Guild Wars 2

Just a thing I found about Shield of Courage (f3). If you have Indomitable courage traited in the Virtues line (breaks stun and grants stab on f3) then use shield of courage, you first break stun then you begin the 1/4sec cast time, and finally you have your shield, stab, and aegis.

This is exploitable; you can cast it to break the stun, and then if you’re fast enough, can hit esc, or roll backwards to interrupt the cast. It goes on 3sec ‘interrupt’ cool down, and you can do it again. So this is essentially a stun break every 3 seconds if you have fast fingers. I believe the Jalis Legend’s elite skill on revenant suffers from this same issue.

Note to ANET devs: An acceptable way to fix this is to make f3 instant cast. No ifs, ands, or buts. Instant cast, please. AnUNACCEPTABLE way to fix this issue would be to make the f3 go into cool down if interrupted in that 1/4 second.

Traps just do not sync well with the longbow. They require the enemy to be on top of the traps before they trigger while the longbow wants me to be far away from the enemy. Using a hammer or greatsword makes traps a lot more effective. They should just be ground targetted or be turned into wells to allow for backline play.

The dragon hunter traits seem like a joke, especially the grandmasters. The 3rd one is amazing, meanwhile you have to question why the other 2 even exist. They wouldn’t even be awful if it weren’t for the internal cooldowns that Anet seems to have such a bone for.

Just some thoughts while trading these responses. I’m on a phone so I’m not going to bother formatting well.

When traps all had a kitten cooldown, it was kind of iffy they didn’t have a cooldown reduction trait. Now that their cooldowns have been adjusted, it’s unnecessary.

Longbow skills here created without needing a cooldown reduction trait. Or are people advocating for things like 3.2 second True Shots and 36s Hunters Wards.

Speaking of Hunters Ward, it’s multiple rings of warding, with damage, at 1200 range. At 60s it was on the high side, but why on earth should it be lower cooldown than both ring of warding and line of warding? Think of all the stability stacks you could strip in wvw. Just because it appears lackluster in 1v1 doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a definite purpose.

Also speaking on Longbow, the autos crit for 2k in pvp and True Shot consistently crits for 5k. Are y’all trying to run this with Magi stats?

Also in pvp, Soaring Devastation crits for 3k on top of the immobilize. That’s non-insignificant damage.

I can understand not liking the cast times for virtues, but the actives certainly act much more like actual skills than before.

Dragonhunter will certainly have it’s place in every game mode. In pve you should be able to get some significant damage modifiers and abilities to be competitive in damage and utility. In general we have the unique position of having power based traps that can turn hybrid in combination with our virtues and traits (this could have applications in wvw location defense). In general wvw our longbow can provide lots of fight utility with Hunters Ward, Deflecting Shot, Symbol of Energy, and a source of non shout stability from True Shot. In pvp medi hambow and other variants will have their place. Their presence in tournament level pvp would be mostly irrelevant as not everyone plays tourney level pvp. Success and failure depends on the harmony of player skill, build, and team comp. None of those preclude DH from being useful.

new virtues are clunky: they need to be instacast

traps: I don’t see how they will add much to any of the current builds I play; and the longbow: it looks good but the skills seem slow and ineffective.

Maybe it’s a question of l2p but at the moment I wouldn’t use a lb in wvw

My feedback:

Longbow:

• Puncture Shot: Too slow, could be faster.
• True Shot: No changes.
• Deflecting Shot: Since it blocks projectiles it should be unblockable.
• Symbol of Energy: Needs longer vigor duration. Missing symbol skill fact.
• Hunter’s Ward: No changes.

Traps:

• Purification: No changes.
• Light’s Jugdement: No changes.
• Fragments of Faith: No changes.
• Procession of Blades: No changes.
• Test of Faith: Says it’s unblockable but it isn’t (bug?).
• Dragon’s Maw: Should be unblockable.

Virtues:

• Spear of Justice: Needs instant cast time.
• Wings of Resolve: Leap range is too short. Needs instant cast time.
• Shield of Courage: Needs instant cast time.

Playing with it some more:
1) Traps should be ground targetable, because it doesn’t synergize well with the longbow if it doesn’t.
2) Virtues need a cooldown reduction.
3) Traits are lackluster.
4) Longbow needs one less skill that makes you rootable.

superherofan.8042:

Playing with it some more:
1) Traps should be ground targetable, because it doesn’t synergize well with the longbow if it doesn’t.

This. They want to give guards an option to backline but then what use are traps going to be other than a waste of utility spot? We’d be better off stacking full shouts for supporting other backliners. DH needs synergy with itself desperately.

Nike.2631:

Arken.3725:

One last thing to add. Bow will not see any real play in PvP due to the loss of sustain you gain from running X/Focus. There are no defensive capabilities attached to this weapon so you’re essentially a sitting duck.

So when the Devs say “The Dragonhunter is designed to serve in the Backline” what did you think that meant?

If we had 8v8 PvP, there’d be a backline, but the rolling shuffle that is 5v5 you pretty much ALWAYS end up with somebody directly in your face… No backline build fairs well in that environment.

Normally you’d think this would work but since the auto is terrible at tracking(did a test and it was still missing at 600 units).

Also, the traits are a mess with all of the GM’s not even being worthy of being GM’s.

Arken.3725:

One last thing to add. Bow will not see any real play in PvP due to the loss of sustain you gain from running X/Focus. There are no defensive capabilities attached to this weapon so you’re essentially a sitting duck.

I disagree, it simply requires a new playstyle with longbow as main dps and secondary weapons to swap to in case you get focused.

Huh lads I spend the entire weekend testing the DH and the traps…. You can read my feedback in many posts so I will not write it down again… This afternoon (Sunday) I rolled a chronomesmer just for the “lulz” (my highest mesmer is level 18 ATM…).

I cannot even compare the gamestyle, the efficiency and the fun-factor of the two professions. Sorry to say but after this experience the DH feels even more crappy than before… And if you know me you know that I love the Guardian and I was looking forward to play DH… These hours just convinced me to say:

Dragonhunter is crap….

I’m sorry :S

The only thing i can’t deal with dragonhunter are virtues..
Ele overload works good cause you are not forced to use that skills, since attunement swap is still istant cast so is your choice to use them or not…
Dragonhunter instead, forces you to give up to what really makes powerful virtues, their instant cast, and the instant benefits virtue gives, nothing comparable to a spear, a leap or a wall that doesn’t prevent melee distance projectiles..

