Guild Wars 2

Looks good Karl. Though there are also some things that still need to be addressed.

Traits -

Defender’s Dogma – This trait isn’t doing much, and it kind of makes you not want to use your Spear of Justice. When you use spear this doesn’t do anything for you and in some cases this trait does not really feel any sort impactful. Suggestion for it to work better would be to have Spear of Justice retain it’s passive after so it feels like a decent minor that does something. The other suggesting for this would be to rework it to refresh Spear of Justice when you block while attaching a ICD to it. Say 15 or 20 second ICD sounds fair. As it stands now though the current state of this trait is pretty much nothing.

Pure of Sight – This shouldn’t be a minor. If anything attached to Heavy Light for Longbow based builds.

Heavy Light – Just talking about this trait, the knockback is really random, and you can’t control the knockback. For me personally and other guardians we’d probably like to see this function moved towards ability like True Shot. So it isn’t just a random short knockback from time to time. not to mention it’s going to be competing with Big Game Hunter which is a pretty decent damage mod, and a Hunter’s Fortification which pretty much everyone will most likely use for 1 condi removal every time you block on a 1s cd, that’s strong.

Hunter’s Fortification – The trait is strong though the damage reduction if you have no condi should be tweaked a bit. As it stands right now, this damage reduction will pretty much be non existant because there are so many things that will inflict 1 condition. Auto Attacks, AoE, passive traits etc, you’ll never be condition free for more than 3s. My suggestion would be to have a threshold before the damage reduction disappears. Something like something like 3 conditions would make this function well.

-Skills-
Wings of Resolve – Looks fairly decent, though just one or two things I’d like to maybe see added. Evade for the duration of the skill, and a range increase. Don’t know why but it feels sort of short. Though evade on WoR will help with clutch situations.

My 2 cent.

Can you remove the skillshot element of Deflection shot?

I don’t see the point of it. I am going to use this on enemies that are shooting at me. From what I know, Projectiles don’t horizontally curve to go around the deflection shot.

Virtue cooldown reduction is nice, but should have just been baseline for the entire class, honestly. And Courage needs the cooldown reduction even more than the other two did.

Bow changes look good, for the most part. A little disappointing that you’re not changing the way the autoattack bounces/applies cripple though. Also while the Deflecting Shot changes look really nice, consider making the projectile barrier it creates linger for a couple of seconds. The slower speed might make it more effective at blocking head-on incoming projectiles, but it’s still not very supportive in cases where you’d want to block for an ally.

I’m still 100% against traps. Lowering the cast time is a good step forward, but they’re still mechanically flawed. This game is just too fast-paced for them to be effective. They need to at least be ground targeted up to 600 range with no root while casting.

Traits are better, but still not very good. The minor traits are still terrible, and while some of the major traits are better (new Zealot’s Aggression and Hunter’s Fortification), it still doesn’t give me the feeling that it’ll be worth giving up one of our existing traitlines. Also the new Hunter’s Determination looks like it’s going to overlap with Retaliatory Subconscious. This makes me worry that the latter might be getting the aegis removed, which would be really upsetting considering that the retal from the trait has very little value in comparison.

Both minor traits are still rather useless. Overall, my thoughts are about the same as Lucentfir- we had a discussion in game about the changes. Your changes are bringing the specialization in the right direction, but we’d hope to see you looking into Defender’s Dogma and Pure of Sight, as well as the range on Wings of Resolve. However, I can understand if you want to keep it as is, since it’s already been put absolutely on steroids from how the original version was.

Also, can you clarify how Wrath of Justice interacts with Spear of Justice? Right now, it just activates on the next hit that connects after pressing F1, which I think is good design. Is this going to be an all-or-nothing “Spear hits, you get the immob, if it doesn’t, it’s gone” or will it be on the next hit as well?

I’m glad that a DH-Valor-Radiance build may have viable condi clear with the new Hunter’s Fortification. Hopefully the synergy with Radiance traits is good.

It’s time to accept that Traps are a failed experiment.

I am deeply saddened to see no changes to Traps in your notes.
Traps are useless. Worse then Spirit Weapons and we all know how you refuse to fix those for the past three years.

And still no fixes to Shield…

Positives: Virtues and Longbow are great now, well done. Traits are okay, i agree with those above me regarding Traits. Please now turn all your attention to our skills, rework Traps or replace them.

Karl McLain.5604:

Symbol of Energy: Increased missile velocity by 60%. Increased symbol damage by 10%. The initial burning impact now inflicts two stacks of burning, up from one. This skill can now be fired behind you.

I’m so confused. From Aug 26:

Karl McLain.5604:

• Symbol of Energy: Removed the burning on impact (no other symbol has an additional effect, so this felt weird). Increased damage dealt by 10%.

