I'm really interested in where you're going with an apothecary armor based build for a guardian. The idea to incorporate condition damage along with healing is appealing.
My comments regarding guardian traits:
Zeal: I agree with V on zeal. The traits associated with zeal are all on the blah side when there are so many other beneficial traits by increasing and/or maxing Radiance, Valor and/or Honor. When I tried 30 in zeal, I had a lot of fun with it, especially in WvW. When I tried a zeal based build in PvE, my survivability was minimal and I was being revived more instead of being the one to revive in a group. In the end, I felt I was sacrificing too much for the power.
Radiance: I leveled my guardian up maxing this trait line and had an absolute ball! Guardians, imo, really can't go wrong in focusing on Radiance. Applying 30 trait points to the radiance line grants you +300 to condition damage and precision. That would be roughly 20% crit chance base non-inclusive of armor/trinkets/weapons and the runes/orbs/sigils being used. Grand Master trait right-hand strength (increase crit hit chance by 15%) alone would increase that base crit chance to roughly 35%, again non-inclusive of armor/trinkets etc.
Valor: I adore Valor for Altruistic Healing. I will always carry AH with me in groups as it really does nothing much for me in solo play. AH doesn't always save my group from tough spots but I'd have to say that maxing Valor has definitely increased my survivability so that I can help my group rally and recover easily, when necessary.
Honor: Grandmaster traits in honor are really nice for a supportive/defensive build. Especially Battle Presence (nearby allies gain virtue of resolve's passive effect) and Pure of Voice (allies affected by shouts convert one condition to a boon). I've steadily used BP more than PoV even though BP is still a bit broken. I switch out the two depending on the situation.
Virtues: Boons, sweet boons, my sweet, sweet boons! I'm a boon focused guardian heavy traited in Valor/Honor with runes that affect boon duration. This is important to me for my consistent group play and I love it. Being able to stack layers of boons that provide protection, might, regeneration, among many other boons, has been really fun to experiment with in my support build. I bounce around from only 5 in this line to 20 maximum. V is right that this line doesn't need to be fully traited as the grandmaster traits aren't anything great and every guardian should always carry at least 5 here.
With all of that said and thinking about your builds being geared towards apothecary armor which supports condition damage and healing, what do you and everyone interested in this topic, think about a 0/30/15/15/10 build for the apothecary gear? Honor has a trait to apply retaliation on aegis end and 10 in Virtues would increase retaliation by 25% or you add 10% damage.
Of course this is less defensive than I would like and granted, the discussion hasn't involved trinkets/runes/sigils etc. which is something to consider to insure that the weaknesses aren't too weak.. vitality, for example. At any rate, if it were me gearing into apothecary for the first time, I'm pretty sure I'd wanna test out that beautiful radiance line!
Also, V's balanced build base of 0/5/0/15/20 is a great place to start and is especially flexible when guardians are beginning to experiment and learn each trait line. As an example, if I wanted a more defensive condition damage group build, I'd start with V's base build and max Valor, 0/5/30/15/20, to have the AH grandmaster trait. I'd use my +boon duration armor set and then I could tweak condition damage with sigils/trinkets.
There's so many great ways to adjust the trait lines and the most wonderful thing about this system is that once you find your favorites, it isn't always like the next players build. In my opinion, it's always truly unique to the player.
I'm anxious to read about your apothecary gear findings! I'm always learning so much from you, V and many other Jadites
Keep us posted!
Cheers!
Keep us posted!