just want to solo trash mobs, then I would stay with meta or something with high self might/vulnerability stacking that allows you to down vets quickly. Champions you just have to adjust to the combat style, but again high damage if you can maintain.

I was playing with vulnerability on immobilize while utilizing focus/scepter + gs. blinds and immobilizes including signet of wrath gets you 25 vulnerability on a fairly short cooldown for rotations solo, providing for 10k+ damage with whirling wrath rotations. Mix in shield of wrath and smite condition and you have some high solo burst for open world pve.

Well, I’m 99% certain the build is a 6/4/0/0/4 build because of the enhanced burning numbers, virtue cooldown timers, and the burning on spirit weapons OR when he chooses shorter torch burning durations. Also positive he specs into zeal because of symbol on low health.

Consecrations are at normal duration and cooldown, spirit weapons have extended timers and short cooldowns, blinds cause vulnerability, and virtue of resolve cleanses conditions.

The alternate traits are:

• torch cooldown/burning duration or spirit weapon burning
• fiery wrath for maybe enhanced scepter damage. he never took vulnerability on immobilize as you watch only 3 stacks of vul on immob instead of 8 with the trait

Beyond that he heals for 112 per sec with virtue of resolve and has approximately 18,639 hp. This number will fluctuate depending on wvw buffs and world bonuses from it.

That said he is probably running something close to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQRAsd7flsApIoVBxZI8DNR8Ql5d8iW+BvQ1VQA8oA-TRSHABCqijsKxcT/AjqHEwTA4OlgAcSAOS5RI7PQKA2kGB-e

Gear is iffy since I don’t know if he is using ascended or not and what the wvw bonuses/food are that he is benefiting from, but it is a close match to what is being observed in the videos.

His precision seems low and hp high thus the speculation of either dire or carrion with a mix of shaman gear for the healing numbers while maintaining condition damage.

Before people were good at the game (release/beta) people preferred shield in pvp because of the anti stomp and pushing people off point to cap.

But because of the long cooldown and gaps of ineffectivess cause the skills are down now one uses it.

By lowering the cooldown of the shield you allow it to be used more frequently, but what I think needs to happen is to provide a 1h version of perma protection, much like hammer has.

projectile absorb/pushback/burst heal are all on shield 5.

Pushback is ok, but maybe additional effects to targets remaining inside (blindness? Would synergize with traits to provide vulnerability)

projectile absorb it limited because of mobility and duration-cooldown, why not have it a reflect instead of just destroying it, providing more ranged offensive capability. In fact I think all of our projectile block skills should “reflect” instead of just destroy.

burst heal is a good idea, but I feel needs to be stronger. A 2-3k heal without healing power and closer to 4k with healing power? Although with shorter cooldowns now, maybe the 1.5k heal is sufficent.

lack of mobility and continual sustain may be is issue in pvp, but the OP was asking about solo pve if I’m not mistaken?

If you are just solo PvE and want to see higher numbers on kills, look towards high stacks of vulnerability along with damage modifiers. Vulnerability on immobilize and blinds utilizing focus, scepter, and signet can net you 25% extra damage.

Combined with 10% from burning and 10% from targets with conditions on them.

You lose a lot of survival utilities doing so, but can provide impressive solo numbers. May as well build berserker then as well to maximize your killing speed since you lose other means of survival anyway.

For survival, utilize blocks/blinds/dodges in spaced out gaps. Not as amazing as other classes but you can go full glass and do large damage in between those windows of blocking/blinding/dodging. The idea is to kill it before your cooldowns are up and hopfully you have cycled them out far enough to be able to begin a second rotation of blocking/blinding/dodging if need be.

Players are served a plate of mush and they hate it.

Players are served a plate of mush, and an after meal mint…and they love it!

While the OP used the wrong word, the intent behind it is clear and somewhat insightful.

The content has been short and choppy, with loopholes in plot, and overall grindy (less so than before, with better rewards along the way), and RNG based. Still zergy to a degree (again better than it was and more organized, but still zerg fests).

Yet now the majority are all hearts and cuddles instead of spite and thorns.

It is a sign of the fickle nature of consumers, the consumers “wanted” an expansion. So when they didn’t get the idea of what they wanted exactly as they wanted, they were determined to hate what they got.