That’s what

I think DH should be stylistically different than other bow-based weapons (although balance > aesthetics)

• LB1: No arc, no physical arrow, just a ray of light. Greatly increase projectile velocity. The effects should be visually similar to LB2, but thinner of course.
• LB4: Remove the projectile. Function similarly to Engineer’s Mortar Strike, where it deploys after a short delay.

After giving myself more time to think about DH, I’ve come up with some proposed changes (some of these changes play off of my previous post on this thread). I think Virtues should be re-purposed to fit a more offensive playstyle:

• Remove the passive burning proc on F1, replace with a charge system that grants unblockable attacks. Gain a charge every x seconds, max of y stacks. Expend a stack every time you hit through a block. Activating F1 will consume all stacks, increasing the duration of SoJ by 1 second per stack. F1 Active will apply 2-3 stacks of vulnerability each second and will grant the user x stacks of might per second. Might gain may need to be a trait.
• Remove the passive health regen on F2, replace with +25% movement speed.Thematically, F2 has taken on a more mobile role. With the Guardian, you sacrifice passive health regen for a burst of healing. With the DH, you sacrifice a flat mobility buff for a leap/heal. F2 active range should be increased by about 300 units when traited.

Virtues Indeed feel sluggish with the cast times and I find myself using them less, or my muscle memory causes me to hit them at inopportune times either cancelling them with another ability before they can go off, or interrupting an attack like whirlwind.

also I do not like how the heal and condition removal on VoR happens when you land it would function better at the beginning. earlier I got rooted in spvp and my reflex is to pop resolve to break out of it intending to immediately jump towards the enemy but since the cleanse is at the end I just hopped straight up

I understand the idea is for support, that you would leap into a group of allies, cleanse, heal them, and damage and root enemies depending on your spec, but that makes it clunky for personal use.

I think someone suggested a while back splitting the effects. personal effects would happen immediately upon activation, and group effects would happen on landing.

The other virtues feel awkward too, like justice is blind. does the blind radiate from the guardian? or can you use it at range and blind enemies you hit with the spear? maybe someone could test and confirm this?

I’m also having a hard time figure out if courage works well in melee. it kind of feels like melee targets are behind the barrier and so there attacks aren’t blocked, but I haven’t really tested it.

as far as traps got I’ve only messed with 2 so far. procession of blades feels very disappointing. It looks like the blades are only up for like 1 second, but I can’t tell if its just a visual bug. sometimes I see damage tics after they’ve disappeared, but I don’t know for sure. overall the damage and duration felt underwhelming to me and I quickly ditched it.

the other trap I tried was light’s judgement and I really like this trap in spvp. its great to start casting it then JI to your enemy. At the least the light show tends to scare people and make them flee off a point, but if they choose to hold there ground the vulnerability is seriously punishing.

The only other awkward mechanic I’ve run into so far is deflecting shot. It seems you’re only able to cast it within a cone in front of you. if you try to target outside that, it simply wont go off. It’d be a great QoL change if your character just immediately faced the direction they needed to in order to cast it. Other than that it functions better than I thought as far as using it to stop projectiles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm5L_nQ-jl0

40 minute video with my thoughts so far.

TL;DW
Traps base damage is way too low, and they feel really gimmicky because of it.
Virtues are awesome! Wings of Resolve is love and life <3
Traits are overall pretty good. Heavy Light may be slightly OP.
Longbow feels like a great new weapon, but needs some bug fixes and usability adjustments.
Dragonhunter overall is better than some people think.

Wrath of Justice – trait from Radiance does not work with Spear (F1) – supposed to immobilize target
________________________________

Bow:

1) needs faster projectile speed (a la Ranger) and a small damage increase ~10%
-note: you are essentially forcing the Zealot’s Aggression trait selection for effective longbow damage. this undermines the recent decision to gravitate away from “must have” traits. Suggestion: increase the damage on 1 altogether, rework Zealot’s Aggression to the MUCH REQUESTED 25% movement speed!

2) Personally, I don’t mind the short root, but why are we locked down when Ranger can pew pew pew their Rapid Fire on the move and it does vastly more damage AND pierces. Please remove the root, allow to be cast while moving.

3) Personally I think this ability is crap, but it seems to have a niche. Would feel more rewarding if it had either more damage (does less damage than auto attack) or had some kind of reward for successfully nullifying an incoming ranged attack. Stun attacker?

4) Causes burning but Light field. Can we get a burning symbol for once?

5) As many others have said, cage should come first.

Virtues
F1) Best of the three. Could do without the cast time, but otherwise solid.
F2_ I seldom use the active effect as I prefer having the passive. The active just doesn’t have enough benefit. Extremely situational. Maybe make the damage trait baseline or add a blast or leap finisher to add incentive to use.
F3) Prefer old Aegis. The frontal thing seems clunky. Can it be modified to just be a shield AROUND the player for the duration? If it’s going to be kept as is, add the functionality from hammer revenant’s similar skill so the shield acts as a light field to combo with projectiles.

Traps

Honestly do not like traps; especially in PVE. I can see the benefit in pvp point defense but in PVE I find myself using old school utilities. I get where you were going with these and on paper they look interesting but it seems they are going to be hit or miss with the vast majority. Consider me a miss :P

No way I will ever pick Dragon’s Maw over Feel My Wrath. Not. Gonna. Happen.

Traits:
Dulled Senses and Heavy Light rely too much on each other. Would like to see these merged and the creative team to come up with a better Grandmaster. Big Game Hunter is too strong a choice for Heavy Light to compete, and unless you take Heavy Light, Dulled Senses is absolutely useless.

I think the bow for Guardian is a great idea: this is a ranged option that I can get behind. The Dragonhunter satisfies in some regards, but not all just yet. I’m confident that it can though
I guess my biggest concern is that I don’t know what role the DH can play. Longbow usually relegates it to the back-line, but with all of the traps and the Heavy Light trait, it seems destined for front-line combat. If it’s meant to switch back and forth, it has few, if any, options to do so. It just doesn’t feel like a dedicated ranged option. Some stray comments:
-I agree that the auto attack is too slow. Especially if this spec is meant to survive on the front-line (which I’m not sure it is, anyway).
-I like the idea of the traps, but their effects are a little underwhelming. If they were to have longer-lasting effects (I’m thinking of Procession of Blades specifically), that could offset this.
-The range on Wings of Resolve doesn’t cover enough ground. I feel it would be a lot more useful with larger range, to allow the DH to cover ground, stay mobile, and move back-and-forth from the back- to front-lines.

So here are my thoughts I only was able to play a few hours. PVE only

Guardian with a Longbow: Would of never dreamed of it the day I made my Guardian during head start. I love it, especially since we were only limited to scepter/focus for 1200 range.

