They can do 2 things: include condition/bonn duration in the specific armor set (condition duration in carrior and rabid and boon duration in soldier and cleric, for example) or make new armors that provide that bonus, forcing you to chose that set to increase your condition duration, making you lesser defensive, just like Ferocity for direct damage. And that will help the balance between direct damage and condition damage builds.
Personally I’m hoping they do the later and make boon/condi duration stuff be it’s own gear.
I say that because if you look at stats +30% boon or condition duration is the = of + 600 stat points.
Simply tossing the +boon/condi duration onto gear that already has stats on it will mean said stats will need to be lower then zerker gear would be.
This will give players more options for min/maxing.
Other than Glacial Heart, which is pretty much guaranteed due to Sigil of Intelligence, not really. GS doesn’t burst super hard since you have time to avoid the spin. The ridiculous amount of sustain on medi guard with a zerker amulet is the heart of the problem.
Try kiting.
I beat allot of med guards because I know their weakness. They lack spammable chill/cripple/slow.
So aside from a teleport once & a while they have no way to get on target or stay there.
So when you see them swap to ranged and kite.
While a few of the traits are nice I’m overall unimpressed.
They need to realize that death shroud is a failed mechanic & get rid of it.
It’s impossible to balance, gets progressively weaker the more enemies your fighting & the problems it causes prevent the necro from getting allot of things.
Once they get rid of it and create something else that revolves around life force the necro will be much better off.
The main reason the necro doesn’t get better support is because of the design failure that is death shroud.
Death shroud is also the reason the necro doesn’t get better defensive skills.
They need to face it, death shroud is just too hard to balance.
1v1 starting with full life force it’s too powerful, but it gets progressively weaker the more enemies your fighting (and is the only defensive skill to do so other then stability stacks)
Once they accept this they can redesign the class mechanic to revolve around the use of life force, but do so in a balanced way.
I hope they add gems & gem slot back to amulets.
Then add in a good variety of gems and everything should be alright.
Or they could add in rings with a good variety of ring choices.
@ OP if your having problems with bunker guard it’s a L2P issue.
They are only good when allies are nearby and even then their damage potential is pathetic compared to any other bunker.
Some of the guardian traits they showed were quite nice.
Others were well….. uninspiring and sad comes to mind given what was shown over all.
Allot of ideas have been posted in the guardian thread, hopefully they take a look at them.
Prior to the info I would have agreed 100%. But with the new scepter trait that gives might for Justice procs while wielding a Scepter I’m not sure if I’d actually want this change or not. Smite + AA will proc Justice twice in a couple of seconds even with one target. If Smite became a symbol, then you’d only get that level of Might gain from at least two targets, and even then you’d be getting them much slower since Symbols only hit once a second.
I do think maybe the Scepter trait should be in a different traitline, though. Perhaps the Virtues traitline to synergize with more frequent Justice procs?
I doubt anyone will want that trait anyway given that it’s in the same slot as the +10% damage to burning targets trait.
That means your choices are +10% damage to all burning targets or a couple of might stacks when using a scepter. That’s not much of a choice
Well guardians already have a heal on AEGIS break, so that one is out.
Guards also have a trait to do damage on AEGIS break so that is out.
A VOC recharge reduction on block however could be quite nice & would fit in with some of the traits they are adding.
Another possibility could be an AOE daze or slow when AEGIS breaks. (would be quite useful & add some CC that the class desperately lacks)
The only reason med burst is high is because the class lacks access to spammable chills/cripple/slow that every other melee has.
It also lacks the escapes other classes have & in many cases is weak to high CC builds.
This means that while you can teleport to your target on occasion any intelligent player will kite you.
This in turn means med guard is good vs enemies that are stupid and try to go toe to toe with you but against players that kite well your more or less screwed.
IDK about cleave.
That being said it would be nice if it just blocked any attack (and actually blocked, just absorbs now) for the next 1 & 1/2 seconds. then had the projectile speed increased.
Been suggesting it since launch.
The question is what symbol would actually work for it ?
Symbol of protection or mercy are the only ones that could really work unless they make a new one.