Arguging over the OP using hypocrite does not change the nature of the change of heart of the consumers.

Also the example of a wife being mad at a husband for something he did four years ago…is that justified? That is an example of the “WRONG” reasons to be mad, by wanting to be mad at something that is not pertinent to the situation, so NOTHING the husband (anet) does will be accepted because the wife (consumer) WANTS to be mad, even if the husband did good.

Then the husband buys a pretty necklace (expansion) and the wife (consumer) is happy again…until she wants another necklace (expansion).

….If he buys her a bracelet, she will be furious, even if it was better than the necklace.

I avoided this thread, but seems not everyone realizes the troll bomb that happened.
Amir.1570 created the initial post and has not responded back once in 4 days. You guys got stirred up and arguing with nobody

Ignore it and walk away so this post dies.

@Hamster

With 5 might (for ease of calculation assuming you pop VoJ and a couple of blocks)

4/3/6/0/1
Damage Modifier – 2.24334 (Avg for Crit – 1.677067)
WW – 6045 (4519)
LeapOF – 2528 (1890)
SmiteCon – 2923 (2185)
SoW – 4780 (3573)
Smite [per orb strike] 769 (575)
ScepterAuto – 1556 (1163)
GSAutoChain – 6436 (4811)
SymbOfWrath – 6315 (4720)
BindingBld – 2297 (1717)

Burst: WW + LeapOF + SmiteCond + SoW = 16277 (12168)

Also I’m not factoring in 20% crit from Fury, so your average damage would be a bit higher as well.

Avg modifier would be – 1.899135

revised post because it was missing 5% from rune of strength. slightly higher results.

Just a warning, these are not totally accurate breakdowns of damage, but generalizations based on damage modifiers.

Based on that build on the build calculator and assuming 15 stacks of might (easier since calc does not do 12) and 3 boons active, your damage stats are:

Damage Modifier (Avg For Crit Chance)
2.367404 (1.484088)
WW – 5435 (3407)
LeapOF – 2272 (1424)
GSAuto – 5783 (3625)
SymOfWrth – 5681 (3561)
SmiteCond – 2587 (1622)
StaffAuto – 1238 (776)

So a combo of Leap -> WW -> SmiteCond = 10295 (6454)

Hope that helps provide you some data.

edited to show 5% from rune of strength

part of my point with adding the scepter/signet build is to showcase what high vulnerability stacks can do for our damage, as well as emphasize the idea that immobilizing (CC) our targets prior to trying to do a whirling wrath actually helps us land our burst (duh).

We have been asking for soft/hard CCs for a while, thought I would try to implement what we do have, and it works decently well. At the expense of a good portion of sustain I would caveat.

Because I’m back to testing direct damage dps builds, thought I would try to math this one. Using build calculators assuming a target with 2600 armor.

2/5/6/1
Dmg Mod – 2.48864 (avg crit chance – 1.847754)
WW – 5,260
SoW – 4,089
LeapOF – 2,199
SmiteCon – 2,506
Total Burst – 14,065 (avg crit chance – 10,443)

2/1/6/1/4
Damage Mod – 2.48864 (avg crit chance – 1.72209)
WW – 5,260
SoW – 4,098
LeapOF – 2,199
SmiteCon – 2,506
Total Burst – 14,065 (avg crit chance – 9,733)

2/6/6/0/0
Dmg Mod – 2.737504 (avg crit chance – 2.060175)
WW – 5,787
SoW – 4,508
LeapOF – 2,419
SmiteCon – 2,756
Total Burst – 15,472 (avg crit chance – 11,644)

6/2/6/0/0 (scepter and signet of wrath for immobilize/vulnerability stacking)
Dmg Mod – 2.75 (avg crit chance – 1.925)
WW – 7,141
SoW – 5,299
LeapOF – 2,989
SmiteCon – 3,239
Total Burst – 18,669 (avg crit chance – 13,068)

More bleeding will provide higher damage, but at the expense of mechanics.

The reason for poison is two fold: Damage to a lesser degree, but heal prevention to a higher degree.

