Guild Wars 2

Hey my beloved Guardians.

First of all I want to introduce myself. My name is Rajnesh and I’m a WvW Roamer for the Guild Ultranumb[Numb] on Kodasch[DE]. I’ve played mainly core medi guard before HoT and been playing Dragonhunter since the release of HoT. Most of the time I do Solo/Duoroam or making duells.

When I read the latest patchnotes my first thoughts were: “Darn it Anet,…are you f***ing serious about this? I mean I knew True Shot would be nerfed, but 20%? And then also another nerf to the ONE Trap i use? WoW!”
But since I love the Dragonhunter i kept playing it and thought about how to change my build and my playstyle a bit to fit the new situation.

Before the patch I was running full zerk medi trapper with traveler rune and a soldier backpiece, since the high Dmg output did let me onehsot the most classes with the LB2 + JI + ToF + Spear of Justice + Smite Condition Combo. True Shot + ToF + GS2 have been my biggest Dmg outputs. It was a burst build over all that was based on killing the enemy as fast as possible since the most cooldowns are pretty high on DH to be honest.

My build before patch:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJATRnsABVDhVdCmDB8DhlEiKb/+vAU+5j+s/aZDgEA-TVCFAByt/gAXAgFOEAMcEAA4BAgkyvCV/BLlgppLgUAmJyC-w

After the nerf on the Trap Dmg, and the Trueshot I thought about changing this build over all to stay viable mainly against Revs, Druids, Scrappers, Cele DD-Ele and new Regen Warriors. Against all other classes i did not had any problems at all before and after the Patch. So i realized I just have to live a bit longer now to make anough dmg over the time, or have another burst availabe to finish of fights.

So lets see what the patch gives us overall:

+ Deflecting Shot: The base damage of this skill has been increased by 17%.
+ Symbol of Energy: The damage of this skill has been increased by 25%.

Ok, thats actually a pretty good buff on the longbow over all. Lets play around these buffs!

So here is my new build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJATRnsABVDhVdCmDB8DhlEiKb/+vAU+5j+s/aZDgEA-T1CFQBYRJY0MxkGdBFS9Hko8gBHBgFcIAEoSM5s/ABuAAA4BAQKgy1ZB-w

I know have a bit more sustain through the marauder trinkets, the food AND the combination of Sigil of Blood + Omnomberry Pie, which give me a good chance to heal myself on crit. I have the sigil on the longbow because it is the weapon i do most autoattacks in fights. Together with the Medi heal it’s more then enough to stay healthy a bit longer. A nice side effect of the food is the bigger critical dmg over all.
But how do I adept my playstyle to this build?

At first I only started to use Symbol of Energy on myself right before swaping to greatsword to get a sweet burst with sigil of hydromancy + GS1/GS2 + Symbol of Energy + Smite conditions (when I have condi on myself) when an enemy gets into my melee ranger after getting some shots with the longbow before. A nice side effect,…with the energy sigil as second sigil on my greatsword I nearly can get perma vigor if I time the weaponswaps right. It is not the big burst, but most of the people aren’t aware of it and get traped.

At second I started to really focus on hitting Deflecting Shot! I tended to miss a lot of them but right now I’m on 8/10. It’s just perfect to knockback warriors when they’re using their shield to reflect your projectiles. It’s just repeating and trying to hit every Deflecting Shot, thats it.

At third I tended to kite too much on greatsword,…since the patch I was going back to hitting more autos with it and try to find GS3 + smite condition Combos while being under high pressure just to get some dmg done and blind a potential enemy burst.

At last, I try not to hit True Shots with JI port,…cause it just got so predictable. I tend to rather use the port to hit GS5 again like in core guard builds. Of course I still port True Shot when I see the opportunity to finish of a fight.

So what did the patch to me? It made and will make me a better guardian again, a better player over all, since I’m not able to just braindead oneshot people. I still got some problems with Druids and real good Revs,..but the rest of the classes I’m able to kill most of the time.

Thank you for that Anet!

BUT: NO THANKS for still giving us guardians ONE viable build over all in WvW Roaming. And we are still the only class without a passive 25% movement increase, and still bound to 1-2 runes to play. I would love to see a traitrework, and a rework on spirit weapons, just to be able to play more then 1 viable build.

Thank you for presenting a positive spin on the patch. I was waiting to see if anyone would do what you did. I’m trying to get better playing my guard, but all the QQ doesn’t help.

Eh my gripe isn’t so much the reductions to traps and bow.

Even with them guard is a good middle of the pack where builds over all the classes are concerned.

My gripe is

1: Everything the guardian can do is done better by another class (some even do many things the guard can do better for instance ele, engi and rev)

2: The only semi viable build for pvp is variations on med/traps as a middle of the pack build. Even then smart players counter it extremely easily because it has very little flexibility or depth.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Eh my gripe isn’t so much the reductions to traps and bow.

Even with them guard is a good middle of the pack where builds over all the classes are concerned.

My gripe is

1: Everything the guardian can do is done better by another class (some even do many things the guard can do better for instance ele, engi and rev)

2: The only semi viable build for pvp is variations on med/traps as a middle of the pack build. Even then smart players counter it extremely easily because it has very little flexibility or depth.

Whats wrong with a jack of all trades class? Im pretty sure other classes cant do lots of stuff at the same time.

Ryou.2398:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Eh my gripe isn’t so much the reductions to traps and bow.

Even with them guard is a good middle of the pack where builds over all the classes are concerned.

My gripe is

1: Everything the guardian can do is done better by another class (some even do many things the guard can do better for instance ele, engi and rev)

2: The only semi viable build for pvp is variations on med/traps as a middle of the pack build. Even then smart players counter it extremely easily because it has very little flexibility or depth.

Whats wrong with a jack of all trades class? Im pretty sure other classes cant do lots of stuff at the same time.

The problem is that everything the guardian can do can be done better by a rev, ele or engineer better.
They also can often do this while having greater flexibility of role with the same gear.

So guard/Dh is meh decent middle of the road with its medi/trap builds (the only really decent build it has) but unless your extremely attached to the class you would be better served using a ele, rev or engi because they could allow you to do more.

I actually played solo roaming with a hammer/lb build yesterday using 2 traps and 4 shouts without a single point in valor. I went for my celestial armor with rune of the trooper and used sigil of blood/energy in the bow and energy/perception in the hammer and omnom food for life steal.

I invested in honor, virtues and dh.

And i can say i didnt lose out on one single encounter where i wasnt out numbered.

Will swap my armor if i get the resources to convert my condi armor to some thing with power/precision/healing power.

Will work some more on this and optimize the stats but also try to get some soft cc in since main issue is people getting away from me.

Might swap the hammer for gs to get a gapcloser and/or swap in judges intervention.

Its a good build though and playable.

We were a bunch that explored life steal build a long time back and didnt get them to be competitive but the long bow offers a very different playstyle compared to the core guardian and it might be possible that this playstyle can benefit from life steal builds.

Brutaly.6257:

We were a bunch that explored life steal build a long time back and didnt get them to be competitive but the long bow offers a very different playstyle compared to the core guardian and it might be possible that this playstyle can benefit from life steal builds.

Agree on that!