Virtues: A bit meh. Great in concept but like people mentioned needs tweaking with distance and action/animation.

Longbow 1: Same as other said. Its slow and clunky. It needs to be a bit more snappy and quicker. If you want it slow, make it hit harder.

LB2: Love it, I like the wind up power shot, good DPS

Lb3: Least favorite. The reflect is gimmicky and it’s easy to miss.

LB4: Love it, the AOE is quite small compared to LB5. Give us a larger AOE circle or a trait that makes it bigger.

LB5: Yay and Nay. The only way this works well is static mobs during the entire duration and end nuke finale. It should pin down everything in the AOE at the very start so the mobs take the full brunt of the hit.

Traps: Cool, but yes, meh also. They need to be ground targeted. I notice a lot of abandoned traps where the mob was killed before it could even reach the trap, like at a gate in SW. Long bow reach with traps laid at your feet are counter intuitive. Sure you can trap kite, but I found traps are more fun standing in them with Greatsword. Swirling blades , spinning blades, it turns the guardian into a giant blender.

Elite: looks cool, reminds me of the giant Croc from Peter Pan comming out of the water! And thats about it. It looks cool, very lack luster.

Also you guys need to work on the turning, aiming and aligning for this Profession. I find if I move around too much it makes it difficult to line up shots.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Arken.3725:

One last thing to add. Bow will not see any real play in PvP due to the loss of sustain you gain from running X/Focus. There are no defensive capabilities attached to this weapon so you’re essentially a sitting duck.

I disagree, it simply requires a new playstyle with longbow as main dps and secondary weapons to swap to in case you get focused.

The point of this weapon was to promote back-line assistance but as I’ve stated many times, you can’t do that due to a few factors:

1. The auto is easily strafeable due to how inferior the tracking is with it. If you look here on my page http://www.twitch.tv/bigheart_gamer/v/10049334 at around the 1:05:00 mark you’ll see the problem is just as apparent as the Scepter’s. This isn’t a bug but rather a design flaw since it’s been 3 years and Scepter is still plagued with the same problem.

2. Having a skill root you in place should yield significant benefit. While Trueshot can do significant damage, it comes at a significant cost. I was only able to do the damage you see in that VOD because of my significant investment into power and pretty much nothing else.

3. Deflecting shot does anything but deflect. What’s a single blind that barely blocks any barrage of ranged attacks? Again, if you watch the vod you’ll also notice we test how effective it is against rangers towards the beginning.

4. The symbol of energies arc time was too long and like other symbols, it’s pretty dangerous for you as a Guardian to stand in it(since the benefit is nil) and to keep your enemy in it(which you can’t since it’s so tiny and the damage is also nil).

5. Hunter’s Ward is amazing.

Traps:

Every single trap requires your opponent to screw up and if they see you plan something on the ground, chances are, they won’t run in it. Having skills require the ineptitude of your opponent are terrible by design since they don’t actually reward the player doing well.

Traits:

Piercing Light: This seems like a kitten attempt at giving Guardians yet another option to have a viable Condition build.

Zealot’s Aggression: Reducing this to 7% was weird enough but the main issue is that this doesn’t work by itself since Guardian’s application of cripple relies upon the enemy screwing up and not the Guardian performing well.

Soaring Devastation: Excellent damage, immobilization was nerfed heavily for a skill that’s on an incredibly long cd and short-range leap.

Bulwark: At first I thought Shield of Courage blocked all attacks in front of you but that’s not the case at all making this trait even more useless. It’s a poor-mans version of the #4 hammer on Revenant.

Dulled Senses: This should have been combined with Zealot’s aggression and Heavy-light.

Hunter’s Fortification: Incredibly small-ranged and short-duration Protection as a GM? Absolutely terrible. Hate to make the comparison but Ele’s fart out Prot with the same ranged for more duration on far less of a cd.

Big Game Hunter: 10% dmg modifier for a GM? Again, pretty bad for such a slot.

Overall: Pretty weak weapon due to its flaws. Traps relying too much on your enemy to screw up and traits that don’t Synergize well at all and are actually pretty weak when you break them down.

All of my fears of this class have come to pass. Traps are useless and the longbow is not an effective ranged damage weapon. This has not only brought nothing new to the Guardian but it also hasn’t brought options for anything old either. Huge disappointment. I’m putting this class and tempest in the trash bin. At least chronomancer and Reaper came out good.

Bow – fine, could do with more dmg on 3, and mobile cast on 2.

Traps – Fine, could do with ranged placement (too awkward with bow currently), and heal would be better triggering on enemy or wounded ally.

Virtues – pants. F1 is just kittene all over. F2 could be ok but range is worthless, needs ot be at least doubles, preferably trippled. F3 is ok, only one worth the time, the other 2 are just downgrades.

Playing Dragonhunter was interesting, especially since I didn’t expect much from it in the first place.

I liked the bow. The skills are well done, they give you something to work with. You have cripple, burning, blindness, stability if traited… honestly, I don’t know why people would complain about the longbow on the guard. The dps could be a little bit higher but it’s a bow and the guardian is no ranger, so I won’t say that that needs to be fixed or anything.

The traps are… well, ok at best. Dragon’s Maw looks extremly good, though I personally don’t know where it can be used in general PvE sine you have “Feel My Wrath!” and Signet of Courage as alternatives. One is dps and one is party support so I don’t see myself using the elite trap anytime soon.

Procession of Blades did really good damage when traited with the trait hat gives bleed on traps and the cooldown is nice as well.
Fragment’s of Faith deals damage and throws away aegis, which again I won’t use in PvE. Test of Faith was nice with the running mobs in the new maps though I don’t know how usefull it is with the old AI. Light’s Judgement seems like a pure PvP skill to me, though maye it could be used in WvW.

All in all my problem with the traps is still that they are placed beneath you. I was running around for 30 minutes today to try and pull mobs into my traps, but as soon as there are other people you fight a loosing battle. In genereal PvE they are unusable, and even beyond that you have the problem that the first thing that walks into the traps triggers them. Also every trap has a radius of 180-240 which means that I’d have to spend 1 sec standing in the middle of the mobs to cast it.That’s bullkitten. Make them groundtargetable with a 600 radius and everything is fine.

As said before F1, F2 and F3 should be instant cast. Spear of Courage should do more damage, because as it is it’s ludicrously weak even with the trait – which brings me to the traits and the only thing that I really despise about the Dragonhunter.