Also, on swap sigils when going from GS to scepter assume you will be engaging in mid ranged combat and not melee combat.

so if you get geomancy for scepter as well as earth, you will probably maintain about 6 bleeds, but you have to ensure you are in melee range to do so. Doing that makes you more vulnerable to external sources of damage. Nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t how I was playing the build.

I intended a “get in, get out” style combat to enhance survivability, mimicking ele and thief. We have a small health pool and limited/long cooldown survival skills, so relying on range and positioning to minimize damage allows us to use those survival cooldowns for survival and not to maintain damage.

Long answer short, yes more bleeds will be more damage, but I didn’t want to risk the returning threat in my play style.

obal.3218:

The second build doesn’t look worthwhile over the first one since it would do less dps and has no blind/vuln spam. The first one would probably be more dps doing 2/6 instead of 5/3 since the majority of your damage isn’t coming from symbols. Judging by the rest of the spreadsheet the first one would probably be in the upper 9k range if you ignore elusive power since it won’t be triggered much and a bit more if you consider it. There is 3/5/0/4/2 gs mace calc that is 9896 which would lead to similar damage. I’m not sure if 2h or writ was used but it would be the better of the two for that trait spread. It seemed like 2h mastery rotations were harder to pull off when I did them for the calcs.

The rotations video I made are what were used for the calcs along with a few others like 2h mastery tests and such. We do a rotation for 30s as perfect as possible and count all the different attacks done chopping off any further hits and symbol ticks at the 30s mark and then plug them into formulas. Doing new rotations would be a lot of work and Dekeyz isn’t that interested in the game anymore so I don’t want to bug her for exact numbers. She started to use some program as well which makes her work unsharable for people to pick it up and try to use it and dumps the results to a spreadsheet. The best I can give you is the ballpark above.

Unfortunate that we can’t try it out for real, but I trust the judgement and experience. Thank you for the time.

About 2-3k off from the top dps, not horrible but probably not worth going down unless you like the weapon set. So I guess we can stamp “average” on it.

well, that skews the result of the amulet then. we are talking about Carrion versus Rampager amulets, not Carrion with Flame runes and Rampager with Krait.

As far as which rune to use, it is still debateable. I was trying to maximize bleeds, but I may opt to drop that, in turn the reason I went with Rampager is to again emphasize bleed stacks via crit since scepter will not normally be use in close melee range for on swap sigils, thus the only way to maintain bleed stacks on weapon swap.

Carrion lacks crit chance at all, thus losing bleeding on weapon swap.

Rabid will be even worse without any power at all on it.

In the end it will depend on weapon selection, and I opted to take scepter with the greatsword because of heavy traiting into zeal provided more damage modifiers with immobilize, which the scepter excels at…as well as stacking vulnerability innately as well.

providing an essentially 15% damage increase along with 10% from burning targets.

So damage modifiers equate out to (1.1*1.15*1.371)=1.734315

502 damage on gs auto attack turns into

502 * 1.734315 = 870.62613 or 870 damage (not counting fury bursts after meditation usage)

then factor in burn you get 1614 damage.

Ideally though, this build is not about auto attack damage, but on demand bursts with weapon swaps and immobilize/vulnerability setups while keeping condition damage as persistent pressure between bursts. So calculating things out this way is good for pve, but not always optimal in the mobile fight environment of pvp.

ok, so rampager gives 53% crit chance with 170% crit damage

(0.53 * 0.7) + 1 = 1.371 damage modifier on average

Carrion gives 9% crit chance with 170% crit damage

(0.09 * 0.7) + 1 = 1.063 damage modifier on average

looking at these two build calculator links we look at GS auto attack damage.

Rampager does 502 damage with first swing

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNArdRlsApaolDxbI8DNR8QZ1HU9DEAP61/QQkDA-TpRFwAAOBAJOCAFeAAIOEAp2fwaZAA

Carrion does 605 with first swing

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNArdRlsApaolDxbI8DNR8QZ1HU9DEAP61/QQkDA-TpRFwAAOBAJOCAQLDU4BAg4QAka/BA

So Rampager damage should be

502 * 1.371 = 688.242 damage or 688 damage

Carrion damage should be

605 * 1.063 = 643.115 or 643 damage

Rampager is doing more damage right? 688 versus 643, or am I missing something.

