Guild Wars 2

The good:

1) Longbow is great. The increased arrow speed helps immensely both for feel and practicality and adding the necessary aiming functionality for the symbol have it in a good place.

2) The virtues are finally worth the trade-off of non-instant cast.

Traps “still-need-work”:

Although somewhat interesting and powerful (at least in a melee oriented build), traps still sacrifice far too much potential survivability to see any real use. To echo the oft-repeated advise, a stunbreak is mandatory, and the best place mechanically for it seems to be test of faith. It’s one of the currently weakest traps, and adding a stunbreak would provide it some fun counterplay when melee cc’d (ie. I’ll stunbreak, and then get out of the ring – do you still train me?)

The most pressing need: Minor traits for dragonhunter are not interesting, are not impactful, and worst of all, can be completely useless for a large number of potential implementations of a dragonhunter.

In my opinion, Defender’s Dogma and Pure of Sight are the worst part of the dragonhunter, so much so that they make the entire feel of slotting the trait line feel bad. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) They don’t work with all of the potential builds. Say I want to build a melee-focused trap guardian for PvE, or a melee bunker relying on the grandmaster trait. Pure-of-sight is completely and utterly useless. It is something I am forced to take, and yet completely useless.
2) Pure of sight is not interesting because there is no choice. The damage modifier is required to access the rest of the specialization, and consequently feels like a poor-mans trait. Why not just roll the damage in baseline to the bow in the first place? It feels like something was taken away just so there could be a text-string for a minor trait.
3) Defender’s dogma is gimmicky and even within its role, is outclassed by other core guardian functionality. If I want to speed up my passive justice, I’ll build for it in virtues.
4) On top of that, Defender’s dogma encourages even more passive play: it only works when I don’t activate F1, and unfortunately that use/don’t use decision is currently not a great choice (it’s currently much better just to keep the passive and get some free cripple). One of the compelling elements of the new virtues is supposed to be their more physical, impactful nature.

All in all: Defender’s Dogma and Pure of Sight don’t feel good, and since they are required, it feels like I’m sacrificing to access the rest of the specialization. That’s not a good feeling, especially when the core Guardian has so many nice traitlines and tools.

Please, however you do so, remove/replace/BANISH Defender’s Dogma and Pure of Sight.

To this, some thoughts and suggestions:

The Dragonhunter is a selfish, positioning-heavy take on a guardian as it has multiple post-up skills (longbow), other skills that only function if and when you can kite your enemies through them (traps), and others that are explicitly linked to your position (shield of courage).

The problem: cripple doesn’t cut it as a mobility tool on a class without any core mobility options.

So here’s a couple of suggestions, based on some other ideas here, reddit and on the forums:

Version 1:
Remove Defender’s Dogma.
Remove Dulled Senses as an adept and replace with Pure of Sight.
Add two new minors:
Hunter’s Balance: Your first attack cripples foes (3s) and grants you swiftness (6s).
Resolute Hunter: Activating a virtue reapplies Hunter’s Balance.

Motivation: The goal here is to encourage in combat mobility and brief positional advantage only, while simultaneously allowing for a dependable source of cripple. The addition of swiftness helps when there is more than one enemy to be kited, and the second trait encourages use of the more active physical virtues.

Note: At this point is seems as though dev’s are too wary to ever give the guardian any increase to out-of-combat movement speed, and this would avoid the problem of having a mobile (or at least more so) bunker.

Version 2
Remove Defender’s Dogma.
Remove Dulled Senses as an adept and replace with Pure of Sight.
Create two new minor traits based on the previous Dulled Senses:
Dragon Snare: Control effects (knockback, knockdown, launch, and pull) cripple enemies (3s).
Hunter’s Stride: Striking a crippled foe grants swiftness (10s). 10s ICD.

Version 3
Remove Defender’s Dogma.
Switch Dulled Senses and Pure of Sight.
Amp up the minor versions based on the old Dulled Senses:
Dulled Senses: Foes you cripple are made vulnerable (3 stacks, 5 seconds)
Dragon Snare: Control effects (knockback, knockdown, launch, and pull) cripple enemies (3s).

