Guild Wars 2

my impressions so far on the Dragonhunter:

Longbow:
– Autoattack projectile speed could be a bit faster, its very easy to sidestep (like scepter)

- True Shot is fine

- Deflecting Shot should reflect projectiles, remove base damage of the skill, would make it into a “true” skillshot

- Symbol of Energy shouldn’t cancel if i turn my character around (like the similar skills on warrior/thief) – consistency is key!

- Hunters Ward is fine

Traps:
feel a bit out of place but are “fine”, maybe add 1 sec of imob to Dragons Maw and remove 2 conditions on Purification and decrease cast time of all traps to 3/4 (they feel a bit clunky)

Traits:
Minors:
- Virtuous Action make it so that the active effect triggers at the start – not at the end of the cast

- Defenders Dogma should cause your next attack after blocking to burn for 1 sec

- Pure of Sight should be 10% more damage when endurance is low (which got removed during the trait overhaul)

Majors:
- Piercing Light should also reduce the cd of traps by 20%

- Zealots Aggression is fine (maybe 10%?)

- Soaring Devastation should also increase the range of f2 to 900 from 600

- Hunters Determination is fine

- Bulwark should be baseline, maybe add another trap trait to make them break stuns/add weakness to foes/remove conditons/stability – some form of defensive utility

- Dulled Senses is fine but also add the cripple if you pull (gs5) and launch (hammer 4)

- Hunters Fortification is kinda boring but alright, remove internal cooldown and increase the radius to 360, maybe add something more (resistance for a few sec?)

- Heavy Light is fine but should also decrease longbow cd’s by 20%

- Big Game Hunter is fine

I wish the healing trap (Purification) would trigger whenever an ally not at full HP walks across it rather than only when an enemy walks on it. It feels as though I’m forced to sit on it when I’m already at low health, and pray I don’t die from ranged attacks.

First impression, the bow noise is a bit annoying to me. Not sure why it has a special noise when it fires, but it would be nice if it sounded like every other bow on autoattack.

I don’t main a Guardian, so take my opinion for what you will. I really enjoyed the traps, but the longbow felt too slow. I also didn’t find the traps useful in combination with the longbow, however I did enjoy using them with a melee weapon such as GS, since it was easier to guide the enemies into the traps. I don’t believe the longbow has a way to pull or manipulate the enemies to the traps other than aggro and the slight knockback from the traitline.

Generally, I enjoyed the Dragonhunter. I’m a PvE player mainly and I’d call myself casual hardcore (I’ve experienced casual players, who’ve played since launch but are still “diamonds in the rough” ), but I’m not so hardcore that I will tell the devs how to change the mechanics. I’ll leave the tweaking and detail discussing to some of the more “invested” players.

My overall experience with the Dragonhunter so far has been great. I think it’s a fun spec to play. I control the battlefield, lure enemies into my traps, deflect projectiles (new virtues are great), and I “spread my wings and fly away” (as far as they’ll take me – could use a range increase, I’d say).
- It’s a welcome addition to my Guardian’s repetoir, and one I think I’ll enjoy for a long time. I like the animations, I like the sounds of the skills and I love how the spec plays (I did see a comment above stating that the bow had an annoying sound, although I haven’t noticed that myself).
- I’m looking forward to see how it plays at the release of HoT, not to mention future beta weekends.

Kudos to Warangel Eldrith for some suggestions for improvements, and also to any and all that take the time to contribute.
- I trust ANet to sort out the good from the bad (and the truly ugly) suggestions.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to hunt some dragons.

Here’s my short review.

The traps were good for traps, but still not particularly good. They don’t make sense to me with a ranged class and it is annoying to want to keep enemies at ranged for the LB but bring them in for the traps. The trap setting time also annoys me, as I want them to trigger asap. Overall, guardians have some of the best utilities in shouts and meditations and these traps do nothing to change that.

The longbow was good. It felt strong and useful. I don’t know what people are saying about the attacks, I saw my bolts just fine. The blocking shot on 3 seems to miss all projectiles that aren’t fired directly at you. So any enemy shooting an arcing shot (like vines and arrows) go right around it.

The virtues were no better than the original virtues. Which means the activation ability was never worth the loss of the passive ability. Basically, continue to not activate your virtues until you have to.

The traits were the worst part. They felt weak and uninteresting. This alone killed the spec for me. I don’t think it was worth going into DH just for a longbow to lose better traits elsewhere.

I agree that the bow felt a tad sluggish, the attack speed should be faster.
I also with you could throw the traps out instead of using it and having to skirt into them.

I pretty much main guardian as a default and I’m not liking long bow.

The arrows are super small and you don’t hear the sound of bow like you would on a scepter and without the visualization you naturally keep looking back to the cast bar to make sure he really is attacking.

I wish skill #2 could be used while moving, feels very awkward to be running around trying to flank the enemy and have to keep stopping for a minor skill with a fast recharge.

Skill #3 should be auto target (your selected target). Your not going to be able to see, target, and cast in time to stop a projectile coming from the sides or flanks. Its really hard to do even with the enemy is right in front of you. I’m pretty sure most people will never even bother with it as its just troublesome with no real benefit.

I’d like skill #4 to be auto target as well but its more of a personal preference then it being absolutely terrible, like skill #3. It feels like it should either auto target your enemy and get everything else around as a bonus or you make it stronger and larger and make it the #5 skill. If it was stronger and larger then being a target effect would make sense.