The traps: fine, you don’t have to use them, no harm done. The traits however feel very lackluster. As I said before Piercing Light does makes for some good condi damage with the traps (which only works if you actually play those) and the stability on LB2 from Hunter’s Determination is intriguing especially for WvW. The Grandmaster traits however are… weak? Useless? A little protection from virtues and some vulnerability on the weak Virtue of Courage aren’t Grandmaster-worthy. The knockback on the bow is lame as well, and obviously can’t be used if someone doesn’t want to play LB.

All in all for me the only reason to play Dragonhunter would be the longbow, but then I would have to give up a useful traitline for Dragonhunter line that gives me nothing if I don’t play traps and even then is only medicore.

I’m disappointed with the Dragonhunter so far. The idea was good, the execution not so much.

My biggest problem as a PvE player focusing on environment instead of dungeons is that the bow does not auto turn you to face the target like other weapons do. I was continually getting ‘no line of sight’ errors when the target ended up beside me or behind me. That made for a painful playtime.

Bow 1: Too slow, too weak, not enough targets.
Bow 2: Nice damage, too long a cast time. By the time you cast at something coming at you, it is in your face.
Bow 3: Total waste of time. Either give it enough slowness and a big enough block to do some good, or speed it up and give it damage. As is, it goes too fast to block more than one hit, and the block area is so small that it does absolutely nothing for most projectiles.
Bow 4: Should be a fire combo field – would be nice to have that instead of light, as we have light combo fields on other weapons. Also needs to hit behind you. Having it red out when you are trying to drop it at your feet was annoying.
Bow 5: OK, but either needs to do a shorter cage on champs or needs to have the cage hit sooner. By the time the cages show up, most things are dead (if others are fighting) or out of the AoE, thus not useful.

Virtues: as everyone else said, insta-cast. And as many have said, why have a virtue that leaps you into melee range on a specialty that is ranged? Not thinking much?

Utilities: Increase the damage and make them ground-targeting. Having them at your feet does nothing if you are using a bow, and dropping it and moving away is useless if your skills root you.

All in all, ok, not great. Needs work. Either make it ranged or make it melee, sort out the line-of-sight problems, sort out the damage problems and the cast time problems. Give us a weapon skill speed boost.

Overall grade at this point? C- .

My2Cents:

Bow Skills:

Bow #1 projectiles are far too slow, dmg i ok’ish, enemys seem to be able to simply move around them at 900+ range

Bow #2 dmg is perfect, cd is perfect, not being able to move while casting makes the whole skill useless tho.
If you compare this skill to Rapid Fire from the Ranger Longbow and to Volley from the Warrior’s Rifle it makes no sense to make True Shot so static, i’d rather see a 1-2 seconds higher CD than to stand still while casting it.

Bow #5 it absolutely has to have the cage hit sooner or no enemy ever (in PvP/WvW) will be hit by it ever. It doesn’t have to be instant but a bit sooner.

Virtues:

Spear of Justice:
Seems a bit slow as well. When i read the skill description I expected something at the speed of the Necromancers Lifeblast, the overall dmg, burst together with the burning, seemed ok to me

Wings of Resolve:
Best Virtue of all basically (also compared to the old ones), the cast time on this doesn’t hurt because it is executed very fast ( I think exactly as fast as the GS #3 Leap of Faith), very strong together with the trait

Shield of Courage:
Cast time mainly hurts on this one because you can’t execute it while in Renewed Focus, the effect as such is very nice but sadly the cast time seem to restrict most of its potential.
__________________________________________________________________

The Dragonhunter Elite-Specialization Traitline as such isn’t bad, it’s actually good with nice features, BUT the guardian already has 5 other strong traitlines so i don’t see anyone choosing DH over the usual specializations. I already see guardian as very balanced, and there are many viable options in trait choices and playstyle. I fear the DH will mainly have no impact on the guardian (in the current state of it) at HoT release while other classes get very usefull bonuses.

Just a couple quick comments – targeting does not seem to work right. Normally if a target moves a character will continue to orient on towards the target. With the Dragonhunter the target moving would simply cause losing the target instead of automatically turning to continue facing the target. Like OP received so many “No line of sight” messages when there was no visible reason that combat ability was significantly degraded.

Here is the video version of my thoughts with some gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIdJcdudau0

There are a few things I will cover here that I didn’t cover in the video, I personally feel like the weakest part of the Dragonhunter is the traits. The virtues are fine, certain bow skills are fine but the traits just don’t do any of that justice (pun not intended).

The traits: I feel like certain traits should be merged and new ones made because whilst builds can be made out of these Dh traits, they don’t really influence build diversity that much. The builds that can be made are boring and just retooled versions of old builds. Below are suggestions for what I’d like to see change in the traits, I’ve posted these before but I’ve gone back, editted it and made it better (I believe). I really do think the below changes would make a huge difference and a large impact on builds.

Piercing Light: (Change piercing light to this. Adept Tier)
Cause 3 stacks of Bleeding to targets when you reach the burning threshold.
Threshold: 3 stacks of burning

Rebounding Light (New Minor Trait, Replaces Soaring Devastation. I would like Soaring Dev to be merged into Strengthened Virtues below)
Your Longbow auto attack now bounces between 3 targets and cripples them.

Trapped (Replaces Dulled senses in the Master Tier as I want that to be merged with Hard Light)
Deal 10% more damage to Stunned, Knocked down or Immobilized foes. Immobilized foes cannot evade and deal 15% less damage.

Weakened Prey(Master tier trait replacing Bulwark. I want to merge Bulwark into Strenghtened Virtues)
Apply weakness to targets when they reach the bleeding threshold.
Threshold: 3 stacks of Bleed
Weakness for 7s

Hunter Determination (Merge Pure of Sight with Hunter’s Determination. Master trait)
Attackers outside the threshold take 10% more damage. Gain stability for every enemy hit by True Shot.
Threshold: 600

Replace Pure of Sight GM minor trait with;
Winged Defender
Activating Wings of Resolve grants you Aegis. (Then it would synergize with Defender’s Dogma the Master tier minor trait)

Heavy Light (GM trait merge with Dulled senses)
Enemies you hit with the Longbow within the threshold are knocked back and crippled. 7s CD

Strengthened Virtues (This is a GM trait and is a merger of Soaring Devastation, Bulwark and Big Game Hunter. It replaces Big Game hunter in the GM line)
Shield of Courage lasts longer and has an increased radius.
Wings of Resolve immobilize foes and deals damage
Spear of Justice increases damage dealt to tethered foes by 10%

Hunters Fortification (The current hunter’s fortification should be changed to this. GM Trait)
When you lay down a Ward, you also lay down a trap. Traps recharge 20% faster and apply bleeds.
Trap: Test of Faith (Wards include Hammer 5, Staff 5, Longbow 5)
Trap Cooldown: 45

Utilities: Traps are great in PvE and WvW but I don’t feel they’ll get any love in SPvP. Dragon’s Maw would be pretty disruptive in team fights though.