Hey Karl! Good to see that you are listening to our feed back, and have taken many of our suggestions into consideration!

I would still like to see Pure of Sight and Defender’s Dogma addressed though. These two minor traits are still not very impactful, and are not that helpful to most builds, or thematically representative of DH. Here is my issue with each, the logic, and a proposed fix:

-Defender’s Dogma: Yes, this ability will be getting juiced up if you decide to take Zealot’s Aggression, but it still remains fairly weak, and not very useful to most builds.
It is only mildly useful to a condition build (most burning builds will be using torch, so you aren’t going to benefit from focus’ blocks), and a more reliable way to stack burns would be Supreme Justice. If you don’t take Zealot’s aggression (because Soaring Devastation will also be relatively strengthened due to f2 cooldown), Defender’s Dogma is not very useful at all. Not to mention, Defender’s Dogma is next to useless for a power-based Guardian build.

-Suggested Fix: Let this minor trait give us something that will be useful to most Guardian builds! Perhaps blocking an attack will reduce the recharge of virtues by a static amount (2 seconds, 1 second internal cooldown)? This would heavily benefit f1, would encourage us to use f1, and would REALLY benefit our other virtues if we took the virtues trait line. It screams synergy!

-Pure of Sight: Argue as you may, but this trait is a longbow trait. It primarily benefits, and encourages us to use longbow. This is something that no other minor trait in other elite specs does. Not very good design imo.

-Suggested Fix: Roll the 10% damage modifier into the longbow trait. This makes longbow a lot more versatile as it will have benefits both close up, and far away. As for our grandmaster minor trait, it should be something specialization-making! It is clear that with this grandmaster minor, you aim to encompass both power and selfishness (the damage modifier) while stressing group support (staying at range and dealing damage). You can accomplish this with something that stresses the use of our virtues: Gain 7% additional damage for each virtue that is on recharge. When a virtue recharges, grant allies might (2 stacks, 8 seconds, 1s icd). This would make for a very versatile grandmaster minor that stresses the use of our virtues, and benefits both power and condition builds!

Misguided.5139:

Karl McLain.5604:

Symbol of Energy: Increased missile velocity by 60%. Increased symbol damage by 10%. The initial burning impact now inflicts two stacks of burning, up from one. This skill can now be fired behind you.

I’m so confused. From Aug 26:

Karl McLain.5604:

• Symbol of Energy: Removed the burning on impact (no other symbol has an additional effect, so this felt weird). Increased damage dealt by 10%.

I noticed that too, i am hoping that maybe they decided to keep the burning because many people complained about its removal. This makes my condi guard happy!

Now i hope they bring back bleed in some form.

May as well throw in my opinion, since I’m one of the folks who actually likes the implementation of traps as is. I’d agree with previous posters about Defender’s Dogma and Pure of Sight, but otherwise I’m thrilled to bits with Dragonhunter, and feel like it’s revitalized Guardian for me as something quite unique as well as just being a blast to play. Swell work, and kudos to the team.

Deflecting Shot
I really dont like the way this skill works.. I prefer a replacement.

Karl McLain.5604:

Traps:
We’re continuing to work on trap usability, functionality and improve visual effects. There’s not a whole lot in this update, but we continue to appreciate your feedback on these abilities.

This worries me.

If i am correct this is the last Beta weekend before launch, this was your last chance to rework Traps and allow us to test them.

Traps need a complete redesign or replacement. You have no other option.

“There’s not a whole lot in this update” – Implying what? That you are secretly working on redesigning Traps in the background but those changes wont be ready in time for BW3? I hope so.

“usability, functionality and improve visual effects” – Visual effects should be the last thing you worry about. You could make Traps instant cast and ground-targetable and they still wouldn’t be viable. No logical thinking intelligent person is going to sacrifice a skill slot for a Trap. You would be giving up so much reliable support. If you want us to take Traps you need to make them reliable and not dependent on the enemy playing badly.

“we continue to appreciate your feedback on these abilities.” – Yet the past two Beta tests weren’t enough feedback for you to realize Traps suck? The last three years of Traps sucking across the game wasn’t enough feedback?

It is looking likely that Traps won’t be touched before launch, if at all. Every other profession gets a set of shiny new toys to play with we get nothing.

Lucentfir.7430:

Looks good Karl. Though there are also some things that still need to be addressed.

Traits -

Defender’s Dogma – This trait isn’t doing much, and it kind of makes you not want to use your Spear of Justice. When you use spear this doesn’t do anything for you and in some cases this trait does not really feel any sort impactful. Suggestion for it to work better would be to have Spear of Justice retain it’s passive after so it feels like a decent minor that does something. The other suggesting for this would be to rework it to refresh Spear of Justice when you block while attaching a ICD to it. Say 15 or 20 second ICD sounds fair. As it stands now though the current state of this trait is pretty much nothing.