I was not sure where you were getting the numbers from here:

messiah.1908:

base dmg on gs AA is 502*1.5=753 (688) so average direct dmg with crit chance would maybe be bit lower than 700 . 753*20%+688*80%=700

with carrion its 662*(0.09*1.7+0.91)=703

In order for the bleeds on crit to persist., we need the precision on rampager. So the question is are the extra 2-3 bleeds worth it. I am on my phone, so don’t have my spreadsheets to crunch numbers atm. Without the crit so would opt for chill on hit instead and possibly might on swap. If it is more optimal to surpass the precision, but I don’t know if that is totally true yet.

Crits increase damage by something like 45-50% averaged out? (Don’t have stats in front of me). And the persistent bleeds to help pad damage. Versus what 300ish power? Maybe but I want to calculate it myself first.

Other options are to pick up rune of strength + sigil of strength encourage 5 extra might while auto attacking with scepter.

Or

take sigil of ice + maybe speed or travelers rune to prevent being kited by a target somewhat while auto attacking again with scepter. I feel sigil of earth should remain on scepter to further augment burning and bleeding procs with auto attack. Puts you close to 1k damage a second till burst is ready.

Even further, you could take sigil of agony to get 95% increased bleed duration and allowing up to 5-6 stacks of bleed on auto attack with scepter alone.

After all that time I pointed out how ruin of the krait was less than optimal, I am going to post a build that utilizes it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNArdRlsApaolDxbI8DNR8QZ1HU9DEAP61/QQkDA-TpRFwAAOBAJOCAFeAAIOEAp2fwaZAA

Build Structure

• Amplified Wrath opens the door to superior burning over every other class in the game without overly heavy investment into condition damage, this will make your burn ticks happen before anyone else
• While down Zeal and taking burning traits, augment direct damage more by 10% with Fiery Wrath
• Further augment direct damage with either Zealous Blade or Scepter of power….or compromise and pick Binding Jeopardy (this will allow both GS and Sc to do 8% more damage on either weapon after burst setup)

The above choices led me to take Scepter and Greatsword after traiting down Zeal so heavy.

• Poison provides a protective layer that prevents targets from healing up after your burst.
• Bleeding acts as a buffer for cleanses as well as augments burning damage by an extra 300 per tick

The above 2 things combined with the standard whirlwind burst from GS prompted sigils of geomancy and doom on the GS when swapping for a burst kill.

• Scepter is a “ranged” weapon, so on swap aoe sigils are less than optimal
• Vulnerability is inherent in the weapon as well as direct damage
• Auto attack is about one hit every second, so low cooldown runes synergize well with the attacks
• Continued condition damage from burning and bleeding provide pressure between bursts

The above choices led me to take Sigils of Fraility to further establish direct damage burst setup and Earth to help buffer condition damage pressure. I may opt for Sigil of Strength to increase condition AND direct damage instead.

• Bleeding is now a heavy part of the build and I want to maximize stacks and uptime

This sole choice encouraged me to actually take Rune of the Krait after talking negative about it in another post. This is the highest bleed duration increase available with 45% duration to bleeding. Also provides some damage on elite with torment/poison…meh?

Gear and Build

After that everything else fell into place. Meditations are the best self reliant heals available to a dps oriented guard. The build is also still focusing on direct damage with heavy stacks of vulnerability and power orientation. So furthering damage multipliers I took focus and 2 into radiance for more vulnerability on blinds.

Since conditions are now a part of the build I opted for Rampager over Carrion or Rabid.

Carrion and Rabid are pure condition damage amulets and they both lack one attribute or the other that we will need to focus on direct damage. One has power and vitality but no precision, this increases survival but leads to weaker condition application without crits and less direct damage.

The other has precision, but no power or vitality, lower survival and direct damage, but more condition application.

Rampager is a true hybrid amulet that provides direct damage, conditions, and survival. All at lesser amounts but the guardian has conditions built into every build (burning). Also they lack vitality, so this needs to be gained somewhere. Lastly this amulet still allows you to crit and increase direct damage with precision and power.

