DH in PvP:
LB: skill 2 hits hard, but anyone decent enough will dodge that big burst and proceed to pressure the hell out of you because the rest of the skills suck. LB 1 is ok only if you hit multiple people since it constantly cripples, 2 is easy to see and thus avoid, 3 travels fast but I got used to it so it wasn’t bad, 4 makes no sense because you need to use it melee range to get the benefit from vigor, 5 is pure useless due to long cast time and people can easily just walk out of it before it completes animation.
Traps: They are garbage. A person can dodge over them and it ends up doing nothing at all even though they get activated. I don’t know what the devs were thinking putting traps on a guardian; traps were already known to be crap from ranger/thief but they decided to implement them anyway. The elite trap is so bad it targets a single person last I tested it (didnt even bother testing that elite this weekend because we’re pretty much locked into RF – without which medi builds are not nearly as good). Other traps do an okay amount of damage if the enemies are dumb enough to stand in them for the entire duration. In reality, people look at the trap being activated and dodge out instantly; better to have hit them once with an auto attack and it would’ve done the same damage and you’d have saved utility slots and cooldowns.
Traits: Biggest problem is that they don’t go well together with the core guardian’s traits. Virtues have this physical aspect to them, which sounded cool in theory, but they are pretty bad in implementation because the devs feel there should be a cast time to them. Say your DH goes into Radiance for the instant blinds for big plays in PvP. When you do need it though, there is a cast time to it, and you chuck your spear at the enemy and you end up getting hit anyway because the blind was too slow. Moreover, you can’t hit F1 for its blind in the middle of stomp animation, you can’t heal your teammates instantly by pressing F2 (which isn’t great because it doesn’t evade during your leap and cripple/chill does affect you), and F3 cast time prevents you from producing instant blocks. Cast times are bad, DH traits don’t play well with Radiance. Similar problem with Virtues, you can’t use F3 instantly for the stab or stun break, essentially nerfing your GM from Virtues (the only one worth taking in PvP). F3 cooldown needs to be reduced to 50 or 60 seconds. Even the DH traits themselves are not designed that well. The minor on master (Defender’s Dogma) is useful only for burn builds, and the GM minor Pure of Sight is useful only for ranged builds. That’s awfully specific, forcing certain builds on you. All the GMs are underwhelming as well: Hunter’s Fortification should at least make it so that you take less damage when you DO have a condition on you because literally everything in the game now puts out condis almost passively. Heavy Light feels completely RNG based (try fighting a mesmer with it) and not worth taking at all due to its long ICD, and Big Game Hunter is way too conditional to worth having that 10% damage buff (maybe if it was, say, 20% it might be worth it OR if the spear pulled the enemy to you at the end of it along it would be good). Bottom line: DH traits are way too conditional to feel all that useful compared to the core guardian.
The worst part about it all is that they’ve already said that at this point nothing major can be done to the DH even though it was one of the first elite specs to be revealed and people had been talking about changing things from the get-go – and yet only a few minor things were changed and not always for the best. Honestly ever since the talks of guardians started the best change has been the shield’s buff.
If they want people to play DH, they need to them a reason to take the DH line over the base guardian’s because as things stand the base guardian trait lines are better in every role and synergy.
PvE you can do whatever you feel like because it doesn’t really matter what you bring so long as you know how to dodge. WvW guardians are still best suited to bring the regular shout guardian because 1)it’s just so useful and 2)DH isn’t worth bringing because it doesn’t have superior damage or CC compared to other ranged classes. When I think about playing DH in WvW, I just think why should I when I can do a better job by playing a Ranger or Rifle warrior (esp with the berserker spec).
Edit: In regards to “fun,” you’re right in that it’s very subjective. I did not have even a little bit of fun and it was downright frustrating to try to make DH work with the other traits. In order to have fun in PvP, you need to have a build that flows and has synergy with its skills (how much fun would you have taking 2 shouts and 2 medi skills?) so you can be effective. If I know one of my trait lines is ruining another one, and things just don’t work well together, I will not have fun. This past BWE, I played DH to try to make it work but then when I ultimately got tired of it I switched to Rev to have fun.