Pure of Sight – This shouldn’t be a minor. If anything attached to Heavy Light for Longbow based builds.

Heavy Light – Just talking about this trait, the knockback is really random, and you can’t control the knockback. For me personally and other guardians we’d probably like to see this function moved towards ability like True Shot. So it isn’t just a random short knockback from time to time. not to mention it’s going to be competing with Big Game Hunter which is a pretty decent damage mod, and a Hunter’s Fortification which pretty much everyone will most likely use for 1 condi removal every time you block on a 1s cd, that’s strong.

Hunter’s Fortification – The trait is strong though the damage reduction if you have no condi should be tweaked a bit. As it stands right now, this damage reduction will pretty much be non existant because there are so many things that will inflict 1 condition. Auto Attacks, AoE, passive traits etc, you’ll never be condition free for more than 3s. My suggestion would be to have a threshold before the damage reduction disappears. Something like something like 3 conditions would make this function well.

-Skills-
Wings of Resolve – Looks fairly decent, though just one or two things I’d like to maybe see added. Evade for the duration of the skill, and a range increase. Don’t know why but it feels sort of short. Though evade on WoR will help with clutch situations.

My 2 cent.

You’ve summed it up pretty well. The only thing I would add is maybe reduced immobilize on WoR to 2 seconds? 3 seconds seems like a lot especially for an adept trait. Also PLEASE MAKE TRAPS GROUND-TARGETED.

Hey Karl, like allot of the changes. There are a few however that feel very meh and a few changes that still really deserve to be made.

1: Puncture Shot. The damage this does is quite low given the cast time.
(lower the cast time to 1/2 second or buff the damage and it would be nice.)

2: Hunter’s Ward. The cast time is rather long & so is the CD.
(what if instead it fired a projectile that immobilized (say 3 seconds)every foe it hits in a line similar to hammer 3 with a similar cool down)

3: Purification, just needs a rework.
(Make it it more or less a copy paste of healing spring minus the water field and then guardians may use it, short of that I doubt anyone will want to use it.)

4: Test of Faith: Really needs a reason to make enemies want to leave its radius.
(perhaps if it pulsed damage or a burn within its radius)

5: Dragon’s Maw. The fact it only effects one target is laughable.

7: Piercing light. The trap Cd reduction is nice but the daze won’t do any good for keeping enemies in trap effects. The loss of bleeding also hurts players who wanted to use + condition damage.
(it needs to stun or immobilize, it would be nice if it also caused traps to apply multiple stacks of bleeding when triggered)

8: Heavy Light. The knockback and stability really should be tied to longbow abilities.
(Trueshot for stability & deflecting shot for the knockback would work.)

9: Pure of Sight. This effect really should just be rolled into heavy light.
(perhaps in its place condition guards could get some love)

10: Hunter’s Fortification. Removing conditions on block is great, reduced damage taken while not effected by conditions is kinda meh once you look at the amount of stuff that practically spews conditions in this game.

11: Defender’s Dogma. This trait really doesn’t do much & isn’t even worth being a minor.
(what if it caused you to maintain your spear of justice passive after you activate it, or caused your attacks vs burning targets to also apply bleeding. Or caused you to daze enemies when you block their attacks)

12: Light’s Judgment. Really needs a secondary effect to make it worth using.
(perhaps it could grant nearby allies protection when triggered)

13: Procession of Blades. Also really needs a secondary effect to be worth using since as is whirling wrath or smite condition are much better.
(Perhaps it could grant allies a boon when triggered, or apply bleeding & cripple on each hit.)

The longbow autoattack needs a damage increase.

Misguided.5139:

Karl McLain.5604:

Symbol of Energy: Increased missile velocity by 60%. Increased symbol damage by 10%. The initial burning impact now inflicts two stacks of burning, up from one. This skill can now be fired behind you.

I’m so confused. From Aug 26:

Karl McLain.5604:

• Symbol of Energy: Removed the burning on impact (no other symbol has an additional effect, so this felt weird). Increased damage dealt by 10%.

I think it’s probably because we all thought that was a horrible idea. Going to give Karl the benefit of the doubt and assume he picked up on that.

Overall these are some pretty good changes. The biggest thing I think we really still need is an increase in Virtue of Resolve’s range, as it feels almost laughably low in its current iteration. 900 would be much better.

I’d also really like to recommend the range on Wings of Resolve be increased from 600 to 900, even if that means increasing the cooldown. Without our ability to pop our virtues passively when we’re in a spot of danger, I do feel we need an escape. Resolve could very much fill that role.

