Guild Wars 2

Keywords: rational, balancing.

There’s a lot of threads out there spewing a lot of misinformation about what a DH can or cannot do, and a lot of shortsighted ideas about how to address any apparent over powered components of DH. This sort of irrational mob rousing is akin to calling for a witch hunt and history has taught us how well that sort of stuff goes over. Previous victims include the warrior, thief and ele classes nerfed to the point of being unplayable; that’s not healthy and we don’t want to keep up this cycle.

So, here’s a thread from the perspective of someone who knows what they’re talking about! I’ve posted quite a bit on this but they’re usually buried at the back of big threads, where people have long since given up any veneer of logical discussion. By making my own topic, hopefully anet sees my ideas and anyone replying here will be addressing them and not some other irrelevant non issue.

The PRIMARY issue DH has is its low skill floor – anyone can pick it up, learn to drop traps in a minute straight and be quite effective especially in the lower tiers. Because it’s so easy to pick up and be good at, lots of players want to try it out and the resultant class stacking compounds the entire issue, with inexperienced players finding themselves unable to effectively counter even if they may be technically better players than the DH players.

This has been a balancing problem since the days of classic street fighting games when people have discovered that spamming one button over and over again will more often than not completely lock down their opponent and win the match effectively (and cause an inordinate amount of salt in the process).

Unfortunately, just like the street fighter analogy, this tactic does not hold up well in higher tiers. DH is just barely viable against other knowledgeable competitive players, and taking the nerf bat to it without consideration of its high tier viability will simply cause the overall game to be even more limited and boring than it already is – we want more classes and more builds, not the other way around. Balancing purely around the average player is not a viable solution as many people want to advocate – it’s asking for a mediocre game with no competitive edge, and what we’ll end up with is more brainless game play catering to the dumb. If we wanted that, we’d be playing farmville.

DH needs to be viable in an environment of perfect mechanical abilities, but also needs to have some abilities toned down so in the random chaos of lower tiers it doesn’t faceroll through the masses.

Here are some of my personal suggestions to achieve this: (tl;dr important bits below here!)

- Nerf procession of blades damage by shaving off its duration from 10x to 8x hits or lower. This is the pinnacle of trap spamminess – it covers too big of an area, has too short of a cd, lasts too long, and looks menacing the entire time, but is completely useless at higher tiers because good players can block through it or simply avoid it. At lower tiers, it will completely force people off point or cause a train wreck on point. Reducing the duration (and hence damage) will alleviate the effectiveness of its area denial and point pressure without affecting high level play (because good players never bring it anyway, or at least use it more situationally like downstate cleave), but anyone trapped for the entire duration of the trap is still going to feel the hurt. This is a bit of backwards thinking, but the trap wasn’t well designed to start with and I don’t see it ever being viable at high level play, it’s more of a PvE tool.

- Shorten the duration uptime of test of faith by 1-2 seconds, reduce/remove the initial damage component, but add it back to the crossing damage by making each consecutive crossing deal more damage. And shorten the ICD for taking damage. Redistributing the damage this way means countering the trap earlier means you get away from it unscathed, but eating the entire chain will mean a more severe punishment. At higher tiers, good players make use of the trap by rapidly cc-ing enemies through it multiple times once the enemy has blown their stun break. The change makes good cc plays even more rewarding, but players have a shorter time window to pull it off. This trap is fairly easily countered by breaking the cc chain, so when it IS successfully pulled off, it should put on extra special hurt. At lower tiers however, players have difficulty avoiding it on point, and class stacking traps makes the point an absolute mess to fight on. Reducing its duration by even 1-2 seconds will drastically decrease its area denial and point pressure effectiveness again, and give it a higher skill ceiling to combo ccs through the trap.

- Shrink the size of test of faith, or even all the traps, in both its inactive and active states. Good enemies can completely avoid triggering traps dropped in bad locations in the middle of a fight (especially good for punishing hastily dropped heals), and anything that reduces the overwhelming point pressure and area denial is good. Good DHs will continue to make use of cc and positioning to maximize trap effectiveness.

- Make the F3 shield slightly smaller so it’s easier to hit the guard from the sides and back (eg 160 degree arc rather than 180 degrees). This makes it easier to attack shielded DHs from the flanks especially when bursting down in a 2v1, but good players will be able to maintain good positioning to make maximal use of the shield. In addition, make it easier to hit the DH when you completely enter his hitbox range which is technically behind the shield anyway. Reducing duration is not recommended as this is really the only ability making DH sustainability on par with the other meta classes, and the entire thing is countered by meta necro staff anyway. 1v1 against engi, druids and good revs/warriors is already an uphill battle.

- Increase scepter immob time from 2.25s to 3s to make successful decap plays even more punishing, and to setup SMART trap burst combos. Good buff at high tiers, not much use in action at lower tiers.

These buffs and nerfs aim to maintain competitive viability of DH while reducing its prevalence at lower tiers mostly by reducing passive trap effectiveness. Most of the current complaints (too much dps, burst, cc, sustain etc etc) aren’t even real issues as DH doesn’t even have the most dps, burst, cc OR sustain. None of this stuff even changed from season 1. Instead, they’re symptoms of having too low of a skill floor, compounded with the fact that they’re the sudden new FOTM. Everyone and their grandmother is suddenly playing a DH and being good at it; much better in fact, than corresponding skill level players of other classes, so out comes the mobs and pitchforks.

Let me know your thoughts, and bump this thread if you’re annoyed by all the other emotionally driven nerf/don’t nerf DH threads and want to support my ideas!

PoB nerf..ok.
Test of faith. no. Srry only trap that is good.
F3 shield nerf? srry no, average player can easily come behind DH and do some dmg.
So increase immob on Scepter(that noone uses outside of pvp) which 90% classes have trait for decreased duration or immunity? Nope.

They need to nerf class stacking. Max of 2 per each class.

DH was out for 2 seasons (and maybe 1st too). One buff to sword and all crying NERF NERF. So traps were ok for 3 seasons?

Make DH learn its weaknesses and counter them.

People who cry for DH nerfs without understanding what they’re nerfing are annoying, but so are people who are adamant about not making any balance changes when there’s clearly something wrong with the game state. LIKE I SAID (repeatedly), I’m not crying out for nerfs, I’m attempting to balance DH so its competitive viability stays the same while lower tier effectiveness is reduced. I’m an advocate for DH if anything.

The test of faith change is not a nerf. It’s moving the damage out from the initial trap drop to successful cc plays through the trap (and buffing that a bit more), and giving players a shorter time window to do it in. Reducing the duration means bad players who originally counted on dumb enemies walking back and forth through the trap are no longer so effective at lower tiers.

It’s practically impossible to “go behind DH” and do some dmg when the DH only needs to keep rotating the camera away from you. This will only happen in a team fight, in which case the slightly reduced block arc increases the likelihood of this happening, without changing 1v1 viability. Also currently, if the DH backs up against a wall, you can’t hit him at all which is not good design. You should be able to hit him by walking right on top of him inside his hit box, which will at least force the DH to keep moving to maintain the block. This change will increase the skill ceiling for using this skill and make it more plausible to counter.

Only warrior and thief have traits that downright remove immob. So that’s why it’s even more important to increase the duration of the immob for the other classes traited to reduce duration. Scepter immob is crucial for pulling off decap plays (and for positioning enemies to drop your traps on) and would be even better with a small buff, but clearly you don’t appreciate what it offers

And like I said in the last paragraph, I’m aware not much changed from season 1, but the fact that they’re the new flavour of the month has exposed the problems of the class and they’re not just going to suddenly go away.

It’s like you didn’t even read my thread!

Ragnarox.9601:

Test of faith. no. Srry only trap that is good.
F3 shield nerf? srry no, average player can easily come behind DH and do some dmg.

