Guild Wars 2

@sephiroth, why not just play ele then? For the same support role, you’d bring a LOT more to the table with an ele than a funky necro build that doesn’t do anything well. The necro’s one and only role is to boon corrupt and spam condis and it does it VERY well. For that reason alone, you see it used in most coordinated teams.

I believe the bouncy chest was simply missing completely Everyone on the team got theirs except dj huehue.

The 6th effect of the rune doesn’t appear to apply tormenting on heal like it’s suppose to. Tested in PvP on golems, NPCs and players.

Djinn.9245:

Leveling a character to 80 and through the entire Personal Story should teach you all you need to know. If it isn’t, that is Anet’s fault.

Also, where did Anet state that HoT was supposed to be for those who were better players? I don’t remember seeing that at all.

That is a terrible attitude to have. Like everything else in the world, it takes will and practice to get better at anything and that includes learning how to use your classes in depth. It doesn’t come handed to you on a silver platter. If it was that easy to be mechanically perfect, there ‘d be no reason to play the game. You’d be better off watching a movie or reading a book.

Some of it might not be intuitive and anet doesn’t do too good of a job at explaining it, but nothing stops you from doing a bit of personal research on the wiki , watching some videos, or doing experiments yourself etc.

HoT was specifically designed to be challenging and it says right there on the sales page.

“The jungle represents a challenge for you to overcome. Creatures within it use our new advanced AI, making the fights you encounter harder, giving you the opportunity to work with your friends and put your abilities to the test in battling Mordremoth’s forces and the deadly inhabitants of the jungle.”

Like other people have suggested, I recommend you practice in PvP and dungeons until you have a better handle on game mechanics before attempting to tackle HoT content. You won’t be able to just stroll in and faceroll over the keyboard to get through the content. PvP is an excellent training ground even just to get an idea of how high up the skill ceiling for any class can be when played by a skilled player.

Sooloo.1364:

Opc.4718:

Sooloo.1364:

This is why divisions need to be scrapped altogether, the only way some people can make themselves feel good is by trashing others. PvP is toxic enough without this garbage.
Also being proud of being good in a video game is kind of sad to be honest, most of us have real world commitments.

Lol what you mean is, you’re bad at the game so the only way you can make yourself feel good is to dismiss the achievements of other people. Being a hypocrite is kind of sad to be honest.

You have that reversed, I’m not trashing anybody. Comprehension is not your thing.

I deliberately reversed it so you could see the irony for yourself. It appears to have wooshed over your head.

“Also being proud of being good in a video game is kind of sad to be honest”.

I know it’s hard for a hypocrite to look at a mirror and see your own flaws for yourself but that phrase right there is downright condescending and toxic. In your narrow view of the world, you have an opinion of the kind of activities one is allowed to be proud of, and of course, anybody not conforming with your views is “kind of sad”. And in my humble opinion, that kind of attitude is indeed, very sad.

Sooloo.1364:

This is why divisions need to be scrapped altogether, the only way some people can make themselves feel good is by trashing others. PvP is toxic enough without this garbage.
Also being proud of being good in a video game is kind of sad to be honest, most of us have real world commitments.

Lol what you mean is, you’re bad at the game so the only way you can make yourself feel good is to dismiss the achievements of other people. Being a hypocrite is kind of sad to be honest.

It’s a soft reset, you’ll face roughly the same level of opponents you did before but the rating volatility is high so it changes much quicker depending on how your placement matches go.

The rating of your opponents is also taken into account. Obviously winning and losing against good players is a completely different case to doing the same with scrubs. Since only a soft MMR reset was done, the system already knows who is suppose to be good or not, and those players will likely still be at the top even if they lost more than you because they’re competing against other very good players.

Justine.6351:

Ya I meant far and contesting a neutral or decapped node. Ya I get team that sometimes freak when they fold and I trying to keep point from being capped.

So next question,

I’m on the map with svanir and chieftain. I’m on the middle node squatting because a thief keeps coming by trying to decap. Down below in yard there is a 2v2 going on for 2min and everytime I try to go the thief hops on point trying to decap. After my allies lose the 2v2 they blame me and say I getting reported for throwing the match. Did I do it wrong? I was on a druid (“zomg why you no heals us!”) at the time and a previous match I saw people freaking cause people wern’t fighting on points. Confusing.

Unless you’re 20 points away from winning and you holding that node is the only thing bringing the points in, it’s almost always better to help win the team fight than to keep the node. Your team really should’ve tried to disengage and move the fight onto the node, but that’s not always possible.

As usual, it’s all about reading the situation and knowing the tradeoff between the points you’ll gain from keeping the node capped vs winning the team fight and snowballing from there.

Cynz.9437:

Here is problem: Anet customer support does nothing about verbal abuse in game. I have been harassed whole season 1 and 2 simply for playing thief and not switching. Things i was told were bad, like realllllllyyy bad ( i would get instant permaban if i posted screenshot of one of such “convos” here) – despite all reports i kept seeing same people every day in matches.

You know what happened when i tried to bring attention to the issue? Imagine you get robbed, go to police and officer beats you half dead – yeah that.

Counter comping and getting good team compositions is a huge part of the game. Thief, unfortunately, is often not a very viable pick especially in previous seasons. By not switching, you’re already throwing the game before it begins. Seasons are inherently a cesspit of frustration and overboiling tempers because everyone is out to win, and you deliberately reducing your team’s chances of winning by picking bad classes is a pretty understandable cause for people to get fed up.

I’m by no means defending the actions of people who can’t control their own tempers, but you shouldn’t expect people to be nice to you either for screwing your own team over. I too, want to play whatever I want and to hell with everyone else, but I understand its a team game and to win, you sometimes gotta make sacrifices and not be selfish. It’s a two way street.

Harper.4173:

You’re not getting me – of course dragons are not real.
That doesn’t mean that the well-established ideas of what a dragon is and isn’t can go right out the window. Of course there is variation – but it has to fall within a certain range to maintain the suspension of disbelief.

Your argument that they aren’t real doesn’t mean that you can have a cat with dragon wings tacked on running around and you can suddenly call it “a dragon”. It doesn’t work like that.

