Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen this work with decent success. This build excels if you’re running with a havoc group and are trying to harass a zerg by luring people into choke-points (traps pre-laid).

Don’t expect any great success in 1v1s though; many other roamers out there are also seasoned spvp players and are quite familiar with DH traps. You might be able to catch warriors, and non dodge-spamming thieves with traps but most every chronomancer, ranger/druid, and revenants are going to give you trouble.

Here is a good video of a DH with trapper runes in action in WvW:

https://youtu.be/uHtcnh0eHwk

For most of the video, s/he is running a medi-trapper build, but in the latter half you see a nearly full-traps DH build. For solo-roaming, I find the medi-trapper works very well against -melee oriented classes (daredevil, reaper, warriors, other DH), whereas full medi DH/Longbow works better against ranged/kiting classes such as druid/chronomancers.

If a pulsing-aoe damage (such as another guardian’s symbol) is placed on you, and the center of the aoe is in front of you, then you will block it.

The other possibility is that if you’re within the aoe, but caster of the aoe is in front of you, then you’ll block all of the damage from the aoe regardless of your positioning relative to the aoe.

I think the first case is how it really is, but am not completely sure as I haven’t extensively tested this.

Coalescence of Ruin (Revenant Hammer #2) needs nerfing first, then we’ll talk about trueshot.

But on topic: yes, I think trueshot would be balanced at 5s cd. 4s seems a bit too low, and 6s would hurt the dps too much.

It’s interesting, and I think it would be a lot more useful if you were part of a havoc group than it would be solo/dueling. One thing you’ll lack if running solo is mobility. GS2 and f2 wings just doesn’t cut it in wvw; you need swiftness or +25% MS of some sort.

Honestly I don’t think you’d be feeling the extra bit of healing power there. I’ve tried running a medi build with a chunk of healing power (around 500), and it just didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I would change out the zealot’s and commander’s armor pieces for either Marauder’s or Knights, and change out the amulet for soldier’s. This will give you a pretty solid minimum base of health and armor so you won’t be getting 1-shotted or bursted too quickly.

One thing about this build that is different from most medi-DH builds is that you’ll have excellent burst (from the runes) with ToF + f2 leap + LB2, or GS2. You’ll hit quite a bit harder with this combo.

Edit: Ah, missed that opal orb there. Have you tried running this build with a full 6/6 of the DH rune? Th 5 extra might stacks you get from laying a ToF trap while going into a burst more than matches the stats you get from that opal orb.

I’m finding that mace/shield works really well with longbow, especially if you take ToF trap. The only problem with this weapon combo is that you have absolutely no mobility…. If you are using travelers/speed runes, or have a herald in your party, it works just fine though.

I’d wager that when they were creating the skills for every class, they did the most balancing around pve. Things like party wide aegis and protection on paper seemed quite op in pve, hence the long cooldowns. No one really complained, or used those skills in pvp, so they kept their long cooldowns even until today. Heck, look at our f3. That didn’t see a cd reduction until within the last year. What was it, 80-90s base cd for a single party wide aegis proc?

Brutaly.6257:

Hoping that anet would roll back a bug fix just so MB can work smoother with JI is a bit far fetched tbh.

Yep, nail in the coffin for me here. The hammer feels outdated, its trait is practically unable to be taken, and a good portion of its combo power got removed just because a few people are able to use JI to unfairly reach npcs in a single location in one game mode. I think some overhaul to its skills could encourage more hammer use and its trait could use either a balance change, or movement to another line.

Oh, it also doesn’t cure immobilized. What happens is you will begin the leap, and immob will get cured, but since you were immobilized at the start of the leap, you stay immobilized throughout the leap. Faulty order of operations here. I’m sure this same fault is why f2 is still affected by cripple/chill. This is actually starting to get on my nerves; Engis got their rocket boots fixed almost immediately upon complaining, whereas this issue, which affects proportionally more guardians than rocket boots did engis is probably sitting at the bottom of a to do list.

Dear ANET: With the next patch, whatever the patch may be, can we please get Wings of Resolve fixed? Bugged skills ruin a player’s experience across ALL game modes.

Aww deflecting shot isn’t that bad! It’s a solid skill, nothing op though. The balance team has bigger fish to fry than this.

Eurantien.4632:

Dragonhunter:

Shield of Courage Virtue [F3 Active] blocks ALL attacks: Shield of courage is only supposed to block projectiles but blocks everything including melee attacks. Also, the radius seems larger than intended on this skill.

