Guild Wars 2

Before HoT I used to main guard, then stopped playing for a while until HoT came out (and of course I rolled a revanent once I came back cuz it’s new!) So now I’m about to bounce back to my original main (now my alt I guess) and jesus every review I try to find is so bipolar about dragon hunter… some people think this is the worst elite spec, while others think this spec is absolutely overpowered and incredible…

I don’t know what’s going on here but I’ll try for optimism and assume the people who think its great are correct. In which case, what’s great about it? Any particular build that especially stand out? Anything specially that makes u guys love the class? I’ll probably unlock my guard’s ES anyway cuz of sentimentality but I want to look forward to something!

Basicly.
Its overpowered VS stupid people (who run over your traps. F3 blocks all attacks against your characters face, thats the only op part)
Well, it dpeends what content for, check mettabattle.com theyve got what you need to know pve and pvp wise.
GUARDIANS NEED 25% MOVEMENT SPEED>>>>>>>>>>>

I’m not going to trash anyone but lets say that I believe metabattle.com and others who follow it religiously fueled this “zerker meta or get out” mentality that caused me to quit in the first place. Which, of course, is not the website’s fault they never told anyone to be toxic to others for trying out other non zerker builds but it kind of turned out that way…

Here’s what happened:

Dragonhunter at reveal and during the first two BWEs was woefully underpowered due to poor mechanics, bad traits, and bad trait placement, as well as under-tuned damage. In BWE3, some of the stuff was buffed and DH became playable, but still suffered from poor or uninteresting mechanics. After BWE3, Karl added a plethora of buffs.

The result at HoT launch is silly levels of damage and sustain due to overbuffed abilities and traits. However, the mechanics are very simple and shallow. That leads to many players finding DH overpowered, but top players can brush it off most of the time.

i think the biggest misconception was that traps are bad. They were not as good as they are now but by far were they as horrible as people made them to be.

In conquest and if they are traited you basically enter fights with two full bars of utilites. The biggest fun I have with them are the mind games you can play.

The numbers backin BWE2 where lower and that was the reason to say DH is bad and has bad mechanics. I argued multiple times that this is bullkitten and if the numbers where higher it would be cosnidered strong/OP/awsome.

All this talk that the trap theme does not fit the guardian made some people salty but I believe only for some this was actually an honest opinion. the rest just band waggoned.

DH is great against noob ppl who dont even know their classes. But its mediocre vs skilled ppl. It shines in good skilled hands.

Ragnarox.9601:

DH is great against noob ppl who dont even know their classes. But its mediocre vs skilled ppl. It shines in good skilled hands.

which is true for every class out there…

DH is fine, people having a trouble with traps does not know what is stability and does too much shadow step (thieves in particular), CC mixed with condi damage are key against DH. Chronomancer on the other hand, screw that spec, it’s broken everywhere…

Personally, I think the DH is great in both PVE and PVP. The longbow is a nice addition especially in the new HOTs area and actually having some threat at range is great for PVP. The trait line for DH is pretty strong and has some interesting traits for both damage and defense. The new Virtues take awhile to get use to, but are incredibly strong. Traps are a nice change of pace and add some real damage to our otherwise defense-oriented utility bar.

For PVP, the overall consensus I have heard for DH echoes the other posts above me that DH destroys newbs, but suffers against high skilled players. But, I personally think the trap builds will slowly disappear and the new DH medi guard will be a strong competitor.

Very famous esl player are bandwagoning to revenant
It started with phantaram who with his op dd ele as rev is very good in sustain.
Then sidreneer left his thief for rev as its mobility is game breaking.
Finally tage left his guardian as sustain damage at close and range is unrealistic.

But yes people keep talking on dh…
Be aware that at worst period of the profession tage kept playing guard (he was almost alone).
This is not the case anymore…for me this is pretty telling. It is kind of as if helseth would leave mesmer.

I think when things will settle in PvP and people will learn how to deal with DH this elite will look a lot less powerful.
I like playing DH (it was unexpected honestly) but I spending more time with Herald at the moment.

My only problem with DH is that stupid daze trait. The traps are really freakin strong but after several annoying deaths to them, I figured out which ones do what and how to counter them. However, that Daze trait is hideous against everything not fortunate enough to have stability and with knockback on longbow combined, I think it’s just a little too much considering Guardians can spam a wide area with traps and kill you effortlessly while preventing you from even touching them with aegis+invuln+shield of courage. Aside from that, I do think fighting DH traps are a L2P thing and I do REALLY love Dragonhunter. I run a meditation build on mine and find it much more rewarding and fun to play than simply spamming traps on some poor dudes and getting off easy nukes.