Skill #5, its a complete copy of ranger long bow #5 graphic mechanic but completely useless in combat. Does almost nothing sits on cool down forever.

As is, there is almost no chance long bow would make for a suitable weapon replacement for scepter as a guardians ranged weapon.

Maybe someone else already brought it up but the dragon hunter spear of justice doesn’t interact with the trait skill that is suppose to recharge it on killing an enemy. I can’t recall but I also don’t think it blinds enemies when you activate spear of justice, but I might be wrong as that’s a bit harder to notice in a large fight.

bump for more feedback, keep it coming guys

At first I loved it and was instantly taken by its shiny effects and all that came with it, then I started to look deeper.

First thing I did was compare it to ranger longbow and warrior longbow, just to see how it matched up. I found that Warrior longbow wasnt really in the same range as it filled a different role, so I scratched that from the comparison.

Now, as for the Ranger Longbow vs Guardian Longbow, I found the ranger version to in every single way, be better than the dragonhunter, shorter cooldowns, better damage, better trait synergy, and if you equipped two longbows you could get some really sweet CD reductions going on.

For example, the skill 5 on dragonhunter is practicall the same skill as the skill 5 on ranger longbow, except it has 20 seconds longer CD for an immobalize that requires the enemy to be in the area of effect when it ends… Not always the easiest thing to ensure, dmg wise they appeared roughly equal so no real complaints there, also the dragonhunter version is amazingly stunning to look at.

The nr 2 ability, true shot vs barrage, basically the ranger version does roughly twice the damage, but it also takes about twice as long to channel, however, it is usable while moving, which coupled with cripple traits for longbow, makes it quite abit more usefull than the dragonhunters true shot.

True shot, while I love the short CD and the nice damage of it, it does root you, it has to fire twice within 8 seconds to match a rangers barrage. But despite this, I really think this ability is in a good spot atm.

Auto attacks… Oh boy, even at the shortest distance, the rangers auto does more dmg, and it pierces (if you spec into full longbow mode), the Dragonhunter one bounces, which while amazing for groups, means its damage is very… meh, at single target encounters.
And I mean for a spec designed to hunte these huge dragons in the jungle, why is its single target so meh?

Also, lets move on to the traps, the traps of the dragonhunter are all pretty much power based, compared to the rangers more condition focus, that said, traited ranger traps have CDs below 20s and I think one or two above 20s but below 30s, the shortest CD on dragonhunter, was 25s, with a few going up to kitten .
They are just to long, traps are hard to use as it is, having such long cooldowns is not fun utility gameplay.

That said, they are very graphically pleasing, really amazing effects.

But to try and close things off, I feel that while the dragonhunter is cool, everything it sets out to do as a ranged attacker, a ranger can do better. And for an elite spec to lose out to a core ranger, it doesnt feel right.

I mean, arent the elite specs supposed to be you know…. Elite at their role? And as a ranged dmg dealer and trapper, Dragonhunter just isnt up there.

Also the virtues need to be able to activate while you are doing other things, currently, they are cool, but not all that practical due to this, also the wings? Give it ABIT more range will you? It hardly feels like a leap worthy of wings atm….

Harddrive.2738:

Skill #3 should be auto target (your selected target). Your not going to be able to see, target, and cast in time to stop a projectile coming from the sides or flanks. Its really hard to do even with the enemy is right in front of you. I’m pretty sure most people will never even bother with it as its just troublesome with no real benefit.

I’d like skill #4 to be auto target as well but its more of a personal preference then it being absolutely terrible, like skill #3. It feels like it should either auto target your enemy and get everything else around as a bonus or you make it stronger and larger and make it the #5 skill. If it was stronger and larger then being a target effect would make sense.

I agree that skill #3 is tricky to land as is. You either have to change settings to fast casting ground targeting skills (which is tricky to use with 100% accuracy) or just hope you can line the shot up fast enough to block the incoming attack. I did find it a must use skill though when those uber Hunters/Snipers are around.

I play a staff ele a lot so I found skill #4 to be just fine. Maybe a larger aoe but I thought everything else on it was just fine.

If you really want an auto-target you can change your ground target settings but you better keep track of where your mouse cursor is! lol

John.5732:

The virtues were no better than the original virtues. Which means the activation ability was never worth the loss of the passive ability. Basically, continue to not activate your virtues until you have to.

The traits were the worst part. They felt weak and uninteresting. This alone killed the spec for me. I don’t think it was worth going into DH just for a longbow to lose better traits elsewhere.

Traiting Big Game Hunter and activating Spear of Justice followed by True Shot is actually a nice little combo. In the heat of the battle when aegis has been lost, out of endurance and you see a big attack coming from a Veteran Stonehead or Hunter activating that Shield of Courage can be a difference maker for you and your allies. It’s a good oh-crap button in a pinch not too mention the best way to deal with the Jungle Tendrils when several of them are spitting poison at you.

As a guardian main who mostly plays pve here’s some of my thoughts..

Traps:
- Light’s Judgement is obviously amazing for pve content as it provides tons of vuln

- Procession of Blades is fine imo, maybe increase the radius a bit.