That’s definitely intended. Guardian f3 has been this way since BWE3. Oh one thing though: this skill has a 1/4 second cast time. On the very tiny off chance that you can interrupt it, the skill goes into full cool down, the guardian gets no boons nor a shield so there’s that.

Deflecting shot is Longbow #3. It has been unblockable since HoT release, but simply wasn’t mentioned on the tool-tip so the devs fixed it!

@SpookyPoo: Yeah, and you know what I was thinking? This might be me reading too much in between the lines, but maybe they have some sort of change planned for trueshot, and really wanted to announce it, so they freudian-slipped and said true-shot instead of deflecting shot.

Any change coming to true-shot can’t possibly be good, it will be either neutral, or a nerf. DH haters rejoice :p

These probably aren’t the balance-fixes that we were all expecting, mainly just an attack on game-bugs. They seriously addressed not one of the issues that we have been complaining about in terms of pvp class balance. While some of the issues may be l2p, there is no way that every single thing we have complained about is seen as totally ok by the devs. Believe me, the balance will come. Might be a while though, I predict before leagues drop.

Aggrostemma.1703:

@Arcaedus:

Honestly I can live with this bug or “working as intended”…

But the Hammer weapon"s issues affect the whole guardian community unlike the DH’s single F ability.

I know it’s annoying as a DH but as a “Guardian” I feel the Hammer fix is a more urgent problem…

Just my two cents…

I agree, would love to see hammer changes, but the changes they’d need to make to hammer are fairly numerous small changes, or a fairly large overhaul imo. It’s going to be a while before that happens.

The change to f2 on the other hand is a quick change; they made the same change to engineer’s rocket boots as it was still being affected by cripple/chill (engis complained about it on the forums, it got fixed soon afterwards).

Also, just a note: Yes, our f2 is still affected by cripple/chill.

PoB is fine in pvp, no one is complaining about that one. Honestly if you manage to get hit by all, or even enough of it to turn the tide of the battle then it’s probably your own fault.

I really hope they nerf trueshot’s damage VERY slightly, orrrr, increase its cd to 5 seconds. I’ve heard at least one person suggest a cast-time increase which I really don’t like; one of the greatest things about true-shot was its short cast time being able to combo with CCs (heavy light KB, f1 pull, and GS5 pull). Increasing the cast time on true-shot would essentially be both a cd nerf, AND a nerf to its combo-potential.

Yeah this isn’t the balance patch; that will probably come a week before leagues at the latest.

Have any changes been made to our f2 wings of resolve leap? Is it still affected by cripple and chill? Imo this problem is more important than the entire visual noise problem of all traps put together.

SirServed.5693:

Arcaedus.7290:

-Reworking of quite a few traits (best to start with radiance and zeal)

I personally think Radiance and Zeal are fine, what problems do you have with them? I still primarily use GS so those two are must haves for me. Add in the traps from DH and some stuff is going to be angry/dead, or angry then dead.

This is mainly from a pvp/wvw perspective, zeal and radiance are great in pve or so I hear (I wouldn’t know, i’m a scrub when it comes to pve lol). I don’t much like the GM options for radiance. Amplified Wrath is a great trait for condi builds and hybrids but the other two GMs are rather diminutive. Even power-based guards taking radiance will often take Amplified Wrath. The other two GM traits need a bit of workover imo.

Zeal has good major traits, but the two minors (master and GM level) seem a bit redundant. We essentially have three traits dealing with symbols in the zeal line. I think we could stand to have some rolling-together, and development of a new minor. As is, if you don’t use hammer, and/or mace, you don’t seem to get a lot out of the symbol-related minor-traits here.

From what I’ve been told, the stomp bug occurs when you have the interface option “Allow Skill Retargeting,” checked. What happens is that you single down player A, and then press F to stomp him. While stomping player A, you either untarget him/her or target player B. The game’s code interprets this as you wanting to stomp player B now instead, and the animation is no longer being executed on player A.

This is a pretty dumb bug imo and should be easily fixed. For now, your best bet is to keep your intended downed player targeted the entire time during your stomp animation. I haven’t had any trouble stomping while doing this.

Prediction: I think the most reasonable and likely nerfs that will be coming to us on Tuesday without completely destroying us would be:

-Add 1/2s cast time to Test of Faith, but crossing the barrier now does about 10% more damage.