Longbow: Good weapon but not being able to shoot LB#4 without facing the right direction is annoying.
LB#5 timing is a bit off. The Ward seems to drop later than intended. Hopefully it does get fixed
LB#2 rooting you ruins the flow of combat a tad.
BUGS
Spirit Weapon Hammer doesn’t work with Dulled senses
Wrath of Justice doesn’t work with Spear of Justice.

Dirame.8521:

Rebounding Light (New Minor Trait, Replaces Soaring Devastation. I would like Soaring Dev to be merged into Strengthened Virtues below)
Your Longbow auto attack now bounces between 3 targets and cripples them.

Trapped (Replaces Dulled senses in the Master Tier as I want that to be merged with Hard Light)
Deal 10% more damage to Stunned, Knocked down or Immobilized foes. Immobilized foes cannot evade and deal 15% less damage.

Weakened Prey(Master tier trait replacing Bulwark. I want to merge Bulwark into Strenghtened Virtues)
Apply weakness to targets when you reach the bleeding threshold.
Threshold: 3 stacks of Bleed
Weakness for 7s

Replace Pure of Sight GM minor trait with;
Winged Defender
Activating Wings of Resolve grants you Aegis. (Then it would synergize with Defender’s Dogma the Master tier minor trait)

Heavy Light (GM trait merge with Dulled senses)
Enemies you hit with the Longbow within the threshold are knocked back and crippled. 7s CD

Strengthened Virtues (This is a GM trait and is a merger of Soaring Devastation, Bulwark and Big Game Hunter. It replaces Big Game hunter in the GM line)
Shield of Courage lasts longer and has an increased radius.
Wings of Resolve immobilize foes and deals damage
Spear of Justice increases damage dealt to tethered foes by 10%

Hunters Fortification (The current hunter’s fortification should be changed to this. GM Trait)
When you lay down a Ward, you also lay down a trap. Traps recharge 20% faster and apply bleeds.
Trap: Test of Faith (Wards include Hammer 5, Staff 5, Longbow 5)
Trap Cooldown: 45

I like some of your ideas here.
Rebounding Light – I agree that LB1 should affect more targets have have an indiscriminate supply of cripple.
Trapped – When you said, “Immobilized [units] cannot evade,” are you including that Mesmers can use Sword2 Blurred Frenzy but the evade frames won’t function? This should include Crippled in the list of affected conditions to have synergy with DH’s kit.
Weakened Prey – I think your wording is confused here. Right now, it means that if the player has 3 stacks of bleeding, that player will apply weakness on foes. Reliable access to weakness is a good idea, however, Guardian has very constraint access to applying bleed (unless geared for it).
Winged Defender – Should also apply aegis to all allies within the effective radius. You say it has synergy with Defender’s Dogma… but what is the quality of that synergy? So what, you get to apply burning on your next attack, bfd.
Heavy Light – I think Rebounding Light should just be merged into this one.
Hunter’s Fortification – Good concept, but the payoff is pretty unrewarding. I’d like to have “All ward skills have a reduced recharge” by no more than 15%. Change the skill to Procession of Blades, because with most wards, you’re not going anywhere and Test of Faith won’t do much. Also, rework traps so they have potential to apply more bleed stacks.

Strengthened Virtues – This one is what caught my eye. I don’t mean to hop on the “Let’s make mesmers the ideal for balance and work up toward them” train, but it really has bugged me that Mesmer’s shatter skills are all improved slightly with one trait, Master of fragmentation. And here we are, with three underwhelming traits spread out across three trait tiers. Soaring Devastation would need it’s damage reduced, however, because that is the only good one of the three.

My feedback:

Virtues:
I thought these were fun. I like the different take on them, Justice is quite strong and I like that I could make Resolve do damage. Shield of Courage was an interesting new take on the blocking capabilities of this virtue. The thing I don’t like, as it seems most others don’t like as well, is that you can’t pop any remaining Virtues when you use Renewed Focus. I’m willing to live with that as a downside for what I feel is overall an upgrade to the virtues.

Longbow:
Meh. It wasn’t very fun. Unlike some other Elite Specs or certain parts of the Revenant I can’t really pinpoint why. It was a bow with blue skills, that’s about all I can say.

1. is boring and too slow.
2. is cool, I had read a lot of feedback before I tried it leading me to believe it had something like a 3s windup. It’s not that bad, but I do think the damage needs to be increased if it’s going to root you. It has to compare to Killshot, maybe not as strong but it needs to be in the same ballpark.
3. is alright, an interesting idea. I would like to see it travel slower to actually have a chance to react to incoming projectiles.
4. is burning from a light field… weird. Overall it’s not very exciting and contributes to the “bleh” aspect of the Longbow for me. It’s nearly an exact copy of Warrior Longbow skills.
5. is cool looking, but I feel as the “#5 skill” it should do more damage. It’s also sort of hard to see what exactly it does visually… I think it immobilizes with light or something but I never really saw more than a faint ring around enemies.

Traps:
I did not get a chance to try them all. I thought Dragon’s Maw was pretty cool looking. I would like to see a damage over time effect on it, they are being chewed up by a dragon after all. Procession of Blades was pretty good for generic AOE meat grinding. Overall I feel the traps were also sort of boring, nothing that set them apart from other traps to me. They do need a trait for ground targets if that can’t just be made baseline.

Traits:
Adept: Piercing Light is really weak, the others I like. Piercing Light needs to do something else, Guards don’t bleed so adding one bleed doesn’t really do much except cover but I don’t want to take a trait just for that reason (especially when the other choices are good).
Master: I can see the usefulness of Bulwark. The minor is also interesting if you want to max burning. The other two are pretty bland to me, they don’t seem to add much and I can’t see where I would “need to have it”.
Grandmaster: The minor is fine, obviously meant for the longbow. Big Game Hunter is great but the other two aren’t. I can’t really think of any reason to take either of the other two over BGH. Hunter’s Fortification is not bad necessarily but that doesn’t seem to be what this trait line is about. If you’re going for tankiness you’re probably not using this trait line. One trait probably isn’t going to change that.

Conclusion:
The Dragonhunter (aside from virtues) feels like a Ranger… with blue effects. It doesn’t really stand out to me as something different. Traps will likely be used mostly with Greatsword, they synergize much better than Longbow, but I understand the new skills don’t necessarily have to be used with the new weapon. Using them together might be why I felt the Dragonhunter was sort of “meh”. Maybe using other Guardian utilities would make it feel better but I didn’t do that. This might be the only elite spec (so far) where it feels better to NOT use the new skills and weapon together.