Granted these are all probably horrible, but the point is….please, please, please do something to fix the current state of the Dragonhunter minor traits.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Replace Pure of Sight with: Hunter’s Stride
You move 8% faster for each passive Virtue effect on you.
If you activate a Virtue, the passive is gone(and your Virtue goes on cooldown), so you lose 8% movement speed. But, this trait would also give 8% increased movement speed to allies when combined with Battle Presence.

I actually really like this suggestion.

1) It gives the dragonhunter some VERY needed ability to kite with the longbow (or I suppose around traps cough cough) and re-position between it’s post-up skills.
2) The tie-in with battle presence helps give it synergy with the core guardian lines which is something most of the traitline is desperately missing.
3) It’s not as much a mobility gain as the constant +25% move speed that other classes get, helping to keep the feel of guardian having to commit to a fight. Longer the fight goes on/the more virtues the DH invests, the less mobile or able to disengage they become.

My only preference would be to get rid of defender’s dogma instead of pure of sight. A block trait that refreshes F1 passive when there are none on the longbow seems like a really bad thing to stick as a minor. Stand in your traps and pop shelter. Great. Depend on mace/focus. Whatever. For most reasonable implementations of the DH it seems really out of place/borderline useless.

Your proposal would do a lot to help both trap/longbow focused dragonhunter playstyles. +1 for the suggestion.

Thank you for the change notes.

However, a couple of lingering concerns that don’t seem to be addressed:

1) The auto-attack is too easily strafed by a single target. What is the reasoning behind not improving its flight speed?

2) The changes to F1 and F2 are okay, but it feels like Shield of Courage could still really use some instant cast love. The projectile block is great and all, but it would be more useful to be able to actually use it reactively when you are stuck in one of the longer dragonhunter skill animations (picket fence) rather than have to wait to queue it up or cancel the cast.

3) As mentioned above, the GM protection on virtue seems really out of place both thematically and in terms of play style, not to mention its out classed by other skills the guardian already has.

4) Some trait interactions are a bit wonky with the new virtues (as one example, Justice is Blind. It waits till after the cast animation of the spear and centered on your character.) Given that the range on the F1 spear has been bumped up to be longbow range, would it be possible to look into making traits like these more functional (ie. maybe blind around target when hit?)

Elite choice becomes meaningful.
The most powerful and unique aspects of the tomes are preserved.
They fit nicely as subclasses of current utilities.

I too love the flavor of tomes, but would gladly see them go (to perhaps come back in a future specialization! – I’d gladly trade guard weapon swap for a legit heal kit…err…tome and so on).

+1. Excellent idea.

DaG.5103:

1. I believe guards are at the appropriate strength level. If guards were harder to kill, it would further discourage PvP on defense. Guards should be soloable, which forces players to devote some time to defending to ensure they don’t get an easy path cleared for heros and DBs. This also encourages summoning Archers, because when players are defending their guards, it’s more advantageous to spend supply pushing NPCs that can help overwhelm them rather than just doing DB spam.

I definitely agree that guards should always remain soloable, but I think that term could be made a little more demanding.

The reason I’d like to see that is 2 fold:
1) I’d really like the Archers to feel as threatening as the doorbreakers – something that needs to be kept away, cc’d, dps’d, treb’d away from your guards, just like the doorbreakers are for doors.

In a lot of cases, it felt like they were only ever a threat to your guards if you left your side completely undefended or they had a squadron of ’em and your team completely failed with the treb. Upping the armor of defensive NPCs relative to the player -a little (emphasis: not a lot) – and upping the damage the archers do to the NPCs might make them feel a little more threatening and something that needs to be controlled/summoned.

Perhaps having the archers strongly prefer to attack the NPCs over doing negligible damage to players would have the same effect (I may just be underestimating their damage potential because they always seemed to be plinking away uselessly at a player). Make them more mission-focused like those good ol’ kamikaze doorbreakers.

2) In a lot of our matches the enemy guards between the inner and outer gates were just collateral damage of us pushing a wave of doorbreakers (ignoring any mention of the rock-paper-scissor archers) to the next gate. They weren’t necessarily an obstacle in themselves. They either fall during the push or could be bursted down by a zerk while we prepared for another push with doorbreakers.

Our Beta Experience:
Already feels like a fun game mode, and refreshing after years of only conquest based maps. We had a guild group (3-5) queue most afternoon, on mumble. Our members are mid-rank, so feel free to take the following feedback with a grain of salt (mix of phoenixes, bears and wolves mostly, but we even had a few rabbits try out the mode and enjoy it).

