100% critChance without a Single Point of Precision

Coming across these on the wiki page:

• Radiant Power Radiant Power — Attacks against burning foes have an increased chance to critically hit.
• Righteous Instincts Righteous Instincts — Retaliation increases your chances to critically strike and grants might each interval.
• Right-Hand Strength Right-Hand Strength — Critical hit chance with one-handed weapons is increased. Sword skills recharge faster.

I decided to mess around on the build editor. Note that this is entirely theoretical and some trinkets listed here aren't even available yet. Here's the build:

Firebrand: 100% critChance & critDamage, 100% fury & retaliation (duration and up-time), 75% boon duration, +21% damage, 3k armor

Probably only goodfun in open world ¯_(ツ)_/¯ but hey, gotta admit that the sheer possibility to reach 100% critChance without a single point of precision is quite amusing.

Edit: A bit more elaboration here.

The minimum critChance for a level 80 character is 5% (instead of 4% shown on Hero Panel). Permanent fury adds 20% and the three traits mentioned at the beginning of this post add 15% + 10% + 50% with permanent burning on the enemies and retaliation on self.The trait 'Retribution' (Radiance Major Master) adds 250 ferocity, adding additional 16.66% critDamage to the original 183.33%.

i run this on pvp and kick ass

@michelada.2947 said:i run this on pvp and kick kittenyeah there is actually some pvp/wvw potential after swapping a few traits and skill slots.

It's already used in pvp, it's the Radiance hammer build. Though, pvp cares about bursts, so you don't need perma retaliation there.

You can replace right-hand strength with Berzerker weapons (or any 3-stat with minor precision) and Sigil of Accuracy. That means you can use any weapon you want and you can take Healer's Retribution, instead, which provides another source of retaliation and reduces the boon duration requirements.

I don't see why you would slot so much Concentration to begin with, though. Mantras have no synergy there, especially the Flame one, when you could instead pick more sources of retaliation. Healer's Retribution and the Elite mantra provide 72% uptime already with no boon duration, take Stand your Ground for more than 90% uptime. Then, Fried Dumplings, and your other traits will patch up the holes. Greatsword as a weapon makes it easy mode.

Anyway, those traits were discussed already back in August. The obvious problem is that you can't get more damage out of them, only more survivability, toughness, vitality, healing power, etc. If we had a gear set with Power>Ferocity/Condition Damage, for example, it would be a lot more interesting for pve.

You can check a Radiance build in the front page, the Centaur solo thread, OP is using Cavalier gear.

Many thanks. I totally missed the discussion pre-patch there (and probably post-patch as well :P guardian is really not my main).

@Virtuality.8351 said:Many thanks. I totally missed the discussion pre-patch there (and probably post-patch as well :P guardian is really not my main).

Nah, it's not your fault, the discussion happened in the old forum.

But yeah, you can do some interesting stuff, mainly with Valkyrie or Cavalier gear.

Radiant DPS builds are the best Guardian spvp build right now as far as I am concerned. The damage is extremely high I routinely double hit for around 4k with smite condition and lesser smite condition each back to back. My GS auto attack cleaves can go to 2-3k range when I get some might stacked. I perfer to use GS over Hammer for the leap and better cleaves and it allows me to run Absolute Resolution for the condition cleansing. You do lose out on the cc and the burst potential of Mighty Blow plus a Glacial Heart proc. That and the healing meds give it a decent amount of sustain and you have little bits of group utility with Absolute Resolution and Indomitable Courage. This is spvp only I dont WvWvW so cant comment there. I use Lynx Runes and Valkrie amulet and GS and Sword/Focus.

I have been using a variant of this for over two month now, without FB obviously.

5 mantras in the build you linked?At first it seems amazing because you constantly have a ton of skills to use...(ʘ‿ʘ)But then you start to feel the effects of ~15 seconds of prep time on every map change...(ಠ‿ಠ)(ಠ.....ಠ)(ರ.....ರ)

There are definitely some awesome Righteous Instincts builds out there though.

