Showing Posts For RobinC.6573:
Tome of Courage (ToC):
- ToC focusses on granting stability and defensive spells, while being able to CC enemies with the taunt on ToC 2. It is a bit lacking in both the defensive and offensive department, as improvements could be made in both.
- ToC 1 is probably your most reliable source of (quick) stability, but could still be interrupted, defeating the purpose of the skill. It also has no offensive component (which I would expect of a charge). Some might or retaliation could be added to also make it somewhat offensively oriented.
- ToC 2 is the only skill on the tome that does damage and it gives the guardian acces to taunt (which it could have used for the dragonhunter spec). Taunt is ofcourse nice for breakbars, but the 1.25 sec duration will not have a great effect in PvP oriented combat (except maybe to strip away stability). A stack of retaliation (short duration) might be fun to add to it for some additional damage.
- The ground casted dome might be a very nice idea for ToC 3, but the cast time is a bit too long to really be reactive. Additionally, it is rather difficult to predict where on the battlefield this dome will perform best, since it is rather small. All in all, only allies within the dome will be safe from projectiles and since they tend to move around a lot, the coverage of this dome is not really that great. A shorter cast time will greatly benefit this skill.
- ToC 4 is a bit of a strange skill. It’s the only stunbreaker on the set and it grants resistance in 1 second pulses (likely to prevent removal). Why this skill is even a stunbreaker (instead of say, skill 5) completely eludes me and why it only grants resistance amazes me even more. Giving additional defensive boons to this skill (such as protection) or granting this skill stability would greatly improve it and raise it above mediocre.
- ToC 5 is probably the strongest skill on ToC as it grants stability and protection along with 300 toughness to allies (which is good everywhere but raids). It also grants retaliation which improves your offenses almost equally (if you trait into retal, that is).
The only improvement here would be a longer duration on the boons provided, since the stability doesn’t last much longer than ToC 1’s.
Overall this tome feels a bit subpar due to the lack of both defensive and offensive presence. While it does what one would expect of it (give stability), it could do so much more to turn the tide of battle.
Mantras:
Mantras can be relatively powerful utility skills, yet they are held back by two major drawbacks: long precast times and cone based AoE. This makes it so that none of these mantras allow offense/defense on the fly, unless you have them prepared. Even when they’re prepared, mantra’s still have a hefty cast time (0.75-1 second) which diminishes the reactive gameplay the guardian is known for. The player also feels somewhat discouraged to use the final charge since putting the mantra and cooldown and having to recast it later is quite a hassle.
- Mantra of Solace does somewhat average healing (including the final skill) and grants Aegis to you and allies (in a cone). However, casting it fully takes quite a lot of time (even if it’s prepared) and works best when allies are present in your cone (which has the same drawbacks as ToR 1). Therefore, it’s a bit subpar as a self-heal and only average as a group heal. Removing the cone would greatly benefit this skill and the group play it was balance around.
- Mantra of Flame has relatively low burning potential, since it can only stack up to 5 burn stacks before reaching CD (and it will usually only provide 2, since recharging it during a long fight costs you dps in the long run). It does provide some nice physical damage, but it needs more burning on the first two attacks.
- Mantra of Potence is amazing at providing might to the firebrand and its group. 360 ° AoE would really make this skill shine, in addition to higher might duration (although that might also be provided through stats and runes).
- Mantra of Lore provides additional condi removal and some healing through regen. Overall, it isn’t as strong as ToR. However, while ToR is an entire skillset (with cast times and CDs), this is just one skill with relatively low cast time (still 0.75 sec though). This makes the skill shine a bit in comparison to ToR, yet it might feel as overkill when you have acces to ToR (perhaps a good skill for when ToR is on CD).
- Mantra of Truth provides the Firebrand with some alternative conditions. Only the movement impairing ones are really interesting while weakness could be replaced with vulnerability for additional damage.
- Mantra of Liberation feels like “Stand your ground” on steroids. While the stability one the first two attacks is somewhat meager for an elite skill, the long duration of retaliation on this skill makes it worth taking if your invested in the retaliation traits in radiance. Overall, the only thing that this skill needs is extra stability.