Thoughts on the map/gameplay:
1) Communication is king. Premade seems like a much stronger advantage here (and would likely need a correspondingly higher mmr penalty than in conquest to keep matches competitive if pugs were to ever be put up against premades). Case in point: we are not exactly amazing, but we felt like we are able to fight above our technical skill level because of the advantages of voip.
2) Simultaneous lord fights feel amazing. Banner. Stability stomps. Boon removal and CC. Really fun moments for us in a couple of games. Unfortunately, they were quite rare. The far more likely scenario was a one-way fight at lord.
3) The map might have a bit of a snowball problem. Although the idea of two-lanes is clearly there to provide a risk-reward to pushing too kitten the enemy, this tended to fall apart. We won a lot of our games simply because we would win the early encounters. Getting down the outer gate early is a very strong change in the map, and even more so if you are able to push in numbers when it goes down.

This might be because of a couple factors:
- Defending NPC’s feel a little weak. Even with active defenders, it was possible to take them down as part of a push, or have one player wreak havoc –because of this archer’s felt considerably weaker and less useful than they probably should be.
- It’s really, really hard to re-establish map presence once you’ve been pushed into a defense. I think out of the all of the matches our guild played, we only lost one match where we got inner gate down first. In part, this is because there is a huge position cost to committing to defense. The enemy will respawn and make it back onto the map too quickly for your defenders to get back out onto the map and take advantage after a successful defense (run supply/reapply pressure on their defenses). The worst part of this was that there was never a real feeling of risk to making a lord push.
- A possible comeback-mechanic/suggestion:As this map already has a ton going on, it may not be wise to add another mechanic to the map, but it feels like it could really use a strong comeback one. The heroes don’t quite do it because of the positional problems from above.
Proposal #1: increasing respawn timers.

Proposal #2 : a one-time movement-speed advantage that only becomes available for use once after inner gate is down. Example: a shrine inside the home base that when channeled gives slick-shoes type speed to the entire defending team for a certain amount of time (usable once per game). This would create a way for a defending team to rapidly reestablish some map presence, without being a mechanic that helps the stronger side, while simultaneously adding a little bit of risk to pushing into their lord room. And yes, portal, but relying on one skill on one profession doesn’t make for an interesting general comeback mechanic.

Thoughts on scoring/win condition/timing:
Overall, the timing of the matches and win condition felt pretty good. There is one caveat – we had two close matches where we won/lost because points from kills even though the opposite lord was at half-health and the other inner gate was still up. That didn’t feel like a good win, and it felt like a horrible loss.

Thoughts on the NPCS/Trebs:
1) Doorbreakers and trebs feel about where they should be. Fix the treb targeting.
2) Archers need some love. Whereas doorbreakers feel like awesome little kamikaze tools, archers feel a bit weak. Maybe consider upping the damage from archers to guards and slightly upping the overall health of guards as well? Also, to our archers: why you run off after non-NPCs?

Nitpicky-stuff:
1) Why have the gate portals close when a gate is destroyed?
2) Is red spawn a few seconds back compared to blue? Seemed a tiny bit more rushed to get to gate and stack swiftness.

Is there a reason why custom arena is not viable?

Not if we want the ability to be auto-matched against (roughly) comparable skill-level players in a competitive or pseudo-competitive format. Anet continues to put a lot of effort and thought into trying to improve their matchmaking so that players are matched up in (hopefully) fair AND varied fights. Granted, players could organize their own matchmaking with custom arena’s, but that seems a poor trade off with all of their efforts.

As to the argument that combining the queue eliminates splitting the population:

1) It seems to assume that part of the population doesn’t leave because they can no longer play what they want to. Imagine logging into the game, and having a dice roll to decide whether your wvw or spvp or dungeon run tonight – even worse, imagine having a weighted dice roll voted on by other players where YOU lose and end up having to play the game mode you really didn’t want to play. Oh and make it worse – if you leave, you get dishonor, and told you can’t play the thing you want to at all. Although I might be patient the first couple times, eventually I know as my roll went bad again and again that I would a) be upset at the other players b) not want to continue playing. Result: the population you were trying to keep from being split, has been dwindled regardless. Granted spvp (conquest) and spvp (stronghold) might not be as different as all the other GW2 has to offer, but for those that want one or the other – it will feel like it.