Actually, this new ToF idea can easily be a buff for good players. I can now pull off combos with F1, Shield, and/or LB#3 knockback a whole lot quicker rather than limiting myself because of the cooldown on ToF’s crossing damages. I feel these combos are imperative for DH to be successful in any given fight. At the same time, most casual players are successful by just spamming traps blindly in lower tiers.

Ragnarox.9601:

They need to nerf class stacking. Max of 2 per each class.

DH was out for 2 seasons (and maybe 1st too). One buff to sword and all crying NERF NERF. So traps were ok for 3 seasons?

I definitely agree with limiting class stacking but the OP has a strong point and his suggestions are in the right direction compared to others who have no idea why DH is stronger by 3 buffs, and think everything needs nerfing. What is true, trap’s positioning needs more thought behind them rather than casting them at random.

Ragnarox.9601:

PoB nerf..ok.
Test of faith. no. Srry only trap that is good.
F3 shield nerf? srry no, average player can easily come behind DH and do some dmg.
So increase immob on Scepter(that noone uses outside of pvp) which 90% classes have trait for decreased duration or immunity? Nope.

They need to nerf class stacking. Max of 2 per each class.

DH was out for 2 seasons (and maybe 1st too). One buff to sword and all crying NERF NERF. So traps were ok for 3 seasons?

Make DH learn its weaknesses and counter them.

Where the hell have you been for the last forever? People have always cried about traps as they are the quintessential zero-risk-high-reward noobstomper (PoB+ToF+someone who can’t/won’t dodge/block=dead including cleaved in downstate, zero input from guard, he can be on the other side of the map).

ToF is fine. By itself it’s not that strong. I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw someone using PoB at any level of PvP unless there were 3+ guards on the team (1 Dragon’s Maw+3 PoB’s and 3 ToF’s=entire enemy team downed if unlucky), so I’d say that PoB is fine too.

What I see that actually needs nerfing is:
-Fragments of Faith
Dropping 5 Aegis fragments on a 35s cooldown can make or break a team fight or 1v1 vs. a power class. Drop it to 3 or 4 fragments and I’d call it balanced (it’s got too much utility in a team fight to lengthen the cooldown but you shouldn’t be able to aegis the whole team)
-Heavy Light trait
Shorter cooldown than the Ranger knockback, plus blind, plus higher damage than the Ranger knockback, plus multitarget, plus stability. Needs to come down to being in line with the Ranger knockback, I would trade a faster projectile speed for a longer cooldown on it. While in its current form it’s relatively easy to avoid 1v1 due to the slow projectile speed and the fact it has to be manually aimed (people flat-out miss a lot), blasting that through the mid melee teamfight can be huge and due to the very short cooldown and instacast it’s low/no risk.

And finally, the ONE THING that will do the most towards 5v5 balance:
—GET RID OF CLASS STACKING
2 per team tops. There is enough build diversity throughout most classes (guard has 4 viable/2 meta specs, necro has 3 viable/2 meta specs, warr has 2 meta/1 situational spec, ele has like 4 viable specs, ranger has like 12 viable/3 meta specs, thief has 2 meta specs, rev has 1 meta/3 viable specs, etc) that 2 of any class isn’t game-breaking and has a good chance of not sticking you with 2 of the same spec (something that can’t really be controlled for without getting Draconian on filters).

Concur that procession of blades damage needs to go down since its the prime culprit of qq when it comes to low tier pvp noob stomping. I might also suggest a nerf to symbol spamming from sword 2 and scepter 2, decrease its damage but increase its sustain utility via a buff to the honor trait line symbol healing (or higher healing contribution).

Lucred.1802:

What I see that actually needs nerfing is:
-Fragments of Faith
Dropping 5 Aegis fragments on a 35s cooldown can make or break a team fight or 1v1 vs. a power class. Drop it to 3 or 4 fragments and I’d call it balanced (it’s got too much utility in a team fight to lengthen the cooldown but you shouldn’t be able to aegis the whole team)
-Heavy Light trait
Shorter cooldown than the Ranger knockback, plus blind, plus higher damage than the Ranger knockback, plus multitarget, plus stability. Needs to come down to being in line with the Ranger knockback, I would trade a faster projectile speed for a longer cooldown on it. While in its current form it’s relatively easy to avoid 1v1 due to the slow projectile speed and the fact it has to be manually aimed (people flat-out miss a lot), blasting that through the mid melee teamfight can be huge and due to the very short cooldown and instacast it’s low/no risk.

And finally, the ONE THING that will do the most towards 5v5 balance:
—GET RID OF CLASS STACKING
2 per team tops. There is enough build diversity throughout most classes (guard has 4 viable/2 meta specs, necro has 3 viable/2 meta specs, warr has 2 meta/1 situational spec, ele has like 4 viable specs, ranger has like 12 viable/3 meta specs, thief has 2 meta specs, rev has 1 meta/3 viable specs, etc) that 2 of any class isn’t game-breaking and has a good chance of not sticking you with 2 of the same spec (something that can’t really be controlled for without getting Draconian on filters).

So can i have you heal + stealth = nerf celestial avatar without healing power. Lets say 200 heal per skill.

Nerf druid pets when user is in tank gear.

If they nerf heavy light I want TS to be unrootable. And Deflective shot gives stealth 10 sec on successful knockback.

See what I did there?

Fragments of faith and heavy light aren’t real issues as far as I’m able to tell. It’s not what people complain about when they talk about trap insta kill qq, and it’s certainly not used a lot by trap spammers or low skill players.

Fragments of faith isn’t all that good to start with – it’s great as part of the stunbreak trait in a 1v1 where you can block up to 5 consecutive attacks, but the enemy can SEE the dropped aegis and just cleave it off with auto attacks when they spot you running around trying to pick it up. Right now, it’s a decent counter against warrior and warrior/engi rampage elite, and I don’t want to see it losing any more viability. In a team fight, it’s very unreliable, gone too fast from all the random aoe attacks, and your team can’t even easily tell if the fragments belongs to you or an enemy DH. I don’t think low tier players even try actively pick up the fragments.

Heavy light is completely balanced by how slow and difficult it is to land the skill. More skills should be skillshots like this one. With proposed balances to test of faith, you’d need to execute the skill in combination with the rest of the cc chain VERY fast for it to be effective. There’s not much point blasting it into the middle of a team fight if you have nothing to follow it up with. If you can pull the trap combo off, you’re already well on your way to getting out of low tier fights into high tier ones, where this sort of stuff isn’t in the realm of OP anyway.

About blocks i think it is fine, since they are active ones, u need to know what you are gona block, low health, no escape and no reset combat, heavy armor is arroud 100 damage out in 1k hit..priceless, and our blocks can be countered with a bit of effort.

The issue i find with trapper is that many are leeching 2 vs 1 ji +trap combo to kill targets, move along to next one repeat, yes it is brainless, but every class needs a nerf one 2 or 3 skills, lots of classes need more stat trade off.

Opc.4718:

Fragments of faith and heavy light aren’t real issues as far as I’m able to tell. It’s not what people complain about when they talk about trap insta kill qq, and it’s certainly not used a lot by trap spammers or low skill players.

Fragments of faith isn’t all that good to start with – it’s great as part of the stunbreak trait in a 1v1 where you can block up to 5 consecutive attacks, but the enemy can SEE the dropped aegis and just cleave it off with auto attacks when they spot you running around trying to pick it up. Right now, it’s a decent counter against warrior and warrior/engi rampage elite, and I don’t want to see it losing any more viability. In a team fight, it’s very unreliable, gone too fast from all the random aoe attacks, and your team can’t even easily tell if the fragments belongs to you or an enemy DH. I don’t think low tier players even try actively pick up the fragments.

