Guardian - Burn Guard
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Note: Please note that builds will default to plain icons, these may not be as accurate. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Contents
Overview
A build designed for massive AoE DPS that performs better the greater the enemy numbers.
Skillbar
Weapon Variants
Staff
Staff/
Staff brings extra long range pressure if you feel out of range for scepter skills often.
Skill Variants
Heal
- better party support but lose a very strong block.
Utility
- personal stunbreak and AoE stability
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Specializations
Equipment
6x
Superior Rune of Balthazar
18x
Malign WvW Infusion
Consumables
- feast option with additional Condition Damage and Expertise
Variants
Stats
- Try to maintain 100%
Burning duration since your primary damage comes from the 2s base duration burn of with . - Trailblazer's adds condition duration from the gear which you can use to reach 100% burning duration.
Viper's and 
Sinister's can be used in place of Trailblazer's and Dire's for more damage, gaining from Zeal spec, at the cost of survivability.
Rabid's can be used in place of Dire as a smaller damage increase that helps with proccing with less loss of survivability.
Sigils
- general defensive sigil
- or trash condis to cover Burning from cleanse
Runes
- highest damage option if unconcerned about condition duration.
- alternative hybrid damage option when unconcerned about duration.
Food
- to reach burn duration cap with other gear setups
- alternative defensive option against condition pressure
- highest damage option with frequent kills.
Usage
- Most of your damage comes from a Burning, meaning that if it gets cleansed, the build isn't fulfilling its role. Always try to coordinate your main skills with you group bomb, to ensure trash condis get cleansed and your burn can tick longer and deal damage.
- To play this build effectively you should aim to use all of your skills rapidly. The only skills you do not use off cooldown are defensive, such as healing. You also should keep your unused to ensure you are receiving the passive activation.
- and are your main sources of damage. Place and carefully to proc it as much as possible.
- Rotate between your weapon sets, using your symbols off cooldown. provides a significant Burning spike, and should be constantly used.
- should be thought of as a DPS ability, the reflected projectiles will proc /.
Laughably easy to play burn guard to a basic level, just place down the Reflect and grin at the scrubs pumping their projectiles in it.
The consistent stuff starts beyond the reflect. Although cleanse has dwindled in the last patch, the guard is still locked into Burn as single condition and thus can still be countered, yet the strength lies not only in the potential stacks of burn but even more so in the constant reapplication, in principle capable of wearing down any cleanse since ages.
yet the usage of guard is still predominantly the Support Firebrand which at this moment still seems to take the cake. As long as there is need for the support Firebrand can offer (eg. not having enough guards in the squad), its getting hard to justify running guard as DPS, regardless of its power.