A virtue trouble: Newbie guardian

Greetings.

I made this post because I m triying to get into guardian but I don t kow how to properly use their virtues. I am used to the engineer toolbelt skills that don´t have a penalty on use and are quite fire and forget sometimes.

The thing is; as virtues have passive effects that are lost on use I often think that in the long term it´d be better if I keep the virtues for their passive effects rather than using their actives.

I´m aware that there are different builds and specializations that probably use them on a different way so please, do you have any advice on virtue usage? I m mostly interesed in burn firebrand buker guard/firebrand and power guard/dh.

TL/DR: I don t know if it´s better to keep the passive effects of the virtues or use their actives -or when use them-. Please help.

For core Guardian, Virtues are more of a clutch, hail mary kind of use.You'll want to keep the passives on most of the time.But you can use the actives, basically for last-ditch, or some specific situations.F1 can be used when you're going to burst, and when you're comfortable with it, use it straight after the passive procs for double burn stacks (this is especially the case if you have traits that give you more damage on burns, or if you're playing condi)F2 you'll use it mostly either has a clutch self-heal, or in Fractals/Dungeons, you can use it as a group heal to keep an ally alive.F3 is pretty much the same as F2. Keep the passive going, and use it when you know a big attack is coming and you don't have other Aegis sources. Like if a boss is about to use its big AoE, use F3 to shield yourself and your group.

Firebrand and DH are kind of the opposite.For DH using F1 is pretty much mandatory, and part of the damage spike rotation (you use it plus big game hunter trait to get a 10% damage increase on your spike).The other two skills will be situational, like for core Guardian, you'll still use F2 either as an escape tool, or a clutch heal, and F3 is great for projectile blocks vs strong attacks.Firebrand is a whole other beast, and you'll want to use Virtues all the time, F1 is pretty much the main source of burn damage for condi FB, and you'll pretty much use all your Tome of Judgement skills for damage.The other two tomes are used for support, so in bunker mode you'll want to use both, probably (never played it).Also FB has a cool trait that retains the Virtue passives when using Tomes, so there's no really a problem with it.

Guardian is a great class to play, and it has a lot of tools to be a good DPS or a good support, have fun ^_^

If you spec into Virtues traitline, they basically become extra utility skills. Resolve becomes a massive condi dump, and Courage is a stun break. They also all grant retaliation which is great for radiance builds. If you spec into Radiance, Justice resets after every kill, and also blinds the target and creates a light shield for retaliation uptime, so it makes a good active defense/offense combo skill. If you don't spec into virtues, they are basically just fallback skills like ReaverKane said.

In DH they become a lot more useful but are still basically extra utility skills, learn what they do and use as needed. Also, they change completely in Firebrand, giving whole new skill bars, that's a whole other ballgame.

@Rhyse.8179 said:If you spec into Virtues traitline, they basically become extra utility skills. Resolve becomes a massive condi dump, and Courage is a stun break. They also all grant retaliation which is great for radiance builds. If you spec into Radiance, Justice resets after every kill, and also blinds the target and creates a light shield for retaliation uptime, so it makes a good active defense/offense combo skill. If you don't spec into virtues, they are basically just fallback skills like ReaverKane said.

In DH they become a lot more useful but are still basically extra utility skills, learn what they do and use as needed. Also, they change completely in Firebrand, giving whole new skill bars, that's a whole other ballgame.

To add to that, if you are running Core: Zeal / Radiance / Virtues , F1 at least becomes part of your rotation, as it helps to keep Retaliation up 100% of the time, which gives you various boons as well as +50% crit. Once you kill a mob, the virtue's cooldown is reset thanks to Renewed Justice trait (Radiance), so you activate it again, which essentially refreshes all the boons and Retaliation.

If you can't kill the mob fast enough, you can then use F2 or F3 to again proc retaliation and keep those boons up.