To be fair, I don't even think that FB is the right build to use this on ... conditions benefit little from crits.

Radiant made me change my main to Guard, its the epitome of a fun build. I don't use hammer though, scepter and focus for better versatility.

I love the firebrand version too, I run zeal and radiance, with 4 mantras.

@Obtena.7952 said:To be fair, I don't even think that FB is the right build to use this on ... conditions benefit little from crits.

Firebrand gives you that sweet perma retal, though.

Though, the problem with Radiant builds, especially in pve, is that you can make similar condi builds, because condi only need 1 stat. Any condi damage set with Balthazar runes is good damage, so you can make some interesting builds with Carrion, Dire, Settler, Shaman, Apostate, etc.

This is the epitome of why Legendary armor is so awesome, so many builds you could try if you didn't have to worry about gold.

@Obtena.7952 said:

To be fair, I don't even think that FB is the right build to use this on ... conditions benefit little from crits.

Lol, Firebrands are equally as good in power builds. Perhaps even better if we are talking radiance, so much more cleanse, so much more aegis, and best of all, so much more quickness. Condition builds on firebrands are cheesy and lose steam really easily.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAR8ensADdDhNCDGBDkCjl5BrqBkACAWXg6VjaflGTvpA-jpAaQA89HAlBAA

I use something like this. The build has a hilarious daisy chain of effects. Depending on your playstyle, you can take the shorter mantra recharges, it is probably slightly better for WvW.

Shattered aegis is just so good on Firebrand. You can activate your heal to get fury, quickness, retaliation once the aegis gets triggered, and burn on hit. The rune will give you a 60% uptime with fury, which is about the time you want to engage and disengage anyways.

If you take the reduce mantra recharge, you can immobilize on the last hit of your quickness mantra, for a quick spin-to-win on your greatsword.

@kKagari.6804 said:@Obtena.7952 said:

To be fair, I don't even think that FB is the right build to use this on ... conditions benefit little from crits.

Sounds like a matter of opinion actually ... whether condition builds are 'cheesy' is not relevant. FB is equally as good as WHAT as a power build? Show me these equivalent builds and maybe there is something to discuss. Frankly, I see little reason to play a power build FB, other than the novelty of Mantras; I personally do not fancy making one my my virtues completely irrelevant simply to make a point about equivalence .. to each his own I guess.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:@Obtena.7952 said:

To be fair, I don't even think that FB is the right build to use this on ... conditions benefit little from crits.

I literally just posted one above. 3k shattered aegis critical hits against scholars, substantial quickness uptime, 100% critical chance, enough sustain and cleanse to take on scourges in pvp.

I have to say, the Righteous Instincts change is by far the best addition to ever grace this game. Radiant guards are the pinnacle of balance. Medium window of opportunity for high reward game play, still requires coordination, still requires engage and disengage knowledge, and is completely rewarding for build-making.

Btw, OP. for a less fidgety build, if you have a marauders amulet, retaliation will instantly boost your critical chance to 100%, no need for fury, no need for burn on target, and you can even use two handers!

I use a similar build but i have a tiny bit of precision. About 25% crit chance. About 2.2 k power, over 3000 armor and 20k health.With a high aegis uptime you basically have a ton of might, survivability and dmg. Soloing champs with this is fantastic :D

@Obtena.7952 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:@Obtena.7952 said:

To be fair, I don't even think that FB is the right build to use this on ... conditions benefit little from crits.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:@Obtena.7952 said:

To be fair, I don't even think that FB is the right build to use this on ... conditions benefit little from crits.

I'm still not sure what the LAWLS are all about. Perhaps you assumed we were have a PVP-centric discussion. Nothing the OP stated made me think this was the case. I'm still not seeing how ignoring a part of my toolset or how crits not benefiting conditions makes what I said lol worthy. /shrug

I just want to point out that ToJ can still do some nice power damage, so it's not only useful for the condi build. Skill 4 does comparable damage to a symbol (for example, more damage than sword, but less damage than GS), but you don't benefit from symbol traits, and the auto is a lot better than the scepter auto.

