Guild Wars 2

Hello hammer guardian players!

During recent theory-crafting/experimentation, an issue has become apparent.

I’ll outline the main points that led me to my conclusion before sharing other thoughts.

- A new symbol of the same type overwrites the last one.
- Writ of persistence increases duration, which adds a pulse of heal/protection
- Quickness increases hammer chain speed.
- Hammer chains usually take 3.7s
- Quickness brings that down to about 2.4s
- Symbols of Protection with Writ of Persistence last 4s

I believe the result under quickness is:
- Sumbols are overwritten before pulsing their extra damage/prot from Honor.
- This could account for a ~11% loss of hammer damage

I feel like this has been overlooked by Anet, as quickness traditionally adds 50% to auto attack damage, but here there is an artificial limit.

This actually reduces the value of Symbolic Power and Symbolic Exposure.

With boon duration boosts from a revenant and/or bountiful utility item, boon sharing from melee mesmers or dagger/warhorn eles, is it possible that honor is sup-optimal or even redundant?

With all the other boons thrown around, virtues can offer healing, and perhaps around 27% damage.

Valor can offer ferocity, allied toughness, extra aegis, and more.

Radiance can give more crit, blinds, 10% damage under retal, extra burn, etc.

Other combinations are: valor/virtues, virtues radiance, virtues zeal, valor/zeal, valor radiance. More damage mitigation, soft cc, and more direct damage amplification/sources.

Currently my main reasons for even bringing Dragonhunter to a fight despite the delay to F2 (inc. possible interrupt) are the F3 duration-based (rather than count-based, eg. focus) block and cripple uptime from traps, which may be even redundant in an organised team. (As an aside I feel like fragments of faith offers far more than procession of blades to a group.).

Essentially, honor’s relevance in organised, instanced group content depends upon foe mobility and closeness of ally stacking. It’s also inefficient for ranged weapons. Given the small redundancy in the damage available, coming from a bonus offered by the GRANDMASTER trait, the value of this trait line seems quite limited.

This post isn’t here to tell people not to bother with honor, or to discredit what has been achieved in both playing this build/role, and expanding the meta-playing audience’s vision from the generic GS/LB/mace builds. It is powerful, and has its relevance, but the limitations make whether a revenant could get more out of my ascended gear worth consideration. Utility should be freeing, no?

The aim here is open discussion about other viable hammer builds. I feel quite boxed in with this “meta” build, and the redundancies leave the build somewhat underwhelming.

Please do share thoughts, data, or other suggestions, and for goodness sake do correct me thoroughly if I’m mistaken.

You will get no argument from me that the majority of guardian traits, utility skills and numerous weapon skills are badly designed.

That being said your wrong in that the previous symbol is overridden.

It simply places a second one down and they both continue to pulse.

Right from the wiki

" A player can maintain only one mark of the same type at a time, making a new one while it is still active will dissipate the first one."

mark =! symbol
if you have quickness you’ll have 2 protection symbols up for a short period, they both trigger

This is specifically from the symbol page.

“A symbol is a marked effect that guardians can place on the ground, where they inflict damage to enemies and deliver a boon to allies that enter it. Symbols generally persist for a few seconds and then disappear. A player can maintain only one mark of the same type at a time, making a new one while it is still active will dissipate the first one.”

Sounds like a job for Target Golem!

Meld.1629:

This is specifically from the symbol page.

“A symbol is a marked effect that guardians can place on the ground, where they inflict damage to enemies and deliver a boon to allies that enter it. Symbols generally persist for a few seconds and then disappear. A player can maintain only one mark of the same type at a time, making a new one while it is still active will dissipate the first one.”

The wiki is wrong about many things and a lot of stuff is outdated. At least visually 2 symbols are up when using quickness, but I guess it’s worth it to double check.

So you can confirm I get that full damage under quickness? If so I’m pretty pleased. It’s kinda hard to see with everything that’s going on during a proper fight. I’m lucky to even see the enemy itself half the time if they’re not enormous.

You can have 2 symbols of the same type running concurrently.

Tested it just now to be sure.

Haha crisis averted. Thanks for that. I hope that wasn’t counting any kinda fade-out animation they’d use. Also hope someone fixes the wiki.

If anyone wants to test it themselves, attack a golem without targeting it, after the second hit on the hammer lands turn around and plant the symbol on the ground without hitting anything. Press 1 as soon as it’s planted but keep moving, you’ll place a second symbol down outside the first so that you can observe both ticking for their full duration.