-Test of Faith no longer does unblockable-trigger damage, but crossing the barrier still is unblockable.

-Protection gained from triggering Test of Faith reduced by 1 second, Regen gained from triggering Purification reduced by 4 seconds.

-Increase the cooldown of Trueshot by 1 second. Damage remains same.

I hope ANET doesn’t forget we need some fixes/buffs too…..
-Wings of Resolve being affected by movement-impairing conditions.
-Our Spirit weapons should receive the same treatment as scrapper gyros
-Shield of Courage (f3) being interruptible and going on full cool down without providing shield, or any of the traited effects.
-Hunter’s ward (LB #5) sometimes doesn’t affect the target during initial damage pulses if the terrain is not even.
-Reworking of quite a few traits (best to start with radiance and zeal)
-Some very slight buffs to our hammer moveset would be nice; namely damage on #2, speed on #1 and #3, and cd reduction on #4 and #5.

This is biased as I have only dueled AS a DH and druid, but based on my win/loss ratio and observation of other duels, here’s how I’d rank them:

Druid
Chrono
Scrapper ~ Reaper
DH
Herald
DD
Tempest
(some core class meta builds)
Berserker

Druids just take the cake… All that healing (even with full glass), ancient seeds, and powerful sustained damage; they do even better in wvw duels. Condi chronos are exquisitely difficult to duel. Unless the opposition kites really well, condi chrono will destroy most duelists. Even power chronos are very good duelists. Scrappers and reapers never die. Most of my duels end in stalemates against these. Heralds are good duelists, but very killable once you figure out how their skills work. DH and DD are good duelists, bout middle of the totem pole. Tempests generally aren’t too difficult, but cele d/d tempests can be pretty difficult. Berserkers usually have poor sustain. While they can take out DH, reaper, and scrapper with cheesy gunflame builds, they usually get destroyed by DDs and chronos from what I’ve seen.

Also, most core specs just can’t seem to keep up with elite spec counterparts. In near every case save for traditional power necro vs. Power reaper, I see elite specs dominating.

alemfi.5107:

At the end of the day though, MMO’s in general are not balanced around 1v1, nor should they be. It would be a nice way to highlight good/bad matchups for popular builds though.

I disagree with this. Even within a team-based pvp type match there are many interactions that simulate a 1v1, so raw dueling ability is still important, and should be balanced around. Not to mention, balancing around 1v1 strikes me as being one of the easiest ways to balance a class for pvp: It’s much easier to test numbers and matchups for the devs and staff. Not ALL balancing should be around 1v1, but at least some should be. There should be no class/build that can defeat everything (or even greater than a certain proportion of builds) at a 1v1. Offenders should be nerfed accordingly.

The rock-paper-scissors feel of pvp in this game is what keeps it exciting. The ability for you as a rock to see scissors, and engage, or to see paper and only tactfully engage when scissors is nearby is what truly makes for exciting matches in my opinion. It’s much less exciting when you bring in dynamite into this game that forces you to always engage it in a team fight.

From my experience with DHs, you have to make them chase you. If you try to fight them on their grounds it isn’t going to turn out pretty unless you have a stroke of luck of some sort. Every time I’ve beaten a DH by playing melee, it has been in a scenario where I’d sort of lure and tease him/her into taking the offensive, and blowing traps. A good ol’ turn n burn from there will shift the match up in my favor.

That being said, lets say you’re headed from mid back to home and see a DH bunkering your home. It’s a little bit harder to 1v1 them in this case as the DH has very little incentive to step off point or chase you.

I guess the best advice I have to offer you, is:

1) try to lure them away from any single fighting area, and keep them on the move. Burst them, and move away as they WILL lay their traps.
2) Watch for Test of faith (jail of blades), and Dragon’s maw. Aside from those two, they probably aren’t going to boss you around very much with trap dps.
3) Be aware of where the DH is during a game! If you’re headed to a point where the DH is, don’t go unless you see a team mate nearby, and engage the DH 2v1. DH will drop FAST once one of you springs the traps, then you can go in melee range and do some serious damage. They really only have their f3, and their Renewed focus to keep them alive for a few seconds.