Just because it isn’t real in OUR universe doesn’t mean it can defy fantasy conventions. The classic archetype of dragon does not appear or behave the way this one does. By calling this creature a dragon you create expectations which are not met by the creature itself.
They could have called it something else and had it be something else.
It might be a wonderful “pokemon” for example but the way it is constructed it does not make a good dragon.

Gw2’s dragon is also a sentient primordial force predating the existence of human gods so that makes it an Eldritch monster more than anything else, in that we can’t really decipher it in terms of any conventions we know about. On one hand, this gives the authors the freedom to do whatever they want, but on the other hand, you’re right I was expecting the baby dragon to show more menace as befitting its lineage. Giving it cutesy mammalian traits cheapens it and makes it lose its air of mystery as an ancient force of nature. Sure you could argue this is just how it appears as a baby, but give it some dignity d*mn it. An eldritch monster shouldn’t be producing normal cute babies that you can train like a puppy. Where’s the subtle show of a hidden killer instinct? At the very least make it look vicious when it starts attacking!

Randulf.7614:

Yes but we no longer have the same level of authority since we are Commander in title only and work outside of The Pact. Braham is neither part of the Pact or our Guild.

I’m not seeing where we have acted out of character – we are a Guild leader now working independently. Realistically the only person a Norn will truly listen to is Knut and it would be more our responsbility to convince him of our plan and direction so as to discourage more lives lost. If Braham wants to charge off and get himself killed in the name of revenge and glory…so be it. It is def not our place to interfere in that.

On a side not concerning our responsibilities, I’m still not entirely convinced that we are acting responsibly in allowing Taimi exclusive access to Dragon research which would be benefit all of Tyria, when we have 3 Orders which we should be trusting in a lot more with that info.

Ignoring titles and formality, we are pretty much the only person powerful and connected enough in universe to be challenging dragons. That makes it our responsibility to do the right thing if we don’t want the world to end.

As it is, Braham wants to call a crusade against Jormag and lead a Norn army to slay it. The plan proposed by the commander is to pitch the dragons against each other, where there will be zero lives lost as they destroy each other. At best, Braham’s plan will result in a LOT of Norns being killed, at worst, it ruins the commander’s plan by distracting Jormag at a critical time, Jormag doesn’t get killed, and both dragons proceed to destroy the world before they annihilate each other. In between the two extremes, a bunch of norns get killed and Jormag is also killed, but we’re left to assault Primoridus on our own at the cost of countless pact solider lives.

Clearly, Braham being allowed to proceed with what he wants to do is in no one’s best interest except his, and it’s going to affect a lot more people than just him, so it falls to us to stop him because we’re in the best position to do so. We’d simply not help him retrieve the scroll, and judging by the fact that braham and rox combined do pretty much zero dps, they’d never get through the cave alive.

I believe the reason why Taimi doesn’t share her research is because of simple bureaucratic red tape. Phlunt has already been attempting to hijack her research and he has the legal right to do so because she’s an underaged progeny and he’s a Councillor. Phlunt is also Inquest however, and you can bet the research he acquires wont be shared to anyone except to further the inquest’s interests. They aren’t known for being particularly magnanimous or caring about the lives of anyone except themselves. If it becomes known that Taimi has been undertaking further unsupervised research, you can bet everything would be confiscated and put into incompetent, indifferent or malicious hands. I doubt the pact can protect Taimi or her research if that’s what Phlunt chooses to do. As it is, all the research is going directly to us, the person best positioned to take down dragons and cares enough to do so, so that’s a win all around.

Randulf.7614:

Braham is acting in character for a headstrong Norn who is grieving for lost parent. He has had poor development up to this point and to me, this makes him more interesting. Believing in the Legend of the Tooth and charging forth to defeat Jormag is more in keeping with how the Norns should be than relying on science and tech from other races.

I think the issue is that ppl look at Braham’s reaction from a human perspective when he is from a different culture. Frankly, my Norn would gladly take up the Hunt and join him in Glory!

Yes Braham is acting somewhat in character and I can understand his actions, even if its absolutely irresponsible on his part and makes me lose all respect for him. But as I mentioned above, you’re the commander in charge of making sure the world doesn’t end. Braham’s course of action endangers this AND the lives of a lot of norns who really don’t need to be needlessly sacrificed. It should be your responsibility to stop him, but the commander never does.

This isn’t a human perspective, this is the cold rational perspective of a competent leader with bigger responsibilities than their own desires. As the commander, we’ve proven to be pretty competent so far but this episode has shown a huge lapse in our judgement which is completely out of character.

If , as a Norn commander, you decide to follow Braham’s path, you’d also be chucking all your responsibilities out the window and you’d be unfit to be commander. You’ve also likely just doomed the entire world, or at minimum, a lot of lives that didn’t need to be lost. As the story has been setup so far though, our identity as commander of the pact supersedes any original racial identity, so this would be completely out of character too.

Talonblaze.3175:

He’s going to continue doing so until he learns to grow up, or find his actions cause a grievous mistake he will forever regret.

I fear the next grievous mistake is going to result in a very high body count. At this point, the commander should be doing an intervention, not let him bumble his way onwards to disaster. If it means losing him as a friend so be it, there’s 2 dragons and the rest of the world to worry about first.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Perhaps this is part of the problem. Because of our lack of story choices and our inability to intervene in situations where you can see disaster written on the walls, it creates this sense that you’re at the mercy of the plot, whether it ends up being good or bad. In this case, it seems almost certain that Braham is about to commit his entire race to a disaster on what could possibly be a genocidal scale, all because he’s acting in a manner that seems childishly irresponsible.

Meanwhile, we’ll have to sit on the sidelines and watch it unfold, powerless to do anything unless the writers write our own character into a position where they can bash Braham over the head with an oversized cup of wake the hell up, because that’s just the nature of the story. That’s what irks me the most. Still, I’m hoping it doesn’t get to that and I’m hoping the writers do a good job of redeeming the situation somehow.

I think you nailed the problem on the head – the whole scenario feels so out of character for how I imagine a commander in charge of keeping the dragon-pocalypse at bay would act. With so much at stake, you don’t just let a guy free to pull off his incredibly stupid plan that he’ll most definitely regret later, and you especially don’t aid him in getting that crucial last component he needs for said incredibly stupid plan.