- Test of Faith feels rather underwhelming for current content as mobs usually don’t run away or stuff like that and triggering the damage part is rather rare.

- Fragements of Faith seems fine to me.

- Haven’t played with the Heal and Elite a lot because it feels like Shelter and Feel My Wrath outclass them by a lot.

Longbow:
- As a ranged weapon I suppose it’s okay overall.

- True Shot has respectable damage although the root is a bit annoying.

- Hunter’s Ward could imo use some more damage on the first hits and in return remove some damage of the final impact if needed.

- Symbol of Energy and Deflecting Shot are fine.

Traits:
- Piercing Light feels a bit underwhelming as it is right now, I’d like the already suggested 20% cdr on it as well.

- Zealot’s Aggression and Soaring Devastation are fine.

- All Master Traits are imo very weak for pve, I can’t think of any situation where you’d want any of these.

- I’d personally like to see Pure of Sight moved to a major trait so you can trait for it if you plan to be ranged and disable it if you plan to go melee.

- Grandmaster Traits all seem okay for different things, obviously Big Game Hunter is the choice for pve and it’s in a good spot imo.

- As a general point, I’d really like to see virtues be instant cast again as it’s really frustrating when you’re used to activating a virtue mid animation of another skill only to have that skill cancled. To me it just feels uneccessary on F1 and F3 to have cast times and they really mess up the synergy with other trait lines.

I have a Ranger as main in PvE and always playing Guardian in WWW and couldn’t resist trying out the Dragonhunter. I’m a bit mhe though.
I like the idea of a guardian with a bow, but I think it is too similar to a Ranger, diffrences being not quite so ego-tripped, obviously lacking the pet and being slower. I would much rather have had this specialisation in the ranger, giving them more team support and maybe a better standing in WWW.
I can’t see myself taking the Dragonhunter to replace my Ranger in PvE in the future, it is just too slow even if she can hold her own against the mobs in verdant brink. I will try out the WWW part in our guild-raid tonight but I have a hard time seeing it will replace my Guardian.

So here’s my schtick.

I main a guard, I play 3 types, healer in nomads for WvW, zerker meta for just putting around, and a tank type for high level fractals (our guild meta build, it works really really well).

I understand that the idea behind the elite specializations was to give a different field, but the whole point was to give an alternative, not something vastly inferior. It’s not really a problem with any one thing, but the general concept. In the game, Guardians provide unmatched defensive support to a party. No one can pump out as much aegis as us, our healing without DPS loss, blinds, blocks; we’re pretty much the life’s blood of a party keeping alive all them squishy zerkers who haven’t learned to dodge or memorized enemy attack patterns.

The longbow is nice and shiny, but seems really lackluster, very much the same as scepter (which honestly, I never had a problem with). The saving grace I can see with it is that it does provide decent hit counts to trigger supreme justice, making it somewhat viable as a burn condi build type thing (stacking more burns), so in certain situations where you’re ranging (solo’ing lupi comes to mind), I can see a possible longbow/scepter+focus for stacking burns and keeping ranged pressure. However, on large hit box bosses like Lupi, smite is still a superior skill and has a really low cooldown. In Tyria, as has been discussed massively, there’s really no room for condis. The ramp up time for condi’s to be worthwhile is very limiting when most of your mobs are dying in 30 seconds or less. PvP and WvW, condi builds have a little more room, as do the traps that come with the new specialization.

Traps, they’re very pretty, but again, what you “lose” by taking a trap over our signature utilities like wall of reflect, hold the line, retreat, etc just doesn’t seem like a worthwhile trade off. I mean, what’s better? a block for every single member of your party, or doing a couple thousand damage? I’d take the block 10 times out of 9 without question. That said, obviously we haven’t seen all the content coming out in HoT, so maybe there’s a place for it, I just have yet to see it.

The virtues however, I think they did a great job with. They added a much needed flavor, actually giving me motivation to want to hit F2 for the distance closer/heal. The burning chain type action is pretty cool as well, I can see those synergizing well with some of our other trait lines. However, the virtues aren’t enough of a reason for me to drop one of my other specializations.

Right now, the specialization has an interesting flavor, though not unique (as many have said, we’ve become bear-bow rangers, without the bear or the trap supporting specialization line). More to the point though, with everything you’ve lost, it seems like it’ll be like an ele not taking ice bow. Sure, don’t take it, just realize you’re 30-40% less effective by doing so.

Got to play for a few more hours this morning and here are my 2 cents:

The longbow damage can’t beat the Ranger’s and it shouldn’t. So I think it’s in a good place. Big Game Hunter with Spear of Justice spam and True Shot spam can do some good damage.

Initially I was unimpressed with the zerker build damage but once I traited properly, learned some combos and how to bait enemies into my traps I began to enjoy it much more. I really like the Rampager condi build I was running as well. A Guardian naturally puts out soo much fire condi that re-traiting and gearing for a condi spec and things were melting pretty quickly in the jungle.

I like all the longbow skills minus a few tweaks needed. Deflecting Shot felt clunky at first but I was getting better at landing it with practice. Symbol of Energy could use a slightly larger aoe radius. My BIGGEST frustration came from SoE not working if I was looking the wrong way. This needs to be fixed please. I really enjoy True Shot as it reminds me of the GW1 version and Hunter’s Ward is just fine. HW just needs a little forward thought to put it in use properly.