Unless they do 3 things spirit weapons will remain complete trash
1: Make the Ai better
&
2: Put on their GM trait “Also increases spirit weapons health by 100%”
&
3: Make their Cd timer start as soon as they are summoned (as much as you sacrifice for them they need a much higher up time)
Unless that happens nobody will use them (with the exception of shield)
Frankly though I think they should just redesign them to be immortal mobile banners that follow the guardian around providing a passive buff & can be activated for an active buff
Also noticed that inscribed removal didn’t get rolled into perfect inscriptions.
This is very sad since signet builds were not that popular anyway.
If they would add the inscribed removal effect into perfect inscriptions it would help make the choice viable.
Either way, the protection mace grants currently is incredibly unreliable, because it only procs if you can go a full 3 and a half seconds of channeling without getting hit by a single attack. Mace 3 really needs to be reworked to function like other weapon blocks, so that it only counters when in melee range and has a subskill that cancels the channel and provides a different bonus (in this case, protection without having to channel for so long).
That is one of the things I alluded to in my last sentence about base skills needing fixed.
Among them are
1: Sword auto attack number 3 (often misses & can be reflected but is not considered a ranged attack.)
2: Sword number 3 (projectiles often miss & do less damage then the auto attack, the “block” doesn’t actually block & it roots you)
3: Mace number 3 (only melee block in game that can be triggered & ended by ranged attacks, it also does not have a second skill like other blocks)
4: Scepter auto attack (moves so slow that anyone beyond 600 range can avoid many of them by strafing)
5: Scepter number 2 (smite is good for single target but given the rework of traits wouldn’t it be great if it was a symbol ?)
6: Litany of Wrath (even with the rework it will be hard to justify it’s use vs shelter or the other heals. Having it be instant or lowering the base CD to 25 seconds would help a great deal)
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
SO anyone have any suggestions, input or thoughts ?
Now for Valor
1: Strength of the Fallen. Nice combining it with purity trait, but I doubt anyone will want to use it because it’s still so niche. Suggestions are open for what to do here.
2: Stalwart Defender. Considering focus is now the defensive choice this could really use some help.
What if it caused the shield skills to grant AEGIS to nearby allies ?
Now for Honor
1: Protectors Impact. Nobody really likes fall damage traits. I suppose they could become more useful with the new maps but they are really just to niche.
Suggestions are open for what to do here.
Lastly Virtues
1: Unscathed Contender. It can be quite nice when it’s up but in any serious fight AEGIS is unlikely to be up for long.
What if instead it gave a 10% boost to damage while under the effects of protection ?
2: Retaliatory Subconscious. The addition of an AEGIS proc is nice but given the CD it’s still quite underwhelming.
What if you chanced the name to “Protected Subconscious” & instead had it give protection & AEGIS when it procs?
3: Permeating Wrath. I think one of the dev’s mentioned changing it to burn around the target on VOJ proc ? If so you would have allot of very happy guardians.
That’s more or less it for the traits. There are still quite a few skills that could stand to be looked at on the mace, shield, & sword however. Plus Litany of Wrath could also stand to be looked at if you want it to become an actual choice.
By now we have all seen the traits they showed on the last ready up, Some of them were great.
Others, well they were just sad….
Figured I’d put this thread out there with some suggestions. If you have any suggestions for Arena.net on guardian skills & traits post em here, just try to keep them reasonable.
Lets start off with Zeal.
1: Symbolic Exposure. Given how many other classes can literally spam vulnerability stack this trait is rather under powered. What if it instead applied 2 stacks for 4 seconds ?
2: Symbolic Power. Better then it is on live but burns appear to have a much much lower base damage then they do on live. Stacking burns will also be extremely hard when so many of the ones guardian has access to are such short duration.
What if it had a 100% chance to apply a 2 second burn ?
3: Wrathful Spirit. This trait is incredibly weak on live & remains so. What if it gave 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds to anyone effected by your AEGIS when it breaks ?
4: Expeditious Spirit: Nice that the spirit traits are combined now but unless they get a health boost they will remain extremely fringe use (shield being the exception)
5: Shattered AEGIS. While the damage boost is nice it’s not really enough to warrant it’s use. What if it dazed anyone who breaks one of your AEGIS (that could add some great counter play).
Or it could apply slow to anyone who breaks your AEGIS.
Now for Radiance
1: Renewed Justice. This trait can be quite useful in large groups of mobs, however against bosses & players it’s much less useful. Back during the original closed beta we had a trait that gave critical attacks a chance to burn, what if we combined them so that it also gave critical attacks a 33% chance to apply a 3 second burn ?
