Guild Wars 2

I thought struggling to get to legend in season 1 was hard and I hated bunker mesmers but atleast with enough trap spam you would be able to pressure them off node or kill them (in solo queue at least). But this new meta is absolute cancer and already rivals my hate for cele ele meta. It is still early I know but necros now completely dumpster guardian. Now this was the case before as well but for the most part necros in pvp were never good enough to pull it off, now all they have to do is mash buttons. Most Guardian skills gives boons or require us to use some proactive defense but the advent of Reaper and now this much boon corruption ruins our class.

Necros now have unblockable marks, reaper 5 unblockable chill, signets corrupt, scepter corrupt, and most aggravating is the reaper 2 corrupt. The boon removal changes for guardian are hilariously stupid. Get conditions, use contemplation, enjoy getting them all corrupted, die.

I’m done with gw2, I’ll maybe check season 2 when there is something worth pvping for. What a joke of a game.

Necros have had unblockable marks for a while so that’s eh.

My guardian/dh revolved around shelling out burn, burn wasn’t changed, so I’m fine.. Only boon I have at any time is fury. Adapt man.

Once they fix smite condition to actually remove 2 condi’s instead of 1 (like the patchnotes say it should be doing) then that’ll be a big help vs necro’s. Add onto that that maybe you should just not use contemplation and you’ll see a big difference in chances to win. Dragonhunter vs necro is also not a braindead run in class, its beatable if played properly. I exclusively play dragonhunter and it was relatively easy to get into legendary, if you were struggling it wasn’t class.

Furthermore, its been 1 day since patch is out, play and test around a bit more, from my personal PoV it seems like dragonhunter will be in a solid spot.

Aidal.4901:

Necros have had unblockable marks for a while so that’s eh.

My guardian/dh revolved around shelling out burn, burn wasn’t changed, so I’m fine.. Only boon I have at any time is fury. Adapt man.

Yes they have had unblockable marks for a while but necros usually skill spam things for no reason, a good necro can make shelter never work. Furthermore its the fact that they make f3 active useless and chill became stronger that I dislike them.

I am surprised you still even use burn guard. It only applies one condition and if anything HoT brought even more cleanses to every class. How do you plan on beating a druid, engi, mesmer, tempest (even with new DS), necro plague signet etc? Granted it is somewhat readily re-applicable but they should kill you if they know what is going on.

Dril.2495:

Once they fix smite condition to actually remove 2 condi’s instead of 1 (like the patchnotes say it should be doing) then that’ll be a big help vs necro’s. Add onto that that maybe you should just not use contemplation and you’ll see a big difference in chances to win. Dragonhunter vs necro is also not a braindead run in class, its beatable if played properly. I exclusively play dragonhunter and it was relatively easy to get into legendary, if you were struggling it wasn’t class.

Furthermore, its been 1 day since patch is out, play and test around a bit more, from my personal PoV it seems like dragonhunter will be in a solid spot.

Smite condition is used more for damage than cleansing. Its proc on your heal via trait is more valuable than the skill itself because that is the time you really do want to try and remove a condition (poison). Ever since HoT classes can condition spam much harder than before so I have no idea why you would think clearing 2 random condis is going to matter. Furthermore, my main point was pointing out the buffs to contemplation are irrelevant if necros get that much corruption anyway.

Also I never claimed it was a braindead match up but if you fight random legend necros the fight can be determined pretty well by how much shroud the necro has. Now if you fight a good necro like Ostrich, Noscoc, Slin, etc. they will absolutely 100% dumpster you because not only do they know how to maximize their skills in the match up in the first place but now have even more utility on skills to corrupt your boons.

You are correct and incorrect at the same time that DH wasn’t the reason for the struggle to legend. It was due to premades, some bad match making, and getting legacy of foefire but having less/no bunkers. But I can almost guarantee if I had learned rev instead it would have been easier because it can carry bad teams far harder than DH can.

Smite Condition removing 2 conditions rather than 1 is actually a world of difference…

You’re right though, guardian can’t carry hard lol. I am enjoying using Smite Condition now compared to before… I don’t feel as overwhelmed by conditions with both my heal and utility removing 2 conditions rather than 1 condition at a time.

Necros are very strong but at least Necros are easier to kill then the other problem classes from the last meta like Chrono, Tempest, and Herald. You can’t honestly tell me you were beating those builds 1v1 last meta because there is no way in hell you were.

brannigan.9831:

Necros are very strong but at least Necros are easier to kill then the other problem classes from the last meta like Chrono, Tempest, and Herald. You can’t honestly tell me you were beating those builds 1v1 last meta because there is no way in hell you were.