That was very jarring and I feel like slapping every character involved in the story for allowing it to happen as it did. If this was a book I was reading, this is the point where I’d chuck it at the wall because the plot contrivance is making everyone act dumb (and out of character in the case of the commander) and its annoying.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Braham is a young adult still realing with hormones who lost his mommy during a war.

Get some perspective maybe.

Regardless, he’s in a position of influence, and he’s about to lead a whole bunch of norns to their death and royally screw up the commander’s plan to resolve two dragon problems at once bloodlessly.

As the old adage goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and he’s not acting responsible at all. I have no respect for anyone who pulls a stunt like this when they’re in such a position of power. If he can’t get his emotions in control, he shouldn’t be calling the shots.

If it were up to me at all, I’d have made sure Braham never retrieved that scroll once it became apparent he was so recklessly out of control. He can then continue to be as angsty as he likes as long as it doesn’t come with the potential for great disaster.

The fact that the commander doesn’t think of this course of action annoys me too. It should’ve been evident from the first interaction that Braham was unstable, and you don’t go around putting potent magic into the hands of someone like that.

Tissitra.4153:

The above calculation proves that this is false. BOTH major DH builds (marauder symbolic and meditrapper as listed on metabattle) can heal for over 25k HP in 30 seconds on average. The number for symbolic is actually EVEN HIGHER than that from using traits in the honor line:

+ 0,1k from every dodge using slefless daring
+ 0,6k from every aegis using pure of heart
+0,6k from every symbol using writ of persistence

Assuming 4 dodges, 3 applications of aegis (shield 4+virtue passive+hunter’s determination ) and an average of 3,5 symbols (sword 2 + scepeter 2, 10 and 6 second cooldwon respectively) over the course of 30 seconds, you get in addition about 5k every 30 seconds, so the healing available to the meta symbolic build using everything on cooldown is about

30k IN 30 SECONDS OR 1K PER SECOND.

Now the other two professions with the same healthpool as guardian are thief and ele. The best marauder builds for these according to metabattle are d/p and fresh air. According to my calculations, marauder fresh air gets about 11-12k healing over 30 seconds, d/p a bit less. So DH healing on symbolic is about THREE TIMES what these builds get. If you take into account all the blocks that DH has, it seems VERY hard to not see an issue with this.

This is just cherry picking data.

There’s a reason why fresh air is not viable, and thief sustain is focused around evades and not heals/blocks like guardians. Neither classes fill the same role as DH, so it’s not even worth comparing them. No matter what variant of DH you play, you’re a slow moving point holder and you NEED the sustain that comes with this role.

And of course, in a real fight you’re likely going to be poisoned the entire time, you wouldn’t be spam dodging as the endurance becomes available, you’re not going to be standing perfectly in symbols the entire time, the f2 is easily interruptable, the enemy can easily counter the heal by simply not walking into the heal trap and kiting the DH (wow counter play!) etc etc.

Tissitra.4153:

Razor.9872:

Do you think you can express your counter-opinions without lines like “you’re 100% wrong”, “most of your suggestions are outright bad or useless.”, “your post is nothing more than…”? That’d be great.

The wording may be off-putting, but he is making one valid point at least: it is quite likely that many of the DH players who ‘generously’ accept in their posts nerfs to say procession of baldes or dragon’s maw play one of the meta builds, which use neither of these things – and in fact, if you take into account their other suggestions (see OP’s post), the meta builds would be either mostly unaffected or potentially even slightly buffed by the ‘nerfs’ they are so graciously accepting. I for my part provided above some rather concrete calculations to underline where I see a major issue that can be depicted in factual numerical terms: healing/sustain.

Only accepting ‘nerfs’ that largely either don’t affect or even buff the meta builds of your profession IS NOT being ‘rational’.

I’m nerfing the effectiveness of trap spam in lower tiers which will curb the plethora of guardian players. This will also contribute towards solving the issue of guardian being too heavily stacked and becoming more powerful because of it.

The meta build changes will be nerfs to people who don’t understand how the class really works to begin with, and buffs to raise the skill ceiling and finally make DH competitive. At high level play, guardian continues to struggle behind most of the other meta builds that find their way into competitive teams.

Your theoretical numbers and figures don’t mean much when in a real life situation, classes like warrior, rev, druid and engi continue to out sustain DH builds as you can see from pro player duels. These are classes that a DH would need to be on par with since they fill close to the same role, otherwise there continues to be no reason to take DH.

It is therefore rational to balance these abilities by nerfing the passive random elements that rely on opponents being dumb, and buffing up the parts that require mechanical skill to pull off and reward them better.

Not saying it’s your case, but legend is hardly a good indicator of “high tier” play especially this late in the season. By now, anyone who has had time to farm 300 games could’ve gotten to legend. From what I’ve seen at actual high tier play, engi and druid will beat DH, and its a roughly even matchup between rev/warrior and symbol DH (but medi traps is outclassed). I might not be 100% correct on these, but its definitely fact that DH is far from the best duelist even on symbols, is far worse on medi trapper which is only good in team fights, and has little team utility on symbols so you’re pigeon holed into an unsuitable roaming role. It works in solo Q because you can keep far node contested for a long time and people aren’t coordinated enough to counter you. And again, it is far easier to be effective at DH than at another class at the equivalent skill level, but that sharply drops off.

Those 4 classes I mentioned are bruiser sustain classes that form the basis of all good teams, and there’s no reason to take DH over any of them if DH suffers any more nerfs and can no longer keep up in a 1v1. DH doesn’t have the mobility to take the role of thief or portal mesmer, or the condi pressure of warrior and necro. As a medi trapper, it’s a good team fighter and area controller, and as symbols, a decap duelist, but as it stands, it holds an awkward role and is barely viable in coordinated teams.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times in my post, my goal is to reduce effectiveness AT LOWER TIERS while maintaining viability at higher tiers. The changes I suggested will effectively do that.

- PoB is a huge offender of trap spam at lower tiers
- ToF changes will mean it’s ineffective to simply drop it on a player even if it’s insta casted, there needs to be subsequent follow up to bring up the damage which is EASILY COUNTERABLE to begin with. Failing to counter the cc chain should be punished harder to encourage good play on baiting out stun breaks.
- Size reduction will in fact make good positioning for both DH and opponent all the more important, and will be effective even at 20-25% reduction. Especially on large nodes like foe fire mid. I actually wouldn’t even mind a 50% reduction in size, it wouldn’t make much difference to good active playstyles, and it’d certainly reduce random spammy element of traps in general. Nerfing any further trap functionality however, will simply remove one of the few things guardians are good for – area control – and take it back to s1 warrior status.
- immob changes makes it easier for decap symbol guards to, you know, decap and do its job since it takes forever to kill anything with sustain on that build. Its usage is very niche, might as well make it effective. Symbol guards already suck in team fights, but its the one build that can truly go toe to toe with all the other meta HoT builds.

