Guild Wars 2

Was really looking forward to trying the guardian with the longbow and I wasn’t very impressed with it’s skills or of the Dragon Hunter specialization. The longbow skills themselves are weak on damage and a scepter makes a better weapon. I also felt that if you picked the dragon hunter specialization and used the longbow there wasn’t much synergy between it’s skills and any other of the old specializations.

Also as the virtues changed with the dragon hunter specialization I felt they themselves were dumbed downed and weakened compared to the old standard virtues. Why would I spend time to specialize in a trait line that offers me less damage ?

Old Virtue of Justice – 457 / 1143 ( passive / active damage )
New Virtue – 329 / 686 ( passive / active damage )

Note – This was with beta gear but it shows the difference here in damage potential

Bow Skills – They were slow and a guardian can trait spirit weapons to do more damage while using another ranged weapon getting more DPS / Crowd control and condition effects.

I agree that the bow dealt a little weak, but I found that setting up traps and kiting with the cripples gave me more survivability. I like the new virtues. The leap is super useful, and has a decent heal on it. The sheild you can throw up with the third one helps protect your group from snipers as well.
All in all I’m having fun with it, and it definitely feels different than traditional gaurdian.

Dragonhunter is one of the specs I was interested in. Having set it up, and done quite a fair bit of combat with it, its not terrible. However, I think there could definitely be some tweaks that could make it better.
- There needs to be more synergy with the traps. Traps are not ground targeted, which if you’re a melee is fine, cause youre right there with the enemy. “Setting up” an enemy is difficult, due to the fact that there are so many, and most of them ranged with little to no los breaks. Youre better off using the traps with melee.
- The damage on the bow isn’t great, but kind of standard fare for the guardian. I never expected to be beating my ranger’s dps. That being said, Im hearing friends doing crit damage of 30k or more, and my paltry 1200 makes me feel a bit inadequate.
- The range of 1200 isnt ideal. The scepter is already 1200, so if the longbow was supposed to make us long range fighters, why wasnt it a longer range? I almost feel like scepter is a better option here, cause then I can get the good torch skills with it.
- The virtues are okay, but I feel like the active uses of the virtues dont have enough payoff to lose the passives for the cds. The spear for a ranged fighter is too short of a leash, and the damage it does makes me feel like Im afraid to lose the passives, so I just skip it. The leap is okay, but Id much rather have the passive regen, and the cd on the leap is a bit long to have to lose that. The shield is nice, but the whole point of a dragonhunter I thought was to relentlessly hunt down our prey, regardless of the cost (i.e. witch hunter) not hunt down our prey while trying to keep our friends alive.

TLDR: I expected the dragonhunter to be an offensive machine, hellbent on destroying its targets, no matter if it cost him everything he previously stood for. What I feel I got was a guardian who wanted to do this, but just couldnt let go of his past, so he feels muddled and confused, and sort of halfway in both worlds, and that just doesnt work.

The bow (and virtue) combat seems to be a lot more about positioning, which honestly makes combat more engaging than just getting next to the enemy and hitting 1-5. I think the longbow is definitely what the guardian was lacking, and I’m enjoying it so far. I think the specializations seem to all be pretty limited, but it’s definitely a solid system, and I’m excited to see how they roll out new specializations in the future. I’ve always used my guardian for support and control, but the longbow (I traded out staff from my non-HoT build) gives you a decent range option at the cost of some support without really giving up control. Damage isn’t everything.

I have some ideas i may post later for improving Dragon Hunters.

Cant comment on the bow since i did not master it jet, but the traps are a great addition
to the guardian. Mixed whit close combat they will probably be an amazing pvp strategy. The new virtues are amazing.

I’m really enjoying it so far. Maybe I’m just a silly casual, but I have no complaints. ;O

Tested out the bow a bit and its quiet fun.

I liked the traps. The bow skills didn’t seem to flow together very well. LB2 doesn’t hit near hard enough to justify rooting you, and I broke the cast repeatedly trying to move while casting it. I’m unsure if the Virtue 1 still procs its burn every 3-5 attacks or if it’s now just a 1sec ICD. The wording is vague. The trait in Radiance or w/e that lets you reduce the trigger count from 5 attacks to 3 isn’t clear in its interactions with the new Virtue 1 effect.

Overall, really fun, though. Love the blade and beam of of light traps.

Syraxis Windrunner.1973:

… – There needs to be more synergy with the traps. Traps are not ground targeted, which if you’re a melee is fine, cause youre right there with the enemy. “Setting up” an enemy is difficult, due to the fact that there are so many, and most of them ranged with little to no los breaks. Youre better off using the traps with melee. …

While I agree with Syraxis’ other points as well, this is the one that stood out to me the most. A guardian using the elite spec would be doing himself a disservice to use traps at this point. Here’s why: if you take trap utilities instead of symbols, you can use only one trait in the elite trait line to make your traps bleed. Symbols, on the other hand, are functional with utilities, weapons and up to three trait lines if your symbols cause burning.

Specifically, Honor has writ of persistence and protector’s impact. Zeal has zealot’s speed, symbolic exposure, symbolic power (for burning), and symbolic avenger. If your symbols burn, Radiance can further enhance that with inner fire, radiant fire, radiant power, or amplified wrath. Even if you’re not traiting for all of that, why give up all those options?

The traps were kind of fun to use, but ultimately not worth it when compared to symbols and other traitable choices. I expected more synergies between weapons/ utilities/ and traits. It’s just not there.

Edit: Also, I still think the name of the elite spec is ridiculous.

Kumion.7580:

Syraxis Windrunner.1973:

… – There needs to be more synergy with the traps. Traps are not ground targeted, which if you’re a melee is fine, cause youre right there with the enemy. “Setting up” an enemy is difficult, due to the fact that there are so many, and most of them ranged with little to no los breaks. Youre better off using the traps with melee. …

While I agree with Syraxis’ other points as well, this is the one that stood out to me the most. A guardian using the elite spec would be doing himself a disservice to use traps at this point. Here’s why: if you take trap utilities instead of symbols, you can use only one trait in the elite trait line to make your traps bleed. Symbols, on the other hand, are functional with utilities, weapons and up to three trait lines if your symbols cause burning.

Specifically, Honor has writ of persistence and protector’s impact. Zeal has zealot’s speed, symbolic exposure, symbolic power (for burning), and symbolic avenger. If your symbols burn, Radiance can further enhance that with inner fire, radiant fire, radiant power, or amplified wrath. Even if you’re not traiting for all of that, why give up all those options?

The traps were kind of fun to use, but ultimately not worth it when compared to symbols and other traitable choices. I expected more synergies between weapons/ utilities/ and traits. It’s just not there.

Edit: Also, I still think the name of the elite spec is ridiculous.

You talk about taking traps over symbols, but this is not possible at all. Symbols are all weapon skills. Traps are utility skills, could it be that you are confusing symbols with consecrations?

Still testing it but so far I was disappointed in the zerk build damage. I have found much more damage and fun playing it with rampager and condi traits.