Heavy light is completely balanced by how slow and difficult it is to land the skill. More skills should be skillshots like this one. With proposed balances to test of faith, you’d need to execute the skill in combination with the rest of the cc chain VERY fast for it to be effective. There’s not much point blasting it into the middle of a team fight if you have nothing to follow it up with. If you can pull the trap combo off, you’re already well on your way to getting out of low tier fights into high tier ones, where this sort of stuff isn’t in the realm of OP anyway.

I’m not saying Fragments is godly, I’m saying it can make or break a team fight assuming your team is either lucky (accidentally steps on one) or good (actively looks for them). I couldn’t tell you the number of times I saw a ragezerker pull out the GS so I drop it on him and his 6k Arc Divider did squat all to the 3 people he was in the middle of, and the trap itself does similar damage to about the only other skill used in that slot (Smite Condition). It’s a situational use and you’d better believe if I’m facing a team with necros I’ll swap it for Smite Condition, but in a power-heavy match I’d rather have Fragments.

Doubleclick to cast means a JI+ToF+Deflecting Shot chain is almost entirely instant (less than 1 second considering you can simultaneously cast JI and ToF and the initial aim activation of DS) and at point blank ranges where JI already orients you to the opponent a guaranteed hit. Hunter’s Verdict+doubleclick Deflecting Shot auto-orients you to the target and is a 90%+ hit rate. It’s only when you’re not right on top of the opponent that you really have to aim the thing. And even if you don’t get the knockback from DS (stab or similar) you still just did a 6-8k burst with 3 instacast skills plus the at least one AA you got in there.

What I want someone to take the time to explain to me is why is each profession so inferior to DH. People are complaining about DH because it isn’t very easy to kill [anymore] and has decent sustain/defenses. It’s still easy to kill a bad DH, and currently, good DHs are rewarded for playing well.

Some general things that need to be looked at across the board are resurrecting, healing, mobility and stealth…

I am sorry but this does not address the real core problem of DH: too high sustain and survivability. DH can heal for far over 20k every 30 seconds on symbolic build – this is more than TWICE the healing you get on d/p thief thief or fresh air ele (the best marauder builds on the other two professions that have the same HP pool as DH), while also dealing more damage overall. DH healing and in particular purifaction need to be addressed first and foremost.

Conerning dps: while ToF hits hard, I’d say it’s much less of a problem than the traited symbols – those are too easily spammable and more often than not will deal much more damage over the course of a fight thatn ToF. The other traps are not very relevant given that they are not usually used by the meta builds.

Agree f3 being adjusted to 160 would be decent – better to make counterplay more accessible than to just flat out nerf..

Tissitra.4153:

I am sorry but this does not address the real core problem of DH: too high sustain and survivability. DH can heal for far over 20k every 30 seconds on symbolic build – this is more than TWICE the healing you get on d/p thief thief or fresh air ele (the best marauder builds on the other two professions that have the same HP pool as DH), while also dealing more damage overall. DH healing and in particular purifaction need to be addressed first and foremost.

Conerning dps: while ToF hits hard, I’d say it’s much less of a problem than the traited symbols – those are too easily spammable and more often than not will deal much more damage over the course of a fight thatn ToF. The other traps are not very relevant given that they are not usually used by the meta builds.

20k every 30 seconds?

Not even with Mender’s. Not even CLOSE with Mender’s. Mender’s will do 11-13k healing every 30 seconds and that’s assuming you’re also not using WoR so you get its passive, and that you’re running and not activating Signet of Courage so you get its passive.

Using Demolisher’s, this is what I’m seeing on my guard (zero healing power):
-Purification (24s cooldown)
-Initial heal: 2192
-Trap heal: 6413
This gives 8605 healing every 24 seconds assuming something activates the trap and I’m dropping the trap on cooldown every cooldown. This normalizes out to 10,756.25 healing every 30 seconds.

Lucred.1802:

I’m not saying Fragments is godly, I’m saying it can make or break a team fight assuming your team is either lucky (accidentally steps on one) or good (actively looks for them). I couldn’t tell you the number of times I saw a ragezerker pull out the GS so I drop it on him and his 6k Arc Divider did squat all to the 3 people he was in the middle of, and the trap itself does similar damage to about the only other skill used in that slot (Smite Condition). It’s a situational use and you’d better believe if I’m facing a team with necros I’ll swap it for Smite Condition, but in a power-heavy match I’d rather have Fragments.

Doubleclick to cast means a JI+ToF+Deflecting Shot chain is almost entirely instant (less than 1 second considering you can simultaneously cast JI and ToF and the initial aim activation of DS) and at point blank ranges where JI already orients you to the opponent a guaranteed hit. Hunter’s Verdict+doubleclick Deflecting Shot auto-orients you to the target and is a 90%+ hit rate. It’s only when you’re not right on top of the opponent that you really have to aim the thing. And even if you don’t get the knockback from DS (stab or similar) you still just did a 6-8k burst with 3 instacast skills plus the at least one AA you got in there.

That’s great fragments play then, but I don’t see a lot of use of it outside the bunker version of the symbols build, and this build isn’t particularly prevalent in either high or low tier play. Not sure it needs a nerf as it is :P

The proposed trap changes would mean ToF insta cast wouldn’t do as much initial damage, it’s only the subsequent CCs through the trap that will do most of the damage. The JI combo is kinda predictable as it is already, you wouldn’t want further nerfs to the ability to actually cc people. I can’t see any way of nerfing the knockback without taking too much away from high end viability. If you want to bring it in line with the ranger kb, you’d also have to remove the fact that it’s also a skillshot and that’d be taking a step backwards in the wrong direction towards making the game more skillful.

Like you mentioned yourself earlier, “it’s relatively easy to avoid 1v1 due to the slow projectile speed and the fact it has to be manually aimed (people flat-out miss a lot)”, so you fix that by JI-ing into the target you want. But that also means you wont be “blasting that through the mid melee teamfight”.

Opc.4718:

Lucred.1802:

I’m not saying Fragments is godly, I’m saying it can make or break a team fight assuming your team is either lucky (accidentally steps on one) or good (actively looks for them). I couldn’t tell you the number of times I saw a ragezerker pull out the GS so I drop it on him and his 6k Arc Divider did squat all to the 3 people he was in the middle of, and the trap itself does similar damage to about the only other skill used in that slot (Smite Condition). It’s a situational use and you’d better believe if I’m facing a team with necros I’ll swap it for Smite Condition, but in a power-heavy match I’d rather have Fragments.

Doubleclick to cast means a JI+ToF+Deflecting Shot chain is almost entirely instant (less than 1 second considering you can simultaneously cast JI and ToF and the initial aim activation of DS) and at point blank ranges where JI already orients you to the opponent a guaranteed hit. Hunter’s Verdict+doubleclick Deflecting Shot auto-orients you to the target and is a 90%+ hit rate. It’s only when you’re not right on top of the opponent that you really have to aim the thing. And even if you don’t get the knockback from DS (stab or similar) you still just did a 6-8k burst with 3 instacast skills plus the at least one AA you got in there.

That’s great fragments play then, but I don’t see a lot of use of it outside the bunker version of the symbols build, and this build isn’t particularly prevalent in either high or low tier play. Not sure it needs a nerf as it is :P

The proposed trap changes would mean ToF insta cast wouldn’t do as much initial damage, it’s only the subsequent CCs through the trap that will do most of the damage. The JI combo is kinda predictable as it is already, you wouldn’t want further nerfs to the ability to actually cc people. I can’t see any way of nerfing the knockback without taking too much away from high end viability. If you want to bring it in line with the ranger kb, you’d also have to remove the fact that it’s also a skillshot and that’d be taking a step backwards in the wrong direction towards making the game more skillful.

Like you mentioned yourself earlier, “it’s relatively easy to avoid 1v1 due to the slow projectile speed and the fact it has to be manually aimed (people flat-out miss a lot)”, so you fix that by JI-ing into the target you want. But that also means you wont be “blasting that through the mid melee teamfight”.