The traps feel ok and I really like their cool animations. The elite Dragon’s Maw is really fun and it has such a good 60 sec cd. The traps do need to be used carefully though as they do go down a bit slow but mastering how to bait enemies and than pin them in your traps makes for a fun experience. It’s nice to have pure damage traps too where as the ranger needs to go condi to get good use from their traps.

It took me a while to catch on as I was initially disappointed in the Dragonhunter but with a Big Game Hunter mentality and practice I was beginning to enjoy it as I began to take down Veteran Stoneheads and Veteran Tigers with ease. I play a sin trapper build on my condi ranger and I can’t see this beating it in damage but it makes up for it in support and survivability.

One thing that I’ve noticed on Dragonhunter is that if the enemy is right up in your face the auto attack ceases triggering, even if you try and do I manually. It’s as if there is a minimum range threshold for being able to attack. Like a lot of other people have said, I hate everything to be facing my target to use skills. SoE should fire just like any other AoE ability. When I activate it and start to run in a different direction it should still fire.

Guardian main since launch of GW2, the Dragon Hunter in its current state is completely useless. Dragon Hunter is a massive nerf to this profession. There is zero reason to use the Longbow, there is zero reason to use traps, and there is zero reason to use the traits.

- New Virtues need to be instant, no cast-time. Spear of Justice has to work with the Virtue trait lines or that entire trait line i useless to Dragon Hunters.

- Longbow 1 needs to be much faster and hit harder, Longbow 2 needs to not root you in place, Longbow 3 needs a complete redesign the range attack absorb is a horrible gimmick, Longbow 4 needs to fire faster and fire behind us, Longbow 5 needs to apply the fence at the start not the end of the cast.

- Traps need to be changed to Wells, or at the very least make them ground targetable. Traps are useless at ranged, they work okay with melee weapon like Hammer.

-Dragon Hunter traits are terrible and need a redesign from the ground up, not a single good thing about them.

Currently Dragon Hunter is useless. I am shocked this even made Alpha testing it is that bad.

Now I tried the DH with traps/longbow in WWW and it was no fun at all. Way to slow and since some skills don’t trigger when you turn around or when enemies gets behind you, it is just useless. Traps doesn’t feel useful enough even if there is time to put them down in time. Dragon’s maw just do nothing at all.
After this try I would rather come on a ranger, at least I have agility and a chans to move when things hots up.

My feedback~!

Longbow was a great choice for Guardian imo. The hype for it was very high for me. It was my first beta character! Getting into game I was excited. The second I shot off an arrow my excitement started to dwindle.

The AA is very slow. The animation of the arrow is even droopy looking. The damage isn’t worth how slow it feels. I would rather it never bounce what so ever and provide with a good amount damage.

the 2 roots me. Aye me… I already feel slow enough as a guardian. And I’m rather bored of always having to slot for Rune of the Traveler. If I invest in burst this root will be the death of me on many occasions. Traps around me or not. o.o

3 feels very . . . underwhelming. I would love to trade this for some instant damage . . . seeing as we don’t have any in the kit.

4. Love it. I love this skill! I don’t know why. Symbols always feel a bit meh but this one was fun for me. I like the range I can drop it down on someone with. I wish traps worked more like this.

5 on the kit . . . the cast time + delay + CC as the final effect? As someone who loves arrow rain effects this one just didn’t feel strong to me. I wish I could suggest something better but I’m just at a loss for it right now.

Traps. I love the effects on the traps (Minus Dragon’s Maw) but I hate the setup. How long it takes and how close I need to be for them to be effective. That aegis trap would be great to set up for frontline . . . but I’m supposed to be able to play backline now. I can run back and forth sure but I’m slow without rune of the traveler. Running speed for someone who needs to manage range is a big deal to me.

My wishlist for DH

Run Speed +25% trait
More synergy with traits
More synergy with backline play
Faster paced combat / damage
Instant cast on virtues.
Choice of which virtues we lose from Guard. Sadly I don’t really enjoy any of them minus the new block. I don’t want the leap at all. It’s just too short of a range to be useful to me.

The Final Word
The concept can be good. But it needs to bring more to the table. We don’t need it to be the best ranged option but it needs to be a tempting one. We are giving up blocks, blinds, holds, and what not (Scepter, Focus). And if we want to play from the backline we would be investing more into power, precision, and ferocity which means we would be taking a large dip in Vit and Toughness which means less survival overall.

Anyway it was a great chance to try it out and I’m excited to see how things change for the next beta. \o/

The concepts of DH are great. But its when its put into play that it gets sluggish and awkward. I am firm that if we could place traps like we do wells or kit 4 on LB it would enchance our backline play.

Arnath.2319:

Guardian main since launch of GW2, the Dragon Hunter in its current state is completely useless. Dragon Hunter is a massive nerf to this profession. There is zero reason to use the Longbow, there is zero reason to use traps, and there is zero reason to use the traits.

- New Virtues need to be instant, no cast-time. Spear of Justice has to work with the Virtue trait lines or that entire trait line i useless to Dragon Hunters.

- Longbow 1 needs to be much faster and hit harder, Longbow 2 needs to not root you in place, Longbow 3 needs a complete redesign the range attack absorb is a horrible gimmick, Longbow 4 needs to fire faster and fire behind us, Longbow 5 needs to apply the fence at the start not the end of the cast.