Ghotistyx.6942:

People have been capping burn long before Viper’s or Trailblazer’s have existed. 15% duration is not actually that useful for a Burning Guardian. Iirc, Guardian only has 1-2 traits (Amplified Wrath, Radiant Power, and somewhat Inner Fire) that benefit from striking a foe while burned. Amplified Wrath is already the better option. Guardians have a unique way of using condition damage, and changing Amplified Wrath in that way would damage that niche.
I’d make no changes.

Perfect Inscriptions is kind of odd. I’ll agree that the trait itself is pretty good and most of the problem is on the signets themselves. This isn’t unique to Guardians, but signets kind of seem… undefined. 3/6 signets have stat boosts. 2/6 are timer based, and 1/6 is a flat damage reduction (variable stat boost essentially). 2/6 actives are CC, one is “power” based (knockdown) while the other is condition based (Immobilize, benefits from duration but not damage), 1/6 gives a support boon and condition, 3/6 have some form of healing (one is a res). In order to make a straightforward trait, you need a straightforward set of skills. The themes of Signets seem to be CC and healing support.
Personally, I would change:

• Signet of Mercy to a 10% Healing passive while keeping the revival active.
• For Signet of Wrath, I could see the passive becoming +20% condition duration. The active would likely stay the same.
• Signet of Judgement would keep its passive. The active would change to provide 2s Taunt
• Bane Signet would change its passive to grant Swiftness for 5s every 10s.
• With all that being said, Perfect Inscriptions would then change to inflict Weakness on enemies and improve Signet effects (20%, same as current).

Now onto Radiant Retaliation. Because it’s the retaliation trait, it should help provide the uptime. We can move Perfect Inscription’s Light Aura over to an on-hit effect while under Retaliation. 3s Light Aura, 10s icd. In addition, I would change the scaling to use the original power-based scale (power*0.075) and use that same number to scale from condition damage (cd*0.075). This would make it more of a hybrid styled trait. This makes the balance be between defensive and offensive stats.

Some of the other traits, especially involving retal, will still need some clean up and smoothing over, but this could give a good start to opening up some options.

I think these are very well thought-out suggestions and deserve to see the light of day. Hahahaaa, get it, because….radiance… and light! (someone please high five meeeee)

Signets could do to have a bit of rework, they aren’t overpowered in any way, and a lot of people don’t use them (other than a single signet for certain builds) because there are generally “better” options out there (pvp and wvw perspective here). As for the Radiance GMs, I totally agree, we need a bit of reworking.

Radiant Retaliation is just not at all a good grand master… even if you used absolutely no burn skills, didn’t use torch, had every possible skill that gave retaliation and had as few blocks as possible, I’d be willing to bet that Amplified Wrath would still be a better choice for a condition build. Ok perhaps not, but it’s that much better in most cases that I can’t ever see myself taking RR when playing as a condi guardian. Reworking of the GMs in such a way that Ghosti suggested could bring some life to this trait line!

I have been beaten by an excellent DD thief in a 1v1. He essentially out-sustained me, coupled his bursts with stuns/dazes, and moved back out of my range whenever his burst was done. He saved his dodges specifically for my trueshots with longbow. I was not using traps here though, just standard medi. This thief beat me due to his patience and well-timed bursts.

It’s definitely possible to beat a DH. You have plenty of dodges as a DD to trigger traps, and get out. I would recommend unhindered combatant as your dodge just because of how far this skill will move you. If you try to burst a DH down early, it’s likely not going to end well for you.

Saint Tyrael.5804:

Swiftwynd.1685:

The main thing that needs to be fixed is that the virtues should NOT go on full recharge if interrupted.

I would also trade some of the base healing of wings of virtue for better healing power scaling and evade frames during the leap animation.

All virtue triggered traits should work instantly upon activation not completion. You are spending a trait slot ob improving these skills and it makes zero sense that they should become functionaly weaker by using them with dragonhunter

If they gave us evade frames during Wings of Resolve, that would make Dragonhunter even more powerful, and we’re talking about a spec here that seriously needs a nerf

Certain aspects need a nerf, not the entire spec. For one, Test of Faith needs a small nerf (either an arming time, reduced trigger damage, or a casting time), and many would agree that Longbow #2 needs a slight nerf (either base damage, or cool down).

IMO, our f3 should not be able to be interrupted because it casts faster than the human reaction time + time it takes to cast an interrupt. That means getting interrupted is next to random chance, and we should not be castrated due to random chance.