You must be joking. Chrono (unless they ran time warp) and herald were not the difficult to kill because almost noone but esl players ran them well. My issues with new necro are that it makes our boons a liability.

Its becoming apparent that people here are from various skill levels and experiences. Theres too much nuance towards the match ups than I would care to write to respond to posts like this. Suffice to say I do not see guard having a place without some more changes.

Hmm its hard to tell atm due to unranked not rly giving very skilled opponents most of the time. But from my personal experience i think dragonhunter will have a solid spot in the next meta.
Thiefs are fine 1v1, in bigger fights they can be tricky.. but they are very fragile so if your team can help they should be punished fast.
druid/engi feels like beatable matchups for now, need to fight some top top ones to check if they can actually beat me.
ele/mesm weak now, revenant was alrdy a relatively easy battle, now its even easier.
it really is just necro that causes most problems, and so far i dont feel like its that uphill of a battle, with smite conditions removing 2 on a relatively short CD, and then using your CDs/positioning properly its deff a battle that can be won.

So how exactly do you see guard not having a place without changes? i think its a top 3 class atm

Oh and smite condi removing 2 conditions is a biiig difference, you can use it for dmg purposes but really just keeping your condi’s low is so nice and you can’t deny that. You can use it almost immediately on the first set of condi’s that he applies on you and just keep shooting from far away, by the time he finally gets to you (keep distance with whatever you got), you can pop some traps and its not even that unlikely that you’ll have smite condi up again. popping heal in a dire situation once again will remove 2 more AND if hes close deal a nice bit of dmg.

Either way i think dragonhunter will be viable at the very least, if not one of the stronger classes in the meta.

Side question: Im currently still running rune of the pack, do you think this will stay the best rune to use? or maybe could it be better to go with a rune that doesn’t provide any buffs? Im thinking with all this boon convert it might be more of a downside to get the proc from pack than a benefit? idk maybe it depends on how many necro’s the enemy team has)
Opinions?

Dril.2495:

Hmm its hard to tell atm due to unranked not rly giving very skilled opponents most of the time. But from my personal experience i think dragonhunter will have a solid spot in the next meta.
Thiefs are fine 1v1, in bigger fights they can be tricky.. but they are very fragile so if your team can help they should be punished fast.
druid/engi feels like beatable matchups for now, need to fight some top top ones to check if they can actually beat me.
ele/mesm weak now, revenant was alrdy a relatively easy battle, now its even easier.
it really is just necro that causes most problems, and so far i dont feel like its that uphill of a battle, with smite conditions removing 2 on a relatively short CD, and then using your CDs/positioning properly its deff a battle that can be won.

So how exactly do you see guard not having a place without changes? i think its a top 3 class atm

Oh and smite condi removing 2 conditions is a biiig difference, you can use it for dmg purposes but really just keeping your condi’s low is so nice and you can’t deny that. You can use it almost immediately on the first set of condi’s that he applies on you and just keep shooting from far away, by the time he finally gets to you (keep distance with whatever you got), you can pop some traps and its not even that unlikely that you’ll have smite condi up again. popping heal in a dire situation once again will remove 2 more AND if hes close deal a nice bit of dmg.

Either way i think dragonhunter will be viable at the very least, if not one of the stronger classes in the meta.

Side question: Im currently still running rune of the pack, do you think this will stay the best rune to use? or maybe could it be better to go with a rune that doesn’t provide any buffs? Im thinking with all this boon convert it might be more of a downside to get the proc from pack than a benefit? idk maybe it depends on how many necro’s the enemy team has)
Opinions?

Good analysis, but have you actually done much pvp since the patch hits? I’m rather curious as to how we’re faring against boon-corrupt city at the moment; wish I could get on to see for myself.

Also, that’s a great point about rune of the pack. If you’re using a marauder’s amulet you’re going to be sitting above 50% crit anyways, so perhaps a power/x rune would be more helpful than the power/precision of pack. The boons it gives might actually be a liability. You can most safely bet that even 1 necro means your boons will be getting corrupted, but if the enemy team has 0 necros, pack rune would still be the go to imo.

I’ve done a good amount of pvp already yea, its alright tbh, dont rly feel like anything is crazy strong.

About the runes, been looking at alternatives but rune of the pack is simply too good idk.
I’ll probably stick with pack for now.

Dril.2495:

I’ve done a good amount of pvp already yea, its alright tbh, dont rly feel like anything is crazy strong.