As much as we like to emphasize that conquest is a team game, you still need to be able to hold up in your 1v1s even if the match up is unfavorable. This is especially the case of the guardian, which needs to frequently hold nodes for a lengthy amount of time. At high tier play, guardian sustain does NOT need further nerfs when the other meta classes already do better. Nerf to purification is short sighted, especially when it is so easily predicted and interrupted. Shelter provides a 2 second block and requires an unblockable skill to interrupt, so it’s hardly in the same ballpark. Rather, we should consider the fact that guardian needs so much heals just to maintain the same sustainability as everyone else.

I suppose it’d be alright to nerf my 500 dps symbols :eyeroll:

My proposed 2 second reduction to ToF would already significantly reduce the inordinate effectiveness of trap spam. Plus the tiered damage will mean cc-ing through multiple traps is not as effective as cc-ing through the same one multiple times. Under my changes, the first activation of the trap does next to no damage, but the damage would be added back to each subsequent crossing. Redistributing the damage this way means countering the trap earlier means you get away from it unscathed, but eating the entire chain will mean a more severe punishment, as it should be since that’s the one trick pony we have in the way of burst damage.

If diminishing returns were to be introduced to guardian traps, it’d only be fair to do the same to the aoes of every other class.

You play a thief though so you might just be a tiny bit biased. DH counters thief pretty effectively, while everything else counters DH. feelsbadman. Of course I’m biased too, but I like to think I make a good case since I play a number of classes across a number of accounts across the skill spectrum.

Prevent class stacking would certainly go a long way to cut down all the trap spam, but if anet’s not willing to make such drastic changes to their matchmaking, then the next best thing is duration/size nerfs to traps while retaining their high end viability with some circumstantial buffs.

Lucred.1802:

…I actually do just “blast it through the mid melee teamfight” a lot because it hits pretty friggin’ hard for an instacast multitarget with long range on a short cooldown (2400-4100 depending on crit and might). Especially against minionmancers as it will kill or come close to killing most of the minions, and it seems I get lucky or am able to set up angles to where the knockback blows someone onto/through someone else’s traps/marks/other ground targeted AoE with some regularity. I know it’s cheese, I know it’s not skillful, but it works more often than not.

If you’re blasting it into the middle of the teamfight, then you’re not JI-ing on to the target and dropping traps on top for a concentrated burst, and people should see it coming a mile away and move. It’s not like the complaint about trap damage, where people have actually no obvious warning before it’s all dropped, and tunnel visioning should be punished anyway. It doesn’t even deal THAT much damage.

By reducing trap duration and size, there should already generally be less dangerous aoe detritus a DH can leave around that someone can be knocked into.

If you’re really that adamant about the skill damage, it can be shaved off but it’s a complete non issue really. I don’t think its primary functionality should be changed or you risk breaking more things than intended – it is probably the only thing making bow viable. Maybe cd can be slightly increased, but the people who spam it on cd already punish themselves more than a longer cd would; it’s a skill that should be saved for trap burst, preventing rezzes, and interrupting key enemy skills and ought to be carefully rationed out by a good player.

Tissitra.4153:

I am sorry but this does not address the real core problem of DH: too high sustain and survivability. DH can heal for far over 20k every 30 seconds on symbolic build – this is more than TWICE the healing you get on d/p thief thief or fresh air ele (the best marauder builds on the other two professions that have the same HP pool as DH), while also dealing more damage overall. DH healing and in particular purifaction need to be addressed first and foremost.

Conerning dps: while ToF hits hard, I’d say it’s much less of a problem than the traited symbols – those are too easily spammable and more often than not will deal much more damage over the course of a fight thatn ToF. The other traps are not very relevant given that they are not usually used by the meta builds.

The “core issue” of DH that has been adamantly thrown all over the forums is the trap damage that low tier players are unable to counter – you can go to any of the DH hate threads right now and see this for yourself. Your comment also feels like a mashup of all guard builds at once.

There’s 3 main guard builds our right now:

1 – traps. 5 trap build, or really any build that uses the trap elite/PoB. Mostly used at low tier games, the ones where people walk onto a point where a DH has left all the traps and promptly dies. Pure glass cannon in the full sense of the word because the guard has close to no defenses at all. These nerfs will further reduce the viability of this terrible build to ensure they wont be as effective when they trap spam everything into the middle of a team fight and run away, while the entire enemy team melts. As bad as the build is, players have seen reasonable success doing exactly this, and it should really be discouraged. This is what most inexperienced players complain about.

2 – medi trap. Balanced team build that brings 2 traps. The sustain isn’t great compared to other meta hot builds and will have difficulty 1v1ing anything, but does okay in team fights when teammates can peel to let you reposition so you can set up another burst. Probably the most viable competitive build when you have a good team with you. Gets a little irritating when the team stacks a bunch of these guys because ToF covers the entire node and should be balanced with these proposed changes, but guard stacking is NOT a viable comp at higher tiers regardless. The proposed changes should also make it slightly more effective when played correctly, and not when the player is overly reliant on massive trap effects.

3 – dps symbols. 1v1 powerhouse that CAN potentially out sustain engis and druids and hold out 1v2s for a reasonably long time with good use of sword/focus blinds. Great to carry a team by contesting far node, but is otherwise a selfish build and subpar in team fights, and that’s why it’s balanced. The symbol damage is overrated, everyone already throws out way more aoe damage more frequently, and it only shines in 1v1 situations when you’re both stuck on the same small node. By the time you’re facing against decent symbol guards who can actually do their niche jobs properly, you should probably also be knowledgeable enough to counter them properly without wasting time. The healing is no where as fantastic as you suggested though, even in the bunker symbols variant, which I believe is a far less viable build in this meta.