Overall, some mantras feel strong, but they are rather limited in use. The long pre-cast discourages the use of the third charge, while the cone prevents proper group sharing. One benefit of mantras, however, is that you can switch them for another mantra even when they only have one chrage left, effectively resetting the charges.
A bit late, but here is my feedback on the firebrand:
Axe:
- Axe 1 could use longer duration on the condi’s it applies, since it isn’t really stacking condi’s as it should.
- The symbol on axe 2 has an excessively long cast time and could use a reduction in that department.
- Axe 3 is good at what it does, but could use an extra burnstack to make it slightly better.
Tomes:
Tome of justice (ToJ):
- Tome of Justice is incredible at applying burning spikes, especially to large groups, but these groups have to remain in front of you (which is why ToJ 3 is necessary for anything but target golems).
- When it comes to skills I most enjoyed using ToJ 4 and 5, since they gave me a (relatively large) fire field and a group wide buff that can’t be removed. ToJ 5 in particular adds some dynamic which makes it interesting. These skills are fine as is.
- ToJ 2 is basically ToJ 1, but not cone based and with additional firestacks to counterbalance the CD time. You will most likely only use this skill once (maybe twice with additional pages) in your rotation, since waiting around for it instead of spamming 1 takes a bit too long. CD can be reduced with loremaster, but even then spamming ToJ 1 seems more effective than waiting around for ToJ 2.
- Talking about spamming 1, this is probably the most effective way to build up burn stacks (since other skills have CD’s). Sadly it’s cone based instead of 360 ° AoE, which makes it somewhat harder to land. This is what you’ll be doing when you have blown all your other skills, which is not very exciting, but AA never is.
- ToJ 3 is the skill you need to collect all your foes in front of you. Sadly, it has an 8 sec CD, so if you waste it, you’ll probably waste your chance at burning. This CD can also be reduced, but even with the reduction the wait might be too long to use it twice in one rotation (unless you simply don’t attack at all, which will reduce your dps greatly and leave you open for counters).
Overall I would reconsider the CD times on these skills, since they greatly bar the use of some of these skills. While this is fine for ToJ 4 and 5 (since their effects are relatively strong to be spammable), it is holding ToJ 2 and 3 back, especially in places where spiking down opponents is necessary.
Tome of Resolve (ToR):
- ToR is focussed on healing and condition removal, at which it can do a decent job (the condition removal shines a bit more here than the actual healing). However, it relies heavily on skills hitting your allies, which is very difficult to accomplish with cone based skills (since your allies constantly move around).
- Both ToR 4 and 5 are therefore the best skills on the set, due to the (relatively) large range and 360 ° AoE. ToR 4 is a decent heal with a water field for some additional healing and some swiftness. ToR 5 increases the effectiveness of healing received by allies and therefore has great synergy with all other healing skills (it also converts condi’s to boons, which puts it a notch above the rest).
- ToR 3 is a bit of a letdown, since it only provides limited healing through regen and some swiftness and vigor (which are alright, but not as essential as added healing or condi removal). This skill needs an added direct heal to be on par with the remainder of the skills in this skillset
- ToR 2 is a condi cleanse and a heal in one skill, making it stronger than ToR 1 at least. Use of this skill will of course depend on whether or not there are conditions to be cleansed, but since condition are omnipresent, this skill will always see use, if not only for the added healing on it. The CD seems appropriate, since condi cleanses are not something to be spammed, but rather to be timed.
- ToR 1 is you spam heal and it does just that, spam healing. It is difficult to aim with the cone and your have to run behind allies to heal them, but it somewhat works if you hit them with it.
Overall, ToR could lose the cone based gameplay for the more traditional healing style of 360 ° AoE. It will not ensure that every heal lands, but it will make the lives of healing Firebrands everywhere that much easier.