I can agree with our f2 being able to be interrupted because it is telegraphed, has such a short cool down, and its cast time is 1s (plenty of time to interrupt), but our f3 should NOT be able to be interrupted.

@DrDivine: it’s not so much an issue of what they are capable of, but rather how powerful individual skills are. Is trap damage really that bad? Procession of blades is really the only other dps utility trap. If you manage to get hit by all of that, well then you probably deserve it. Dragon’s maw, the elite, does a ton of damage, but it has a long cool down and has a target limit to it. DH’s dps culprit is Test of Faith and to a degree, longbow #2.

After many hours of playing DH in both pvp and WvW (roaming), there are only two things which I perceive to be overpowered:

-True shot: the combination of being one of the single hardest hitting weapon skills in the game AND having such a short cool down, makes this skill extraordinarily powerful and has won me matchups that I shouldn’t have won. The best way to nerf this without gutting it is to increase the cool-down to 6 seconds. This would put true-shot in a much better spot in my opinion. It needs to maintain it’s position as a mini-killshot for anyone to want to take longbow as a weapon, so it’s high damage should be maintained, but it should have a higher cooldown.

-Test of Faith: The combination of an instant-cast trap with high base damage that is also unblockable, and can daze when traited makes for far too strong of a utility with the right build. The best nerf to this trap would be to either add a cast time, or add an arming time (would have to be universal to all traps). As is, this skill is essentially a point-blank aoe bomb. It should instead be an area control that punishes the clumsy/unware (more damage should be tacked on to crossing the barrier) like traps were intended to be, rather than an additional burst tacked onto a medi build.

There are other issues which are very minor in my opinion, but balancing DH should focus on these two skills first and foremost. If small changes like I mentioned were made it would balance the class without gutting it.

+1 for the panache of this post

Revenant makes good use of sword-shield. As glint-legend revenant, you are fairly shiny, and emit lots of nice looking effects! Perhaps not holy, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it dark; you’re more like a magical dragon-knight. The facet of strength consumption has a nice looking effect that looks somewhat magical, like light-infused dragon-claws!

Mesmer/Chronomancer also makes excellent use of sword/shield, although that gives off more of a magical feel than a holy knight.

From a role-playing perspective, I’d say guardian with a greatsword is as close to a paladin/holy-knight kind of feel you can get while still maintaining decent damage output.

I’m pretty sure the devs are aware, but try reporting this as a bug, or posting in the bugs forum. I have noticed this too; you just don’t leap as far with f2 if chilled/crippled which is not intended.

I estimate this won’t get fixed until the upcoming balance patch though, so we just gotta deal for now.

This isn’t a bug, but rather a difficult-to-resolve issue with the skill itself. I’ve had a problem with this since BWE2, and in my opinion the best possible fix would be a dual-change:

1.The stability/protection from activating f3 should last 1/4 of a second longer (change to base guardian).
2. As a DH, upon pressing f3, you should immediately get stability and stun break, but still have to cast for 1/4 of a second to get the shield.

As is, I very much dislike that a very powerful utility can be completely negated by random chance and go on a 65+ second cool down.

Scrappers: Had any decent fights against DH medi guards? Playing DH medi I haven’t had too much trouble against scrappers. A good one the other day fought me to a draw, and I reckon had he been full zerk that he would have won. Scrapper sustain is pretty strong.

Rodzynald.5897:

Woah, I am glad that this thread gets so much attention, looks like our hammer really needs some good touch.

I run hammer in spvp and pve for a week, along with longbow and it is not too shabby but ham’s damage and skill feel somehow “raw”.
By raw I mean that it lacks something extra to it be it damage or certain triggering effects (excluding AA symbol). I look at scrapper’s hammer AA buffs and Im really wondering why they get so much of the good stuff.
As I said in my last post and considering that ham is a CC/support weapon.
The CC is quite rare. In this case banish should have 12 second cooldown and ring of warding about 20 (both on trait). Now it’s just an occasional CC due to very long cooldowns even with trait. But such weapon that has CC’s should at least have a one strong burst or AA chain.
I think that in supportive and damaging aspect, hammer could keep its normal AA damage and speed but 3rd attack instead of symbol, should give us and our allies a slight heal (like mace) and 1 stab for let’s say 5 seconds.
Now my fav ability which is Mighty Blow should be on 4-5 more seconds longer cooldown but True Shot’s damage, symbol for 6 seconds (pulsing 1 stab every 2 seconds stacking duration and protection in the same interval as it is now) and 5 stacks of might.