That's ignoring the condi damage. So, it's not a loss using ToJ as a power build, especially considering you get better range than our melee weapons, and more coverage than our ranged ones.

The ask was simple ... if your going to LOL my statement, what build are you using to justify it? If you were being specific to PVP, I wasn't. The best part is that I wasn't responding to you anyways ... so your reply to me is out of context. All your posts were AFTER my first so it is you assuming I'm talking about PVP, not me assuming you're talking about PVE. If you don't want to respond to me, then don't. It seems to me the thread would have been better off if you took your own advice in the first place.

Anyways, I'm uncertain if FB is a good spec to apply this 100% precision build with. I simply think you miss out on too much if you aren't taking advantage of the conditions you have access to and you can't do that without taking armor prefixes without precision in them. Does anyone have DPS comparisons to definitely say it's better one way or the other? It would be really enlightening.

@Obtena.7952 said:The ask was simple ... if your going to LOL my statement, what build are you using to justify it? If you were being specific to PVP, I wasn't. The best part is that I wasn't responding to you anyways ... so your reply to me is out of context. All your posts were AFTER my first so it is you assuming I'm talking about PVP, not me assuming you're talking about PVE. If you don't want to respond to me, then don't. It seems to me the thread would have been better off if you took your own advice in the first place.

Anyways, I'm uncertain if FB is a good spec to apply this 100% precision build with. I simply think you miss out on too much if you aren't taking advantage of the conditions you have access to and you can't do that without taking armor prefixes without precision in them.

evenmorelol. I'm actually responding to the OP and providing him better suggestions, what did you do? "omg, you aren't using ToJ, build i useless, omg you critical hits don't help condition builds" <- the latter is actually so wrong on guardian. The fact that safely half of their burning comes as byproduct effects, on skills with decent damage coefficients means a substantial amount of your damage is from power, which also means critical hits are good. This is even more so the case in PvEcarebearzone when you can run builds with low vitality, and focus on stacking offensive attributes.

Take ToJ1 for example, even on a condition centric gear build like Sinister, a critical hit nets you on average 1800 damage (calculated on medium armor, before +% damage modifiers, with zero ferocity) The burning from the skill does 951 over 3 seconds. If I give you 100% extended burning you're still barely doing the same amount of damage the power component can do.

Err, yeah, its simple really. Its better to critical, than not to critical. And you're saying it wrong. Its 100% critical chance, not 100% precision.

Radiance is generally good to take on a burn build anyways, you have renewed justice, radiant fire. The only toss up is between amplified wrath and righteous instincts.

If you take righteous instinct, you should probably take inner fury, this lets you get fury even if you don't use sword. Right hand strength works with axe anyways, so there's that. You get an easy 35% critical chance by taking the radiance line anyways, (~5 base, 10 against burning, 20 from fury).

Using a condition favored gear set like carrion (1200 condition damage, 900 power), 35% critical chance is about a 1.175 multiplier to direct damage.Your average damage from a 1 handed weapon, using attacks with a 0.8 damage coefficient is about 900. You need 3 seconds of burning for that damage.

Now, if you bump your critical to 100% (~5 base, 10 against burning, 20 from fury, 50 from retaliation, 15 from right hand strength) your multiplier is 1.5Your average damage from a 1 handed weapon, using attacks with a 0.8 damage coefficient is about 1118. And this is on condition damage favored equipment, with no ferocity.

So what really should be said is, you're generally going to deal more damage focusing on the damage component in skills, even in a condition damage build, than focusing on the condition damage component.

Things like ToJ1 will pretty much do better direct damage, than condition damage, unless you're against very tanky targets. .'. there's not one definitive answer to this, since it is situation based, but it can easily be said the direct damage component in firebrand attacks are generally on par with condition damage components, even when the scenario is condition damage favored.