Here’s my feedback:
The staff: It sort of felt lackluster in comparison to S/P (which was the other weapon set I used on the daredevil)
Staff auto-attack is decent damage wise and gives some nice vulnerability stacking combined with the vuln on crit trait, but it just didn’t feel as useful as the sword auto-attack (which gives weakness and cripple)
Weakening charge deals quite some damage (and gives decent amounts of weakness) if you land all three hits, but it also fires in the direction your facing, which is kinda counterproductive some times. As others have mentioned in this thread, it would be better if this was target based. Also, this skill feels like a skill that could use a build in evade (like debilitating arc), but that would probably mean an increase in initiative cost, since an evade would make it much more powerful.
Debilitating arc is a rather odd skill in my opinion, as it disengages you, while it would be more beneficial to stay in melee range on the staff. It also disengages you over a very short distance, meaning most enemies will catch up with you rather quickly. While I’m aware that this skill should be combined with either weakening charge or vault for a disengage/reengage type of play, it just feels kinda weird to move back a little, only to move forward a little in some sort of strange dance routine with my opponent.
Dust strike is a skill that saw rather little use in my combat rotation, simply because it’s rather slow. It really is necessary that the blind on this skill is applied quickly, since most of the time you would like to use it to prevent that one hard-hitting skill from hitting.
Vault is a decent skill, but the balance between damage and animation time is way off. Right now, the animation time is too long for the damage vault deals, or the damage is too low for the lengthy animation vault has. Either the damage has to go up on this skill or the animation time has to go down.
some other remarks about the staff: there are several things I’m missing on the staff that would give the staff some synergy with itself, the daredevil traitline and other traitlines. These things include: combo fields (a field on dust strike wouldn’t be too much to ask), control effects (a daze on debilitating arc for example) and damaging conditions (maybe even confusion). It is also rather strange that the staff can only hit up to three targets, since it is a staff (most other staff users can hit up to five targets and a martial arts guy swinging a staff around should have the reach to do the same thing). I also have to concur with most people in this thread that some of the staff animations are a bit wonky and that they don’t work well with lag.
Physical skills: There were several physical skills I liked, but most of them weren’t that amazing that I actually fell in love with them.
Bandits defense is probably the best physical skill from the entire skillset, mostly due to its low cooldown. Having a stunbreaker on a 10 second cooldown is quite neat, but combining that stunbreaker with a 1 second block and a conditional knockdown makes it almost OP. I say almost here because the knockdown sometimes sends you flying towards you’re enemy (which can be good or bad depending on your situation) and most of the time seems to be off beat with your opponent’s skills, meaning you usually don’t interrupt said skills with it, therefore making it synergize rather poorly with impacting disruption.
Distracting daggers could be a rather good interrupting skill, if a) the equip was instant cast or b) the skill worked like a mesmer’s mantra. Right now, this skill feels like something you should cast right before engaging and then blow on the first skills used by your opponent, because it only lasts 15 seconds. It’s also an interrupt you have to plan ahead of time, since using distracting daggers to interrupt an enemy when you still have to equip them is nigh impossible. Removing the active duration timer and making it reloadable could also be an option (e.g. if you use distracting daggers, while still having one or more daggers available, it will return the amount of daggers back to three). This would keep it balanced, while still providing a QoL upgrade.
Fist flurry & Palm strike have the same problem as distracting daggers in that you have to plan palm strike ahead of time to make it interrupt something. You also have to hit all five attacks to get to palm strike, which is a rather harsh condition for a 2 second stun with some damage attached to it (especially since pulmonary impact can be achieved through interrupts as well). It might be better to switch palm strike and fist flurry in this rotation or even completely remove fist flurry and buff the initial damage of palm strike. To summarize: palm strike is the useful component of this utility skill, not fist flurry.
Impairing daggers is actually quite a neat skill, due to the 900 range immobilize attached to it (which makes it comparable to chains of light on the guardian if it’s not evaded). The only problem is that this utility skill doesn’t offer much more than that. The slow and poison are rather negligible and the entire skill can be cleansed quite easily by most condition removal. This utility skill overall gives the least value for its CD and really needs something extra. Perhaps it could leave a mark on the enemy that increases incoming damage, that can’t be cleansed by condition removal.
