Guild Wars 2

I know why virtues with DH can’t be insta cast. I’d love it, but I get why they can’t be.

But please put the boons at least as instant. Mainly with Virtue of Courage.
Aegis really has to be insta cast in order for it to be useful. A delayed block really is quite a detractor and the only way you are getting it off in response to a telegraph is if you weren’t attacking in the first place. It basically turns VoC into solely a projectile negation skill with aegis being an odd afterthought.

It would definitely be a nice tweak to make our Virtues not feel like they are weakened by going the DH route.

Huh?
Shield of Courage blocks all attacks in front of you for the duration of the channel…
So why would you need to apply the aegis at the start?

If it’s about protecting your team members, just position yourself between them and the enemy when you activate Shield of Courage.

eleshazar.6902:

It would definitely be a nice tweak to make our Virtues not feel like they are weakened by going the DH route.

IMHO, every single one of our Virtues feels stronger with DH. Hands down.

“IMHO, every single one of our Virtues feels stronger with DH. Hands down.”

I would agree that the new virtues definitely have great use and can be stronger than their guard counterparts, but Imo there is still a lot to be said for instant cast virtues.

Resolve can’t instantly cleanse 3 conditions for you and your party (immob/burning stacks/etc, but you need to accurately land on teammates to give them the effect.
Also like stated, Courage can not instantly give stab to teammates (or at all I believe), though the shield part of the skill is arguably better anyway.

I think it is somewhat of a tradeoff but DH virtues do win out in the end for various possible applications (mostly because of Courage, and Justice if you’re doing pve)

While this would indeed be a QoL change, it cannot be done without exploits involved. Any skill that would have a benefit during the casting period of the skill would allow a player to interrupt said cast in order to receive the benefits at a higher frequency than intended. This would then require internal cooldowns to prevent such events from happening. These internal cooldowns may not properly sync with the original cooldown of the skill. Alternatively, Dragonhunter’s Virtues would have to become instant cast which defeats ArenaNet’s desire to have offense-oriented Virtues.

Imagine for a moment all of the runes in the game with the “when you use a heal skill” ability. These rune effects have a cooldown of 10-20 seconds, and the majority of healing skills in the game have a cooldown greater than 10 seconds. If players could interrupt the heal and still receive these benefits, it would create several balancing issues. Thus, ArenaNet would have to increase the internal cooldown on runes which would break the balance for professions with short-cooldown heals. The same could be said about the “when you use an elite skill” runes.

The above examples are the same reasons both Shelter and Renewed Focus lose their healing and recharge effects respectively when interrupted (either by self or by crowd-control effect). If the player receives a benefit, the skill should not receive the interrupt cooldown.

Viralseed.9362:

While this would indeed be a QoL change, it cannot be done without exploits involved. Any skill that would have a benefit during the casting period of the skill would allow a player to interrupt said cast in order to receive the benefits at a higher frequency than intended. This would then require internal cooldowns to prevent such events from happening. These internal cooldowns may not properly sync with the original cooldown of the skill. Alternatively, Dragonhunter’s Virtues would have to become instant cast which defeats ArenaNet’s desire to have offense-oriented Virtues.

Imagine for a moment all of the runes in the game with the “when you use a heal skill” ability. These rune effects have a cooldown of 10-20 seconds, and the majority of healing skills in the game have a cooldown greater than 10 seconds. If players could interrupt the heal and still receive these benefits, it would create several balancing issues. Thus, ArenaNet would have to increase the internal cooldown on runes which would break the balance for professions with short-cooldown heals. The same could be said about the “when you use an elite skill” runes.

The above examples are the same reasons both Shelter and Renewed Focus lose their healing and recharge effects respectively when interrupted (either by self or by crowd-control effect). If the player receives a benefit, the skill should not receive the interrupt cooldown.

Ok, this explanation makes sense, didn’t think about that aspect before. Guess the only way we would get this is if they made VoC insta-cast, which I doubt they will do.