Damage and Rotations

The build will maintain 3 stacks of bleeds and can ramp up to 6 stacks on weapon swaps. (267 and 534)

Burning is available on demand with JI and/or VoJ active or passive. (744)

Poison is simply there as an anti heal after burst condition, but it still provides some damage. (177)

typical condition damage per second totals up to 1188-1455 damage a second.

WW will only provide an average damage of 3157 damage every 10 second
Combined with Smite doing about 3054 damage every 5 seconds.

On an immobilize burst setup, you should achieve about 6000 damage in direct damage, followed up with the 1188-1455 condition damage trailing after. That should kill a target with 18000 life in about 10 seconds after initial burst, assuming full at start.

After burst, swap back to scepter and ranged/kite targets. This will keep you out of necro wells, engie turrets, elementalist ground fire effects, mesmer boon corruption/condition appliers…and just in general bad things on the ground.

When ready to burst set up with immoblize/blind/SoW, then swap to gs and spin to win.

Long explaination, but try it out and let me know how it feels.

Initial response with the build:

While working celestial, there is not a source of might stacking. So I would suggest a combination of empowering might and or sigils of battle to make up for the damage.

Merciful Intervention is a pain to try to land, or maybe I just suck at ground targeting. Moving allies often are out of reach visually unless standing right next to me already. 1200 range, but tpvp has a lot of corners and walls between each cap point, so obstructions limit use.

Symbols on this build are minimal, so probably swap writ of exaltation for superior aria to have more stability from stand your ground. Or even just pick up 3 meditations and take pure of heart for a little bit more healing on virtue refresh via renewed focus.

Right now this build is mostly a meditation dps build with no condition damage, less power and crit chance, but more toughness and vitality.

Lack damage to kill for the gains made in survival stats.

I will continue to play it more throughout the week.

tyvm Ceimash, I appreciated the honest reply and not being offended by my response.

I am going to try out your celestial build over this next week and I’ll attempt to provide some good feedback.

I also agree with your crowd control assessment being a good way to up sustain/damage through active gameplay and not just overbuffing various offensive or defensive stats.

Via CC we can play smart and buy time at the right moments, without making face tanking too strong or making burst guardians OP….hopefully.

Curious as to the dps potential of the following two builds.

2h Mastery
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR5NmIeQs7TtBag90tRB-ThRBABXt/o8DPdDAcRAy7JAQp6PmpEkUA6JMC-e

Mace of Justice
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR5NmIeQqNQDcnu9yj9A-ThRBABXt/o8DPdDAcRAy7JAQp6PmpEkUA6JMC-e

The idea is utilizing the following rotation:

Sy Faith → Swap GS → Sy Wrath → WW → Auto → WW → Swap Mace → Sy Faith → Auto/repeat

Unsure if 2h mastery is better for shorter wait between swap to mace, or 5% extra mace damage is better.

The Sy Faith + Sy Wrath + WW provides some pretty big burst, overlapping symbols provide some sustained dps while auto attacking till next burst. Could try to time in a protector’s strike for more burst if you want.

Question is how does that match up to the optimal builds. I looked at the attached spreadsheet, and the GS/Mace builds didn’t have the same trait layout, and I was unsure of how the dps rotation was being measured.

I didn’t know if you guys had a spreadsheet that would calculate out the dps based on rotation, or just went out and tested it yourselves. If anyone would be so inclined, I am wondering how someone else’s math compares to what I am estimating it out to be.

I’m going to avoid falling into the disagreement chain for the sake of disagreements with Dirame/Ceimash. I think you really pride yourself in being different so much that you base your identify on going against the grain even if it may be without reason.

Guardian has been renowned from launch to have a huge sacrifice for damage and survivability with large skews to one side of the scale or the other. This was identified as balanced by the community, which is why we are in “a good place” to this day. Guardian’s are the “most balanced class”.

To the point of celestial amulet attempts, I have tried it and we do not have the same impact as the two/three celestial amulet classes have that engi and ele (to some degree warrior) can achieve. Even with Permeating Wrath.

Again this hearkens back to having to go all out on defense OR offense, not both typically.

What do I think is missing? -Leeway- otherwise known as flexibility in the class. We are so polar it becomes restricting.