2) It seems to assume that the population for the new game mode doesn’t grow to support it on its own. The dev’s have claimed that it has the potential to appeal to a wider base of players (anecdotal evidence, my pvx guild is psyched). Or, if you are assuming that happens, you are assuming that same group of new additions to the population pool will also stay around and enjoy conquest. That doesn’t seem guaranteed.

I like the idea of letting people choose between ranked/unranked and then conquest/stronghold/both, with a small (actually, maybe not so small- what’s the harm – make it a decent incentive?) bonus for those who are willing to roll the dice for the sake of all of our queue’s.

soakman.7539:

I don’t hear anyone asking why Old Tequatl had to be removed to make room for the new Tequatl…

The answer is pretty obvious. And additionally, if they left everything they will ever create for this game in the game at the same time… It’s going to get very very difficult to find groups to do content. It’s already hard enough to find groups to do story mode.

Yeah, I get that and I think there’s some wisdom in it. I think ArenaNet learned from GW1 that adding too much content without a clever way tying it together just stretched their player base too thin (and as a game ages, this becomes more and more a problem…).

I guess I just had more faith that GW2 could still be in the early growth years where more raw content is a good thing, as more content -> more players -> still feels alive.

The tequatl revamp was both awesome and a good case in point of revamping something old to give a great new sheen. I just don’t see why leaving a dungeon path – instanced five person content – would have an overly negative effect right now (it would be different if we were 3/4 years in and they were coming up on way too many paths).

The idea of a living world storyline solves their problem somewhat by not adding too much new content to spread their base too thin, but if they keep forcing themselves to take something away to add something new, they lose that feeling of expansion somewhat.

I’m a bit confused. It seems almost like ArenaNet has a crippling fear of content creep because their metrics tell them that if they spread out their player base too much it will irrevocably hurt the game. In the occasional interview they’ll mention that they don’t expand game modes or other content (or why they put activities on a daily rotation) so that they can funnel their players into the active content so it feels alive. I get that.

The problem is it’s almost as if they are using that probably good principle as a blind judgement call in everything they do – and it just doesn’t fit with dungeons, at least not now when the feel of an expanding game world does a lot to both keep their current player base excited and bring in new players. The feel that the world is the same “size”, regardless of any “changes” to it is a dangerous one because it implies stagnation whether its true or not. To some, many in my guild, new content needs the feeling of being in addition to what we have – taking something away negates that positive addition somewhat.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t run this path every day. I hate that final boss. Still I feel like the game loses something for just suddenly chopping off a path that had some redeeming features (fountains and bees, I’m looking at you!).

Rip F/U.

Even after the blog post, I am still secretly hoping that there is an about face to switch to 4 leagues in NA. The idea of a league is good in that it gives structure and a time frame with a goal. The idea of participation unlocking the server earned rewards is very good. The idea of varying up matches to bring spice is in itself good. I think the changes to the borderlands are exciting and a step in the direction of providing new strategy and alternative ways for a player (and organized groups) to contribute to the war.

But, the idea of making only 2 leagues just for the sake of varying matches and at the very real risk of roflstomp games is bad. Now my math might be rusty, but 4 leagues of 6 would give you C(6,3) = 20 combinations of servers in a given league (so 10 sets of pairings). Certainly way less numerical variation compared to what you can get with 12 servers and there might be consequences to how you would score these smaller leagues, but at least these match-ups would much more likely be competitive. If variation is so much more important than realistic competition, just allow for adjustments between seasons.

An example of the problem in match-ups: two strong servers and a low being placed together in a given week actually undermines the core 3-way fight design because there is a reduced risk-reward for going after one server at the expense of opening up to the other. Its definitely not fun for the whipping-boy and its not as tactical as if all three servers are close in strength.

I guess I’m just worried that fair-weather effects from getting completely steamrolled (or steamrolling) will completely tarnish what the league brings to the table in the first place: a competitive playoff-like atmosphere with rewards.

tldr: I hope it works. I fear completely uneven matchups will take away from what could be a good idea. I’ll be playing some WvW either way.