The rest looks super! I’m very excited to play it again.

Still nothing about stationary casting of the auto attack on longbow? Having to turn towards your target to shoot while standing still is ridiculous.

Arnath.2319:

Misguided.5139:

Karl McLain.5604:

Symbol of Energy: Increased missile velocity by 60%. Increased symbol damage by 10%. The initial burning impact now inflicts two stacks of burning, up from one. This skill can now be fired behind you.

I’m so confused. From Aug 26:

Karl McLain.5604:

• Symbol of Energy: Removed the burning on impact (no other symbol has an additional effect, so this felt weird). Increased damage dealt by 10%.

I noticed that too, i am hoping that maybe they decided to keep the burning because many people complained about its removal. This makes my condi guard happy!

Now i hope they bring back bleed in some form.

Yeah, after hearing they were removing burning from LB I was pretty much ready to give up on Dragonhunter since I enjoy playing Condi builds the most. Now that they’ve not only kept the burning but added another stack this might actually be something I’ll play. Over all I’m pretty happy with the changes but do hope they add at least one or two other conditions to Dragonhunter’s skills.

Good changes so far!, though I don’t know yet if LB is going to root us entirely or not (as someone pointed out, having a Skill shot on LB it felt really awkward but I’m holding my veredict til the next BWE), as for Traps, I actually like using them (though I might be the minority on this regard), my main issue with them was that they offered 0 to none survivability or condi heal, now with a quick cast and more defense choices here and there (If Fragments of Faith could work as Purging Flames or Hallowed Ground i’d be happier lol), we might have the Dhunter we were waiting for!

I am definitely looking forward to traps now that they have 11/2 second cast time.. That one second cast time really limited those traps. Now it might be viable to drop them in an enemy’s face.

Removing condis while blocking sounds nice as long as it doesnt have a stupid ICD on it.

but the second passive…

“receive less damage when you have no conditions on you”

Is useless for pvp and should be changed to something else.

Hi Karl, I know I am not the first but hopefully I can layout this suggestion fully. If I can get some replies from other DH about whether the suggestions below will help balance this unease we have with the spec (I’d like to hear some Ranger and Thief opinions too)

1. The traits Dulled Senses and Heavy Light, although buffed in this post, are pretty useless without being picked together. Longbow and traps have zero other knock backs.
2. Longbow skills and traits like deal more damage when further than 600 range, are not mixing well with physical damage traps at short range. Guardians did not just lack a long range weapon we lacked ability to compete at long range with utilities too.

So my suggestion is to combine the first two traits into one master trait with a longer cool down on longbow knock back and none on the cripple.
This buffs guardian hambow and frees a grandmaster slot for the next suggestion.

Give guardian a unique interaction with traps:
Grandmaster trait: If you have a longbow equipped your trap skills become 1,200 range.
This lets us use traps from 600+ range by using animation similar to skill 4 of longbow.

Now this feels different from other professions like ranger and thief as you might see dragon hunters on the top of WvW keep walls shooting down multiple traps and symbols. One screenshot of this and I think guardians will actually play dragon hunter at launch as right now it seems base guardian or revenant just feel much more epic.
That is what we Guardians always want to feel like, the leaders in attack or defence.

I’d like to ask; Will Spirit Hammer work with Dulled Senses?

Karl McLain.5604:

Greetings all!
Wings of Resolve: This ability now removes Immobilize at the beginning. Cooldown has been reduced from 50 seconds to 30.
-Karl

4000+ HP heal every 25,5s when traited… gimme, gimme!

Please, remove the beam of blue light from traps. It doesn’t look good.

Still personally skeptical about how condi DH will work. Mono-condi is pretty weak, especially with some enemy types being completely immune to burning. And I’m still not sure if Virtue of Justice even works the way it normally does as a Guardian when you slot Dragonhunter. Burn Guardians don’t like to trigger the Virtue because it stops their burn procs. I didn’t get a sense of the virtue working very well with Longbow on my Condi guard last I test it.

This is looking okish on paper, but in real testing environment like wvw,pvp,pve it does not looking good.

No stunbreakers when every class have like so many cc’s (going full traps is just suicide not HUNTING), no 25% moving trait passive to charge wounded dragons(target), traps are still useless.

Why not giving dragonhunter chance to remove 1 condition on dodge roll? (with 4 sec icd)
Give dragonhunters chance to get stability for 2 sec if traps are succesfully activated.

Dragonhunter is just dull.

Nice Longbow and trait changes; it’s going in the right direction.