Out of the 3 builds, only the 3rd approaches the kind of sustain that you mentioned, and it has pretty major downsides. F2 honestly isn’t an issue, its incredibly easy to predict and interrupt (often by accident). If it could be turned into an evade, I’d take half the healing. The F3 shield might be a bit too generous in team fights – slightly reducing the block arc should punish bad positioning sufficiently and that’s an effective enough nerf to overall sustainability. The 1v1 sustain does not need any further touching because it’s just barely viable as it is.

Lucred.1802:

I’m not saying Fragments is godly, I’m saying it can make or break a team fight assuming your team is either lucky (accidentally steps on one) or good (actively looks for them). I couldn’t tell you the number of times I saw a ragezerker pull out the GS so I drop it on him and his 6k Arc Divider did squat all to the 3 people he was in the middle of, and the trap itself does similar damage to about the only other skill used in that slot (Smite Condition). It’s a situational use and you’d better believe if I’m facing a team with necros I’ll swap it for Smite Condition, but in a power-heavy match I’d rather have Fragments.

Doubleclick to cast means a JI+ToF+Deflecting Shot chain is almost entirely instant (less than 1 second considering you can simultaneously cast JI and ToF and the initial aim activation of DS) and at point blank ranges where JI already orients you to the opponent a guaranteed hit. Hunter’s Verdict+doubleclick Deflecting Shot auto-orients you to the target and is a 90%+ hit rate. It’s only when you’re not right on top of the opponent that you really have to aim the thing. And even if you don’t get the knockback from DS (stab or similar) you still just did a 6-8k burst with 3 instacast skills plus the at least one AA you got in there.

That’s great fragments play then, but I don’t see a lot of use of it outside the bunker version of the symbols build, and this build isn’t particularly prevalent in either high or low tier play. Not sure it needs a nerf as it is :P

The proposed trap changes would mean ToF insta cast wouldn’t do as much initial damage, it’s only the subsequent CCs through the trap that will do most of the damage. The JI combo is kinda predictable as it is already, you wouldn’t want further nerfs to the ability to actually cc people. I can’t see any way of nerfing the knockback without taking too much away from high end viability. If you want to bring it in line with the ranger kb, you’d also have to remove the fact that it’s also a skillshot and that’d be taking a step backwards in the wrong direction towards making the game more skillful.

Like you mentioned yourself earlier, “it’s relatively easy to avoid 1v1 due to the slow projectile speed and the fact it has to be manually aimed (people flat-out miss a lot)”, so you fix that by JI-ing into the target you want. But that also means you wont be “blasting that through the mid melee teamfight”.

Fragments of faith and heavy light aren’t real issues as far as I’m able to tell. It’s not what people complain about when they talk about trap insta kill qq, and it’s certainly not used a lot by trap spammers or low skill players.

Fragments of faith isn’t all that good to start with – it’s great as part of the stunbreak trait in a 1v1 where you can block up to 5 consecutive attacks, but the enemy can SEE the dropped aegis and just cleave it off with auto attacks when they spot you running around trying to pick it up. Right now, it’s a decent counter against warrior and warrior/engi rampage elite, and I don’t want to see it losing any more viability. In a team fight, it’s very unreliable, gone too fast from all the random aoe attacks, and your team can’t even easily tell if the fragments belongs to you or an enemy DH. I don’t think low tier players even try actively pick up the fragments.

Heavy light is completely balanced by how slow and difficult it is to land the skill. More skills should be skillshots like this one. With proposed balances to test of faith, you’d need to execute the skill in combination with the rest of the cc chain VERY fast for it to be effective. There’s not much point blasting it into the middle of a team fight if you have nothing to follow it up with. If you can pull the trap combo off, you’re already well on your way to getting out of low tier fights into high tier ones, where this sort of stuff isn’t in the realm of OP anyway.

People who cry for DH nerfs without understanding what they’re nerfing are annoying, but so are people who are adamant about not making any balance changes when there’s clearly something wrong with the game state. LIKE I SAID (repeatedly), I’m not crying out for nerfs, I’m attempting to balance DH so its competitive viability stays the same while lower tier effectiveness is reduced. I’m an advocate for DH if anything.

The test of faith change is not a nerf. It’s moving the damage out from the initial trap drop to successful cc plays through the trap (and buffing that a bit more), and giving players a shorter time window to do it in. Reducing the duration means bad players who originally counted on dumb enemies walking back and forth through the trap are no longer so effective at lower tiers.

It’s practically impossible to “go behind DH” and do some dmg when the DH only needs to keep rotating the camera away from you. This will only happen in a team fight, in which case the slightly reduced block arc increases the likelihood of this happening, without changing 1v1 viability. Also currently, if the DH backs up against a wall, you can’t hit him at all which is not good design. You should be able to hit him by walking right on top of him inside his hit box, which will at least force the DH to keep moving to maintain the block. This change will increase the skill ceiling for using this skill and make it more plausible to counter.

Only warrior and thief have traits that downright remove immob. So that’s why it’s even more important to increase the duration of the immob for the other classes traited to reduce duration. Scepter immob is crucial for pulling off decap plays (and for positioning enemies to drop your traps on) and would be even better with a small buff, but clearly you don’t appreciate what it offers

And like I said in the last paragraph, I’m aware not much changed from season 1, but the fact that they’re the new flavour of the month has exposed the problems of the class and they’re not just going to suddenly go away.

It’s like you didn’t even read my thread!

sophiewhite.3149:

so youve never fought on a neutralized point to keep them from capping it? wow….

If the point is neutralized, that doesn’t mean you can’t get off the point for a while, come back once the worst burst is over, kb the other person out, then completely neutralize any cap progress the person has made. It takes a long time to cap a point, and a burst is called burst for a reason – it doesnt last very long.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Let’s break this down, Test of Faith still persists even if you dodge through which will Proc on Shield 5 throwing you out of it and F1 pulling you in, on top of if you have to attempt to kite do to more Aoe on point, and I guess you have never had to contest a neutral point, which is something that does need to happen.

Again initially I was just stating that dodging doesn’t nuertralize DH traps since they persist, yes you can avoid the damage.

It’s not difficult to avoid crossing the test of faith boundary, it’s a thin line in a giant circle. The whole cc chain can be countered by having stability, which is readily available on most meta builds. If you don’t have stab up and the trap goes down, then just get off the cap and LoS. As per above, trap duration is significantly shorter than the time it takes to cap the point. You don’t need to stand on it all the time and eat bursts.