Dinks.2478:

All of my fears of this class have come to pass. Traps are useless and the longbow is not an effective ranged damage weapon. This has not only brought nothing new to the Guardian but it also hasn’t brought options for anything old either. Huge disappointment. I’m putting this class and tempest in the trash bin. At least chronomancer and Reaper came out good.

Tempest will be absolutely amazing after beta, just watch. I agree with you on Dragonhunter though

Arricson Krei.9560:

Trapped – When you said, “Immobilized [units] cannot evade,” are you including that Mesmers can use Sword2 Blurred Frenzy but the evade frames won’t function? This should include Crippled in the list of affected conditions to have synergy with DH’s kit.

Didn’t want to include cripple because we already have traits like Zealot’s Aggression and Hard Light.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Weakened Prey – I think your wording is confused here. Right now, it means that if the player has 3 stacks of bleeding, that player will apply weakness on foes. Reliable access to weakness is a good idea, however, Guardian has very constraint access to applying bleed (unless geared for it).

Oh yea, I edited it now to remove the confusing wording (now I know how Anet feels). The trait would synergize with my suggested change for Piercing Light as well as traps, giving the Guardian more cover condis.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Winged Defender – Should also apply aegis to all allies within the effective radius. You say it has synergy with Defender’s Dogma… but what is the quality of that synergy? So what, you get to apply burning on your next attack, bfd.

Good idea with the aegis in a radius thing. The synergy with the Defender’s dogma is one thing but, when you’re flying through the air about to immob a target, the last thing you want is to get interrupted so having the Aegis there is also synergetic with the Wings of Resolve itself.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Heavy Light – I think Rebounding Light should just be merged into this one.

Now that you say that, I think Rebounding Light would be better served if it was merged with Zealot’s Aggression because they are 2 traits that would function well together. My suggested version of Heavy Light would already have a way to cripple targets.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Hunter’s Fortification – Good concept, but the payoff is pretty unrewarding. I’d like to have “All ward skills have a reduced recharge” by no more than 15%. Change the skill to Procession of Blades, because with most wards, you’re not going anywhere and Test of Faith won’t do much. Also, rework traps so they have potential to apply more bleed stacks.

The pay off would be more rewarding than you realize. Currently even if people teleport out of your ring of warding they still get CC’ed. This means that if the skill that is procced is Test of Faith they will still take at least 2-3k damage from crossing the line. It also means that your goal is to constantly push people into the walls of the Ring, changing how you play by quite a bit. Procession of Blades is fine though, my only problem with it is that it doesn’t require any further thought than landing the Ward in the first place.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Strengthened Virtues – This one is what caught my eye. I don’t mean to hop on the “Let’s make mesmers the ideal for balance and work up toward them” train, but it really has bugged me that Mesmer’s shatter skills are all improved slightly with one trait, Master of fragmentation. And here we are, with three underwhelming traits spread out across three trait tiers. Soaring Devastation would need it’s damage reduced, however, because that is the only good one of the three.

Soaring Devastation’s damage isn’t all that really. And it’s a skill that has a 43s cooldown. Reducing the damage wouldn’t be good I think.

Thanks for the thoughts on my suggestions. I appreciate that.

Dirame.8521:

Arricson Krei.9560:

Heavy Light – I think Rebounding Light should just be merged into this one.

Now that you say that, I think Rebounding Light would be better served if it was merged with Zealot’s Aggression because they are 2 traits that would function well together. My suggested version of Heavy Light would already have a way to cripple targets.

Even though there was no mention of this, what if Rebounding Light made all LB skills cripple? It’d definitely help with LB5, and the duration of each application would have to be pretty short, that’s for sure.

Dirame.8521:

Arricson Krei.9560:

Hunter’s Fortification – Good concept, but the p -snip- ential to apply more bleed stacks.

The pay off would be more rewarding than you realize. Currently even if people teleport out of your ring of warding they still get CC’ed. This means that if the skill that is procced is Test of Faith they will still take at least 2-3k damage from crossing the line. It also means that your goal is to constantly push people into the walls of the Ring, changing how you play by quite a bit. Procession of Blades is fine though, my only problem with it is that it doesn’t require any further thought than landing the Ward in the first place.

You make a good point, however, in the instance where an enemy is already caged (Circle or Hunter’s Ward), they would need to escape in order to receive damage, where as with Procession of Blades, they would take damage regardless but would be rewarded for reacting quickly. One could argue that Test of Faith helps a Guardian land hits on a fairly immobile target, but I’d think that the ward is enough of a barrier. Line of Warding is tricky, because either trap would work. Test of Faith essentially extends the range of LoW, and Procession of Blades rewards a player for keen placement.

Dirame.8521:

Arricson Krei.9560:

Strengthened Virtues – This one is what caught my eye. I don’t mean to hop on the "Let’s make mesm -snippy- d one of the three.

Soaring Devastation’s damage isn’t all that really. And it’s a skill that has a 43s cooldown. Reducing the damage wouldn’t be good I think.

Even though it is a 43s cooldown, it has too much going for it. An immobilize is a really strong debuff, a gap closer fairs extremely well with melee burst (whirling wrath), and it heals. If I remember correctly, a Power build would yield a little over 1000 damage, which could make for good damage – unnecessary damage. It’s like a free hand out. Think of it this way: We can all agree that 1.6k healing from Virtue of Resolve is good enough, yeah? So when you can basically do the same value in damage and a lot more, the damage throws Wings of Justice off balance.

My thoughts on issue fixes, and balancing DH from a pvp/wvw roaming perspective:

Virtues: f1 should have higher base damage. No reason to use it unless it’s traite for. I like f2, but would appreciate if the ending lag after landing was removed. f3 needs to be instant cast due to the 4-second stunbreak exploit.

Longbow: Lovely weapon, had lots of fun! Some minor, yet important fixes though: #1 should have increased velocity. #2 should have a 5 second cd. No changes to #3. #4’s vigor should be 1.5 second or 2 second ticks. Also, should be fireable backwards. #5 should have a 50 second cd. Finally, add on to one of the 2 longbow traits a longbow cd reduction.

Traps: As is, they’re awful. I’m sorry guys, I know the devs put a lot of work into making these traps look beautiful, but in pvp they’re awful. They offer next to no sustain, and cds are too long. Cripple should be on Procession of Blades, not Fragments of Faith. Also, Dragon’s Maw should deal multiple hits instead of being a single burst so that it’s condi-damage friendly (yes getting bitten by a dragon hurts, but it also hurts over time if you’re still getting bitten).