The elite skill felt rather subpar compared to most of the other elite skills in PvE. In particular the final move dealt very little damage for the build-up it was given. Besides that, it felt kind of strange that the elite skill was three seperate skills instead of 1 chained skill.
The daredevil traitline: Overall a really decent traitline with enough options to choose from, but some of the traits only shine in some situations.
Most of the minor traits feel somewhat… irrelevant. Enforcer training is a given, since it introduces the specialization mechanics and weapon, but Driven fortitude gives such negligible benefits that it should be removed to make way for a better minor trait. Endurance thief is a decent minor trait, but it requires you to use steal mid-fight, which means you won’t use it to gap-close/initiate a fight. However, it synergizes well with sleight of hand and impacting disruption, since the daze on steal is instant and works rather well as an interrupt.
Evasive empowerment can be fun, as it can be used on D/P to up the power of backstab (bound + smoke field for stealth, then + 10% backstab), but it requires a lot of strategizing for a mere 10% damage boost. Most professions get this boost as a baseline on one of their traits.
Weakening strikes could also work quite well, but has a relatively long ICD, meaning it will be rather easy to predict. Right now, it can also be combined with weakening charge to get 100% weakness uptime on anything without condition cleanse, which is rather powerful. This trait could be changed to give weakness on interrupt, for example, to increase the active participation required for this trait, but since interrupts don’t work on mobs with defiant/breakbar, this could kill this trait in dungeons/raids and on world bosses, where the higher weakness uptime is needed (due to reduction of weakness duration on unshakeable mobs).
Staff master is conceptually a very good trait, as it gives extra damage when your endurance is not full (which incentivizes dodging) and extra endurance when you use skills (which is useful since your endurance is partially drained most of the time). However, this requires the player to incorporate dodging as part of its combat rotation (even when it’s not necessary) to keep the endurance bar from being full. Nevertheless, since the grandmaster traits add damage to most of the new dodge skills, this trait can be used in a damage oriented dodge build (where dodges are used to damage the opponent in addition to evasion).
Impacting disruption is probably one of my favorite daredevil traits, as it rewards interrupting (active defense) with an almost unavoidable damage spike. It works particularly well with S/P, where the burst damage of pistol whip can be increased even further through this (pulmonary impact hits near the end of pistol whips sword damage spike). It also works well with head shot and steal (due to the (almost) instant daze). This trait, however, is useless against anything with a breakbar or defiant, as interrupts don’t work on those mobs, which means that it’s relegated to PvP and open world PvE (and even there it has its limits)
Out of all the new dodges I have only tried Bound, so I can only say something about that. Bound is both a blesing and a curse. The damage is quite good and the leap gives you easy access to stealth, but the animation truly sucks and the dodge doesn’t seem to take you anywhere (you can’t outspeed someone with bound, as it seems to not leap as far as the regular dodge and locks you in place). As an offensive dodge, it’s amazing and it opens up a lot of options, but as a defensive dodge, it’s simply subpar.
Summary: The daredevil is quite an impressive specialization that opens up a new playstyle for thieves (more control oriented with offensive dodging) while giving them new ways to enter stealth through several strong leap finishers. However, the staff needs a lot of work, as right now the daredevil works better with either D/P or S/P than with staff. The physical skills need to be more direct, as right now, most of the physical utility skills either have a long build-up time (distracting daggers and fist flurry) or they are more wait and see then pro-active (bandit’s defense). The traitline is quite good, but driven fortitude should be replaced with another minor trait. In addition, for impacting disruption to work on anything besides other players and non-defiant mobs, something has to be changed in the way interrupts work, but this might be too much to ask.
(edited by RobinC.6573)
Shouts:
The shouts on the elementalist are quite decent, as they provide both offence and defence. The most important thing I would change to shouts, though, is to remove the cast times on shouts entirely. Right now, both “Feel the burn” and “Eye of the storm” have no cast time, while “Shock and aftershock” and “Flash-freeze” have a 0.25 second cast time, which creates a gap between these shouts, as the former two can be used during the overload channel, while the latter two can’t. Another thing that annoyed me about these shouts, is that they damage neutral (or unpulled hostile) mobs within the range of the shout. This makes shouts a liability, as you could end up pulling more mobs then you could kill.