…I actually do just “blast it through the mid melee teamfight” a lot because it hits pretty friggin’ hard for an instacast multitarget with long range on a short cooldown (2400-4100 depending on crit and might). Especially against minionmancers as it will kill or come close to killing most of the minions, and it seems I get lucky or am able to set up angles to where the knockback blows someone onto/through someone else’s traps/marks/other ground targeted AoE with some regularity. I know it’s cheese, I know it’s not skillful, but it works more often than not.

Tissitra.4153:

I am sorry but this does not address the real core problem of DH: too high sustain and survivability. DH can heal for far over 20k every 30 seconds on symbolic build – this is more than TWICE the healing you get on d/p thief thief or fresh air ele (the best marauder builds on the other two professions that have the same HP pool as DH), while also dealing more damage overall. DH healing and in particular purifaction need to be addressed first and foremost.

Conerning dps: while ToF hits hard, I’d say it’s much less of a problem than the traited symbols – those are too easily spammable and more often than not will deal much more damage over the course of a fight thatn ToF. The other traps are not very relevant given that they are not usually used by the meta builds.

The “core issue” of DH that has been adamantly thrown all over the forums is the trap damage that low tier players are unable to counter – you can go to any of the DH hate threads right now and see this for yourself. Your comment also feels like a mashup of all guard builds at once.

There’s 3 main guard builds our right now:

1 – traps. 5 trap build, or really any build that uses the trap elite/PoB. Mostly used at low tier games, the ones where people walk onto a point where a DH has left all the traps and promptly dies. Pure glass cannon in the full sense of the word because the guard has close to no defenses at all. These nerfs will further reduce the viability of this terrible build to ensure they wont be as effective when they trap spam everything into the middle of a team fight and run away, while the entire enemy team melts. As bad as the build is, players have seen reasonable success doing exactly this, and it should really be discouraged. This is what most inexperienced players complain about.

2 – medi trap. Balanced team build that brings 2 traps. The sustain isn’t great compared to other meta hot builds and will have difficulty 1v1ing anything, but does okay in team fights when teammates can peel to let you reposition so you can set up another burst. Probably the most viable competitive build when you have a good team with you. Gets a little irritating when the team stacks a bunch of these guys because ToF covers the entire node and should be balanced with these proposed changes, but guard stacking is NOT a viable comp at higher tiers regardless. The proposed changes should also make it slightly more effective when played correctly, and not when the player is overly reliant on massive trap effects.

3 – dps symbols. 1v1 powerhouse that CAN potentially out sustain engis and druids and hold out 1v2s for a reasonably long time with good use of sword/focus blinds. Great to carry a team by contesting far node, but is otherwise a selfish build and subpar in team fights, and that’s why it’s balanced. The symbol damage is overrated, everyone already throws out way more aoe damage more frequently, and it only shines in 1v1 situations when you’re both stuck on the same small node. By the time you’re facing against decent symbol guards who can actually do their niche jobs properly, you should probably also be knowledgeable enough to counter them properly without wasting time. The healing is no where as fantastic as you suggested though, even in the bunker symbols variant, which I believe is a far less viable build in this meta.

Out of the 3 builds, only the 3rd approaches the kind of sustain that you mentioned, and it has pretty major downsides. F2 honestly isn’t an issue, its incredibly easy to predict and interrupt (often by accident). If it could be turned into an evade, I’d take half the healing. The F3 shield might be a bit too generous in team fights – slightly reducing the block arc should punish bad positioning sufficiently and that’s an effective enough nerf to overall sustainability. The 1v1 sustain does not need any further touching because it’s just barely viable as it is.

Lucred.1802:

…I actually do just “blast it through the mid melee teamfight” a lot because it hits pretty friggin’ hard for an instacast multitarget with long range on a short cooldown (2400-4100 depending on crit and might). Especially against minionmancers as it will kill or come close to killing most of the minions, and it seems I get lucky or am able to set up angles to where the knockback blows someone onto/through someone else’s traps/marks/other ground targeted AoE with some regularity. I know it’s cheese, I know it’s not skillful, but it works more often than not.

If you’re blasting it into the middle of the teamfight, then you’re not JI-ing on to the target and dropping traps on top for a concentrated burst, and people should see it coming a mile away and move. It’s not like the complaint about trap damage, where people have actually no obvious warning before it’s all dropped, and tunnel visioning should be punished anyway. It doesn’t even deal THAT much damage.

By reducing trap duration and size, there should already generally be less dangerous aoe detritus a DH can leave around that someone can be knocked into.

If you’re really that adamant about the skill damage, it can be shaved off but it’s a complete non issue really. I don’t think its primary functionality should be changed or you risk breaking more things than intended – it is probably the only thing making bow viable. Maybe cd can be slightly increased, but the people who spam it on cd already punish themselves more than a longer cd would; it’s a skill that should be saved for trap burst, preventing rezzes, and interrupting key enemy skills and ought to be carefully rationed out by a good player.

the ONLY problem whith DH is class staking, DH are one of the unique class that staking is incremental not decremental for team(mid low tier, in higher tiers is to static and can be outrotatet easily, but in mid low soloq game ourotating a heavy positional comp is a dream) . and it can be more than 3 viable dh buils combining: meditrapper, simbolic dps, simbolic bunker, burning etc

Prevent class stacking would certainly go a long way to cut down all the trap spam, but if anet’s not willing to make such drastic changes to their matchmaking, then the next best thing is duration/size nerfs to traps while retaining their high end viability with some circumstantial buffs.

Ban class stacking – this fixes at least 80% of the issues with DH and many other classes.

Reduce purification base heal, increase healing power scaling to compensate. Same with F2.

this is a terrible, terrible post.

you’re 100% wrong when talking about DH being only effective in “lower tiers” of gameplay. every profession that isn’t Druid/Herald struggles immensely to beat a competent DH- condition and power specs alike. I’m in Legend and I still haven’t seen even the slightest reduction in number of DHs.

secondly, most of your suggestions are outright bad or useless.

• Procession of Blades doesn’t see use. who cares. you’re purposely suggesting a worthless nerf to just say “DH was already nerfed!”.
• your “nerf” to Test of Faith is an outright buff.
• Traps being reduced in size wouldn’t matter. this is still Conquest; unless you’re willing to accept a 50% size reduction this suggestion means nothing because we still have to play around points and that inevitably means stepping onto a small area. another aspect of traps needs to be changed.
• why would you buff scepter? singlehanded DH weapons are already the strongest option available and you want to buff them. are you even trying to hide the fact you play DH?

the only good point you made was changing Shield of Courage into 160 degrees instead of 180, which i already thought it was due to the animation…

other than that one point, your post is nothing more than a poor attempt at trying to redirect the focus away from DH’s true problems.

this is what should probably be done overall:

1. nerf Purification considerably. right now it’s 2x as good as the next “meta” heal (Shelter), and yet it’s on a 4 second shorter CD. DH has roughly 15-16.5k in healing outside of their actual heal; in this context, Purification healing for 10k is completely unwarranted.
2. nerf singlehanded Symbols. the biggest problem with DH offensively is their multi-source pressure. Traps, weapon attacks, virtues, symbols- it’s too easy for Conquest. traps seeing a reduction in size would mean nothing as i’ve already mentioned.
3. rework Traps so that they actually function as traps and not easy AoE spam. nerf active duration slighty, make all traps have a cast time (Test of Faith being instant cast is absurd), and implent a mechanic that forces Traps to have diminishing returns upon different players stacking traps: let’s say four DHs place Test of Faith on top of a point, one should do 100% damage, the 2nd should do 50%, and then the next down to a baseline 25% for the next two. this drastically helps with the DH stacking issue in a way that promotes smart use rather than spamming them without negatively affecting traps in 1v1s or non-multi DH situations.