2: Healers Retribution. This skill is very under powered given how long the CD of most guardians heals are. What if it gave retribution in AOE to allies for 5 seconds when the guardian used a heal ?
3: Perfect Inscriptions. It’s nice that you combined the signet traits but they still seem rather underwhelming. Part of that is due to the signets themselves but short of reworking them there are other things that could be done.
What if instead of a 20% boost to signet passives it instead gave precision for each signet you have equipped ? (say 25-30?)
Eh personally I wish they would make it daze or slow anyone who breaks an AEGIS you applied.
The guardian is horribly lacking when it comes to CC & needs all the help it can get in that department.
New Medi guard: lower burst, lower condi removal, slightly higher burning damage (unless burning is nerfed with the changes).
This change may bury Guardian in PvP.
From the looks of it they had either a guardian with soldier amulet or barbarian amulet.
The burning number when scrolled over was 135 at lvl 80.
Later when you see how much the necro could do via burning it was 350.
This likely means that while burning can stack in intensity it will have a much lower base number. Who knows what amulet the necromancer had, so how well it scales is anybodies guess.
So over all I hope they take a serious look at the guardian methods for applying burns.
They need to increase the number of stacks applied per ability & make some of them apply longer burns.
Otherwise burning from a guardian will barely tickle.
@ the OP.
Was thinking of doing something similar to this, you saved me a ton of time.
I also agree with you on pretty much every point you made.
Over all though I need more time looking at the traits & thinking before I would suggest changes.
Burning will be lower.
CONDITION DAMAGE reduction: bleed and torment: 38.8% ||| poison and burning: 60% ||| Confusion: 84.6%
All those ppl thinking we got buffed are wrong. We got wrecked.
Burning will stack in intensity though.
Still over all it’s going to crap all over the guardian Spvp burn spec unless they up the duration of several of the ways guardians apply burns.
Otherwise ya it “can be” stacked but the burns won’t last long enough to actually stack it.
Simple fix for zealots defense would be to make it block all attacks while active but shorten the block time slightly.
(and by block I mean make it block, the fact it simply absorbs makes it not interact with any traits)
Them simply up the projectile speed slightly.
It’s a tough decision and I understand now why ANet has not decided yet on how to categorize healing breeze, shelter and tomes. We have the current skill groups left:
Shout
- Healing breeze is basically a shout. Although the guardian doesn’t actually shout while breezing, it does fit thematically into the shout skill group. It’s a support skill just like the other shouts. Stand your ground gives stability to teammates, retreat gives swiftness+aegis and healing breeze should heal your allies.
- If they made Save Yourselves more significant they could turn it into an Elite skill. Then you have a full shout group just like the Meditation skill group. This would open up alternatives towards the currently heavily used Renewed Focus.
Consecrations
- Both Tomes should be consecrations. Consecrate means you declare something sacred. You consecrate from tomes to communicate your declarations. Also many skills of the tomes are shown as consecrations on the ground.
- If Shelter is turned into a consecration then we have three complete skill groups. It’s not that easy to justify why Shelter is a consecration though. Perhaps it has something to do with whatever is sacred needs to be consecrated with immunity.
Spirit Weapons
- They should make Bow of Truth a healing skill instead of a normal utility. Although not used by the majority of the players this skill should be reassigned imho.
- Currently no elite skill but why not just make Sword of Justice an elite and make it more interesting?
Even with the merging of all the spirit weapon traits into one I doubt many people will use any of them with any regularity the only exception being shield.
The reason being is
1: They take up utility skill slots, meaning you have to sacrifice some very useful things for them. (most notibly condition removal & or stability)
&
2: They die quite easily & once they die there is a good chunk of time before they can be summoned again.
The easiest fix I can think of for them would be to increase their health by a good margin & make the Cd timer start the second they are summoned.
Or they could just rework them to be more akin to invulnerable mobile buff banners.
Instead of blowing air at you, the Guardian will shout at you until you feel better.
Like a Drill Sergeant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qiQI-zrPvQ
Well think of it this way.
Death shroud may be good in 1v1 situations but all the problems with it keep the necro from getting allot of things like support, vigor etc….
So Imagine if death shroud were replaced with something on the F1-F4 bar, something like
F1: Life blast. Consume X% life force to blast your foe with energy. (Attack pierces, causes vulnerability & bleeding.) 1 second cast time.