As to the others. The reason why you would want aegis to be on the front end of the skill is becaue VoC does NOT block all attacks. It only blocks projectiles. The projectile block is nice, but most of the times you want aegis it isn’t for a projectile, it is for a hard hitting melee range attack.

Viralseed.9362:

While this would indeed be a QoL change, it cannot be done without exploits involved. Any skill that would have a benefit during the casting period of the skill would allow a player to interrupt said cast in order to receive the benefits at a higher frequency than intended. This would then require internal cooldowns to prevent such events from happening. These internal cooldowns may not properly sync with the original cooldown of the skill. Alternatively, Dragonhunter’s Virtues would have to become instant cast which defeats ArenaNet’s desire to have offense-oriented Virtues.

Imagine for a moment all of the runes in the game with the “when you use a heal skill” ability. These rune effects have a cooldown of 10-20 seconds, and the majority of healing skills in the game have a cooldown greater than 10 seconds. If players could interrupt the heal and still receive these benefits, it would create several balancing issues. Thus, ArenaNet would have to increase the internal cooldown on runes which would break the balance for professions with short-cooldown heals. The same could be said about the “when you use an elite skill” runes.

The above examples are the same reasons both Shelter and Renewed Focus lose their healing and recharge effects respectively when interrupted (either by self or by crowd-control effect). If the player receives a benefit, the skill should not receive the interrupt cooldown.

My understanding is that the new Virtues don’t have interrupt cooldowns associated with them currently, so they wouldn’t be exploitable like you mentioned.

eleshazar.6902:

As to the others. The reason why you would want aegis to be on the front end of the skill is becaue VoC does NOT block all attacks. It only blocks projectiles. The projectile block is nice, but most of the times you want aegis it isn’t for a projectile, it is for a hard hitting melee range attack.

Shield of Courage has a tooltip error and it indeed blocks all frontal damage not just projectiles.

“Shield of Courage has a tooltip error and it indeed blocks all frontal damage not just projectiles.” —> I’ve never experienced this, you might have a good bug…
What I have experienced with Shield of Courage is that when I us F3 key it doesn’t respond, even when I’m alone, not fighting. My problem is that it is not an instant cast, it’s like I have to wait half a second to cast it, I’m not lying, and I don’t have lag problems I can assure you. ( I have a Charr character, he says something after pressing F3 key, only after that I get the boon aegis and after that the projectile shiled that it is providing. Sometimes I have to press the F3 key 3-4 times and wait half a second to get it… it is verry lame. (In simple Guardian mode I don’t have any problem with the virtues)
The other big issue is The Virtue of Resolve, when I “Leap” ( I’m in mid air ) sometimes I get blown away, dazed … and the timer goes over 20 sec cooldown… —> and I didn’t get any healing, dmg done to opponent, condition removed…

F3 is indeed blocking everything afront of you… AFTER you have finished the cast… I do not know if this is a tooltip error or a bug.

Aggrostemma.1703:

F3 is indeed blocking everything afront of you… AFTER you have finished the cast… I do not know if this is a tooltip error or a bug.

This must be a bug, because while I get blocks for things that didn’t used to be “projectiles” I’ve still gotten hit by melee attacks (Example snowblind boss’ ice breath is blockable with VoC DH mode). My guess is that instead of using the same tech as WoR they went with any attack that comes from beyond the shield gets blocked (which means things at max melee range could get blocked as well as non projectiles). I tend to activate it in close melee range, so it doesn’t block melee attacks. Will have to test it out tonight to see.

eleshazar.6902:

This must be a bug, because while I get blocks for things that didn’t used to be “projectiles” I’ve still gotten hit by melee attacks (Example snowblind boss’ ice breath is blockable with VoC DH mode). My guess is that instead of using the same tech as WoR they went with any attack that comes from beyond the shield gets blocked (which means things at max melee range could get blocked as well as non projectiles). I tend to activate it in close melee range, so it doesn’t block melee attacks. Will have to test it out tonight to see.

If you are getting hit with melee attacks while Shield of Courage is up, I would guess it is because the attack is long enough that it also makes contact with the back of your character’kittenbox. Video demonstrating shield of courage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8fo5YMUdKw