Not saying it’s your case, but legend is hardly a good indicator of “high tier” play especially this late in the season. By now, anyone who has had time to farm 300 games could’ve gotten to legend. From what I’ve seen at actual high tier play, engi and druid will beat DH, and its a roughly even matchup between rev/warrior and symbol DH (but medi traps is outclassed). I might not be 100% correct on these, but its definitely fact that DH is far from the best duelist even on symbols, is far worse on medi trapper which is only good in team fights, and has little team utility on symbols so you’re pigeon holed into an unsuitable roaming role. It works in solo Q because you can keep far node contested for a long time and people aren’t coordinated enough to counter you. And again, it is far easier to be effective at DH than at another class at the equivalent skill level, but that sharply drops off.

Those 4 classes I mentioned are bruiser sustain classes that form the basis of all good teams, and there’s no reason to take DH over any of them if DH suffers any more nerfs and can no longer keep up in a 1v1. DH doesn’t have the mobility to take the role of thief or portal mesmer, or the condi pressure of warrior and necro. As a medi trapper, it’s a good team fighter and area controller, and as symbols, a decap duelist, but as it stands, it holds an awkward role and is barely viable in coordinated teams.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times in my post, my goal is to reduce effectiveness AT LOWER TIERS while maintaining viability at higher tiers. The changes I suggested will effectively do that.

- PoB is a huge offender of trap spam at lower tiers
- ToF changes will mean it’s ineffective to simply drop it on a player even if it’s insta casted, there needs to be subsequent follow up to bring up the damage which is EASILY COUNTERABLE to begin with. Failing to counter the cc chain should be punished harder to encourage good play on baiting out stun breaks.
- Size reduction will in fact make good positioning for both DH and opponent all the more important, and will be effective even at 20-25% reduction. Especially on large nodes like foe fire mid. I actually wouldn’t even mind a 50% reduction in size, it wouldn’t make much difference to good active playstyles, and it’d certainly reduce random spammy element of traps in general. Nerfing any further trap functionality however, will simply remove one of the few things guardians are good for – area control – and take it back to s1 warrior status.
- immob changes makes it easier for decap symbol guards to, you know, decap and do its job since it takes forever to kill anything with sustain on that build. Its usage is very niche, might as well make it effective. Symbol guards already suck in team fights, but its the one build that can truly go toe to toe with all the other meta HoT builds.

As much as we like to emphasize that conquest is a team game, you still need to be able to hold up in your 1v1s even if the match up is unfavorable. This is especially the case of the guardian, which needs to frequently hold nodes for a lengthy amount of time. At high tier play, guardian sustain does NOT need further nerfs when the other meta classes already do better. Nerf to purification is short sighted, especially when it is so easily predicted and interrupted. Shelter provides a 2 second block and requires an unblockable skill to interrupt, so it’s hardly in the same ballpark. Rather, we should consider the fact that guardian needs so much heals just to maintain the same sustainability as everyone else.

I suppose it’d be alright to nerf my 500 dps symbols :eyeroll:

My proposed 2 second reduction to ToF would already significantly reduce the inordinate effectiveness of trap spam. Plus the tiered damage will mean cc-ing through multiple traps is not as effective as cc-ing through the same one multiple times. Under my changes, the first activation of the trap does next to no damage, but the damage would be added back to each subsequent crossing. Redistributing the damage this way means countering the trap earlier means you get away from it unscathed, but eating the entire chain will mean a more severe punishment, as it should be since that’s the one trick pony we have in the way of burst damage.

If diminishing returns were to be introduced to guardian traps, it’d only be fair to do the same to the aoes of every other class.

You play a thief though so you might just be a tiny bit biased. DH counters thief pretty effectively, while everything else counters DH. feelsbadman. Of course I’m biased too, but I like to think I make a good case since I play a number of classes across a number of accounts across the skill spectrum.

Not going to agree or disagree yet on the points above. Need to review and ponder that first.

That said a large portion of the problem is the players. Played some unranked to get in some Capricorn and some of the examples of people playing poorly against DHs was amazing. Between people not wearing amulets that match their play style to people not even dodging thru traps. These same people would be dieing to ranger traps. Now I know unranked is not the best example but these are also the vocal people that will blame the class versus their own ability or builds. If two people are hit by the same set of DH traps and one dies and one is barely bothered by the damage…you might consider your build or make sure you are playing to how your build is setup. Anyway 2 cents.

I’m sort of convinced that if anti-class stacking measures are implemented you don’t really need to nerf the class much.

The problem is even in mid diamond level games that I played, I see teams with 3 guardians that just sit mid. I actually won every game that I played against teams of 2 or 3 guardians while my team has none. Pretty much the guardian stack team can just sit mid and face roll and auto win teamfights with zero effort. My team however has to play extremely carefully, pick smart fights, and outflank their team. Now the amount of skill and effort my team must put in to win is way higher than the guardian stack team. All the games were close and narrow victories because having a strong teamfight is just a huge advantage over a team that can’t teamfight.

Pretty much the guardian stack team will never lose a teamfight due to how strong guardian stack is with all those symbol and trap overlaps. Good luck fighting into it with pug teams.

Lucred.1802:

20k every 30 seconds?

Not even with Mender’s. Not even CLOSE with Mender’s. Mender’s will do 11-13k healing every 30 seconds and that’s assuming you’re also not using WoR so you get its passive, and that you’re running and not activating Signet of Courage so you get its passive.

Using Demolisher’s, this is what I’m seeing on my guard (zero healing power):
-Purification (24s cooldown)
-Initial heal: 2192
-Trap heal: 6413
This gives 8605 healing every 24 seconds assuming something activates the trap and I’m dropping the trap on cooldown every cooldown. This normalizes out to 10,756.25 healing every 30 seconds.

You appear to have conveniently ‘forgotten’ about 80% of skills that heal a DH. Here is an actual complete count on marauder amulet; this count applies to BOTH the meditrapper and the symbolic build as listed on metabattle (symbolic gets EVEN MORE from traits):

8,5k from purification (24 second cooldown)
+2k from smite condition (16 seconds)
+2k from smiter’s boon (24 seconds)
+2k from judges intervention (36 seconds)
+4k from wings of resolve (26 seconds)
+6k from renewed focus (2k since meditation + 4k from wings of resolve recharge) (72 seconds)

I invite you to crunch these numbers to confirm that the average healing from using everything on cooldown is 0,855k per second or:

25,6k OVER 30 SECONDS

Opc.4718:

Out of the 3 builds, only the 3rd approaches the kind of sustain that you mentioned…

The above calculation proves that this is false. BOTH major DH builds (marauder symbolic and meditrapper as listed on metabattle) can heal for over 25k HP in 30 seconds on average. The number for symbolic is actually EVEN HIGHER than that from using traits in the honor line:

+ 0,1k from every dodge using slefless daring
+ 0,6k from every aegis using pure of heart
+0,6k from every symbol using writ of persistence

Assuming 4 dodges, 3 applications of aegis (shield 4+virtue passive+hunter’s determination ) and an average of 3,5 symbols (sword 2 + scepeter 2, 10 and 6 second cooldwon respectively) over the course of 30 seconds, you get in addition about 5k every 30 seconds, so the healing available to the meta symbolic build using everything on cooldown is about

30k IN 30 SECONDS OR 1K PER SECOND.

Now the other two professions with the same healthpool as guardian are thief and ele. The best marauder builds for these according to metabattle are d/p and fresh air. According to my calculations, marauder fresh air gets about 11-12k healing over 30 seconds, d/p a bit less. So DH healing on symbolic is about THREE TIMES what these builds get. If you take into account all the blocks that DH has, it seems VERY hard to not see an issue with this.