- Traps need to be changed to Wells, or at the very least make them ground targetable. Traps are useless at ranged, they work okay with melee weapon like Hammer.

-Dragon Hunter traits are terrible and need a redesign from the ground up, not a single good thing about them.

Currently Dragon Hunter is useless. I am shocked this even made Alpha testing it is that bad.

You’re being crazy harsh on a profession still in beta. While it needs help, I feel like Dragonhunter is super fun to play despite its low damage potential, and I disagree with the traps comment. I’ve been having no trouble using them with range since you can’t exactly keep targets on your melee people in the party anyway. I, personally, see nothing wrong with the virtues as they are except for Spear of Justice, which doesn’t really do anything quite spectacular. The traits are admittedly hit or miss.

This is a repost i made in another thread. These are my toughts.

LB- could use some improvement.
1- auto atack is to slow.
2- skills 2 and 3 dont respect autoatack range.
3- skill 2 shouldnt root you.
4- you should be able to atack behind you with every skill.

TRAPS- not so bad.
1- cast time is to long, if cast time stays the same then make them ground targeted.
2- there should be condi removal and stun breaker built in traps.
3- heal trap is kinda lackluster considering the risk, initial heal should be higher.
4- lights judgement should have a knock down, only 10 invul is not enough.
5- other traps are generaly fine, fragments of faith is my favorite cause it has great synergy with shattered aegis and brings support.

VIRTUES- they absolutely need to be instant.
1- i like the general idea and i think they bring very interesting gameplay but they seriously need some improvements.
1- by not being instant their synergy with virtue line is terrible.
2- spear of justice is awesome in concept but it needs to either deal more dmg or create an imobilize at the end, i often find myself wanting to repress F1 whenever i see the chains going, it would be awesome if it had another effect by repressing F1 but increasing its cd if u use it. (I know of many friends who feel this way).
In order to make this skill instant it should apply a 2 sec window in which every thing you hit gets tethered and limit the max amount of tethered targets to 3 or 5. And increase range to 1200 so it works with LB.
3- spear of justice is not giving might when activating it. Blind, might and retal effects should be applied instantly upon activation.
4- wings of resolve are also a good idea but the leap is to short, it should be 900 range at least and due to the active gameplay it offers it should have a lower cd.
5- wings of resolve effects (condi cleanse, regen, retal and heal) should be instant upon activation and give a 5 sec window to use the leap if you want to.
6- shield of courage is nice but as the other virtues, basic effects including aegis, protection, stability, retal and stunbreak should be instant.
7- it would be awsome if there was a trait to cause shield of courage to deal knock back on activation to synergize with the trait That cripples.
8- shield of courage cd should be lowered.

TRAITS- some of them should be more generalized to work a long with other specs and builds including full melee.
1- piercing light needs some added effect like reducing trap cd or make them remove condis.
2- defenders dogma is lackluster.
3- Bulwark should apply knockback.
4- pure of sight needs to go as it does nothing at all if you are going melee, it should be a 25% movement increase trait.
5- hunters fortification would work so much better with instant virtues and it should give 1 added bonus besides protection or make it last 1 sec longer.
6- heavy light should bring bow 20% cd reduction and a bigger knockback
7- big game hunter is the best trait this line has, i really like it.
That is mainly what i think really needs to be changed but overall i belive DH could have a lot of potential if our basic requirements are met. Cheers!!

My early two cents as a driver of a coordinated group of 15:

Would really like to be able to run the dragon hunter line, partly for the change up but mostly for the F2 leap. That leap is super cool.

The three specialization lines now though are entirely needed and the traits in dragon hunter can’t work for a meta AH guard. Some are fine but the grandmaster minor doesn’t do anything at all. Say make that minor something to do with condi clear or something for stability and I’ll be thrilled.

rework traits, add some better choices, PLEASE

My main gripes about the dragonhunter are:

Doesn’t feel particularly exciting or powerful.

The new virtue skills are really cool in concept but underwhelming in practice.

Doesn’t bring much to the table that rangers aren’t already doing.

The traps are pretty boring, minus the one that grants aegis. But even so, traps don’t feel worth using at all. If I want to switch to melee I feel like I’m far better off equipping purging flames, stand your ground, and other useful skills rather than switch to traps.

Longbow #5 cooldown is absolutely atrocious, WTF seriously.

The elite spec traits don’t feel particularly interesting or compelling. They’re mostly boring (with some exceptions like Big Game Hunter)

Having access to trap skills ONLY when using the spec that also unlocks longbows is counter-intuitive. One’s all about ranged support and the other is only useful on the front lines. This is really awkward, because they are two conflicting playstyles.

Really, what the Dragonhunter needs, is new long-range utility skills to compliment the longbow, not compete with it. Ergo, traps need to be cast at a distance. If they need rebalancing, that’s fine. Increase the windup time to compensate, or something similar. But if these skills were ranged, the Dragonhunter in general would feel like a much more solid option.

Horrible – sorry.

It’s slow & Clunky. You’ll never get a shot off against any class that’s mobile… and then trying to set Traps in combat… horribly easy to interrupt.

So disappointed.

