Guild Wars 2

DH Power Medi

Hambow medi Virtues/Valor/DH felt more viable than your typical scepter/x build variant using Zeal or Radiance. F3 is a nice engagement tool, F4 offers a nice block but felt it should be instant cast rather than 1/4 cast time. Choosing traps over medi just felt like a death sentence… we can’t lose a stunbreak, full condi cleanse and overall medi versatility.

Condi DH – with & with out traps

Traps:
Again, full trap builds are a death sentence for anyone who gets caught in a melee fights. Procession of Blades is the only trap I would considering its small cd and quick hits. That said I wouldn’t dare trade JI or CoP for it. PoF is a less risky utility, it offers more support and can most definitely deliver more damages through burn stacks. Therefore, I can’t recommend traps beyond defending Stronghold (it doesn’t perform better, mind you) or some WvW defender build where people can literally stack traps on 1 point and attack on walls. I see those being fun but very much niche build types.

Weapon sets – Bow vs GS vs Scepter/Torch
Whirling Wrath is basically a mobile Procession of Blades that you can use when ever you want to, has a less cd, has more F1 procs and can stack more burns if used in Fire Fields.

Torch is self explanatory – it’s a must for burn guardians.

The only merit LB has is LB#4 burns damage when it’s a direct hit. Even then, LB#4 feels incredibly clunky and does more harm than good when “No Line of Sight” pops up. It’s slow, you can’t cast it behind you and It’s overall incredibly frustrating to use.

Condi Guardian DH Virtues
Unlike Power where F2 is a useful engagement utility (and a damaging one), F2 makes for a terrible disengagement item in comparison. The only viable DH Virtue for condi guard is F3. F1 will never be used.

Final Consensus – TL;DR

I feel Power DH is stronger than your typical Zeal/Radiance + Scepter/x build. It offers more versatility as well as a more viable range weapon set in general.

There’s no reason to go Condi DH in competitive TPvP. There’s only 1 or 2 skills in LB that’s useful. The other LB skills doesn’t offer the same amount of damages compared to Power builds. Traps are not just a more risky play style considering it’kitten or miss, but you lose the stunbreak, sustains and condi cleanses from JI/CoP/PoF. The damage, sustains and utilities are worse than the GS/Scepter/Torch burn meta build.

I do like the fact that Process blades + Light’s Judgement + Dragon’s Maw is a death bomb. I feel Traps are too easily triggered by clones rather than players. Light’s Judgement should have a bigger attack radius.

Things I like to see added or changed

Consider making Virtues #3 instant rather than 1/4 cast time.

Dulled Senses needs to also effect our downed state’s #5 knockback ability

Fix “No Line of Sight” on LB#3 and LB#4 – Make the character turn to fire just like how LB#2 and LB#5 works. The character freezes/pause/stop is utterly frustrating when trying to use these skills.

Consider the knock back trait, Heavy Light, effects all Guardian projectiles rather than the Bow specifically. This includes projectiles from whirling wrath, binding blade, torch throw and scepter’s aa.

Saiyan.1704:

Traps:
Again, full trap builds are a death sentence for anyone who gets caught in a melee fights. Procession of Blades is the only trap I would considering its small cd and quick hits. That said I wouldn’t dare trade JI or CoP for it. PoF is a less risky utility, it offers more support and can most definitely deliver more damages through burn stacks. Therefore, I can’t recommend traps beyond defending Stronghold (it doesn’t perform better, mind you) or some WvW defender build where people can literally stack traps on 1 point and attack on walls. I see those being fun but very much niche build types.

I do like the fact that Process blades + Light’s Judgement + Dragon’s Maw is a death bomb. I feel Traps are too easily triggered by clones rather than players. Light’s Judgement should have a bigger attack radius.

The Process blades + Light’s Judgement + Dragon’s Maw combo doesn’t kill though, pretty far from it on celestial stats (I got a guardian to half health with perfect combo + pewpew). Procession of Blades was nice on its own though, but the low power was a problem.

Power stats + Test of Faith was the only trap I found good enough to forego a meditation.

Can’t say if the longbow was worth the loss of a trait line, though the skill 4+5 combo kills doorbreakers a lot faster than staff’s skill 5+3..

It depends on the traitline you remove. If you trade Zeal or Radiance for DH, then it could be well worth it, assuming you go hambow. Hambow is the only viable build that i’ve come across thus far. That’s not to say that nothing else would work.

If Scepter’s biggest draw backs were range dmg and supports, then Bow’s drawbacks is incredibly poor close range combat and self sustains/self support (opposite to what scepter is).

• Dragonhunter’s biggest weaknesses are power medi guardians and Thieves. Even warriors are easier in comparison. These classes can teleport to you all too easily if you’re on the Bow, you’ll not just take hours to attack (slow cast speed), but your character will freeze thanks to “Line of Sight” error code…. you would have to pan your camera and use the skill immediately to reduce the chances of having your skills fail on you.

I can handle the “slowness” of the bow.. what I can’t handle is the “line of sight” items. At least awknowledge my attack moves; make my character turn in that direction to fire. Idc if it has to be a slow turn or what… i’m tired of my character freezing because of “Not in Line of Sight”. Skills #3 & #4 need to work like #2 and #5.

Test of Faith is basically worthless without Dragon’s Maw. People jump in, trigger it, then jump out like nothing. Regardless of all that… we lose too much survivability through utilities to make switching to a trap worth it. I’d consider them if they were either a 600 range cast like purging flames or instant cast so melee doesn’t eat me alive as easily as they do.

Longbow is infinitely better than scepter/focus. I can’t go back to normal Guardian now I need DH. The #2 skill is basically a 4 second killshot that pierces, and the #5 skill is just so amazing for area control. With GS you are basically a cleaving machine, much better than the single target playstyle of scepter/focus.

Anet pls release HoT already.