Tissitra.4153:

Opc.4718:

Out of the 3 builds, only the 3rd approaches the kind of sustain that you mentioned…

The above calculation proves that this is false. BOTH major DH builds (marauder symbolic and meditrapper as listed on metabattle) can heal for over 25k HP in 30 seconds on average. The number for symbolic is actually EVEN HIGHER than that from using traits in the honor line:

+ 0,1k from every dodge using slefless daring
+ 0,6k from every aegis using pure of heart
+0,6k from every symbol using writ of persistence

Assuming 4 dodges, 3 applications of aegis (shield 4+virtue passive+hunter’s determination ) and an average of 3,5 symbols (sword 2 + scepeter 2, 10 and 6 second cooldwon respectively) over the course of 30 seconds, you get in addition about 5k every 30 seconds, so the healing available to the meta symbolic build using everything on cooldown is about

30k IN 30 SECONDS OR 1K PER SECOND.

Now the other two professions with the same healthpool as guardian are thief and ele. The best marauder builds for these according to metabattle are d/p and fresh air. According to my calculations, marauder fresh air gets about 11-12k healing over 30 seconds, d/p a bit less. So DH healing on symbolic is about THREE TIMES what these builds get. If you take into account all the blocks that DH has, it seems VERY hard to not see an issue with this.

No, i don’t see an issue with that. Guardian is the equivalent of a palladin class in other games, so that the menders symbolic build can heal itself for so much seems like exactly what guardian should have had access to from the very beginning. It’s what justifies the guardian having low hp and low mobility. Thf has mobility and i would honestly argue that ele is the one that needs a buff between the 3 low hp classes, since ele can neither self heal or damage negate as a guardian but it can’t move between points fast enough or escape from fights like thf can, leaving few options in battle.

Kuya.6495:

No, i don’t see an issue with that. Guardian is the equivalent of a palladin class in other games, so that the menders symbolic build can heal itself for so much seems like exactly what guardian should have had access to from the very beginning. It’s what justifies the guardian having low hp and low mobility. Thf has mobility and i would honestly argue that ele is the one that needs a buff between the 3 low hp classes, since ele can neither self heal or damage negate as a guardian but it can’t move between points fast enough or escape from fights like thf can, leaving few options in battle.

First of all, I cordially invite people who don’t play DH and might not have seen yet the calculations I gave above to agree, if they think so, that it’s perfectly fine for the symbolic build to have 1K HEALING PER SECOND (along with some of the best AOE damage and blocks).

Secondly, the sustain on thief and fresh air ele is actually about in line with each other (10-12k in 30 seconds), and then we have DH with 3 TIMES the amount. From the point of view of lore, I don’t see an explanation for this. And if your only response to the hard numbers is ‘buff the sustain on the other professions’ – in case you have not noticed, the game is moving in the complete opposite direction, lower sustain leading to more fast-paced combat.

Hence why the cleric amulet was removed. Guardian healing wasn’t buffed aside from mace. What you’re seeing the loss of cleric ele giving away the spotlight to a new bunker that was always there.

The symbolic build is essentially the old cleric bunker guard that was decent but not used due to cleric ele being better. Now the difference is that the build is flexible enough to make into a dps role with marauder, and menders provides enough dps for it to win a 1v1. Another difference now is the build runs one handed weapons when before it used to run mace/shield and staff.

Kuya.6495:

Hence why the cleric amulet was removed. Guardian healing wasn’t buffed aside from mace. What you’re seeing the loss of cleric ele giving away the spotlight to a new bunker that was always there.

In case you have misread my above calculations: DH MARAUDER gets 1k healing per second on the symbolic build. We are still talking about a build that can spike many others in seconds – so it’s rather ironic (although probably not very far from the truth) for you to talk about its survivability as compared to a cleric bunker guard.

Then lower the symbol damage.

Before it was “dh is trash”, “dh is the worst class in the game”, “kys if you die to dh”. Dh got the buff it needed now its “dh is broken”," dh is op"," anet why you do dis".

Dont you guys get tired.

Dh is fine. Unless you play thief, there shouldnt be a problem with dh. The way traps were designed is pretty silly but at least it doesnt break the class. It could have been much worse.

Kuya.6495:

No, i don’t see an issue with that. Guardian is the equivalent of a palladin class in other games, so that the menders symbolic build can heal itself for so much seems like exactly what guardian should have had access to from the very beginning. It’s what justifies the guardian having low hp and low mobility. Thf has mobility and i would honestly argue that ele is the one that needs a buff between the 3 low hp classes, since ele can neither self heal or damage negate as a guardian but it can’t move between points fast enough or escape from fights like thf can, leaving few options in battle.

I believe his numbers are actually for marauder symbolic build.

Mender heals are:
~1.1k from selfless daring.
~1.1 from ageis pure of heart.
~1.1k per symbol from writ.

Menders symbol is basically a melee version of menders druid-sustains for days and just wears you down. Being a melee version of menders druid is also why it loses vs druids…they do the same thing but without eating your symbol and trap damage while also being able to avoid scepter damage.

Ragion.2831:

Before it was “dh is trash”, “dh is the worst class in the game”, “kys if you die to dh”. Dh got the buff it needed now its “dh is broken”," dh is op"," anet why you do dis".

Dont you guys get tired.

Dh is fine. Unless you play thief, there shouldnt be a problem with dh. The way traps were designed is pretty silly but at least it doesnt break the class. It could have been much worse.

This post contains no factual arguments (I would not count ‘Dh is fine’ as one), but merely thinly veiled attacks against anyone who might not share your opinion.

To reiterate: balancewise, I see no reason why the healing available to DH on marauder should be literally 3 TIMES what the best builds the other professions with the same healthpool have.

Ubik.8315:

Kuya.6495:

No, i don’t see an issue with that. Guardian is the equivalent of a palladin class in other games, so that the menders symbolic build can heal itself for so much seems like exactly what guardian should have had access to from the very beginning. It’s what justifies the guardian having low hp and low mobility. Thf has mobility and i would honestly argue that ele is the one that needs a buff between the 3 low hp classes, since ele can neither self heal or damage negate as a guardian but it can’t move between points fast enough or escape from fights like thf can, leaving few options in battle.

I believe his numbers are actually for marauder symbolic build.

Mender heals are:
~1.1k from selfless daring.
~1.1 from ageis pure of heart.
~1.1k per symbol from writ.

Menders symbol is basically a melee version of menders druid-sustains for days and just wears you down. Being a melee version of menders druid is also why it loses vs druids…they do the same thing but without eating your symbol and trap damage while also being able to avoid scepter damage.

I usually just eat their lbs with shield 5 and sword 3 and then wait for stab to run out to pull them in with f1. Generally the fights just go them sniping me off point and me just cycling through my skills to eat their shots. Never died to one without being +1 though, but have never managed to kill one either since they always sit at a distance and i presume the idea is they want me to chase so they can immob me off point and that ain’t happening.

Tissitra.4153:

Ragion.2831:

Before it was “dh is trash”, “dh is the worst class in the game”, “kys if you die to dh”. Dh got the buff it needed now its “dh is broken”," dh is op"," anet why you do dis".

Dont you guys get tired.

Dh is fine. Unless you play thief, there shouldnt be a problem with dh. The way traps were designed is pretty silly but at least it doesnt break the class. It could have been much worse.

This post contains no factual arguments (I would not count ‘Dh is fine’ as one), but merely thinly veiled attacks against anyone who might not share your opinion.

To reiterate: balancewise, I see no reason why the healing available to DH on marauder should be literally 3 TIMES what the best builds the other professions with the same healthpool have.

As i explained to you dear, the reason why it’s ok that a marauder guardian can heal more than a dps ele or a dps thf is becauze healing and blocking is how a dh defends against an encounter. A thf defends itself by using stealth and greater mobility. Ele is the only outlier that doesn’t have a lot of outs.