The cake and eat it issue is more of a point where, here is a trait that, by itself is pointless, but with other traits it becomes usable…but you can never achieve those traits together. I just want the cake to not be a lie.

I actually agree a lot with messaih. The overpowering ability of sustain that the current meta cele comp can provide is hindering growth across the board for the other classes.

So the question is, do we need a buff or do they need a nerf? We have gone through two years of pseudo buffs/tooltip changes where we are pretty much at the starting line still.

Other classes have advanced and fallen back, then caught up. They grew and developed over time.

I do not think our sustain is truly that overly amazing over other classes. I think this was a player community generated idea based off bias and preconceived notion that guardians are “tanks”…then we found out there are no tanks in this game but we continued to try to shoe horn the guardian as the “tank”.

After it was shown that others can tank just as well, we held on tightly to the idea that guardians are the best “support” class in a team fight. Now we are just kind of on the fringe of the meta. Maybe that is good, because it will open us up to change finally.

I don’t think our damage is amazing either. We arguably have some of the highest or “the” highest dps in pve depending on who you talk to. It is actually really good.

Our pvp effectiveness on the other hand has not showcased this. We have a few flashy videos and short lived stars of the dps limelight, but as a whole it has not really taken off. Why is that? Because either

a) we are limiting ourselves as players based on previous preconceived notions

or

b) we are not as effective in dps as other classes are

If it is b, do we need more damage? more survival? more control? At the moment the community feels damage is fine, survival is fine…so we are left with control.

I do feel that condition builds, are effective in potential damage but lack sustain to see the damage out sometimes.

This is why I feel direct damage builds are more “optimal” in a dps flavor, because they front load the damage. This way if your burst lands you survive to see the damage happen. If you miss the burst, then you are dead anyway, but at least you completed your attacks.

….I tried to not get into it, but I feel this ended up being still confrontational with the previous post…sorry. I was just trying to voice my opinions and perspectives with as much reasons as I could. Not trying to pick fights. I voiced it as best as I could and I will leave it alone from here.

Advantage mace has over hammer is:
On demand symbol. Hammer requires you to make contact with the target at least twice before dropping a symbol.

Stop damage via block. Hammer has no block or blind, and it’s damage reduction with protection again needs you to auto attack consistently to gain the boon. Unreliable in pvp.

One handed so you can bring off hand utility such as focus for more blocks. Or shield against range. Or torch for some passive damage. Better off focus normally.

Healing. Hammer has no heals built into it. Mace has heal on auto if you can land 3 hits and provides 100% regeneration boon uptime.

I would love buffs to guardians as I’m one of the first to criticize it. But I am not ignorant to what it can achieve as it is now.

Ezeriel.9574:

so basically:

1) drop a symbol and switch to GS
2) drop a symbol and spam blocks

The first idea is interesting, the second is barely delaying the inevitable, once your blocks are gone (i’m imagining a ranger using rapid fire) your stuck in mace, and it’s over

We can be negative all day.

1) GS leap of faith to the ranger
2) let ranger shoot you as he kites away cause you have no gap closer anymore for another 15 seconds.
3) switch to sword and flashing blade, get kited again
4) JI to ranger again and get kited again
5) Profit
.
.
.
6) uninstall game and complain on forums for months to come

Tobeyeus.9376:

If Communal Defense didnt have a 20 sec internal cooldown it would synergize well with Mace. I like Maces a lot and always use one but I agree it isnt a weapon to kill with, it is a support weapon.

Like the hammer, the strength of the mace is the near persistent damage via symbol in line with auto attacking, letting you essentially hit twice per your “turn”.

Also, like I tried to highlight with the greatsword/mace scenario, having overlapping symbols can provide some decent sounding damage. Perfect in pve where targets stand still.

Kind of works in pvp with conquest being point defense (people still kite you, been running symbol dps in rated pvp and it does well and can take down groups if they don’t realize to get off the point).

Actually if you overlap symbol from mace and greatsword, it provides some pretty decent damage on a close to overlapping cooldown.

Symbol of Wrath + Symbol of Faith then WW+Symbol of Faith, repeat.

Both ticking for about 1k per tick in zerker and writ of persistence gives 7 ticks total, so you do about 14k damage each overlapping symbol?