I only have a one or two problems with the drangonhunter so far…
First: The Longbow, my goodness the auto skill…it’s just horrible! you should improve the speed a bit more because it feels so slow like your using a scepter! If i’m using a Longbow it should feel like i’m using a longbow and not something else.
Second: If i’m using Longbow the point is to be far away from the enemy but if i’m going to use Traps for my utility skills I have to be either close enough for my enemy to trigger them or put it down and hope they trigger it….i freaking hate that! I would like for the traps to have like Ground Positioning on them so that way if i’m using a Longbow and can still stay far away from my enemy and know for a fact that my enemy will trigger the trap when I “Ground Position” it.
Third: The second skill on longbow i hate the fact that when you use and move it cancels the move, I should be able to move and use the skill freely….ughh anyways those are a few things I wanted to point out, hopefully somethings change come release <.<

After Playing around with the Dragon Hunter in most aspects I’ve come up with the following critic:

Long Bow

• No major complaints with the concepts of each skill
• Fun new play style that works especially better the more enemies there are. When fighting bosses or more powerful enemies it does a good job on keeping them in place a bit and has great supportive skills to help as well.
• Overall Skills are balanced and each is useful and the recharges are reasonable.

Virtues

• Spear of Justice – Tooltip could use some clarification about how often burning is applied and how much is applied. I also feel that with the cast time the initial spear damage should be increased slightly.
• Wings of Resolve – The 600 range felt like a good distance and the 240 radius also felt like a good fit.
• Shield of Courage – Tooltip needs clarification on how long the shield lasts.

Traits

• Minor 1 – These tooltips could be used to explain more about the new virtues as described above.
• Adept 1 – Adding bleeding to the traps is nice but only 2 traps really take advantage of it: Procession of Blades and Light’s Judgment. It seems like a let down for the other traps.
• Adept 2 – This trait would not be very effective if the player was alone since not many skills cause cripple.
• Adept 3 – I didn’t feel the effect this had in combat was enough to make much difference. The damage was okay but far from special and the immobilize didn’t make it better. The trade off with the 50 second cool down didn’t seem worth it in the middle of a fight. Wings of Resolve is meant to be a supportive skill that can heal allies, it could do this better if instead of the damage and immobilize, it performed a small knock back, or a short knock down, or stun. This would allow for both supportive and offensive play.
• Minor 2 – This trait could use some clarification. I assumed this meant that on the player’s next hit Justice’s passive would trigger. If this is the case I don’t feel this trait is particularly useful unless the player has built their skills around giving them aegis frequently.
• Master 1 – The stability per hit of True Shot seems reasonable.
• Master 2 – The additional 2 seconds and Shield size increase is effective when needed.
• Master 3 – This needs to be clarified. The cripple is applied on all crowd control skills: knock down, knock back, launch, pull, ward etc.
• Minor 3 – Great bonus for fighting beyond 600 range.
• Grand Master 1 – The application of the protection could be increased to a range of 300 or follow the minor 1 trait in the Virtues line which displays a range of 1200. An interesting effect that could be done with Wings of Resolve is to apply the protection after the jump so the healed allies could also get the boon if they were not previously in range.
• Grand Master 2 – In PvE this trait doesn’t hold up as being very useful, however in when fighting bosses, dungeons, or PvP it can be very useful.
• Grand Master 3 – This is a great trait and fits its name perfectly.

Traps

• Purification – The small amount of damage seems insignificant and would be better if this skill instead gave a boon when triggered, such as resistance, protection, or stability.
• Test of Faith – Good if enemies could be kited around the circle to deal more damage.
• Fragments of Faith – Good for skillful playing when extra support is needed. The Aegis drops last a good amount of time on the ground.
• Procession of Blades – Good damaging trap.
• Light’s Judgment – Great set up trap for dealing large amounts of damage to enemies caught in them.
• Dragon’s Maw – This trap could do a bit more damage but is overall very well rounded.
• A general note for all the traps. I feel their cool downs are justified by their effects and it seems fair to me that no trait was added to shorten their cool downs.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed playing the Dragon Hunter and experimenting with lots of different builds. It feels great to finally have a long ranged weapon that is very fun to play with, and to have some new skills and traps to fight with. I think the Developers have done a great job so far creating this elite specialization but it is still a work in progress and I have high hopes for the future.

My suggestions to make DH a good option for a guardian.

Traps:
- traps have ground target. It’s range spec. after all.
- Purification e Fragments of Faith trigger on ally’s movement, not the enemy’s.
- Purification grants protection, fragments of Fragments of Faith remove conditions too.

Longbow:
- the LB can hit 270°, that’s to say it can’t hit only behind;
- skill #1 hits faster;
- skill #2 doesn’t root the character;
- skill #3 can target an enemy;
- skill #5’s durations is shorter so the immobilize effect is more predictable;

Virtues:
- Wing of Resolve has more range;

The arrow sound needs to change. Forgive me for sounding so trivial, but it really makes me feel like I’m playing my ranger, not a dragon hunter.

The longbow I felt was a really solid weapon in concept. The auto-attack could probably stand to be a bit faster.

The traps on Hunter’s Ward activate too late into the skill, by the time they go off most targets have already walked out, because they have to stand there & be pelted with arrows for several seconds before they’re cc’d, that seems counter-intuitive.

Other than that, Deflecting Shot, & Symbol of Energy have really picky targeting, & it’s hard to reliably activate the skills.