Right now, “Feel the burn” and “Flash-freeze” are in a good place cooldown-wise, while “Eye of the storm” could use a much lower cooldown for the utility it provides. “Shock and aftershock” could also use a CD reduction, although it still should have the highest CD of all the utility slot shouts.
“Wash the pain away” is a very good healing shout, since it heals nearby allies for the same amount it heals you. I would recommend increasing the range on the first pulse a bit so you don’t have to be on top of your allies to heal them with it.
“Rebound” is a really bizarre elite skill, as you have to choose which other skill (from all of the skills you can choose from as a tempest, which are quite a lot) you want to use it on, which isn’t always straight forward. It’s also quite sub-par for an elite skill. As mentioned in this thread, let it reduce the cooldown of all of the skills used by 25% during the eight second period it’s active (you could tweak the duration to increase/decrease the power of this skill).
As mentioned before, adding stability to shouts (via a trait) would be a good idea, because, without a cast time, shouts actually have a good synergy with overloads.
About the traits:
Most of the traits are decent, but not mind-blowingly good. Speedy conduit and Hardy conduit actually have their benefits, but could be merged into one minor trait. The other minor trait could either further buff overloads, or Earthen proxy could be moved there.
Gale song could be removed as there are better options in other traitlines.
Unstable conduit could give an aura to all allies around you by default, as overloads are group orientated.
Earthen proxy improves the effects of hardy conduit, sand squall, overload earth and elemental shielding, but should either be a minor trait (see above) or and additonal effect on another major trait.
Imbued melodies could be changed to give stability on either warhorn or shouts skills (or on both if that wouldn’t be to powerful).
All of the other traits are useful enough to earn their spot, but some of them (such as Element bastion) could use a small buff to make them worthwhile.
All in all the tempest is much bulkier and tankier than the elementalist, while not sacrificing too much damage for the increase in bulk. The main problem with the tempest is that the elementalist is already a very diverse and powerful profession, which means that the tempest doesn’t improve upon any aspects of the elementalist, as there is very little to improve upon. The tempest, however, does introduce a new and different way to play the elementalist, which is quite amazing. Just try to improve the things that aren’t working right now (overloads in particular) and this specialization should be fine.
(edited by RobinC.6573)
So here’s my feedback on the tempest:
Warhorn:
The warhorn for me was sort of hit and miss, as some skills really lifted the warhorn up, while others just let me down.
Starting with fire, Heat sync is actually a really good skill in group fights (since you gain quite a lot of boons on the tempest) and it also has its uses in solo-fights (since three stacks might are always welcome). Wildfire is probably one of the largest fire fields I’ve seen up till now and is therefore relatively easy to blast. I don’t know if it still pulses damage and burning every second, but it should, since it takes a while to get to it’s full effect (not to mention it’s quite obvious to your opponent).
Water: Tidal surge is actually quite neat, as it both heals and knocks back (which makes it very defensive in melee). the moving water field on Water globe sounds good in theory, but doesn’t really play to your advantage in practice, since you have to chase the water globe to get healed. A stationary (or slowly moving) water field would be much more beneficial. Another solution would be to let the water globe follow the tempest, ensuring the tempest gets the most out of it’s healing.
Air: both of the warhorn skills in air attunement feel wonky at best. Cyclone could have its purposes as an interrupt, however, the manual aiming, the small radius on the cyclone and the low speed of the cyclone make it a rather poor interrupt skill. The short distance of the pull also hinders its capability to line up enemies. Lightning orb is probably the wonkiest skill of the entire skillset. It sends out an orb that almost immediately moves out of range of your enemy (assuming your enemy stands in melee) and then does nothing for you anymore (except pulling other enemies, which is annoying). I would reccomend to change the orb in such a way that it follows the player around, making it a melee/frontline based damage dealer.