Zelulose.8695:

Traps are instant and to be used like attacks. They can hit on use or hit over duration which makes them strong. People who say 1 dodge nullifies traps don’t understand how to play guardian. A good guardian does not place a trap waiting for someone to walk over it. They use the traps as interrupts/ damage when your not dodging. They can do this because traps have no cast time. With out a cast time you cannot react to a guardian using the trap. All you can do is hope he is new to DH and placed a trap away from you waiting for you to walk over it. Also if you dodge a trap it is likely you won’t dodge twice in a row. Given that he will probably use the fast and unblock-able f1 and suck you back in.

I have been playing allot of DH this season because they equal free win streaks often.

A good guardian will run a build that uses 2 traps at maximum. The one viable dps trap (test of faith) is countered by a) dodging past the boundary b) stunbreak/stability and passive traits that do it for you or c) getting off the point so the guardian doesn’t have the opportunity to cc you through the trap. Glorious counters!

Instead of going on and on about all these non-issues that don’t even address the reason why guardian feels unbalanced and then call for the nerf bat without thinking of the consequences, let me refer you to this thread where I go into detail about all these issues.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Rational-propositions-for-balancing-DH/first#post6316525

Keywords: rational, balancing.

There’s a lot of threads out there spewing a lot of misinformation about what a DH can or cannot do, and a lot of shortsighted ideas about how to address any apparent over powered components of DH. This sort of irrational mob rousing is akin to calling for a witch hunt and history has taught us how well that sort of stuff goes over. Previous victims include the warrior, thief and ele classes nerfed to the point of being unplayable; that’s not healthy and we don’t want to keep up this cycle.

So, here’s a thread from the perspective of someone who knows what they’re talking about! I’ve posted quite a bit on this but they’re usually buried at the back of big threads, where people have long since given up any veneer of logical discussion. By making my own topic, hopefully anet sees my ideas and anyone replying here will be addressing them and not some other irrelevant non issue.

The PRIMARY issue DH has is its low skill floor – anyone can pick it up, learn to drop traps in a minute straight and be quite effective especially in the lower tiers. Because it’s so easy to pick up and be good at, lots of players want to try it out and the resultant class stacking compounds the entire issue, with inexperienced players finding themselves unable to effectively counter even if they may be technically better players than the DH players.

This has been a balancing problem since the days of classic street fighting games when people have discovered that spamming one button over and over again will more often than not completely lock down their opponent and win the match effectively (and cause an inordinate amount of salt in the process).

Unfortunately, just like the street fighter analogy, this tactic does not hold up well in higher tiers. DH is just barely viable against other knowledgeable competitive players, and taking the nerf bat to it without consideration of its high tier viability will simply cause the overall game to be even more limited and boring than it already is – we want more classes and more builds, not the other way around. Balancing purely around the average player is not a viable solution as many people want to advocate – it’s asking for a mediocre game with no competitive edge, and what we’ll end up with is more brainless game play catering to the dumb. If we wanted that, we’d be playing farmville.

DH needs to be viable in an environment of perfect mechanical abilities, but also needs to have some abilities toned down so in the random chaos of lower tiers it doesn’t faceroll through the masses.

Here are some of my personal suggestions to achieve this: (tl;dr important bits below here!)

- Nerf procession of blades damage by shaving off its duration from 10x to 8x hits or lower. This is the pinnacle of trap spamminess – it covers too big of an area, has too short of a cd, lasts too long, and looks menacing the entire time, but is completely useless at higher tiers because good players can block through it or simply avoid it. At lower tiers, it will completely force people off point or cause a train wreck on point. Reducing the duration (and hence damage) will alleviate the effectiveness of its area denial and point pressure without affecting high level play (because good players never bring it anyway, or at least use it more situationally like downstate cleave), but anyone trapped for the entire duration of the trap is still going to feel the hurt. This is a bit of backwards thinking, but the trap wasn’t well designed to start with and I don’t see it ever being viable at high level play, it’s more of a PvE tool.

- Shorten the duration uptime of test of faith by 1-2 seconds, reduce/remove the initial damage component, but add it back to the crossing damage by making each consecutive crossing deal more damage. And shorten the ICD for taking damage. Redistributing the damage this way means countering the trap earlier means you get away from it unscathed, but eating the entire chain will mean a more severe punishment. At higher tiers, good players make use of the trap by rapidly cc-ing enemies through it multiple times once the enemy has blown their stun break. The change makes good cc plays even more rewarding, but players have a shorter time window to pull it off. This trap is fairly easily countered by breaking the cc chain, so when it IS successfully pulled off, it should put on extra special hurt. At lower tiers however, players have difficulty avoiding it on point, and class stacking traps makes the point an absolute mess to fight on. Reducing its duration by even 1-2 seconds will drastically decrease its area denial and point pressure effectiveness again, and give it a higher skill ceiling to combo ccs through the trap.

- Shrink the size of test of faith, or even all the traps, in both its inactive and active states. Good enemies can completely avoid triggering traps dropped in bad locations in the middle of a fight (especially good for punishing hastily dropped heals), and anything that reduces the overwhelming point pressure and area denial is good. Good DHs will continue to make use of cc and positioning to maximize trap effectiveness.

- Make the F3 shield slightly smaller so it’s easier to hit the guard from the sides and back (eg 160 degree arc rather than 180 degrees). This makes it easier to attack shielded DHs from the flanks especially when bursting down in a 2v1, but good players will be able to maintain good positioning to make maximal use of the shield. In addition, make it easier to hit the DH when you completely enter his hitbox range which is technically behind the shield anyway. Reducing duration is not recommended as this is really the only ability making DH sustainability on par with the other meta classes, and the entire thing is countered by meta necro staff anyway. 1v1 against engi, druids and good revs/warriors is already an uphill battle.

- Increase scepter immob time from 2.25s to 3s to make successful decap plays even more punishing, and to setup SMART trap burst combos. Good buff at high tiers, not much use in action at lower tiers.