F2: Doom. Consume X% life force to inflict fear on nearby enemies (or perhaps one foe) If doom interrupts a foe it also applies Chill. Instant cast.
F3: Life Transfer. Consume X% life force to damage & torment nearby enemies with each pulse. Nearby allies are healed with each pule. 3 & 1/2 second cast time.\
F4: Shadow Armor. Consume X% life force per second to gain protection (can be toggled on & off & has a grand master trait to share protection with allies)
If life force were used like that I would love it.
And without death shroud they could finally give necro things like vigor & support from weapon skills/traits.
Without DS, perhaps the game’s most powerful damage avoidance mechanic, Necromancer would be an easy kill for everything frome PvP to PvE. The profession would need to be totally reworked into something completely different – something like Revy, in which case Necromancer would be replaced.
Depends what they replace it with.
If replaced with F1-F4 skills and 2-3 of them are defensive/supportive it could up being better.
Remember death shroud has plenty of issues.
2 cele DD elementalists, 2 cele rifle engineers, & 1 shout hambow warrior.
The main thing guardian lacks is the spammable cripples/chills that every other melee has access to.
Burst is nice, teleports are nice as well, but if you cannot keep the enemy in melee range once you get there then it doesn’t matter.
If they would get rid of the difference between PvE & PvP for skill 4 that would be a nice improvement.
As for skill 5, it would be great if they made it an AOE knockback that applied AEGIS to allies.
After that reduce the CD to 30ish seconds & the shield would be nice.
Really they need to stop designing WvW based around home servers and institute some type of guild alliance system with a strict cap on how many players can belong to each alliance. (say a couple thousand at the largest tier with smaller tiers having less people)
This way there is a set hierarchy that can set standards for membership & decide who is in & who gets removed.
Anyone who does not want to meet said standards or does not belong to an alliance is simply tossed into a different type of WvW composed of other randoms each week, much like EOTM is now.
Doing this would create a much wider variety of match ups, and makes WvW much more about strategy since numbers on each side will be allot more even then they are now in many cases.
Making WvW rewards more linear (like Spvp tracks) would also go a long way towards getting people intrusted in WvW. As it stands any rewards you get are by random chance & you often spend more then you can make in WvW.
I like part of this, and hate other parts. Reward track would be interesting, and would provide more incentive to get into the game, strategize, and coordinate.
Hate the idea of being able to game the system completely and stack an alliance. If they could guarantee that the alliances would be fairly equal the idea would be less repugnant to me, but if they just let people pick their alliance then you get a situation worse than what you have now.
Really hate the idea of “tossing” non-aligned players into EotM-style WvW. Exclusion is a terrible idea for the health of the game. Too many good/great players would be relegated to lower levels of the game until they get “called up to the bigs”. The result would be guilds/servers cannibalizing other guilds/servers in a feeding frenzy.
Now if you’re talking about having 6 matchups of equal size each week then I could get behind that. I think having this option with an “opt out” option to allow roamers/duelers to have their smaller matchups would be okay.
The last part of what you mentioned is basically what I meant.
Alliances would be between guilds & have a strict cap on the number of players that could belong to each alliance. This would ensure more or less equal numbers & make coordination & skill much more of a factor then simply steam rolling the enemy with numbers.
Anybody that doesn’t belong to an alliance due to whatever reason or anyone who wants to opt out is simply in a randoms group like EOTM.
As for alliances tearing others apart, isn’t that what already happens now.
As is now everyone that is intrusted in WvW has transferred to prime servers, while everyone who realizes the flaws in it’s design or cannot be bothered to pay to transfer is stuck on a dying world.
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
Make transfers to lower pop servers free and allow only 1 free transfer per time period ie, 6 months. Any other transfer is a paid transfer.
This actually wouldnt fix anything.
There are servers with very good sized populations but only an extremely small % of their population do any WvW.
It should also be noted the the skill “Zealots Defense” is a DPS loss compared to the auto attack.
It also has a bad tendency to miss many of it’s projectiles.
And to top it off while it says it’s a ranged block it doesn’t actually block anything, it merely absorbs ranged attacks which in turn means it does not interact with the on block traits the guardian has.
Over all the sword has some real problems.
The problem is the guardian lacks spamable cripples/chill that every other class capable of melee has access to.
