Guild Wars 2

I have a few thoughts, good and bad, as a Guard main who spends a lot of time in WvW and was super excited about LB.

Longbow:
This weapon seems like it wants to dip its toes into being a condi weapon, but it won’t commit. We already have a power-range weapon in the scepter, so I think we’d all appreciate a burn-range weapon (without which, a burn Guard will have to return to Judge’s Intervention and Torch). There are several crutches I’ve had to put the Longbow on to try to make the burn happen, and even then it’s hardly impressive:
-Spear of Justice
-Permeating wrath – You would think this would be OP with the volley shot, but the volley doesn’t appear to count on the justice passive (or sometimes do damage at all until the burst; don’t know if bug)
-Cleansing Flames (Because I might as well, as a ranged character)

Virtues:
-The Spear of Justice mechanic is great. However, it feels like it should apply more stacks than it does. More importantly, though, the range is 75% of the LB range. This makes it more difficult to use them together, which is a shame, since the spear is one of the crutches LB is leaning on.
-Wings of Resolve, as stated throughout this thread, could really use a range boost. At 600, there’s almost no point in bothering to aim, which fails to justify the inherent cast time. However, I still like it a lot for what it is, and the wings are pretty stellar (any chance of expanding on the wing graphic?…… pls).
-Shield of Courage: BIG mechanical problem. As a burn Guard, you’re pretty much guaranteed to take Amplified Wrath, whose nifty mechanic is burning enemies whose attacks you block. Shield of Courage’s projected shield does not trigger this (I tried). That absolutely ruins it for me. I don’t feel that that would be broken, on account of the big, obvious, blue shield in front of me (not to mention the difficulty in aiming the thing). If this was fixed, I’d consider all the DH problems 25% solved.

Traps:
I dig ‘em. They’re lots of fun. The Dragon’s Maw could use some love (maybe contain multiple enemies), but that’s okay. The only serious problem with the traps is that you’ve given traps to Gurdians and not a single one of them applies burning. Wat.

The only other issues I can see there might be are balancing issues. The stated Maw issue, the shortness of the reveal trap debuff (with the pulsing application, it’s kinda okay, but a bigger radius is definitely in order if it is designed to be escaped), and the low punishment capability of the trap damage (I won’t complain about that one too much because of the zerg damaging potential).

Overall, this is an amazing concept with a lot of great ideas that I love. A few changes to give me a mechanical reason to use it, and DH will be about my favorite thing in the game.