These buffs and nerfs aim to maintain competitive viability of DH while reducing its prevalence at lower tiers mostly by reducing passive trap effectiveness. Most of the current complaints (too much dps, burst, cc, sustain etc etc) aren’t even real issues as DH doesn’t even have the most dps, burst, cc OR sustain. None of this stuff even changed from season 1. Instead, they’re symptoms of having too low of a skill floor, compounded with the fact that they’re the sudden new FOTM. Everyone and their grandmother is suddenly playing a DH and being good at it; much better in fact, than corresponding skill level players of other classes, so out comes the mobs and pitchforks.

Let me know your thoughts, and bump this thread if you’re annoyed by all the other emotionally driven nerf/don’t nerf DH threads and want to support my ideas!

Just like how everyone in this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/dragon-hunter-f3-needs-a-nerf-bat/ is quick to point out when you compare the DH block to other profession’s block abilities, “it’s like comparing apples to oranges”.

And just like how I pointed out in this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/GW2-Guardian-Wars-2/page/5#post6310611 there’s a few very specific reasons why guardian feels unbalanced and I proposed some changes to fix this.

If you’re going to go on a crusade against DH, at least make some actual good points rather than bringing out the superstitious mobs and pitchforks and hoping you catch a real witch on the way.

In case that metaphor flew over your head, stop making these silly threads. All you’re doing is drowning out the real discussions that SHOULD be taking place towards making the game balanced properly – and not around the opinions of people who don’t know what they’re going on about.

I’m glad anet’s balance team isn’t made of people who can’t think of consequences more than 20 minutes into the future.

I queue during OCX primetime too and my record so far is 5 hours without a q pop before I had to stop for the night. At this point I’m queueing more for science than expectation of actually getting a game.

TheDevice.2751:

Opc.4718:

The damage stats is quite misleading, the amount of damage you do is going to be doubled or tripled when you fight against anyone with AI pets, especially MM necros and mesmers.

Why is there always an excuse? A guard can do 2x the damage he showed and probably all the guards on forums will come and say “well, erm. actually its because blah blah”

No other prof can get away with it but guards can? Nah man. Tired of DH/burn guards ruining this entire season. 100-0 nearly anyone in one rotation while blocking everything their way.

I can get 1m score on any DPS class as long as you give me a bunch of mesmers to bash on over and over. But this only happens in exceptional games where the fighting has been drawn out into long battles of attrition, regardless of whether or not a DH was involved, so this is hardly an arguing point.

A number of classes can take someone from 100-0 with absolute impunity given the right opportunity. Examples: warrior stunlock, mesmer cc lock with wells or moa bomb, and thief perma evade. Classes like rev engi and ranger are just straight up sustain bruiser monsters and should beat DH 1v1. The fact that DH can chain cc with blocks is neither game breaking nor unique, and like every other class, has its counters.

There may or may not be merit to this thread but lets not sidetrack it with pointless stats and strawman arguments.

The PRIMARY issue DH has is its low skill floor – anyone can pick it up, learn to drop traps in a minute straight and be quite effective especially in the lower tiers. Class stacking compounds the issue and inexperienced players find themselves unable to effectively counter even if they may technically be better players than the DH players. At upper tiers though, it drastically loses its viability and the glaring issues of the class shine through.

This has been a balancing problem since the days of classic street fighting games when people have discovered that spamming one button over and over again will more often than not completely lock down their opponent and win the match effectively (and cause an inordinate amount of salt in the process). Calling for pitchforks, mobs and nerfs across the board is not the solution.

Personally, I’d

- nerf procession of blades damage by shaving off its duration from 10x to 8x hits or lower
- shorten the duration uptime of test of faith by 1-2 seconds, remove the initial damage component, but add it back to the crossing damage by making each subsequent crossing deal even more damage
- shrink the size of test of faith (or even all the traps)
- make the F3 shield slightly smaller so its easier to hit the guard from the sides and back.
- increase scepter immob time from 2.25 to to 2.75 or even 3 to make successful decap plays more punishing

It might not seem much but this makes trap spam and area denial drastically less powerful in team fights although you’ll still die by walking stupidly onto a point with all traps stacked on top. The viability at upper tiers is maintained because no one takes procession of blades and good players cc through test of faith extremely fast anyway. Test of faith now better rewards good play, the smaller size further encourages well positioned cc plays while reducing passive area denial effectiveness. F3 is now also effective only if you maintain actual good positioning. The slight buff to scepter ensures that if you are able to bait out condi clears before knocking back, you’re more likely to score a decap against the opponent.

Burn guards are a complete non issue.

Tab through enemies until you find the guy you want to focus down, easier than trying to look at the actual game screen. Or if someone’s kind enough to provide a target already, just take it.

The damage stats is quite misleading, the amount of damage you do is going to be doubled or tripled when you fight against anyone with AI pets, especially MM necros and mesmers.

Last night I never got a game in 5 hours. Queue was timing out after 2 hours. RIP

PowerBottom.5796:

That strategy is dumb and bad, only relying on players not defending and running bad comps. Yes, it’s hard if you are solo-Q’ing and ppl don’t listen to anything wrote in chat, but it’s really not a strong strategy. I think the way strondhold works now, doesn’t favour offense anymore at all; defending has more than enough advantages to make it wortwhile:

- Faster reinforcement
- Enemies drop supply on kill
- Hiding behind gates when low and dealing DMG through them is very strong
- NPC’s are decent
- Doorbreakers ball up so heavily, you can easily kill them with a smart comp and the enemy won’t ever have enough healing
- You have a treb which can be useful
- More players don’t add a faster push necessarily, since progress through the gates is tied to the doorbreakers and not the players themselves.

So, you’re saying that with all those advantages you can’t fight a full-on attack? hell no, it’s just because ppl don’t defend in this mode: they try and go atk and run supply when ppl are bumrushing their base, thats just bad play and has nothing to do with balance.

You underestimate the healing ability of tempests and druids. Once the treb is killed, it is extremely difficult to take down the doorbreakers when the whole team is buffing themselves on top of the doorbreakers. Unless you take down the healer, the doorbreakers will NOT go down if the healer is competent. The healer is backed up by the entire team designed around 5 man sustained bunker brawls. So instead of just killing the dbs, you’re constantly engaged in long drawn out fights and all the while your doors are getting broken down. You NEED to counter comp it with very specific builds to win this war of attrition, and unlike conquest, if you don’t have the necessary builds, you can’t just avoid the fights and rotate around unfavorable matchups. This just becomes even more of a silly scissor paper rock game and that is why stronghold is flawed. This is doubly the case at higher tiers when the players involved understand just how easy it is to ‘exploit’ this strategy with maximum effectiveness.