Good dp classes aren’t the full glass cannons that blow all their utilities to kill and end up helpless afterwards. That’s stuff for amber leagues and it’s why trap damage nerf might be justified.

A good dps class should be able to sustain itself at least in a 1v1. Rev and war are good self sufficient examples. Necro could be argued to possess that with shroud but it seems like it relied too much on a single mechanic to live. Ele needs a buff in the self sustain regard because it can dps just fine but its sustain when it goes dps is not good enough for higher tiers pvp where you expect your dps to take care of themselves.

Necro is the one exception since the condi dps is so good that a pocket engi is used to keep it viable at higher organized tiers.

Tissitra.4153:

Ragion.2831:

Before it was “dh is trash”, “dh is the worst class in the game”, “kys if you die to dh”. Dh got the buff it needed now its “dh is broken”," dh is op"," anet why you do dis".

Dont you guys get tired.

Dh is fine. Unless you play thief, there shouldnt be a problem with dh. The way traps were designed is pretty silly but at least it doesnt break the class. It could have been much worse.

This post contains no factual arguments (I would not count ‘Dh is fine’ as one), but merely thinly veiled attacks against anyone who might not share your opinion.

To reiterate: balancewise, I see no reason why the healing available to DH on marauder should be literally 3 TIMES what the best builds the other professions with the same healthpool have.

How exactly is someone supposed to convince you to get better at playing your class based on fact? Dh is difficult to fight against but from my experience a good dh vs a good [insert class except thief here] will fight to pretty much a stalemate.

Before the buffs i said that if they buff dh (and they should) dh will be seen as broken because of traps. So many people reacted the same way you are reacting now, now look at the threads.

Im sure we can agree that DH is ony getting hate because of traps, so here is an excercise for you, check how many classes can avoid trap damage even after being pulled without the basic dodge and how often.

@Kuya, im very surprised you are part of this DH witchhunt. You were here when DH was often said to be completely trash because of its sustain. The sustain has been improved so if another class is lagging behind how is it DH’s fault? Ele is the way it is now because of bad development not because DH got an unfair buff.

Kuya.6495:

As i explained to you dear, the reason why it’s ok that a marauder guardian can heal more than a dps ele or a dps thf is becauze healing and blocking is how a dh defends against an encounter. A thf defends itself by using stealth and greater mobility. Ele is the only outlier that doesn’t have a lot of outs.

Good dp classes aren’t the full glass cannons that blow all their utilities to kill and end up helpless afterwards. That’s stuff for amber leagues and it’s why trap damage nerf might be justified.

A good dps class should be able to sustain itself at least in a 1v1. Rev and war are good self sufficient examples. Necro could be argued to possess that with shroud but it seems like it relied too much on a single mechanic to live. Ele needs a buff in the self sustain regard because it can dps just fine but its sustain when it goes dps is not good enough for higher tiers pvp where you expect your dps to take care of themselves.

Necro is the one exception since the condi dps is so good that a pocket engi is used to keep it viable at higher organized tiers.

First of all, ‘DEAR’, I merely pointed out that his post was just a blanket personal attack against anyone who does not share his opinion.

So the reaons for the insane difference in sustain is simply ‘healing and blocking is how a dh defends against an encounter’? This is not really different than saying ‘DH need to heal and block a lot because they need to heal and block a lot’. If there is an argument hidden in this statement, then I am failing to find it.

‘Good dp classes aren’t the full glass cannons that blow all their utilities to kill and end up helpless afterwards’. Which part of this statement addresses the huge sustain difference I calculated above?

I agree with you BTW that ele needs a buff, but as I mentioned before I don’t see new buffs to sustain since the devs are moving in the oppposite direction.

Most of your post is composed of blanket statements not directly addressing the question: Why should DH have triple the healing of the other professions with the same hp?

Ragion.2831:

How exactly is someone supposed to convince you to get better at playing your class based on fact? …

So many people reacted the same way you are reacting now, now look at the threads…

so here is an excercise for you, check how many classes can avoid trap damage even after being pulled without the basic dodge and how often.

More personal attacks not warranting a factual response.

Ragnarox.9601:

PoB nerf..ok.
Test of faith. no. Srry only trap that is good.
F3 shield nerf? srry no, average player can easily come behind DH and do some dmg.
So increase immob on Scepter(that noone uses outside of pvp) which 90% classes have trait for decreased duration or immunity? Nope.

They need to nerf class stacking. Max of 2 per each class.

DH was out for 2 seasons (and maybe 1st too). One buff to sword and all crying NERF NERF. So traps were ok for 3 seasons?

Make DH learn its weaknesses and counter them.

Unless the DH is a product of inbreeding, it’s not going to hit with F3 block up. That block lasts for far too long and can attack through its duration. It needs a nerf.

ToF is far too powerful, lasts too long and has too much ability to deny. Sorry, join the rest of the classes. All of the traps are VERY good, especially with traited daze which needs to go too.

Tissitra.4153:

Ragion.2831:

How exactly is someone supposed to convince you to get better at playing your class based on fact? …

So many people reacted the same way you are reacting now, now look at the threads…

so here is an excercise for you, check how many classes can avoid trap damage even after being pulled without the basic dodge and how often.

More personal attacks not warranting a factual response.

Me saying your problem with dh isnt because dh is broken isnt a personal attack, its simply a long way of saying l2p. Again dh is not easy to fight against, you just need to pay attention to what you are blocking and evading which takes practice.

My condi druid trap build has bigger spike dmg and more sustain… constant bleed, burn and poison – usually one of them is at 10+ stacks. Why don’t you just say you hate traps.

I could make a case that any class is OP given the right play style.

Ragion.2831:

Me saying your problem with dh isnt because dh is broken isnt a personal attack, its simply a long way of saying l2p. Again dh is not easy to fight against, you just need to pay attention to what you are blocking and evading which takes practice.

If, instead of making (this time I guess somewhat better veiled) personal attacks or throwing around ‘l2p’ as a mantra, you finally DO bother to address my actual arguments, you might want to humor anyone reading this thread by explaining why it is perfectly justified in your view that DH gets 1k healing per second on the meta builds, triple what the other professions with the sam hp get – THIS is balancewise the most pressing ‘problem’ I see with it.

I agree with trissitra on the whole the combination of active defenses and healing is a bit much. I do get where OP is coming from, and does not want to see the class nerfed into oblivion. As for the whole “we only go symbol buffs” crowd, you have to remember every single sustain class, including engineer got some pretty large sustain shaves. Some of them still need some more, don’t get me wrong, but where guard/dragonhunter is now it contends with sustaining like a druid or an engineer.

I think PoB is fine how it is. It is a large aoe cleave. I think test of faiths initial bonus damage is a bit much. However not crossing test of faith other than being pulled isnt a problem even on thief runnning dash. The only traps I have an issue with are the healing one (the absurd amount of heal in aoe format) and dragons maw’s very unclear and hard to see animations. The only exception of this is when traps cooldowns are abused by multi placement. Which leads me to think that traps in general just should not begin refreshing the cooldown until the last trap has expired.

I run a pile of different classes, the only three that don’t struggle with guard are ranger, revenant and necro. Druid only works because I can pressure them from range while the pet deals with the traps and the aoe, and match their sustain. It’s a very long fight that is often not worth it but is reliable. Rev only really works because of the absurd amount of burst and sustain counterplay to guards traps/symbols glint heal has. Power necro is another build that really punishes people that really don’t know what they are doing on guard, as none of their passive defenses save them when they continuously stand on unblockable wells/marks.

Aside from the options above every other class it takes way to long to down a guardian, even 2v1 it reminds me of fighting a june 23rd 2015 celestial ele, it doesn’t win the fight, it just stalls with a slew of blocks(instead of blinds), heals constantly, has tones passive procs that saves the players bacon and then resets the fight with invuln. All while doing decent passive aoe damage be it from traps or symbols. Sure there are counter builds, but it’s limited to three niches really.