The longbow is a lot of fun though, & it honestly makes me wish that the new weapon proficiencies were made baseline when they released, & only the skills were tied to the elite specs. Becuase I’d love to use hammer & bow for my Valor/Radiance/Virtues build.

The traps are kinda unimpressive for the most part, & a pair seem redundant.

Purification would probably be more useful if it behaved like Healing Spring on the Ranger, because as it stands it can’t compete with Shelter, & I almost feel like I have to use Monk’s Focus & Smiter’s Boon to top off the heal before I can even consider using it.

Procession of Blades isn’t really a utility skill by my definition. It has no utility at all, it just does damage. Making it a whirl finisher could give me a reason to slot it, & could work really well with Consecrations & Symbols.

Test of Faith seems incredibly redundant when Fragments of Faith does an almost identical amount of damage, cripples as well, & throws out several aegis. Unless Test of Faith is given some other effect to make it stand out, I could never see myself taking it over Fragments of Faith.

The new Virtues are really the most disappointing part of Dragonhunter, & the part that really hurt how excited I initially was for the class. Not being able to instant cast them, or cast them during other actions makes them far less flexible than the base Virtues, & arguably less powerful. They’re flashy & they look cool, but they’re just flat out not as good as the baseline Virtues.

Spear of Justice feels like it does less damage, & is far less reliable than Virtue of Justice. It has a pretty heavy tell to, & I’ve found most people just dodge it.

Wings of Resolve can be traited for damage & immob which is nice, but the leap is very short & makes it questionably useful as a mobility skill. The nerf on the heal’s range has made it almost worthless for team support, & given that’s the skills entire purpose, that seems like a misstep. It also feels slow, you take a lot of unavoidable damage during that leap, & should someone interrupt you, you’ve essentially wasted that virtue.

Shield of Courage doesn’t reliably block. I’ve been hit with projectiles during the shields duration, almost every time I’ve tried to use it. It’s also way too far from the character casting it, people can stand inside of it & still shoot you. A lot like Wings of Resolve, it’s hurt really bad by the casting time, & I’ve even been interrupted while trying to use it as a stun break. I’m hoping that’s unintentional because I cannot see any reason a stun break should ever be open to interrupts.

Not being able to do things like casting Virtues while channeled Renewed Focus, or Shelter, or rezzing allies makes them far less useful, & having casting times has also made using Justice to blind someone during the wind up for a really big hit so they miss, & throwing up an Aegis to catch an attack you saw coming unfeasible.

I was really excited about the Dragonhunter more or less from the minute it was revealed, but the Virtues just feel like much flashier, much worse versions of the ones we already have, & the traps are largely redundant. In the state the Dragonhunter is in right now, I’d just be happier if I could equip the longbow to replace my scepter, & pretend the new Virtues & traps don’t exist.

Slightly unrelated, but I feel the new weapon proficiencies would work better as baseline because some of the new weapons could excel divorced from the new trait-lines & it stands to really limit future builds for classes that are getting an off-hand or main-hand weapon now, & get the other in the future.

The spec just felt weak to me, and trying to use the other two slots to support it wasn’t doing well either, I just couldn’t find a good combo.

As for the DH line, it seemed if you wanted to go damage, get the cripple when you knock back, knock back when so close to you, and deal increased damage to crippled targets. Tried that first, didn’t seem to work all the time with knock backs. And since this was just a straight damage build, I went zerk and basically only cared about getting the “crits give you might” talent.

So then I thought “lets go condition damage, how good is that?”

Its atrocious. Sure, traps add bleed, and bleed is more deadly, but I don’t think any other skill on the bow cause bleeding. Its only traps. So I thought “ok, fire then”. Well, one skill for fire on bow, and then traps might as well be ignored cept the blade one. But then I’m going to be going into melee to spread more fire damage, and this is meant to be for range…so why am I not just going GS?

And then I was confused with the virtues with “ok, this talent effects the original virtue, so does that mean it effects the new ones as well? or no?”

So finally, I tested “ok, what about a spec that doesn’t use the bow, but still takes dragon hunter?” Still doesn’t work. I mean, I guess it’s not suppose to work that way. If you pick Dragon Hunter, then the other two trees need to build around it and the bow, nothing else. Which leaves that weapon slot being unused….cept for, of course, staff…

In the end, it’s just too clunky on what it wants to do. It has DoT potential, but its not that great, and it has power potential, but the talents in the tree don’t support it that well.

So maybe some fixes:

• The auto attack, if it hits two, pierces, cripples and bleeds. Will help with multiple foes, still hurts though on single target boss fights.
• 5 skill – my god that is a long cooldown. I mostly forget about this skill I rarely use it.
• Clarification if other virtue talents affect Dragon Hunter virtues.
• Reduce trap placement speed, I felt so slow putting them down.
• No trap that does fire damage?
• The knockback when in range seems a bit buggy still where it won’t work, and could knock them back a bit more. I understand this needs to be balanced for pvp reasons though, but this is basically the only “escape from melee” mechanic the spec has.