In PvE with 25 stacks of might and full zerker that is around 40k damage. (perfect scenario if everything crits) give the target 25 stacks of vulnerability and it changes to 50k damage every 20 seconds (gs symbol cooldown).

Sy of Faith + WW = about 31k with 25 might and 39k with 25 vulnerability every 10 seconds.

Not sure where that falls inline with the gs / sw+focus meta honestly. Sounds great after I crunched the numbers on a build calc, even if they are not practical numbers because it assumes 100% crit rate, but the traits would put you at about 50% crit chance.

70% if you took assassins and all precision food, oil, and infusions. Damage would be lower though cause loss of power.

Ezeriel.9574:

^by all means, I’ve never seen a bunker guard in pvp that used mace.

I’ve heard people talk about how amazing it is, never seen it. I have tried it a few times, and it’s horrid. The third swing is painfully easy to dodge, as is the symbol. How could it ever be a pvp weapon?

It is used in the basic pvp bunker build for like…ever.

Mace+Focus provides on demand blocks to avoid critical points of damage between dodge refreshes. Overlap symbols if you have writ of merciful for some extra healing. Typically about 226 healing per tick, two symbols down that is 452 healing a second, add in regeneration that is another 315 a second, and include virtue of resolve that is another 173.

Puts you at about 940 health a second regenerated.

gah, 20 seconds is a LONG time, why do they give guardians such long cooldowns on our stuff

I feel 5 maybe even 15 is a good target, but 20? I mean at that rate you can’t even do a group aegis per cooldown of protector’s strike, which this trait would perfectly synchronize with. More broken synergy….

Same with rune of resistance, 30 seconds between signet usage for aegis? If you trait for signets you drop them all under 30 seconds, so why even trait for signets at that rate. Also no point in bringing more than 1 signet at 30 second cooldown. (or any signets at all honestly)

and for the sake of a source to show 20 seconds:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Communal_Defenses

it’s true

I think it would be interesting. Assuming WvW. Need to find a group willing to have you sacrifice some group stability and condition cleanse to pick it up.

Also you can run Rune of Resistance to gain another aegis from using a signet (30s cooldown) for an additional block if you want.

I think another interesting twist that could provide huge burst would be the utilization of shattered aegis.

5 targets all being hit by 200-300 per aegis (6-8 potential blocks by guardian, not counting shelter).

Also communal defense does not have a target limit, so if you have 5 allies you just did
2,400 dmg to one person and 12,000 dmg collectively to 5 targets.

Lets say you had 10 people in your zerg.

24,000 dmg to one target and 120,000 dmg collectively to 5 targets.

30 man zerg

72,000 to one target and 360,000 to 5.

That’s just one guardian, if more than one guard was running that you would be doing stupid zerg damage just for blocking things (if your zerg ball runs tight against another zerg ball).

Tie that in with Pure of Heart for damage and heals

I tried to talk my group into running this when I used to wvw and they were interested but never attempted it.

What I wonder is, if two guards run communal defense, can you chain aegis blocks off each other? infinite damage!!!! I assume this won’t work cause it sounds broken and could crash the game. Probably a 1s internal cooldown between aegis procs from the trait.

Dirame.8521:

Why do you keep focusing on one build? There’s isn’t just one build for the Condi Guard. Also why do you think that you can actually figure out how this build works using just theory? You actually have to play it to figure it out.

And about “Time to Burn”, do you truly believe that no one can evade burst multiple times? Conditions on the other hand, when you apply them in so many ways, will always catch your target. And recently I decided to merge a spirit spec to my condi build, just to see how it would pan out. I have faster TTKs (Time To Kill) now because CC is king.

I could show you buildssszzzzzz that “theoretically” shouldn’t work, but just end up working. One of which is my very crazy version of the condi guard.

Who said I only review and test builds on paper and numbers? I have been actively playing these condi builds this past week or two that they have resurfaced to see for myself, as well as analyzing why they do or do not work from both an effective perspective and a mechanical perspective.

Case in point Messiah’s build, I playedthe 6/2/6/0/0 build he posted and it works, downs people without them expecting it, I even got hate tells from mesmer trolling me to the point I had to block him.

It is effective, but not (I hate to use the words) “optimal”.