Guard/Dragonhunter to me is a really unappealing opponent where, I feel that passive defensive components in addition to the amount of damage and healing in aoe format make a really boring and unskilled class to fight. That’s just my opinon on the matter, which is not fact. Anyways I’m rambling now…

What’d I recommend is:

• Reduce the aoe heal on the trap by 20%
• Change the cooldowns on traps so they do not begin to refresh until the other expires.
• Balance wings of revolve to be more easily counterable (self strips agis and stablity during leap) but raise the heal componet.
• Change dragon maws effects to be more visually noticeable.
• Change cast times of all traps to be non instant, and have a minimal 1 sec cast time, to allow counter play.

I think those changes would be fair, as it would open up windows where more classes could outplay the opponent. Class stacking is a whole other issue that I cannot believe is still not resolved. Simply put if anet enforces are rule at the pro level for team format, then it should be enforced in normal pvp as well.

sinject.4607:

this is a terrible, terrible post.

you’re 100% wrong when talking about DH being only effective in “lower tiers” of gameplay. every profession that isn’t Druid/Herald struggles immensely to beat a competent DH- condition and power specs alike. I’m in Legend and I still haven’t seen even the slightest reduction in number of DHs.

secondly, most of your suggestions are outright bad or useless.

• Procession of Blades doesn’t see use. who cares. you’re purposely suggesting a worthless nerf to just say “DH was already nerfed!”.
• your “nerf” to Test of Faith is an outright buff.
• Traps being reduced in size wouldn’t matter. this is still Conquest; unless you’re willing to accept a 50% size reduction this suggestion means nothing because we still have to play around points and that inevitably means stepping onto a small area. another aspect of traps needs to be changed.
• why would you buff scepter? singlehanded DH weapons are already the strongest option available and you want to buff them. are you even trying to hide the fact you play DH?

the only good point you made was changing Shield of Courage into 160 degrees instead of 180, which i already thought it was due to the animation…

other than that one point, your post is nothing more than a poor attempt at trying to redirect the focus away from DH’s true problems.

this is what should probably be done overall:

1. nerf Purification considerably. right now it’s 2x as good as the next “meta” heal (Shelter), and yet it’s on a 4 second shorter CD. DH has roughly 15-16.5k in healing outside of their actual heal; in this context, Purification healing for 10k is completely unwarranted.
2. nerf singlehanded Symbols. the biggest problem with DH offensively is their multi-source pressure. Traps, weapon attacks, virtues, symbols- it’s too easy for Conquest. traps seeing a reduction in size would mean nothing as i’ve already mentioned.
3. rework Traps so that they actually function as traps and not easy AoE spam. nerf active duration slighty, make all traps have a cast time (Test of Faith being instant cast is absurd), and implent a mechanic that forces Traps to have diminishing returns upon different players stacking traps: let’s say four DHs place Test of Faith on top of a point, one should do 100% damage, the 2nd should do 50%, and then the next down to a baseline 25% for the next two. this drastically helps with the DH stacking issue in a way that promotes smart use rather than spamming them without negatively affecting traps in 1v1s or non-multi DH situations.

Do you think you can express your counter-opinions without lines like “you’re 100% wrong”, “most of your suggestions are outright bad or useless.”, “your post is nothing more than…”? That’d be great.

Tissitra.4153:

Ragion.2831:

Before it was “dh is trash”, “dh is the worst class in the game”, “kys if you die to dh”. Dh got the buff it needed now its “dh is broken”," dh is op"," anet why you do dis".

Dont you guys get tired.

Dh is fine. Unless you play thief, there shouldnt be a problem with dh. The way traps were designed is pretty silly but at least it doesnt break the class. It could have been much worse.

This post contains no factual arguments (I would not count ‘Dh is fine’ as one), but merely thinly veiled attacks against anyone who might not share your opinion.

To reiterate: balancewise, I see no reason why the healing available to DH on marauder should be literally 3 TIMES what the best builds the other professions with the same healthpool have.

Ragion.2831:

Before it was “dh is trash”, “dh is the worst class in the game”, “kys if you die to dh”.

= fact

Ragion.2831:

Dh got the buff it needed now its “dh is broken”," dh is op"," anet why you do dis".

= fact

Razor.9872:

Do you think you can express your counter-opinions without lines like “you’re 100% wrong”, “most of your suggestions are outright bad or useless.”, “your post is nothing more than…”? That’d be great.

The wording may be off-putting, but he is making one valid point at least: it is quite likely that many of the DH players who ‘generously’ accept in their posts nerfs to say procession of baldes or dragon’s maw play one of the meta builds, which use neither of these things – and in fact, if you take into account their other suggestions (see OP’s post), the meta builds would be either mostly unaffected or potentially even slightly buffed by the ‘nerfs’ they are so graciously accepting. I for my part provided above some rather concrete calculations to underline where I see a major issue that can be depicted in factual numerical terms: healing/sustain.

Only accepting ‘nerfs’ that largely either don’t affect or even buff the meta builds of your profession IS NOT being ‘rational’.

Tissitra.4153:

Razor.9872:

Do you think you can express your counter-opinions without lines like “you’re 100% wrong”, “most of your suggestions are outright bad or useless.”, “your post is nothing more than…”? That’d be great.

The wording may be off-putting, but he is making one valid point at least: it is quite likely that many of the DH players who ‘generously’ accept in their posts nerfs to say procession of baldes or dragon’s maw play one of the meta builds, which use neither of these things – and in fact, if you take into account their other suggestions (see OP’s post), the meta builds would be either mostly unaffected or potentially even slightly buffed by the ‘nerfs’ they are so graciously accepting. I for my part provided above some rather concrete calculations to underline where I see a major issue that can be depicted in factual numerical terms: healing/sustain.

Only accepting ‘nerfs’ that largely either don’t affect or even buff the meta builds of your profession IS NOT being ‘rational’.

You’re right. Thankfully the OP didn’t do that.

Tbh, you can bring up total amount of healing calculations and all, but it doesn’t mean squat, due to various variables in fight that can occur in a fight, and most of it looks likes it’s using these skills off cooldown the instant you get them. Wings of Resolve is not instant, and sometimes even a mistake using over renewed focus when being heavily pressured, getting randomly CC’d mid leap or dying mid leap happens more than you think. This is what I think should happen because I main this class, and I play other classes as well.

-Remove Hunter’s Determination – This passive trait is just…kinda way too strong for a passive on CC’d trait proc. -Damage/Daze(traited)/1-5x Aegis/Stability, this alone shuts down so many openers and just flips it on whoever opens. It needs to be replaced.

-1-H Symbols – They could use a small damage shave, so it’s more in line with their cooldowns. Compare to GS/Longbow/Hammer.

Traps – In general i’d like to see something like Shadow Trap from thief. A active portion of the skill. Popping it early gives reduced cooldown, or gives another beneficial effect. Doing this will also stop the doubling down of setting traps down, and getting double use after CDs get back up

Test of Faith – Remove the initial damage, add about 10-20% more damage to crossing the line. Beta ToF didn’t have initial damage on proc before. getting knocked into it or pulled should be rewarding since you’re expending cooldowns to do so. If possible, fix shadowsteps so you don’t take damage for porting out or into it.

Purification- A small 5-10% shave should do it well. Shaving this though i’d like to see things like Litany of Wrath buffed longer duration and higher percentage Damage to Heal ratio, so we have a alternative heal, next to shelter for DPSers. Though shouldn’t be needed if the trap changes happen.

Light’s Judgement – It’s the only trap not ever used, even against stealth class it’s pretty bad. Either buffing to longer duration of reveal, or pulsing blind and immobilize.