• Minor Traits: I don’t have anything to say about any of them. Nice synergies and different goals. Good job!
• Major Traits: like the new version of Hunter’s Determination. Bulwark is nice too, but the CD on Shield of courage is too high. I’d see 50/60sec, or maybe a recharge added to the trait. Dulled senses has great synergy with other traits and the new Justice, especially with the updated Zealot’s aggression. I like this.
• GM: Big game hunter is… Weird. Dulled senses seems much more efficient at applying vulnerability and is already doing that. With Zealot’s aggression and Dulled senses, Spear of justice already gives 3 stacks of vuln. BGH only adds an additional one… That’s redundant and lackluster. Only the 10% increase is really new in this trait, and this is clearly not enough for a GM trait. Also if you take Heavy Light instead, you knock back, gain stab, and since you knock back you inflict cripple, which gives 3 stacks of vuln. So it’s a tradeoff between 3 stacks of vulnerability and stab and a knockback between a single vuln stack and 10% damage. BGH needs a rework in my opinion.

I also have to insist on Traps… For a spec advertised as ranged support, giving us root-inducing offensive melee skills with the longbow is so… unlogical. I like the visual effects. But using them requires giving up so many supporty stuffs that I don’t really see myself use them.
As many have said, making the traps ground-targeted (even at 600 or 900) would be a huge step in the right direction. Then, they’re lacking support for a spec that is supposed to be supporty. Why not make them give a small advantage to allies that are inside them, like Fragments of Faith already do? Like something opposite to what traps do to enemies. Some examples:

• Test of Faith: now inflicts cripple… Add a small reduction of movement-imparing conditions on allies, or grant them swiftness?
• Procession of Blades: maybe give a couple of might stacks, or small-duration fury?
• Light’s Judgement: a light that punishes enemies, why would it not support allies? Add a regeneration buff to allies to it.

This would allow us to stay at range, control enemies and support allies. I don’t think this would make traps OP; allies would need to stand in the traps to actually get the buffs. Or maybe make this a GM trait.

Lucentfir.7430:

Defender’s Dogma – This trait isn’t doing much, and it kind of makes you not want to use your Spear of Justice. When you use spear this doesn’t do anything for you and in some cases this trait does not really feel any sort impactful. Suggestion for it to work better would be to have Spear of Justice retain it’s passive after so it feels like a decent minor that does something. The other suggesting for this would be to rework it to refresh Spear of Justice when you block while attaching a ICD to it. Say 15 or 20 second ICD sounds fair. As it stands now though the current state of this trait is pretty much nothing.

I really do not get the hate for defenders dogma. our F3 wil be blocking a ton. Imagine a team fight on point where you will get like 4-6 blocks. toss in permeating wrath and GS #2, a symbol or a trap and F3 turns into a AOE burn burst while you and your teammates are protected. In general it will proc the passiv more often. why is that bad?

yes it makes you not want to use SoJ but that is actually a problem with the activ of SoJ. Its just not worthwhile at the moment. It does nothing special. Burn and vurnability and a 10% damage boost for 6 seconds .. to miss out on passiv burn and cripple procs for 14secs?

It will get strong with virtues and radiance when it is on a 17 sec CD and applies Pbaoe blind. but in itself its not really impressiv for our key mechanic.

I am looking forward to defenders dogma + F3

Okay, look, I get that the whole deal with Dragonhunter was to give justification for Braham picking up his mom’s bow and acting like a Ranger, but please don’t let what (probably) will happen to an NPC dictate gameplay mechanics. Traps suck, they suck hard, there is no way to make them work well simply because GW2 is a game all about mobility and active combat. Another reason they suck for Dragonhunter in particular is that it’s anathema to the whole long-ranged support that Longbow seems to be about. Hell, one of the GM Traits is focused on getting enemies the hell away from you while pew pewing them with arrows.

I know it’s impossible to change things before HoT release, but here’s my suggestion. Ditch traps, replace them with Wards. Wells and Symbols all basically do damage as well as a mix of debuffs for foes and buffs for allies. Wards do no damage, and instead focus purely on the effects.

These are all ground targeted, can be used from up to 900 range, 240 radius.

Healing: Ward Against Harm – Heals user for a bit, then lasts 5s, acts as Defiant Stance/Infuse Light for all allies in the area, but only heals = to 20% of damage that would be taken, also pulses 2s Regen per pulse.

Utilities: Ward against Malice – Lasts 5s, pulses 2s Resistance on allies in the field.

Ward Against Foes: Lasts 5s, pulse 1.5s Chill on foes in the field.

Elite: Ward Against Destruction: Lasts 10s, allies in the field are completely immune to any damage/conditions/etc from any negative effect that is AoE. Basically if the targets affected != 1, it doesn’t affect any ally in the field.