Biggest disadvantage are the ones I listed. If these builds had more survival to see out the duration of burning, then I think I would favor them more.

There is something to say about sudden burst that downs someone at key points though, which is why direct damage tends to be (not always) better. On demand damage, versus delayed damage.

I feel if more of our condition damage traits that look like they should synergize together were achievable in unison instead of pick one or the other, we would have a better standing as condition dealers.

Also, I really feel survival needs to be looked at. Yes guardians are “tanky” but no they are not in some regards, especially depending on healing power or lack of it.
We only have so many blocks/blinds/dodges.

Compare us to the thieves and elementalists, who we fall within the same tier of health with. Thieves have an overabundance of dodging and evades, as well as incombat mobility and combat resets. If you lock them down they die, but a good thief will dance in and out when needed.

Elementalists also have a good amount of control via stuns, knockbacks, and mobility. They are good at kiting and waiting on cooldowns for huge instant damage, then go back to mobility, with some huge healing potential.

Guardians are supposed to be the “frontline fighters” who “once engaged in combat stay in combat” (to paraphrase what has been said by the devs). Yet a majority of the opponents are not trying to stay in combat with you. They are kitting you and ranging you. I feel we need more frequent and usable blocks and damage mitigatiors. Our healing potential is situationally dependent, and our damage suffers if we spec for survival.

In comes what I feel should work but does not -> Our bunker spec should damage via conditions.

Our traits have synergies all over, but they are often out of reach or in the same line and overlap as to prevent these potentially great builds.

WE are missing something, and I feel the community is finally starting to see that, as I see a lot of hate talk about how useless guardians are in pvp now.

I wonder how long “guardians are in a good place” can last before we finally get some meaningful changes.

Back to the point.

Burning guardian -works-, but I don’t think it is better than standard damage yet

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARSlsApboVDxcI8DRRDRljNYvBZQXe9BMABAA-TRCFABMcBAOU9n2OEAA8AAE4IAkkyP+UCWz+DppLgUAjKMC-e

stat wise the same, if that’s what you were looking for.

Or were you trying to up the toughness while keeping some of the damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARSlsApboVDxcI8DRRDRljNYvBZQXe9BMABAA-ThCFABMcBAWTXQTKNa7QAAwDAQgjAwjq/kkyM+UCWz+DkCgVhRA-e

Small sacrifice in damage and health for more toughness to the 3k mark.

What are the stats you were looking to hit?

Your math assumes 100% uptime on burning/poison/bleeding. Yet in your showcase videos it highlights the fact that you will not have 100% uptime on those three conditions.

So the numbers will be lower in effective gameplay than your showcased math.

On initial engagement you get about 5 seconds of burning on your targets with JI. Then you fight for a bit and utilize Purging Flames for a condi cleanse/burn for about 8 seconds.

Between that, every 4 hits you apply a second of burning.

So for every 4 strikes you get 1 burn, so you can average out your burn damage to something like 195? (780/4)

Giving you about 1585 dps with the burning build.

On initial engagement with JI you have a higher amount of “burst” since the burn is ticking consistently.

So your auto attack dps is 1585 and your burst dps is 2176 if we want to look at it that way.

Lets be generous and say you are doing 700 damage a tick, so 16800 damage in burning is 24 seconds. 24 seconds is a long time to wait in a fight.

Focus, is fine, but again, long cooldown = long gap in useful application of burning. Torch again is nice but seems lacking.

Vigor is not only useful against thieves, so your example on thieves not doing damage to you is lacking in reasoning. Doing more condi pressure versus DD damage pressure is the crux of this discussion in the first place, so you can’t use what we are arguing about as your reason. You need to justify the point in the first place.

Time to kill is still an issue. you say that people will avoid/dodge/block a medi zerker…………BUT you need to land a hit to even apply burning in the first place. So if medi zerker isn’t landing hits, neither is the condi guard → in turn applying no conditions again.

Again, I have been testing and running all of these specs. My first interactions on this forum was trying to make a burn on block build since release day. I am involved and invested in your ideas, but they have yet to prove effective.

I really feel we need a trait tree reorg and some more looks to our skills sets.

i.e. meaningful change to the class.