I like these changes. Instead of making hammer a power creep weapon, this would make hammer deal decent damage provided that you land mighty blow (requires strategy/tactical use). Otherwise hammer provides frequent and decent CCs on lower cool downs. I would argue that we don’t need any change to the hammer auto attack other than a lower cast time on the third hit. Hammer #3 could do with a bit of cool down reduction as well (lower damage, more frequent immobs makes it very team friendly for coordinated bursts).

Additionally I’d like to see a change/shifting around of the hammer trait. As is, no one is ever going to take that hammer trait considering what it’s competing with… Glacial heart should be placed in either valor or honor, and should have a somewhat different effect. The idea behind glacial heart is to add some burst to hammer coupled with a soft CC ability. To pull this off, I think the icd should be reduced to 8 seconds. The visual effect should be a blue flame-burst, and the effect would be cripple and 2 stacks of burning (both power and condi-build friendly).

If changes similar to these are made, I think we’d see a lot more balanced hammer, and see more creative guardian builds in all game modes.

Just an anecdote:

The other day I was in WvW and got hit by two attacks from two different revenants. One hit with CoR from range, the other hit me with a single hammer bolt. Unfortunately I didn’t get a screen shot, but these two attacks ( and some minor cleave from guardian staves) dropped me from 15k hp to 100 health, and this is on 3000 armor too.

I remember checking my combat log later, and hammer bolt actually crit me for 5.8k. I had trouble believing this at first and thought it was CoR that hit the 5.8k but it was definitely hammer bolt. I couldn’t have had more than 5 stacks of vuln on me, but it’s possible the revenants had 25 might. Still, 5.8k on an auto attack? This means CoR crit for nearly 7k damage.

Yes, DH trueshot needs a damage nerf, but so does rev hammer. CoR is definitely up there with trueshot.

I am not entirely sure that I’m correct here, but I think what’s actually happening is that longbow’s auto attack can actually travel further than the 1200 range. Once the arrow reaches 1200 range, it does not simply vanish, but continues to travel a bit further. As such, you could likely hit someone at 1300-1400 range, especially if you’re shooting down at them. Ranger longbow works in much the same way. With auto attack you used to be able to hit targets at 1900 range if you had a slight elevation over them. Not sure if this is still true.

Trueshot on the other hand appears to travel to exactly 1200 range and vanish. It seems to act more like a laser beam than a projectile in this sense.This is how I interpret it anyways.

In spvp and WvW: Has anyone had any sort of decent success/effective use of hammer? Ever since HoT came out, I haven’t seen a single hammer-guardian user. Tried it a bit myself, but it’s almost completely overshadowed by longbow: Longbow does better damage, is ranged, has comparable CC which can be more useful in my opinion.

As for hambow, I tried this, but honestly found much more success with greatsword instead of hammer. GS furnished better overall sustainability and pressure in just about any conquest, and especially stronghold scenarios.

It’s too early to say this for sure, but I think hammer is going to need a bit of an overhaul to both its skills, and to that trait. As is, it doesn’t perform very well in spvp, WvW, or roaming. It is a CC/support weapon? Yes, but there are other builds on other classes that fill this role MUCH more efficiently than a hammer guardian does. It has burst? Mighty blow would need a damage increase to merit that claim True shot is where it’s at right now.

I have not seen any note on this, and have noticed that the skill Wings of Resolve (Guardian Dragonhunter’s f2 class function) is still affected by movement-impairing conditions such as cripple and chill despite the fact that movement skills in this game should not be affected by cripple and chill (as per a balance patch earlier this year).

The skill does work as intended by removing immobilize, and moving the full distance (800 range leap) whether in or out of combat, but oddly enough it will not move the full distance if crippled or chilled.

Considering this is a movement skill, and that the engineer’s Rocket Boots got the treatment recently, I would appreciate if this got addressed. This is a bug, is it not?

Thank you!

Additionally: The increase in health regeneration from the trait Absolute Resolution still does not seem to apply to Wings of Resolve’s passive effect.

What Ghosti says nails the issue: There are seemingly randomly distributed (or at least not ideally distributed) hitboxes on Hunter’s Ward.

