Guild Wars 2 Guardian Traits - Zeal

The Zeal trait line is all about giving your guardian max damage while increasing the time your fire stays on your prey. Another positive about this line in terms of DPS is the buffs it gives for your symbols which I will go into detail later on. Whoever said you can't DPS as a guardian never really looked in depth into the traits. You may not DPS as much as a warrior but you can still hold your own.

Each Trait line has three Minor traits that players can acquire by putting a set amount of points into it. Putting one point into Zeal gives you Zealot`s Speed. This means that when your health drops below 50 % it will create a Symbol of Wrath which will damage enemies caught in the Symbol.

The next trait cost 3 points and it complements the first trait so well. Its called Symbolic Exposure which makes your symbols apply vulnerability. Each stack of vulnerability tends to amount to 1% increase in damage done. Meaning that if a symbol pulses 6 times and hits the enemy 6 times, you'll be doing 6% extra damage to said enemy. Since the first trait creates a symbol when you drop below 50% health this will trigger when the first trait does.

The third and last minor trait costs 5 points and it called Symbolic Power. This trait increases the damage of your symbols by 10 percent. These three traits work so well together to make your symbols so helpful in battle. Guardians can create various symbols that make this trait line very useful. With these minor trait combined your symbols will be giving you protection as well as giving your opponent a hurt with vulnerability and constant pulses of damage.

Like all other trait lines Zeal has 13 major traits to choose from. If you wanna check them out you can go here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zeal. This lists all the traits in a table fashion. If you continue to read however, i will show you which three to pick to maximize your DPS using 6 points in Zeal. I'm not saying this is the best chose, however it is a very damaging guardian build and that`s why we are all here. The three traits I like to run when using Zeal is Fiery Wrath, Focused Mastery, and Amplified Wrath.

This trait is almost completely necessary for a DPS guardian. This is because it increases the damage done to foes who are on fire by 10%. This is a huge increase especially when that`s paired with what the symbols do from the minor traits. Since guardians have the passive ability of setting foes on fire every 5 attacks, this damage increase will almost always be on. Not to mention that 6 points in zeal makes your burning damage last 30% longer. This is a DPS guardians best friend.

You may be thinking to yourself, this has nothing to do with burning damage or symbols........and you`re correct. Next Trait.

Seriously though a guardian using a focus is no laughing matter. It`s number 4 skill Ray of Judgement can blind opponents and give you and allies a health regeneration. Also it bounces 4 times so if you're attacking one opponent it will hit them twice. Next comes the number 5 skill which is Shield of Wrath. This skill creates a temporary shield that blocks up to three attack. If the shield is not hit 3 times it will explode and damage all opponents around you. Both these skills just add to the survivability of you DPS guardian. With the focus mastery trait it will reduce the cool down times of these abilities. Meaning more regeneration of health and more blocking of attacks.

We come to the final trait of the build In the zeal family which is, Amplified Wrath.
What this trait does is increase our burning damage by 33%. That is a huge increase in damage. So now not only do we passively cause fire every 5 attacks in which the burn lasts 30% longer, but now it also does 33% more. This just adds to the DPS of the guardian because you have your damage from you symbols, you regular attacks and now your constant fire damage. This all works together to create a very powerful DPS for a guardian. Below is a full screenshot to what the Trait tree looks like for the build.

Later on I will be covering The Radiance Tree as well as the Valor Tree. Then I will Talk about the weapons and Armour guardians have available and what`s viable to use. To see the complete build go here: Blind Fire.

Thanks for reading and come back soon.