Earth: I didn’t use sand squall often because it really lacks some utility. As other have said in this thread, you could make it a blast finisher, so that it doesn’t only blast might (and fury if traited), but also extends the duration of those boons. Dust storm actaully isn’t a bad skill, but it takes rather long untill it covers a reasonable amount of ground, during which your opponent can just walk away from it. It might be better to turn this into one large storm that blinds enemies in an area (like black powder on the thief).
Overloads:
The problem with overloads isn’t the overload skills, but the fact that you’re locked into channeling an overload for up to five seconds. This, combined with the relatively low amount of stability available to the tempest at the moment, makes the tempest an interruptable sitting duck during overloads. Giving the tempest acces to more stability (through shouts or warhorn skills) would be a step in the right direction, but even better would be to make the channel somewhat shorter and increase the damage dealt and boons gained per tick. The inability to dodge or change attunements during overload channeling is also rather iffy, but understandable, since you are channeling a single attunement (and regular channeling skills are interrupted by dodging as well).
Overload fire: actually the best overload of them all. The might pulse on this overload is what makes this skill particularily strong (especially with heat sync). The tornado at the end of the skill is a nice bonus (as it will continue to deal damage to stationary opponents/world bosses/groups of stacked mobs after the channel is finished, allowing for a high amount of AoE burst when combined with lava font and such).
Overload water: useful for healing larger groups, but most of the skills in water attunement + healing ripple + soothing mist + water field blasting (+ aura healing if you traited it) already take care of this for the most part. The condition cleanse could be useful, but again, elementalists have enough condition removal. Right now, this overload just isn’t worth using when you could do so much more with your water attunement.
Overload air: The damage on this overload is rather low and the static region could use a boost as well. The pulsing swiftness also isn’t that useful (since you already get swiftness from speedy conduit), so that could be replaced by, for example, fury (as air is an offensive attunement. Overload air does work well with weak spot as it hits quite a lot of times. The advantage of this overload is that it works with fresh air, however, since most people don’t use the tempest with the air traitline, this synergy will be lost.
Overload earth: adding a break bar to it does make this overload the most reliable of them all and making it a blast finisher also gives it some utility, but the blast is at the end of the five second cast time, which makes planning it into a routine relatively difficult.
About traps:
I like the traps, however, they don’t see much play due to being cast on top of the user. Having traps cast on the user wouldn’t be a problem, if the dragonhunter was a melee spec. The dragonhunter, however, is a ranged spec and therefore performs best at range. Ofcourse, prior placement and kiting are always options, but they require foresight to pull off consistently. Most of the time, you don’t have that foresight and the traps are just another slot skill you don’t use. I didn’t even use the healing trap, because your self heal needs to be available at any time, not just at that rare occasion where everything works out. The traps I did use (test of faith, procession of bladesand fragment of faith) were alot of fun when they were activated (emphasis on when), although their damage wasn’t that great. A solution would be to make traps ground-targeted (much like marks on the necromancer) as it would make strategic placement possible (at least in PvE).
About the dragonhunter traitline:
The traitline does not really have a general direction, even though being advertised as having a general direction by the devs. Most of the traits felt out of place and some rather basic traits (such as CD reductions) are missing. The minor traits suffer from this the most, as they are either not truly a trait (the first minor trait adds the mechanic of the specialization) or very situational (justice passive effect on next attack on every succesful block, assuming spear of justice isn’t on cooldown).
The major traits are also spread out a bit too thin, as three traits (zealot’s aggression, dulled senses and heavy light) rely heavily on each other for their effects to work, which would be great within one trait, but not among three traits. I would recommend merging these traits into one grandmaster trait that could actaully be useful.
Other traits, such as piercing light, hunter’s determination and hunter’s fortification, sound good in theory, but fall short in practice (piercing light only works properly with procession of blades, since other traps only hit once, or twice if you’re lucky, the stability of hunter’s determination is needed during the true shot cast and hunter’s fortification just doesn’t deliver enough protection for it to be viable).