About the runes, been looking at alternatives but rune of the pack is simply too good idk.
I’ll probably stick with pack for now.

Pack is good, another one you might try is vampirsm.

The health steals are nice at 975 and can add a little extra burst.

Or if your in a really condi heavy match leadership or lyssa can help quite a bit.

I’ve gone a different direction with my testing.

been using paladin amulet with scrapper runes, 3k toughness on top of 7% less damage taken when within 600 range of enemy.

with the buff to smite condition and contemplation, we can deal with condis a bit easier (from things not named reapers) and the extra bulk from paladin/scrapper gives you that extra sustain.

working out decently so far.

imho, Dragonhunter is stronger then it was in Season 1.

Tempest/Auramancer have gone down, this means our Burst sticks without the huge AoE Healing keeping everyone up and Nullifying our instant Damage output.

we hard counter thief, a profession that’ll defintly come into meta this Season which gives us a lot more use in this Meta.

More DPS are around so burst is ALOT more impactful, not to mention we seem to have more sustain in our Zerker build then the average zerker build from a lot of other proffessions specially after Rev Sustain got Nerfed hard.

Energy Sigil took a hard nerf, meaning dodging out of true shots consistently is harder, Dodging our traps just got harder, as it’ll be WAY More punishing avoiding us now then it was last season.

These four points alone put Dragonhunter in Meta in all honesty and give it a good reason to be played, so why ur raging over this issue I have no idea, yes some things weren’t touched that really needed to and none of the Traits were moved around which have so desperately needed so.

but this was overall a Positive patch for a Dragonhunter SPVP Wise, PvE they rly didn’t help us at all and that wasn’t good, calm down with the rage though in all honesty. currently I run Maurader (Don’t want to drop the ferocity for the Paladins) with Trapper rune.

Dragonhunter was Inheritaly buffed, with 0 drawbacks in terms of Capability outside the disruption aspect. I guess just hope Arena net don’t build a Vendetta against Dragonhunter for remaining viable and Nerf it again just to ensure it doesn’t get through.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Aidal.4901:

Necros have had unblockable marks for a while so that’s eh.

My guardian/dh revolved around shelling out burn, burn wasn’t changed, so I’m fine.. Only boon I have at any time is fury. Adapt man.

Yes they have had unblockable marks for a while but necros usually skill spam things for no reason, a good necro can make shelter never work. Furthermore its the fact that they make f3 active useless and chill became stronger that I dislike them.

I am surprised you still even use burn guard. It only applies one condition and if anything HoT brought even more cleanses to every class. How do you plan on beating a druid, engi, mesmer, tempest (even with new DS), necro plague signet etc? Granted it is somewhat readily re-applicable but they should kill you if they know what is going on.

It applies one very powerful condition, and rapidly (every three hits, plus AoE burn so his friends can get in on this action.) nine times out of ten Judges intervention with WW and ToF (No cast time so it can be dropped anytime, and its unblockable CC(traited) so it can jar them out of defenses) takes down near everything a few pegs. I’ve actively oneshot thieves with it even after the buff they got.

Problem is people see burn as one condition. But it’s the only condition I know that I can actively drop 1-3k+ per tick on with relative ease, and guardi pumps it out far faster than a single class can cleanse it

Been playing a medi DH with just purification for traps. It’s been working pretty good. Haven’t had a problem with condis most of the time. I do not see the class negatively impacted by this balance patch.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Necros now have unblockable marks, reaper 5 unblockable chill, signets corrupt, scepter corrupt, and most aggravating is the reaper 2 corrupt. The boon removal changes for guardian are hilariously stupid. Get conditions, use contemplation, enjoy getting them all corrupted, die.

Reaper cannot afford to run the RS 2 corrupt and the signet corrupt at the same time. Keep that in mind when playing against a Reaper.

What is RS 2 corrupt?

Kuya.6495:

What is RS 2 corrupt?

There’s a trait in Curses that makes skill 2 in death shroud corrupt boons.

Since most Reapers are going to have Reaper and Soul Reaping as two of their specialisations, though, they have to choose between Spite (which has the trait that makes signets corrupt boons) or Curses for their third line – they can’t have both. (Well, technically they can, but it’s not worth giving up Soul Reaping.)

Which means that if a reaper is packing a lot of signets, then DS2 probably won’t corrupt boons. YMMV on how much knowing that helps, but that’s what Cecilea is referring to.

Necromancers have lots of ways to corrupt boons, but reapers at least can’t have all of them.

Ah. I’m still deciding whether to go curses or spite.