Some thoughts, shortly, and I will focus only on the areas I tried. (This is from a pve perspective):

Virtues
f1 could be targetable, like lb3, would be helping a lot in trying to catch many enemies into the skill.
f2 ould have a bit more range, and atm it feels a bit clunky, it has some sort of a lag or something when it lands, so it doesn’t feel smooth. I would also love to see it as a blast finisher, as someone suggested on reddit. It would feel really powerful for example in dungeons the whole party could leap to the elementalist casting a water field and you could blast it to heal even more. Guardian doesn’t have a lot of blasts and this could be a good way to implement it.
I didn’t try out f3 enough to have anything to say about it.

Longbow
I feel that the projectile speed of the autoattack is a little bit too slow, and feels like the scepter. Skill 2 is supposed to be a strong attack, yet it doesn’t look like that graphically. It doesn’t feel strong, the only indicator of a lot of damage is the damage counter I see when/if it hits. I don’t know about the rooting, but too many of the LB skills are rooted, so maybe this one could be removed? But LB2 definitively needs some kind of graphical upgrade, which brings me to LB3. The LB3 skill looks really powerful and cool, good job on that one!
I had some problems shooting LB4 at the stairs defending event in Verdant Brink. For some reason it wasn’t targetable a lot of the time, and I couldn’t use it. I don’t know what the issue is/was, maybe worth looking into.
LB5 is described as forming a barrier, and it cripples, but does it hinder enemies from moving out or is it just the cripple? The tooltip isn’t quite clear. The cripple duration could be a bit longer.

Traps
The healing trap doesn’t compete well with the basic options. Like someone before described, it feels like you get a small initial heal, and then try to wait for enemies to walk into the trap and not die into ranged damage. I tried it for a bit but quickly changed back.
The other traps felt damage oriented. In some easy pve encounters where I don’t need utility at all, I would take these for extra damage. And in Verdant Brink I used the crippling trap when running past enemies to the event areas, to slow them down so I wouldn’t get stuck on the way there. The elite feels good, and competes with the other options in that slot.

Traits
I didn’t focus on these as much but from a pve point of view the master line still needs some work. Also you really can’t take dulled senses if you don’t take heavy light in the grandmaster, there just isn’t enough use for it. It should work better on its own.

I did have fun with the DH, but I agree with a lot of what’s been said.
My major issues were:

1)Again.. CC is made significantly less fun by making the duration short & the activation slow. If you have to do this for PvP sake, fine, but apply it ONLY IN PVP. stop balancing PvE around PvP. Most of the important mobs are already immune to an entire spec (control) do you have to hamstring it even more?

2)Slow trap activation is a bit ridiculous. The bow dmg is low, do we really need an activation time so that we do less damage?

3)Not enough actual control. There should be a KB or a pull so that we can actually manipulate the enemies into the traps instead of having 1 option. aggro.

4)The projectile blocker is a waste of a skill. being able to stop ONE projectile is absolutely meaningless in PvE since pretty much every meaningful attack that any mob does is an aoe. Stopping projectiles in PvE is only useful when there are many mobs attacking from all directions at once. This ability should be replaced with (or also have) a pull or a KB. Stop balancing PvE around PvP.

5) The new virtues need new passives. Not only is it supremely boring to have the same passives, but it mean the class mechanics are actually still the same. That’s not much of an Elite Specialization.

6) The whole “Dragon Hunter” theme is supposed to be a big game hunter/foe of the great evils & yet it’s pretty terrible vs Champions & Bosses since the damage is low & the control is completely useless against them. It would be awesome if somehow this was the only spec with CC that worked on mobs with defiant, but something’s gotta change if you want the theme to fit. Right now it should be called the Creep Hunter cuz it’s good on lots of weaker enemies.

7) I absolutely love Bow 5 but the wait for the cast before the CC is brutal. feels like yet another PvP only balanced skill.

I like it, but the amount of setup required to do decent damage & the fact that traps are melee makes it a meaningless option. If the CC lasted way longer & we had KB I think this spec would have a distinct reason to be used. Right now It’s not even a good Ranged option cuz I have to drop traps at melee or spend the entire fight walking backwards (which you often cannot do for many reasons)

What is the exact Dragonhunter’s class / subclass mechanic?

For me it appears to be controlling an area mostly with the help of Cripple.

Reaper gets access to Chill and further traits improve this mechanic:

• striking chilled foes gives him lifeforce, might,
• chill lasts longer… etc.

Same with Chronomancer, he gets Alacrity and his traits improve it:

• alacrity lasts longer,
• you gain alacrity when you shatter.
• besides that, more spec themed traits which grant Slow and Quickness.

And DH gets tons of Cripple… but his traits don’t improve this effect at all! Maybe besides one:

• you deal 7% more dmg to crippled foes.

DH’s traits are a complete mess… And there is nothing (7% dmg is not a “funny” trait) to improve this condition. Instead there are weird traits like:

• your F1 passive recharges when you block,
• you apply protection in an area around you when activating a virtue.

I don’t really know what this class is good for…

Instead of that there could be added more theme based traits (yea but what is the exact theme???):

• when you cripple already crippled foe you immobilize(1s) him instead – ICD: 10s
• if your arrow / #1 bounces you gain might(8s) (you feel strong / enraged) if it doesn’t you get swiftness(5s) instead (for chasing the prey) – ICD: 5s
• when you hit a crippled foe with an arrow you apply 1 stack of Torment(1s) to him; your attack speed while wielding a LB is increased by 15% – GM trait instead of applying prot in an area.

For real ANet do sth with DH’s traits, please.