The longbow I felt was a really solid weapon in concept. The auto-attack could probably stand to be a bit faster.
The traps on Hunter’s Ward activate too late into the skill, by the time they go off most targets have already walked out, because they have to stand there & be pelted with arrows for several seconds before they’re cc’d, that seems counter-intuitive.
Other than that, Deflecting Shot, & Symbol of Energy have really picky targeting, & it’s hard to reliably activate the skills.
The longbow is a lot of fun though, & it honestly makes me wish that the new weapon proficiencies were made baseline when they released, & only the skills were tied to the elite specs. Becuase I’d love to use hammer & bow for my Valor/Radiance/Virtues build.
The traps are kinda unimpressive for the most part, & a pair seem redundant.
Purification would probably be more useful if it behaved like Healing Spring on the Ranger, because as it stands it can’t compete with Shelter, & I almost feel like I have to use Monk’s Focus & Smiter’s Boon to top off the heal before I can even consider using it.
Procession of Blades isn’t really a utility skill by my definition. It has no utility at all, it just does damage. Making it a whirl finisher could give me a reason to slot it, & could work really well with Consecrations & Symbols.
Test of Faith seems incredibly redundant when Fragments of Faith does an almost identical amount of damage, cripples as well, & throws out several aegis. Unless Test of Faith is given some other effect to make it stand out, I could never see myself taking it over Fragments of Faith.
The new Virtues are really the most disappointing part of Dragonhunter, & the part that really hurt how excited I initially was for the class. Not being able to instant cast them, or cast them during other actions makes them far less flexible than the base Virtues, & arguably less powerful. They’re flashy & they look cool, but they’re just flat out not as good as the baseline Virtues.
Spear of Justice feels like it does less damage, & is far less reliable than Virtue of Justice. It has a pretty heavy tell to, & I’ve found most people just dodge it.
Wings of Resolve can be traited for damage & immob which is nice, but the leap is very short & makes it questionably useful as a mobility skill. The nerf on the heal’s range has made it almost worthless for team support, & given that’s the skills entire purpose, that seems like a misstep. It also feels slow, you take a lot of unavoidable damage during that leap, & should someone interrupt you, you’ve essentially wasted that virtue.
Shield of Courage doesn’t reliably block. I’ve been hit with projectiles during the shields duration, almost every time I’ve tried to use it. It’s also way too far from the character casting it, people can stand inside of it & still shoot you. A lot like Wings of Resolve, it’s hurt really bad by the casting time, & I’ve even been interrupted while trying to use it as a stun break. I’m hoping that’s unintentional because I cannot see any reason a stun break should ever be open to interrupts.
Not being able to do things like casting Virtues while channeled Renewed Focus, or Shelter, or rezzing allies makes them far less useful, & having casting times has also made using Justice to blind someone during the wind up for a really big hit so they miss, & throwing up an Aegis to catch an attack you saw coming unfeasible.
I was really excited about the Dragonhunter more or less from the minute it was revealed, but the Virtues just feel like much flashier, much worse versions of the ones we already have, & the traps are largely redundant. In the state the Dragonhunter is in right now, I’d just be happier if I could equip the longbow to replace my scepter, & pretend the new Virtues & traps don’t exist.
Slightly unrelated, but I feel the new weapon proficiencies would work better as baseline because some of the new weapons could excel divorced from the new trait-lines & it stands to really limit future builds for classes that are getting an off-hand or main-hand weapon now, & get the other in the future.
(edited by JeffTrachea.9735)