I’m sure someone could come up with 2 more utility Wards for the full set of 4, but that’s an example of how you could do long-range support with Dragonhunter. Traps aren’t going to work, I know that it hurts to admit it after this much development time, but they really, really suck. And worse than them sucking in general, they just don’t go with the Dragonhunter theme of long-range damage/support.

My main complaint about the bow is True Shot. It is a very powerful skill, but on 3/4s activation so we don’t need rooting effect. The combat feels awkard because often I just have to be on the move and rarely use skill 2. Rangers can use their burst Rapid Fire LB 2 on the move, why can’t Guardians? Maybe just increase activation to 1s and get rid of the root?

Also, traps can lead to very weird scenarions when you want to stay behind and support allies but on the other hand you have to rush to enemy’s face to cast traps. I like the idea of wards that Kamui presented.

So what exactly changed with Dulled Senses? It’s exactly the same as from the last BWE ._.

Dragonhunter is almost fixed! I like the changes so far.
The only problems are Pure of Sight and Defender’s Dogma.

This is important: Pure of Sight needs to go.
1. This trait is very situational, only about 37% of our damaging skills even work with it, on top of which we have to fulfill the 360 range requirement, and the effect is very dull and unrewarding.
2. No other profession has a Minor trait that practically forces it to use their new Elite-Spec weapon.
3. Chronomancer is getting +25% Movement Speed, Herald is getting +15% Boon Duration, Berserker is getting +15% Attack Speed while Berserking. Even Daredevil is getting extra endurance when Stealing.
Those are really cool traits and fit in every weaponset and every build they pick.
There are more builds where Pure of Sight does NOT fit than there are builds where it fits.

Change Pure of Sight be a strong effect such as removing a movement-impairing condition when we strike a foe at 360 range. Dragonhunter needs to remain mobile, we are already low on condition removal if we take Traps. This would be welcome.

Or

Defender’s Dogma would be okay if we got something like the new Zealot’s Aggression as the other Minor trait instead of Pure of Sight to complement it.

So what we would get is a Minor(Defender’s Dogma) that would give us Passive Justice on Block, then the other Minor(Zealot’s Aggression) that Cripples on Passive Justice. This would make Dragonhunter line somewhat specialize in “Passive Justice”, just like
Radiance = Justice
Valor = Courage
Honor = Resolve
Virtues = All Virtues
Dragonhunter = Passive Justice

I wouldnt mind if they removed the increased damage to Crippled foes portion of Zealot’s Aggression to balance it as a Minor trait. That part could become another trait or merged with another Major trait.

Can we PLEASE get the passive speed already……..

Otherwise I’ll pass. Traps are not my thing.

You should finally allow multiple trap placement. Might actually even limit that to certain traps if that is a problem (tooltip: Maximum Amount 2, etc). Would really help to create ambush what traps are all about to begin with and help out ranger as well.

Am I one of the few that likes traps on a Dragonhunter?
It is a support mechanic on a heavy armor class, and I think that can be confusing in itself, but that’s the Guardian’s bread and butter.
Thematically, Dragonhunters are based on witch hunters. The idea of casting runes to bind opponents works with that.
Currently I have a style with my husband that has my Dragonhunter running support for his Daredevil. It has a nice synergy with the other new specializations, and with group play, but I understand it is a little awkward to play it alone.

Kamui.3150:

I know it’s impossible to change things before HoT release, but here’s my suggestion. Ditch traps, replace them with Wards. Wells and Symbols all basically do damage as well as a mix of debuffs for foes and buffs for allies. Wards do no damage, and instead focus purely on the effects.

These are all ground targeted, can be used from up to 900 range, 240 radius.

Healing: Ward Against Harm – Heals user for a bit, then lasts 5s, acts as Defiant Stance/Infuse Light for all allies in the area, but only heals = to 20% of damage that would be taken, also pulses 2s Regen per pulse.

Utilities: Ward against Malice – Lasts 5s, pulses 2s Resistance on allies in the field.

Ward Against Foes: Lasts 5s, pulse 1.5s Chill on foes in the field.

Elite: Ward Against Destruction: Lasts 10s, allies in the field are completely immune to any damage/conditions/etc from any negative effect that is AoE. Basically if the targets affected != 1, it doesn’t affect any ally in the field.

I really do like the Idea of wards.
They could actually work well.

But i also agree with most people on here that the traps kind of feel weird being in a ranged support specilisation, when they can only be applied at your own position.

I also really like this idea:

Arutha.9874:

Give guardian a unique interaction with traps:
Grandmaster trait: If you have a longbow equipped your trap skills become 1,200 range.
This lets us use traps from 600+ range by using animation similar to skill 4 of longbow.