You have to actually strike someone with one of the falling arrows for them to get hit by cripple I think. This is a pretty unreliable method of applying cripple, and I think the following would be a good fix:

The first arrow to land in the target zone should strike the center. It should create a shockwave (the size of the aoe) which applies cripple and does a small amount of damage. Afterwards, all falling arrows can deal the same damage and apply cripple if foes get by them (this way, it’s sort of like meteor barrage, so it’s not 100% punishing). Finally, the skill should end like it currently does at the moment by applying wards to all inside the aoe on the final hit.

A small PSA to all struggling with Test of Faith (the ring of swords which hurts) trap:

The reason this trap is so problematic aside from l2p issues, is how a good guardian will use it:

A skilled guardian who is either surprising you, or watching for your dodges will usually teleport to you (Judge’s Intervention), and then use Great sword #2 (spin2win) WHILE casting Test of Faith. Since Test of faith is instant cast, you get dazed, hit by the first 3-kittens of whirling wrath, and hit by the initial triggering of Test of Faith. This is a sizeable amount of damage that can’t effectively be avoided, or proactively countered in most cases. After this, it’s usually down hill for you.

Here’s what you CAN do: try to apply protection, stability, blocks, or invulns if you see a DH teleport to you. In almost all cases, a DH teleporting to you means VERY bad news. Try to move a bit before dodging. Dodging immediately upon getting hit will likely deposit you right before the edge of the ring resulting in you getting hit for crossing it. You want to take a couple steps, then dodge so that you avoid the edge of the ring.

Do NOT try and burst a DH using this combo. Wait until after the DH teleports, and you’re outside of the ring before putting pressure on him/her. Ranged pressure generally works better. It won’t be long before they pop their f3 if you have decent ranged pressure.

Also, watch for the golden tether! Our f1 (spear of justice) can be used to pull you to us (very strong 1200 range pull). Often times this will result in you getting pulled into a trap, or across Test of Faith. Try to pop stability or invuln to counter this. If you’re a thief, save your shadow-step to counter this ability.

Keep in mind that CCing a guardian isn’t the only way to set up a burst. We can still be immobbed, and soft-CCed. Additionally, a coordinated burst by 3 people is not going to be stopped by a single aegis. I don’t see this as a huge issue.

Booms.3952:

Use it to interrupt blocks like the revs block with the passive knock back since its unblockable.

^This. Pretty brilliant actually. The only problem is that the projectile itself is fairly unreliable once your target is further than 600 unit range from you.

I’m part of a WvW guild, and yes, we’re all either…

1. Experiencing the new maps (for those of us who can or like pve).
2. Farming in the new maps, or farming EotM for elite specs
3. sPvP (trying out every new elite spec)
4. earning our guild hall (yesterday)

Despite the fact that WvW was the only thing any of us did prior to Friday, none of us have even touched the new BL maps. I think we’re going to have to give this a week or two before we can say that the new WvW maps are dead. Not to mention, we still have EB.

Anyone taken full traps, + rune of the trapper for a spin yet? I played a handful of matches with this build yesterday, it’s pretty kitten dope. You can charge into the middle of a large brawl, lay down your traps, and peel off in stealth/super speed. If no one decides to pressure you, then they can have fun eating 5-7k trueshot crits.

For soloQ I had absolutely amazing results with this. It takes a coordinated or fortuitous burst down by the opposing team to take you out. I found I could hold my own against decent chronomancers, classic PU mes, thieves, rangers, and classic med guards in 1v1s, and it took two gank to be able to take me out using this build! Probably won’t see any play in top tier ranked, but it’s fun as hell in unranked/soloQ!

I am not going to be able to play for like another 10-12 hours but I would like to know: How does attacking someone who just came out of stealth operate? Compared to our old mode, does it take more or less time to focus on that target (lets say it’s a thief) after they come out of stealth?

Arken.3725:

Some updates to Virtue’s would also make sense. Not sure if anyone’s noticed but unless you spec into Virtue’s, the class skill is pretty bad(both active/passive’s).

Baseline

Passives

Justice: In addition to burning, why not grant the Guardian Fury.

Resolve: Increase the base healing/scaling(this would help being so dependent on Monk’s Focus/Medi’s)

Courage: Grant yourself protection for an X. amount of time when struck. (ICD of course).

Actives

Justice: AoE Swiftness and Fury for a small duration. (4-5 seconds)

Resolve: AoE Regen and burst healing. (work on the base/scaling)

Courage: Longer duration of AoE protection and a shorter duration of Resistance.