So sure you can occasionally close the gap, but if your fighting a person who knows how to create distance & kite your chances of a win go down the toilet.
And while you can grab sigils & a trait that give access to some cripple/chill getting them severely reduces your damage potential.
So it’s a situation where your screwed if you do & screwed if you don’t.
At least the guardian wrecks melee & those too stupid to kite.
Open world is not "challenging group content"
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Ragnar the Rock.3174
Well some months back (around 6) they did hire people & one of the prerequisites was having experience designing raid content for an MMO.
I am hopeful that this means they will have instanced raids that are at least somewhat difficult.
I say this because open world is always one of 2 things
1: So easy even someone who is high out of their mind can complete it.
or
2: Difficult which causes everyone to whine & cry until it becomes like number 1.
Instanced raid content could allow the more hard core among the players to have difficult content & could provide intrusting stuff for a guild to do without being something that is mandatory to feel like you are progressing because all it really rewards is achievements (or a slightly a higher drop rate)
generally speaking no medi guard cannot beat a good elementalist because they an survive strong burst.
If you have an ally to lock them down however with multiple knock downs, dazes, stuns then you can take them down quite easily.
If you want to take them on solo however I sould suggest a medi burn build. You don’t bring burst like regular medi does but you bring strong pressure.
If you decide to stay with the 1 handed sword I would suggest changing two handed mastery out (unless you run staff) for pure of heart or protective reviver.
Guardian really just doesn’t roam as good as some of the other classes.
It has decent swiftness uptime but lacks the cripple/chill spam needed to stay on a target like many other classes do.
Combine this with the joke that is scepter vs moving targets and you end up feeling like your banging your head against a wall.
Few notes on your build.
1: Sword is good for single target but the cleave is bad. The last AA also has a tendency to miss 1 or more of its hits.
2: You have no stability, this can lead to a quick death from CC chain.
3: Unless your using a Spvp burn build torch is kinda meh compared to focus.
Knowing all this if your still wanting to try a roaming build with a mix of support/offense then I would suggest http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQFABlsApVo1ChfIKiHkcs9jqCg9zoZB-TlBFABaq+T3XAArU+lmOA/UCCwDAgQAlnAA-w as a base build.
After this there are a few ways you can go with it.
For the last utility you can grab signet of judgment, signet of wrath or bane signet purging flames, or save yourselves depending on how offensive/defensive you want to be.
For the untaken trait you can get healer’s retribution or signet mastery.
For the rune you can get traveler & combo it with the scepter. Or you can get pack and combo it with the staff. The former is good for personal offense, the later is good for support
Or if you have someone else to provide swiftness you can grab the staff & rune of strength for a near permanent +12 might stacks for you and your allies.
While these builds lack the instant gap closers of meditation builds they can provide allot of support to allies & their survivability is not linked nearly as much to utility skills.
If they do anything with spirit weapons they should just rework them.
As is now they are very bad because they die so easily, have so much down time & what you sacrifice to make them useful makes you weak in so many other respects.
In continuation of my post
If they had a guild alliance system but still wanted to maintain the income that transfers provides they could easily make joining a new alliance cost gems based on it’s ranking & tier size.
Really they need to stop designing WvW based around home servers and institute some type of guild alliance system with a strict cap on how many players can belong to each alliance. (say a couple thousand at the largest tier with smaller tiers having less people)
This way there is a set hierarchy that can set standards for membership & decide who is in & who gets removed.
Anyone who does not want to meet said standards or does not belong to an alliance is simply tossed into a different type of WvW composed of other randoms each week, much like EOTM is now.
Doing this would create a much wider variety of match ups, and makes WvW much more about strategy since numbers on each side will be allot more even then they are now in many cases.
Making WvW rewards more linear (like Spvp tracks) would also go a long way towards getting people intrusted in WvW. As it stands any rewards you get are by random chance & you often spend more then you can make in WvW.
A lot of times devs play builds that are either perceived as “too strong” and often those “not quite there yet” in order to better understand what makes them strong/weak so that they can make more intelligent adjustments.
I wouldn’t read too much into this.
Which one of them plays necro?
Wait a dev actually has played necro ?
Oh darn it I got my hoped up again.
Let Nightfall series be revisited in GW2
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Ragnar the Rock.3174
Elona is much more likely then Cantha sadly due to politics effecting game design.
The Chinese, Japanese & Koreans throw a hissy fit when you mix their cultures in a game.