Now this feels different from other professions like ranger and thief as you might see dragon hunters on the top of WvW keep walls shooting down multiple traps and symbols.[…]
That is what we Guardians always want to feel like, the leaders in attack or defence.

With this DH-unique mechanic the range support (which is what DH is mostly going for) would increase massively without even making the traps that much different from what they currently are.

Guardian is my favorite Class and I do think that Dragon Hunter has good potential to become a viable and fun to play specilisation.
I hope some changes/improvements to traps come soo.

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

Thematically, Dragonhunters are based on witch hunters.

People who still try to make this association clearly have no idea what actual real-life witch hunters were.

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

Am I one of the few that likes traps on a Dragonhunter?
It is a support mechanic on a heavy armor class, and I think that can be confusing in itself, but that’s the Guardian’s bread and butter.
Thematically, Dragonhunters are based on witch hunters. The idea of casting runes to bind opponents works with that.
Currently I have a style with my husband that has my Dragonhunter running support for his Daredevil. It has a nice synergy with the other new specializations, and with group play, but I understand it is a little awkward to play it alone.

I think people saying “the majority dislike traps” are just flat out lying/making baseless sweeping statements/suffering from information selection bias. You’re definitely not alone in liking them. =)

Karl, can we get a universal change to utilities and their targeting? How about a toggle on each traits, say for example shift +Mouse 2, that set’s them to either standard casting or ground targeting? I would be an easy change on the UI by simply having the targeting reticle or not. Then we can change the style of ground targeting still in our options panel. This would be amazing and create new situational forms of play. Especially to utilities like traps

Oh, and how about a trait on Bow that proc’s more burning on auto attack? Warrior has such a trait on it Long Bow auto.

Hello Karl, it’s nice to see that this is a step in the right direction, I see a lot of the suggestions and ideas in the forums being implemented. I’m still going to ask once more to consider to turn Traps into Symbols: This will bring a lot of synergy when a DH decides to use Symbolic Exposure, Symbolic Power, Symbolic Avenger and/or Writ of Persistence. Please consider it.

Rashagar.8349:

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

Am I one of the few that likes traps on a Dragonhunter?
It is a support mechanic on a heavy armor class, and I think that can be confusing in itself, but that’s the Guardian’s bread and butter.
Thematically, Dragonhunters are based on witch hunters. The idea of casting runes to bind opponents works with that.
Currently I have a style with my husband that has my Dragonhunter running support for his Daredevil. It has a nice synergy with the other new specializations, and with group play, but I understand it is a little awkward to play it alone.

I think people saying “the majority dislike traps” are just flat out lying/making baseless sweeping statements/suffering from information selection bias. You’re definitely not alone in liking them. =)

Have fun liking them. Every competitive and smart Guardian won’t replace shouts/meditations/consecrations to them. Srry but traps are bad in every aspect of team/solo play. They are fun because its new stuff but don’t count to be useful.

Ragnarox.9601:

Rashagar.8349:

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

Am I one of the few that likes traps on a Dragonhunter?
It is a support mechanic on a heavy armor class, and I think that can be confusing in itself, but that’s the Guardian’s bread and butter.
Thematically, Dragonhunters are based on witch hunters. The idea of casting runes to bind opponents works with that.
Currently I have a style with my husband that has my Dragonhunter running support for his Daredevil. It has a nice synergy with the other new specializations, and with group play, but I understand it is a little awkward to play it alone.

I think people saying “the majority dislike traps” are just flat out lying/making baseless sweeping statements/suffering from information selection bias. You’re definitely not alone in liking them. =)

Have fun liking them. Every competitive and smart Guardian won’t replace shouts/meditations/consecrations to them. Srry but traps are bad in every aspect of team/solo play. They are fun because its new stuff but don’t count to be useful.

Only thing I like about this trait like is that 4k virtue heal. Other than that, it’s pretty underwhelming. PvE will probably be the unchanged and they’ll have to pry my medis from me in PvP. This has been dissapointing to say the least…

Ragnarox.9601:

Rashagar.8349:

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

Am I one of the few that likes traps on a Dragonhunter?
It is a support mechanic on a heavy armor class, and I think that can be confusing in itself, but that’s the Guardian’s bread and butter.
Thematically, Dragonhunters are based on witch hunters. The idea of casting runes to bind opponents works with that.
Currently I have a style with my husband that has my Dragonhunter running support for his Daredevil. It has a nice synergy with the other new specializations, and with group play, but I understand it is a little awkward to play it alone.