This could make virtue’s baseline too strong but it’s just a thought.

This is a good point, and great ideas! Many other classes get decent usage out of their class mechanic without having to trait into it like we usually do. For guardians, it seems like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot by not taking the Virtues trait line. Also, we have some pretty high cool-downs on our virtues if they’re not traited (the fact that they’re shared to party members doesn’t justify such long cool downs in my opinion). 50 seconds for a 1.6k base aoe heal, 75 seconds for a single aegis application…

A little bit of change, and rolling certain effects (like improved passive on VoR) into base-line would encourage some build diversity. Base cooldowns should be slightly lower. Still higher than DH cool downs, because these are instant, but still lower than what they are now, such as 25 seconds, 45 seconds, 65 seconds.

Is the root on LB#2 really that bad? The high damage you can hit with it makes the skill very worth-while if you ask me. Personally I’d much rather have this skill hit as hard as it does but root rather than just feel like a ranged mighty blow (lower damage). It makes the longbow feel unique. I think we could do more with the whole rooting rather than have it JUST be a draw-back, such as the trait giving 3s of stability upon casting LB #2. This way condi-builds would benefit from using this skill too.

I have to agree with a slightly decreased cast time to LB#5. 1.75 seconds sounds like a better/more balanced cast time than 2.75 seconds. An opponent still has plenty of time to react and get out of the ward, but the skill becomes more rewarding in 1v1s, or smaller skirmishes because people who are crippled can’t just stroll out; they would actually have to dodge.

@Ragnar: I know you’ve been suggesting taunt on shield for a while not, but I’m still gonna disagree with ya: Taunt neither makes visual nor logical sense on shield imo. Unlesssss you meant spirit shield haha!

I think a good fix to spirit weapons that could also fit in a bit of taunt would be to add functionality to the spirit weapons including “taunts all struck enemies” to the command skill of shield. This would make shield a stun-break, a projectile block, and a cc all in one which would be pretty neat!

I like the idea; it’s very unique and would bring a LOT of diversity to guardian. I like the idea of changing out burn for torment. A few criticisms:

-Too many traits affecting mantras, and you are unable to take all of them. This stresses the use of mantras far too much in my opinion. A master and GM trait should suffice. You could combine the two GM traits into one.

-Blocks/aegis? I think one of the utilities should give a selfish block. Perhaps the elite mantra could apply a mini shelter (1 second block dura).

-Torment is great, but we should still be able to inflict some burning without having to take PF and JI. Perhaps the active effect of justice, or switching aspects will still give decent access to burn? Perhaps axe attacks could additionally inflict burning when striking multiple foes?

-What exactly is the theme/lore behind the Justicar? Is it a “judge” of sorts who is meant to pursue the wicked in the name of justice? Is it something more along the lines of a crusader? Consider this theme when designing traits and skills! The cripple, chill, and torment indicate that you want this to be more of a pursuer-type class, so the class mechanic should reflect that. Perhaps the f1 could pull targeted downed-foes to you, and you could have traits with dual nature (granting stability/swiftness to allies, cripple/immob/torment to foes).

Soryuju.8164:

Zealot’s Defense:

1. Remove the root while casting
2. Change the projectile destruction to projectile blocking for better trait synergy.

As it stands, using this skill can sometimes leave you in a worse position against projectile users because it allows them to gain distance on you while you cast. If we can move while using the skill, that also helps mitigate the poor accuracy it suffers from as targets get farther away. Changing projectile destruction to blocking shouldn’t make a huge difference now that our block traits have all been nerfed, but more internal synergy is always nice.

Exactly this. This is why I rarely use sword in spvp. Against the classes that sword’s rooting #3 attack would do well against, you can do just as well with a mace mh.

I don’t have a quote ready for you or anything, but I believe that the devs eventually intend to expand access to taunt and resistance as these are essentially the new kids on the block that have only been marginally introduced into the current game.

At the moment only three classes will have access to taunt upon HoT release. I’d say it’s pretty reasonable that there will be at least a couple more skills that will be able to taunt.

On guardian I’d like to see taunt on either a spirit weapon, a signet, or one of the shouts (Save Yourselves—> it would draw all conditions and foes to you!). These would be good choices. I can’t really see taunt being placed on any of our weapon skills without drastically changing the mechanic of that weapon.