This leaves three traits (soaring devastation, bulwark and big game hunter) which are useful enough to warrant their placement and all of these traits are virtue oriented, which means that your build will be (relatively) virtue oriented when you decide to play dragonhunter. This is, ofcourse, rather detrimental to the build diversity of the dragonhunter traitline, as only one build truly shines, while the others only shimmer.
My conclusion is that the dragonhunter has a lot of potential to be a powerful backline damage/support spec, but it still needs a lot of tweaks to certain aspects of it to make it viable. Traps and traits in particular need a rework since they are not up to par with the options that are already available to the guardian. The virtues will be fine, as long as they lose the cast time, and the longbow would function properly if the LoS issues are resolved.
It might be a little late, but here’s my feedback on the dragonhunter:
First of all the bow:
I really like the bow. Finally a long range weapon that isn’t called scepter for the guardian.
The auto-attack skill was (in my opinion) fine damage-wise (especially with berserker gear) and it didn’t feel too slow for me (although I haven’t tested it in PvP, so I wouldn’t know exactly what would qualify). The auto-attack did have some line-of-sight problems which have to be removed for it to become reliable.
Trueshot is an amazing skill when it comes to damage and both cast time and cooldown are appropiate for this skill. I didn’t really mind the root (since it serves as a trade-off for this skill), but I can get why most people want to get rid of it. Keep in mind though that without the root this skill might need a slightly more obvious animation to serve as a warning for opponents in PvP.
Deflecting shot is indeed a very odd skill on longbow and would perhaps be better suited as a support option (for example, it applies aegis to every ally it passes through and blind to every enemy). I haven’t tested it’s ability to deflect projectiles thoroughly, but it absulutely has to stop every projectile in its path to be reliable. Perhaps it could stop projectiles in a cone in front of the user instead of a line.
Symbol of energy is actually a rather fun skill to play with. I actually liked that it was a slow arcing projectile, since I could use the skill, then use true shot and have it hit right when the symbol hit my enemy, triggering symbolic avenger on true shot’s impact. It did have LoS issues that were worse than those for the auto-attack, which actually made it less useful than most of the symbols on my other weapons (unless I had the time to properly place it i.e. when pulling enemies). The vigor is not very useful, mainly due to the fact that it was very hard to lay the symbol at your feet, and it might be better if it would apply an aditional condition instead.
Hunter’s ward sounds great on paper, but it does need some improvements to make it viable. First of all, it didn’t always function as it was supposed to when used in the open world. Some enemies (like pocket raptors) would fly under it’s radar and not get hit by the arrow volley (only by the final attack). Other enemies sometimes escaped from the wards before they were supposed to (although I’m not exactly certain of my observation, since it happened rather sporadically). Second of all, the relatively long cast time, combined with enemies mereley being crippled by the arrow volley, made hunter’s ward relatively irreliable when it came to locking down enemies. One solution would be to change the cripple to immobilize (this might make the skill too strong though) to force opponents to use their condition removal or face the consequences. Another solution would be to make the cast shorter and give more damage to each of the arrow ticks (so the damage stays the same). I’m not a great supporter of putting the final attack on the first tick, since that would give the skill the power to lock five enemies in place with almost no counterplay.
About the changes to the virtues:
First of all, I agree that the cast times for the dragonhunter virtues need to go. It just silly to have to wait 0.75 seconds for spear of justice to be cast and then another second for it to hit. The same applies to wings of resolve and shield of courage, as they can’t be used in response to anything (which is one of the major advantages of the guardian’s virtues).
Spear of justice: the projectile of this skill has to be much faster, as right now the skill feels rather clunky to use. The damage of this skill is okay, definitely when compared to virtue of justice’s active.
Wings of resolve: When traited, you would almost use it more for the damage/leap/immobilize than for the healing, which isn’t half bad, as it attains a second purpose that way. I would, however, increase the healing radius, as right now, you have to land on top of an ally to heal him/her, which is a severe downgrade from virtue of resolve.
Shield of courage: This skill would be awesome if it was 100% reliable. I have noticed that if enemies move past the shield (stand on top of you) they can deal damage to you, even if the shield is facing their way. This is, hopefully, not intentional, as it would render the shield almost useless in PvP.