DH is heavy punishing people that don’t dodge or dodge at the wrong time. Having multiple threads that make people dodge (GS#2, traps, GS#5) is helping.

Because the traps are a obvious tactic people now start to figure out how to outplay DH in a 1on1, hence why quite a few classes do well against DH.

The problem starts when there are ‘messy’ teamfights and it is simply impossible to keep track of what to dodge while having multiple enemies. DH will snipe from range and when one is downed he will JI in and place his traps.
In those messy fights you either focus the DH (who has some means to delay/defend) or you will probably feel the pain… that is were most of the salt comes from because most teams are not as coordinated as ESL to work around the DH threat.

Adjusting trueshot and ToF a bit will work wonders in fights I guess and let’s the DH stay fun.

Biggest issue I have with it is the mobility and limited counterplay options. Wings of Resolve and JI make the class arguably better at distance engagement than thieves and mesmers/elementalists, which is a bit troubling considering the burst damage being objectively better than say, backstab, and on what’s pretty much an identical cooldown, except at 1200 range, while still bringing tons of group support and durability. The over-the-top traps and their massive radii and powerful effects make the class very difficult to approach and attempt to contest a point.

Rev is simply better at sustaining and thus used more heavily in competitive teams, as strictly speaking the meta comes from not losing a point more than the capacity to capture them.

DH is overly-punishing to play against when not playing an optimized “meta” build well, or a build without a lot of matching durability and stability, and brings enough of everything to a team to make them highly desirable in pretty much any situation.

When it is countered by an equally-durable/bunker-esque build often found in the upper echelons of play, it is fair. The problem is that when paired against anything but this kind of build, it completely dominates and skilled play attempts are futile due to its high adaptability and fairly potent capabilities in almost any given situation other than sustained mobility or disablement towards other boon-based builds.

Assuming someone knows where you laid your traps, yes they can be countered. however:

1: traps cover 90% of a point. (with he exception of Foefire mid) If i want to cap that point, i have to risk the damage. The counter to this is to dodge into every point you try to cap. This will cause the trap to miss if there is one there. Not bad. The problem there is the secondary effects of the traps.

2: Traps can be dropped on top of you. While traps can be used to secure a point prior to a fight, the can be dropped mid fight. for melee classes such as Warrior, or theif. this is a huge advantage. A Warrior has no choice but to get up in your face to deal damage. this means they cannot reliably avoid your trap damage. Sure, warriors have stability, they also have a block and they have endure pain, but that amounts to a total of 10 seconds of sustain vs your many more seconds of damage.

3: The longbow is more powerful than the ranger long bow. it is literally the most hard hitting weapon in the game, has a ridiculous cooldown and gives you the advantage in Ranged, therefore you now have the advantage at both melee and ranged.

4: The Sustain and support on zerker DH is greater than that of a warrior build for it. This means that not only does a zerker DH have the advantage in ranged damage and melee conflicts, but also in sustian and support.

Overview of the DH

Ranged DPS: A+
Melee DPS: A+
Sustain: A+
Support: B

This the equivalent of making a and character with 5 stats at 18 and one stat at 16.

emkelly.2371:

Assuming someone knows where you laid your traps, yes they can be countered. however:

1: traps cover 90% of a point. (with he exception of Foefire mid) If i want to cap that point, i have to risk the damage. The counter to this is to dodge into every point you try to cap. This will cause the trap to miss if there is one there. Not bad. The problem there is the secondary effects of the traps.

2: Traps can be dropped on top of you. While traps can be used to secure a point prior to a fight, the can be dropped mid fight. for melee classes such as Warrior, or theif. this is a huge advantage. A Warrior has no choice but to get up in your face to deal damage. this means they cannot reliably avoid your trap damage. Sure, warriors have stability, they also have a block and they have endure pain, but that amounts to a total of 10 seconds of sustain vs your many more seconds of damage.

3: The longbow is more powerful than the ranger long bow. it is literally the most hard hitting weapon in the game, has a ridiculous cooldown and gives you the advantage in Ranged, therefore you now have the advantage at both melee and ranged.

4: The Sustain and support on zerker DH is greater than that of a warrior build for it. This means that not only does a zerker DH have the advantage in ranged damage and melee conflicts, but also in sustian and support.

Overview of the DH

Ranged DPS: A+
Melee DPS: A+
Sustain: A+
Support: B

This the equivalent of making a and character with 5 stats at 18 and one stat at 16.