Since Cantha did this & Arena.net’s parent company is Korean Cantha is unlikely to ever return. (unless it gets some major changes in terms of culture & design of buildings)
Weather or not we see it again in an expansion however is anybodies guess.
The fact that you were using consecrations shows you need to learn more about the class.
First off sanctuary is well, useless. It’s so small melee attacks can get through it, ground targeted stuff goes through it & anyone with stability can simply walk through it.
Purging flames is alright if you have someone providing blast finishers.
Hallowed ground, well its really only good for larger scale fights.I do agree the lord needs better defenses but if you wana go defensive support your much better off using a shout build.
Sanctuary on top of supply depot was hilarious. On top of hero spawn, as well.
Forgive me for trying to use the defense abilities for which Anet created to be used by the guardian Profession. Since every class is a carbon copy of the Meta, it was actually quite easy to get myself up to 75 (80 now didn’t play Conq with beta going on) on the NA LB, because everyone is so predictable.
Im going back to medi guard, GS, S/F variant today, and I’m sure I’ll do just fine with the class (profession) I know nothing about.
Meant no offense just the defensive skills like consecrations are so easily worked around by anybody with half a brain.
While they may be hilarious for a moment or 2 they soon become useless when someone with stability bypasses them.
If you want to play defense your much better off using shouts unless your fighting complete idiots who will kill themselves on wall of reflection or run into sanctuary over & over without stability.
I found that using a highly offensive build was more successful at defending than a bunker/cleric build. I could burst door breaks down and then the enemy team simply could not enter our base. Going bunker style allows them into the base and then you’re trying to support NPCs against other players/mobs. Healing in GW2 is just not strong enough to make going bunker a valuable choice in stronghold.
I found the same thing to be true. A strong offensive build just did better on defense. I did see some more bunkish guards do a nice job when it came to defending the lord though.
This^. Offensive build for when they are outside, bunker/support once they get inside.
Over all I found it was best to do a 3/2 split with the team.
3 offensive specs go on the offense with breakers then an offensive spec & defensive spec defend.
Once you get lord gate open however just have everyone rush.
Meditation GS + S/F Roaming is viable.
Remember to use Traveller (or Speed) Runes and Sigil of Incompacitation: I put it on my Sword/Scepter.
I was just going to say this. I run GS + S/F and it works. Runes of Travel are a must. If you don’t you can try Moa features but those are a bit expensive now. There is also some food you could try or the speed boosts although I’m not sure if the speed boosts are still available.
Sigil of Incapacitation, while I use it, doesn’t seem to get much attention. Maybe because the short duration. I like it but what do I know.
Edit: I will say that trying to duo/havoc with team mates that are using speed, then yes. Running without any of the items I noted does seem like you are going in slow motion and playing catch up. But then again that is no different than if I’m on my Ranger or Necro.
Just have to make choices and maybe it isn’t easier as other classes.
Ranger has ready access to a + movement speed signet however & it’s ranged attacks more then make up for the lack of swiftness, (which can be granted by pets)
Necro, well ya it is rather slow but with traveler rune or the right mix of spectral walk etc… it can get some run speed. Combine that with it’s abundance of chills & cripples and what you end up with is perma slowed enemies.
Guardian on the other hand just cannot roam and against a skilled kiter it’s screwed.
If your just now figuring out that guardian is not fit for roaming & that they have a very hard time vs any enemy that knows how to kite then I guess your new to the class.
Personally I would be fine with losing a tad bit of on demand burst (spread it out a bit) if they gave the guardian a +25% movement speed trait (or signet) and more access to chills/cripples.
Heck I have even suggested in the past a number of traits that a low tier & currently suck that they could rework to give said cripple or chill.
PvP is mainly what i think about. PvE tends to work for me no matter what build i am. I have Consume Conditions, but yeah nothing else for removal. I tend to switch to DS when things are getting rough as a damage sponge and usually the opponent will either die or run away because my life blast does so much damage
This is why I suggest a staff dagger/dagger build
Both the staff & off hand dagger have a way to transfer conditions back onto the enemy. This can be especially good vs condi tanks.
Might also try http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW4Yjk00SbNN22whbCchCy3MAi8CKBqjjz4ZB-TJBFwACuIAy3foaZAAPBAA
I have been using it in PvP & WvW for a while now and it’s great