It’s the same as the conquest double bunker healing meta. It’s arguably a “dumb and bad” strategy as well, relying on the inability of people to rotate properly or do enough dps, but in practice it works way too well and everyone needs to be running the same comps or get left behind. It takes very little skill to be successful with the strategy, and a LOT of effort to counter it. At this point it’s just incredibly boring. If you’re solo q-ing up against premade teams running these strategies, it’s pretty much game over already unless you have a super pug team with all the lucky right comps.

Obviously, the only way you can guarantee a ‘smart’ comp is to have a 5 man team yourself, and that stronghold comp isn’t even really good for conquest. I’d much rather just queue for conquest.

There are serious balance issues that need to be addressed with stronghold before it becomes anywhere close to competitive. Right now a lot of 5 man people queue stronghold exclusively and do the 5-man lord bum rush strat, killing the treb fast and relying on healers to keep bombers at full health and bursting down the lord in a couple seconds. Unless you have a team with you that can counter comp that strategy, the game is over in less than 3 minutes. Yes the strategy falls apart miserably if you manage to stave off the initial rush, but it’s completely dependent on the builds you have on your team.

The mode is EXTREMELY solo-q unfriendly especially with the frequency with which you get matched against premades due to the low number of players.

It’s possible to keep repeating the legendary league and get more tickets that way. HOWEVER, it does in fact take more than one season to get the ascended backpiece due to the hard time gated daily 3-match achievement.

EDIT: actually just did my research and apparently legendary league doesn’t award tickets, so yeah I guess that’s time gated too.

Pip gain is tied to MMR, you gain/lose more pips if the game expects you to lose or win more respectively. The only weird thing is that MMR and leagues are separate and contradictory systems that just don’t work well together.

Winning team fights is only half the game. If you split up and rotate well, you can set up easy ganks for the thief and pull off nice decap plays.

If you have a thief on your team, the trick is not to engage in all out 4-5 man team fights.

Maris.3164:

I have no trouble believing this tbh. For one win there’s always at least 3 losses, games that are lost before they start based on matchmaking. One player can’t affect the outcome of the game much.

Afk the entire match and watch as your team loses.

punahou.3986:

No Walking.6349:

52 losses in a row? You are pretty awful O.o

typical leet response— theres more than one player on the team

Eh there’s gotta be something in common between those 52 games to produce such consistent results? That or you just won the bad karma lottery and should probably make some offerings to the RNGeesus.

Just had two games in a row where it was full premade with an amber smurf vs full pug. The queue times weren’t even long. Like WTF is the match making doing? I gave up at that point because I knew if I queued again, it would be against the same team and there goes all my pips.

Shovel Face.4512:

I swear these forums are full of crybabies and whiners. I enjoy this new PvP system. It actually requires skill and rewards u for having skill. I mean come on a main a Thief exclusively and I’m at tier 5 emerald

If you read in between the lines, OP is an ESL player. It is likely he has a high MMR, which is working to his disadvantage since he gets matched up with much harder opponents. This means he can’t progress as easily through the system as an inexperienced person with low MMR.

SteepledHat.1345:

Opc.4718:

It takes a certain skill set to be a l33t pug farmer (ie ability to make the right friends), and even then if you’re not that good of a player, you’re going to be hemorrhaging pips at higher tiers where everyone is either a good solo queuer here to take 2-3 of your pips, or other good premades.

Whatever makes you feel like a special snowflake. Everyone is going to assume you exploited and pug farmed for it so it means nothing. That’s the only thing that matters with a prestige item.

I’ve mostly been solo queuing up the ranks so I understand exactly how much effort it takes to climb ranks. I love 3 pip wins from premades hoping to do some farming. It’s not coincidence that the people who have reached sapphire-ruby and above are pretty good players for the most part, ESPECIALLY the pug players. I don’t know how the lower MMR shenanigans work though.

Really, having different map pings like in LoL would be fine for bringing stuff to teammates attention. Text is just inefficient.

There’s only one thing you need to do to improve yourself, and that’s to focus on the minimap and not tunnel vision into fights. The text is redundant, it’s only pointing out information you can already obtain from the minimap. If you want to improve yourself, you don’t NEED a teammate reminding you to look at the minimap. It should be patently obvious which point you should go to by looking at the minimap. Now that I’ve told you the secret behind perfect rotations, you can remind yourself to look at the minimap as the situation arises and determine for yourself what the best course of action is. The decision is usually very logical and not subjective at all.

Anyway this is derailing the thread. It’s my personal opinion that you should have chat turned off if you can’t deal with toxic players, and that you don’t really lose out anything by doing so. If you’re an experienced player, you don’t need to look at text to know where you should be going next, and if you’re not an experienced player, you now know you should look at the minimap if in doubt. The rotations behind this game isn’t that complicated.

Yasha.5963:

Most of the HoT specs are OP, not just DH. If someone playing a DH can’t regularly wreck other players, especially non-HoT specs, they really need to L2P.

The other meta specs all counter DH except thief. And even then a vault spam thief who can time things well will evade all the hard hitting DH skills. The problem with DH is it has very little innate sustain, whereas all the other popular HoT specs are heavy sustain bruisers.

Daze doesn’t stack in duration, and the cc chain from the DH maxes out at “pull and push”. At any moment during this chain, you can feel free to use a stunbreaker and put on some stability or do an evade. If you’ve run out in the middle of a fight, well any other class can take advantage of that and cc you do death as well. (Reaper, engi, druid anyone?)

It takes a certain skill set to be a l33t pug farmer (ie ability to make the right friends), and even then if you’re not that good of a player, you’re going to be hemorrhaging pips at higher tiers where everyone is either a good solo queuer here to take 2-3 of your pips, or other good premades.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

turning off map chat is not really a good idea , if one person sees a cycle and the opposing team spots this weakness , they will take advantage of it because guess what they used map chat.

If one person can see something, everyone else should be able to see it for themselves on the mini map. The fastest way to improve your rotation skills as a solo queuer is if you take the initiative and stop relying on teammates for communication and direction. Of course you could go the extra step and relay the information to the rest of your team (who lack awareness), but again, it doesn’t require you to see their replies.