3) is completely wrong. If you haven’t seen revenant hammer you’ve not seen what strongest 1200 ranged attack is like. Hammer 1 crits for 3k’s easily while DH LB 1 can only crit 2.2k. Hammer 2 crits for 7k easily and if you get the right spot it double hits and crits for 13k+ along with its 2 second cd. DH LB can barely hit 6k and 8k+ if you get vulnerability on the target. Hammer 3 and 5 both do about the same as Hammer 2 while LB 3 and 5 do half of LB 2. Revenant hammer is the best ranged burst there is. It doesn’t help that hammer 4 completely negates any ranged attacks which makes revenant hammer an auto ranged killer. You’ve to get into melee range if you want to have any chance against hammer revenant.

Ok as a DH here is what are the points that needs to be fixed in my opinion.
1) a good dh never puts all traps down because skilled people just dodge them thats fine its a counter mechanic.
2)daze needs to be remove on traps its stupid and annoying and way too good if you time them you get 4 interupts that sometimes interupt dodges too.
3)dmg is way too high it needs a nerf something like 70% of current dmg should be fine.
4)they should make the changes PVP exclusive thats becouse traps are ok in PVE now.And there aren’t many places in PVE where you can use them.
5) yes the cooldown is way too low.You can basicly place 1 wave of traps and by the time someone comes you already have another wave thats like 8 dazes.
6) they should stop making them trigger on mesmers clones.
And now what i think will be nice fix.Keep the current base cooldowns and rework the trap trait make it do something else that way we will have normal cooldowns and no daze.

dronikal.8150:

…

Or not. I like that option better.

I did read a bit in here because i read DH is OP across the board.
I don´t play guardian, i am a tempest fan. Can´t rememer a lost fight against a LB DH. Regardless of traps or not. But i am a zerker counter with strong ranged defence. Against other zerker classes that charge into melee it is deadly. So you need to play and build smart. You can´t win with some builds even if you are a top player and i like it that builds and tactics realy do matter and its not down to “Meta” and reflexes.
Of course numbers should be reviewed, but basically don´t blame numbers all the time.

For the record, my person best “in a match” hit with Trueshot against a braindead glass cannon Chronomancer (who was not aware I was above in im Skyhammer), was 15,000.

This required: F1 teather on him (10%), he was over 600 range away (14%) I had Aegis (20%), he was burning from a symbol I used (7%) and was in said symbol (10%) and had cripple from an earlier trap another DH had placed (10%). I also was using Scholar runes and was at full health (+10%).

These “omfg what the hell hit me” Trueshots take a HUGE list of variable to set up. I run a non-trapper rune build that maximizes on my Trueshot bursts and try to set up the ideal circumstances. When you can make it all align, the damage is phenominal, but its is highly countered by bruiser builds and anything named "Reaper, Scrapper, or a good Tempest/Chronomancer.

I’m going to be a MIGHT bit unhappy if Arenanet does the ludicris decision of simply “nerfing damage” when what the DH really needs is increased counterplay options.

Give Trueshot a better visual cue, increase cast time to 1 second from 3/4.

Give traps a delay before triggering and let them be visible until they are armed and ready.

Give a shorter tether break distance on F1, and dont let us use it instantly after the spear lands.

Lower base healing and vastly increase scaling on F2, so we’re not heaing for 4k in berserker gear.

There are SO many options for making the DH more fair and balanced without negatively killing its PVE and PVP damage options. Let players have the opportunity to get GOOD and reflect those highly televised Trueshots.

I mst say I specced DH to win spvp.. they are extremly powerful at controlling. Though these players did dodge roll and used pets to destroy my traps… the traps are far from the best though.. Truth shot! That is a beast together with AA. You hit like a trunk. So while CoR might be king of WvW Truth shot is it in spvp.

I do think most of it is a l2p issue, but truth shot might need a tweak or two

Not surprised: The ability of the DH is a wide gap between scrub and pro. It wrecks scrubs, but pros can deal or ignore it. It’s no different than vanilla Guard … if you know what you’re doing, you can avoid telegraphed moves and symbols; our best features. If you don’t, they destroy you. We don’t have a ‘nibble and sustain’ build.

This isn’t something that can really be fixed without a major revisit to the class concept. I’m doubtful as they are starting to build upon that foundation with an elite class and probably a second elite class in conceptual stage.

How do you beat traps? same way you beat necro marks and ranger traps, walk/port into the point, roll. Done all traps go off, none hit you.