Guild Wars 2

Are the HoT zones just awful or do I suck? I feel like I know how to play this game but in the HoT zones I get slaughtered all the time. Should I be running a bunker build? Using rifle or longbow? I’m using hammer/gs in zerk gear, 1800 tough, 3k armor, 19.4k hp, I feel like I should be fairly tanky, but I certainly am not.

Well for Certain HoT enforces More Long term effective Defence traits and weapon sets.
things like Hammer/gs with Super squishy armour will be a death sentence unless you have extra means to get out of the way fast or Block with a shield.

in addition to that HoT creatures are tougher with more HP plus some like the Mordum snipers (those crosshair markers above your head) hit for a lot vs squishy armour usually around 8-10k per sniper.

all i can suggest is look into defensive traits or running a shield if you don’t want to change up gear , Ticking Hp regen through Adrinal health can help in the long run when you have a blocking>evade rotation and when you are kiting , so you could also try to swap some trinkets for Magi and drop some Critical hits as you really don’t need anymore than 50% crit chance sweet spot when all those other group buffs are around.

Going double-melee is more or less a death sentence in HoT. It irritates the kitten out of me, but learn to love longbow or rifle (and the Berserker elite spec).

i can run full zerker double melee in HoT in rev and be just fine…i can imagine war being harder to play in there