I think people saying “the majority dislike traps” are just flat out lying/making baseless sweeping statements/suffering from information selection bias. You’re definitely not alone in liking them. =)

Have fun liking them. Every competitive and smart Guardian won’t replace shouts/meditations/consecrations to them. Srry but traps are bad in every aspect of team/solo play. They are fun because its new stuff but don’t count to be useful.

I intend to have fun =) That is the point after all.

I have no problem with them getting changes/buffs/whatever, but people that are saying “scrap traps completely”, I disagree with.

As an aside, saying that so many of our utilities are already stupidly strong so traps should be replaced with something equally stupidly strong is… kind of stupid. =P

If “every competitive and smart guardian” is so completely averse to playing with new toys because they can’t survive without even one shout/meditation/consecration on their bar, that’s hardly my concern (which I highly doubt you speak for all of them, never mind speaking for any of them, since my definition of a competitive and smart guardian is someone who switches things up and experiments)

Try to remember to have fun out there =)

Sup kaaaaaaarl! I like the direction youre taking, and heres the deal.

We all know traps are cool in theory, but dont work that well in actuality. We have a lot of ground based abilities in this game that work well… Marks, Glyphs, SYMBOLS…. traps arent one of them. However, they CAN work; the entire idea of “trap” needs to be reworked though. Forget the entire Dragonhunter “lore” of traps, I get that its supposed to be a longbow and trap kinda like dragonheart lol but lets forget that. Youre not catching any dragon with these traps, and youre not catching them with our slow moving selves, its just not happening.

If youre going to keep traps how they are now, then so be it. Every trap, while giving condi/damage to the enemy, should also give a boon to the guardian, or to the party/allies close to where the trap went off. So if I drop a trap and you walk into it, I should get 3-4 seconds of protection and such. some thing along those lines.

Now what REALLY should be done, is traps should trigger symbols. Its really not that big a change at all, but it would change a lot of things. Our dps would go up tremendously. we need 25% movement speed in dragonhunter, we are friggen hunters, chronomancer even got it and theyre absolutely perfect.

We need more ways to get Aegis. Before playing Revanent, I didnt think so, but now I do. They can do a lot of what Guard can do but better and faster. All we have on them is reflect and Aegis, and we are good in the reflect department.

Ground targetting is a must.

Overall, DH is kinda “boring” but if we get the appropriate boost for dps/active defense then it can be completely viable with our current builds. as it stands now, id like to have the option to use the longbow, but dont need anything from the DH traitline

People asking for Traps to change to a different skill type need to be realistic. It’s not going to happen.

Focus your efforts on making Traps better, that’s what we are getting.

Perhaps Purification could have a Water Field.

Fragments of Faith could be Lightning field.

Lights Deliverance could be a Blast Finisher.

Procession of Blades a Whirl Finisher.

And Test of Faith a Fire field.

Dragon’s Maw could be a Stun Breaker and grant Stability.

Rashagar.8349:

I intend to have fun =) That is the point after all.

I have no problem with them getting changes/buffs/whatever, but people that are saying “scrap traps completely”, I disagree with.

As an aside, saying that so many of our utilities are already stupidly strong so traps should be replaced with something equally stupidly strong is… kind of stupid. =P

Dude your main is ranger, go play with your trap ranger then. Leave our constructive feedback.

Rashagar.8349:

If “every competitive and smart guardian” is so completely averse to playing with new toys because they can’t survive without even one shout/meditation/consecration on their bar, that’s hardly my concern (which I highly doubt you speak for all of them, never mind speaking for any of them, since my definition of a competitive and smart guardian is someone who switches things up and experiments)

Dude you cannot survive pvp,wvw, pve without shouts/medi.
So anyways did you tried Spirit weapons and do you think they are good and fun?

I feel like all I can do is read patch notes and comment every single time to remove the rooting effect from True Shot. Two out of five Longbow skills interrupt the flow of combat. I understand philosophically that you want a trade-off, but pragmatically this design choice makes combat even slower, less mobile, and less fluid.

This specialization is not fun to play when it rejects the base style of this game’s combat in favor of a hypothetical power trade-off. Stuns and roots are the least-fun elements of this game (my opinion, shared by bunches of others if the forums over the years have been any indicator) and you’ve guaranteed that 40% of the DH’s weapon uses force the player to sit and wait.

Please reconsider. I want to actually play my guardian again, and I can grudgingly accept a massive AOE requiring that I stay in place, but adding a root to the second skill is anathemic to fun.

Q: How will Hunter’s Determination (Aegis and Trap when controlled) function when Retaliatory Subconscious (Aegis and Retaliation when controlled) is traited at the same time?
Will they collide or will we be able to, say: get CC → proc one of traits → get aegis → get aegis removed → get CC again → proc second trait OR will both be on cooldown straight after the first CC and we should make sure we never pick both traits at the same time?