Traits:
-Minors: Defender’s Dogma could be rolled into Big Game Hunter, and Pure of Sight could be rolled into Heavy Light. Imo, these minor traits weren’t very well thought out. For new minor traits, perhaps give us one that deals with cripple/vulnerability/burning in some way, and another that deals with virtues in some way.

-Adept: Zealot’s aggression should be a 10% damage modifier. Piercing Light should also reduce trap cds, and/or give a strong effect to traps, like causing weakness in addition to giving bleeding.

-Master: Dulled senses should be a cripple on critical hit, or cripple on hit trait; it’s boring, but more reliable cripple access. Could also cause weakness, as we have little access to it otherwise. Imo Hunter’s determination could be the trait that reduces longbow cds. Bulwark could reduce the recharge of f3.

-Grand Master: Big Game Hunter should reduce the recharge of Spear of Justice imo (to around 12-15 seconds), otherwise good trait. Heavy Light only applies to longbow users, and as such should offer something else (maybe the longbow cd reduction, or cripple?). Hunter’s Fortification should give us and nearby allies the Resistance boon. Guardians seriously need this boon.

While its great to finally have another ranged option then scepter longbow and dragon hunter aren’t that good in their current state not to mention the overall lack in synergy with guardian trait lines for dps, we have access to a great deal of damage mods (44% in melee and 54% ranged using zeal /radiance/dragon hunter lines) however we cant easily maintain those bonuses ourselves much like other professions e.g Thief and Revenant.

I prefer longbow to scepter but its dps doesn’t even come close to scepter which makes it a less viable ranged option for guardians.

so here’s some of my thoughts on longbow and trait changes that would i think would help make dragon hunter better.

Puncture Shot : needs projectile speed increased and it needs to always apply cripple, the bounce requiring the 2nd target to behind the 1st is just obscene.

True shot : guardians should be allowed to move whilst casting true shot and i feel the animation lacks visual appeal.

Deflecting Shot : could use a damage increase.

Symbol of Energy : should be cast just like the staff symbol, in its current state its so easily avoidable by mobs and players it isn’t funny.

Hunter’s Ward: id prefer for the final impact to actually hit 1st.

Spear of Justice (F1) : needs to be instant cast and ranged increased to 1200, not being instant cast greatly reduce how useful this skill actually is and only 900range reduces its use with longbow/scepter.

Wings of Resolve (F2) : needs to be instant cast and leap range would be a lot better at 900 range.

Shields of Courage (F3) Needs to be instant cast , the shield also needs to be brought closer to the guardian as it fails to block melee attacks greatly reducing this ability’ s usefulness.

Purification : seems rather useless , i think raising the initial heal to 3k and the decreasing the 2nd heal to 5k improve the skill, overall i don’t see this heal having any true purpose in pvp or wvw.

traps: all traps need ground targeting to improve general usefulness and allow for back line play.

Dragon hunter traits.

Defender’s Dogma : This trait should just fully recharge spear of justice.

Pure of Sight: This trait should just be a flat 10% damage increase to longbow, such a change would help make longbow a viable weapon for more then just world bosses.

Zeal traits :

symbolic avenger: This trait would be a lot better if it was changed to provide a 10%
damage bonus for 6seconds after using a symbol skill.

Radiance traits:

Retribution: needs to be changed to 10% damage to targets with a condition , in its current state this trait is only useable in builds that use the virtues trait line. This is a rather critical change needed to allow any non virtues dps build to work, considering for the past 2+ years radiant power use to provide the same effect such a change shouldn’t be a balance issue at all.

Valor traits:

communal defenses : needs to switch place with retributive armor.

retributive armor: remove the 250 toughness when a attack is blocked and raise the ferocity gain to 20% of toughness. my reasoning for this change is valor use to be a viable dps build option before the recent trait changes, this trait also has no use to the tank play style nor would any guardian ever in their right mind choose this trait over monks focus or altruistic healing.

I am aware it may seem improper to mention other trait lines apart from dragon hunter in this thread but we don’t use 1 trait line we use 3 and its important how all 3 trait lines we choose to use in our builds work together.

currently the only real option for a dps build remains zeal/radiance/virtues i feel the all the above changes will help make dragon hunter and other dps builds for guardians viable.

I hope my thoughts/suggestions help, I’m not trying to ask for guardians to be made op, id just like to see a lot of issues we have be fixed and for us to be more then a “1 build only” dps profession.

Arricson Krei.9560:

You make a good point, however, in the instance where an enemy is already caged (Circle or Hunter’s Ward), they would need to escape

My thought was that they would need to hit the Ring repeatedly to take damage and since the ring pushes them back there’s a good chance they’d be taking double damage from Test of Faith. So escaping isn’t needed, attempting to escape is where the damage is at. And the person using the ring can decide to use banish or even the shield knock back or any knockbacks to force the target into taking the damage.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Even though it is a 43s cooldown, it has too much going for it. An immobilize is a really strong debuff, a gap closer fairs extremely well with melee burst (whirling wrath), and it heals. If I remember correctly, a Power build would yield a little over 1000 damage, which could make for good damage – unnecessary damage. It’s like a free hand out. Think of it this way: We can all agree that 1.6k healing from Virtue of Resolve is good enough, yeah? So when you can basically do the same value in damage and a lot more, the damage throws Wings of Justice off balance.

True enough.

It might be a little late, but here’s my feedback on the dragonhunter:

First of all the bow:
I really like the bow. Finally a long range weapon that isn’t called scepter for the guardian.
The auto-attack skill was (in my opinion) fine damage-wise (especially with berserker gear) and it didn’t feel too slow for me (although I haven’t tested it in PvP, so I wouldn’t know exactly what would qualify). The auto-attack did have some line-of-sight problems which have to be removed for it to become reliable.
Trueshot is an amazing skill when it comes to damage and both cast time and cooldown are appropiate for this skill. I didn’t really mind the root (since it serves as a trade-off for this skill), but I can get why most people want to get rid of it. Keep in mind though that without the root this skill might need a slightly more obvious animation to serve as a warning for opponents in PvP.
Deflecting shot is indeed a very odd skill on longbow and would perhaps be better suited as a support option (for example, it applies aegis to every ally it passes through and blind to every enemy). I haven’t tested it’s ability to deflect projectiles thoroughly, but it absulutely has to stop every projectile in its path to be reliable. Perhaps it could stop projectiles in a cone in front of the user instead of a line.
Symbol of energy is actually a rather fun skill to play with. I actually liked that it was a slow arcing projectile, since I could use the skill, then use true shot and have it hit right when the symbol hit my enemy, triggering symbolic avenger on true shot’s impact. It did have LoS issues that were worse than those for the auto-attack, which actually made it less useful than most of the symbols on my other weapons (unless I had the time to properly place it i.e. when pulling enemies). The vigor is not very useful, mainly due to the fact that it was very hard to lay the symbol at your feet, and it might be better if it would apply an aditional condition instead.
Hunter’s ward sounds great on paper, but it does need some improvements to make it viable. First of all, it didn’t always function as it was supposed to when used in the open world. Some enemies (like pocket raptors) would fly under it’s radar and not get hit by the arrow volley (only by the final attack). Other enemies sometimes escaped from the wards before they were supposed to (although I’m not exactly certain of my observation, since it happened rather sporadically). Second of all, the relatively long cast time, combined with enemies mereley being crippled by the arrow volley, made hunter’s ward relatively irreliable when it came to locking down enemies. One solution would be to change the cripple to immobilize (this might make the skill too strong though) to force opponents to use their condition removal or face the consequences. Another solution would be to make the cast shorter and give more damage to each of the arrow ticks (so the damage stays the same). I’m not a great supporter of putting the final attack on the first tick, since that would give the skill the power to lock five enemies in place with almost no counterplay.

About the changes to the virtues:
First of all, I agree that the cast times for the dragonhunter virtues need to go. It just silly to have to wait 0.75 seconds for spear of justice to be cast and then another second for it to hit. The same applies to wings of resolve and shield of courage, as they can’t be used in response to anything (which is one of the major advantages of the guardian’s virtues).
Spear of justice: the projectile of this skill has to be much faster, as right now the skill feels rather clunky to use. The damage of this skill is okay, definitely when compared to virtue of justice’s active.
Wings of resolve: When traited, you would almost use it more for the damage/leap/immobilize than for the healing, which isn’t half bad, as it attains a second purpose that way. I would, however, increase the healing radius, as right now, you have to land on top of an ally to heal him/her, which is a severe downgrade from virtue of resolve.
Shield of courage: This skill would be awesome if it was 100% reliable. I have noticed that if enemies move past the shield (stand on top of you) they can deal damage to you, even if the shield is facing their way. This is, hopefully, not intentional, as it would render the shield almost useless in PvP.

About traps:
I like the traps, however, they don’t see much play due to being cast on top of the user. Having traps cast on the user wouldn’t be a problem, if the dragonhunter was a melee spec. The dragonhunter, however, is a ranged spec and therefore performs best at range. Ofcourse, prior placement and kiting are always options, but they require foresight to pull off consistently. Most of the time, you don’t have that foresight and the traps are just another slot skill you don’t use. I didn’t even use the healing trap, because your self heal needs to be available at any time, not just at that rare occasion where everything works out. The traps I did use (test of faith, procession of bladesand fragment of faith) were alot of fun when they were activated (emphasis on when), although their damage wasn’t that great. A solution would be to make traps ground-targeted (much like marks on the necromancer) as it would make strategic placement possible (at least in PvE).

About the dragonhunter traitline:
The traitline does not really have a general direction, even though being advertised as having a general direction by the devs. Most of the traits felt out of place and some rather basic traits (such as CD reductions) are missing. The minor traits suffer from this the most, as they are either not truly a trait (the first minor trait adds the mechanic of the specialization) or very situational (justice passive effect on next attack on every succesful block, assuming spear of justice isn’t on cooldown).
The major traits are also spread out a bit too thin, as three traits (zealot’s aggression, dulled senses and heavy light) rely heavily on each other for their effects to work, which would be great within one trait, but not among three traits. I would recommend merging these traits into one grandmaster trait that could actaully be useful.
Other traits, such as piercing light, hunter’s determination and hunter’s fortification, sound good in theory, but fall short in practice (piercing light only works properly with procession of blades, since other traps only hit once, or twice if you’re lucky, the stability of hunter’s determination is needed during the true shot cast and hunter’s fortification just doesn’t deliver enough protection for it to be viable).
This leaves three traits (soaring devastation, bulwark and big game hunter) which are useful enough to warrant their placement and all of these traits are virtue oriented, which means that your build will be (relatively) virtue oriented when you decide to play dragonhunter. This is, ofcourse, rather detrimental to the build diversity of the dragonhunter traitline, as only one build truly shines, while the others only shimmer.

My conclusion is that the dragonhunter has a lot of potential to be a powerful backline damage/support spec, but it still needs a lot of tweaks to certain aspects of it to make it viable. Traps and traits in particular need a rework since they are not up to par with the options that are already available to the guardian. The virtues will be fine, as long as they lose the cast time, and the longbow would function properly if the LoS issues are resolved.

My Impressions of the Dragonhunter from the beta weekend:
I tested it only in spvp and WvW, but I can’t see much use in bow or traps for PvE anyway.

Main Issue in WvW: In the start of a fight, as a frontline of course, I want to leap into the enemy, which the Dragonhunter can do with its F2. The trait, which grants damage and immobilize is very nice for that scenario. However sacrificing the passive regeneration from the F2 in the beginning of a fight is very stupid. Thus leaving the F2 as an emergency button and the leap ability of it becomes irrelevant…
(The virtue changes are the only relevant aspect of the Dragonhunter for WvW, if you want to take this trait line for WvW, its only because of them (as I said the leap and the shield (F3) are very nice in general, but if only the leap was on F1, which is a useless virtue anyway, instead of the so crucial F2). Hammer and Staff are required weapon for a frontliner, Traps are too stationary in general.

Spvp: I could only find a playable bunker guardian variant with this new trait line. The bow just does to less damage and has no weapon which adds up with its play style. Maybe focus on a more condition based theme, that would also make traps more useful. For a power build, the auto attack damage of the bow is far too low, which results in almost no pressure from the bow as a whole. Damage of the other abilities was fine.
In general I don’t see a sense in Dragonhunter at all. The bow has no synergy with the new virtues, none with trabs and vice versa. Why is the F2 not a leap? Why doesn’t the traps grant combo fields? Why doesn’t the bow have a blast? Also to make the dragon hunter feel like a new class it should not center around burning or fire/light fields!!!!!

Summary Suggestions:
1. Increase either velocity or damage of the bow 1.
2. Add a blast finisher and change the light field to water/ethereal field (depending if you want to go more the condition direction or not).
3. Increase the AoE damage of traps, give them ground targeting, and make some of them into combo fields.
4. Change the leap to F1 and make it a leap finisher. Change the spear to F2, make it targeting up to three allies for a certain time and if they stay in a certain range: incoming damage gets splitter equally on all allies bounded this way.