Guild Wars 2

Ghotistyx.6942:

As I read some of these comments, it definitely sounds like we don’t really know what we want. We might have a vague idea, but we aren’t really good at articulating what we’re missing. Even if we got everything we asked for, I’d be willing to bet we’d still be unhappy.

I can tell you for certain people would be a lot less unhappy than they are now, at least.

Yeah, the Dragonhunter is a pretty massive letdown. Like others here have said, nothing short of a total demolition and ground-up rework is going to make it appealing to me. It’s become the nail in the coffin for my Guardian, so if I buy HoT (which I’m really still undecided on), I’ll be hopping on the Revenant bandwagon.

PvE meta is very strict. If you’re not looking to play the meta builds, then you might as well just pick whatever you want and hope that you don’t find any groups that will care about low DPS.

Thaddeus.4891:

Black Box.9312:

I think Guardians will still be useful in PvE, but in PvP we’re already almost entirely out of the meta, with Bunker Guard somewhat making a comeback but still not really being all that powerful. Dragonhunter looks like a waste of time no matter where you look, so I don’t see our chances really improving much.

Bunker Guardian and Burn Guardian are everywhere these days. I’m not saying they are the absolute best. But they have a very strong presence and are far from out of the meta.

Bunker Guardian requires heavy coordination to be effective and still deals no damage, and Burn Guardian is only strong right now because burning in general is too strong at the moment. Sure, they work, but the class has definitely seen better days.

I was never pledging to have everything work the same way that AH and MF work. I was simply saying that the other skills should be brought up to their level rather than have them nerfed to be “made up for” elsewhere.

I think Guardians will still be useful in PvE, but in PvP we’re already almost entirely out of the meta, with Bunker Guard somewhat making a comeback but still not really being all that powerful. Dragonhunter looks like a waste of time no matter where you look, so I don’t see our chances really improving much.

Nope. We’re (by design, apparently) not very well-equipped in terms of CC. If you want to play that type of build, you should probably just switch over to Warrior or Mesmer.

Of course there is something wrong with shield. It’s terrible. It’s good for an AoE knockback, at the cost of not having a blind, regen, condi clear, block, high burst damage AoE attack, or a blast finisher.

But, you know, it’s totally worth sacrificing that for a knockback, right?

I’m not “having trouble wrapping my head around it”. I just flat out don’t agree that it will do what you think it will do. At best, you’ll have a class that has a built in Healing Signet that will become the scourge of the PvP community and will inevitably get nerfed back into place at the cost of already effective traits that will reduce the incentive to play their respective builds. At worst, you’ll have rendered our best traits ineffective with no apparent gain.

Litany is definitely a very solid choice for Medi Guard now. With Monk’s Focus and Smiter’s Boon, you’re looking at a 5.6k base heal on a 1/4s cast time with a 24s cooldown, and that’s not even accounting for the 6 seconds you have available (covered by 8s of fury) to deal more damage to gain more healing.

Shelter is still a good heal, but the block really isn’t as invaluable as people seem to think. Just play smart and you’ll do fine without it.

Loex.5104:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I play everything, but I’ll definitely be focusing on Revenant for HoT launch.

it would be a shame if HoT hits and you would say “screw this kitten class i’ll play Dragonhunter” O_O

I’d be all for that, tbh. Dragonhunter still needs some serious work done to be worth considering.

It got removed, sadly. It was a really neat idea that was only a few number changes away from being a core trait in burning builds.

Brutaly.6257:

Black Box.9312:

Brutaly.6257:

Black Box.9312:

Brutaly.6257:

Black Box.9312:

In order to make the class competitive without Valor, they’d have to go beyond undoing every healing/sustain nerf we’ve ever received,

All they have to do (an example) is to make passive resolve the same as warrior passive healing from their signet and buff the active to heal for 4k.

If they do that i wont ever again trait into valor for medis, even though i will use medi utilities in my builds when i go for burst builds.

There is nothing wrong with medis as utilities and they are pretty much in balance with both consecrations and shouts. Signets and SW are behind as we all know. Its having more or less 10k instant heals that makes them unbalanced with other lines and utilities.

Make them heal for 1k innate and let monks focus give you swiftness (instead of heals) for 15s when using a medi. That would help both roamers and burst builds greatly.

And this is on topic. I think asking for changes that makes DH in balance with valor or virtues is unrealistic due to the strength they have. Seriously i would need some sort of tactical nuke in DH-traits to ever use it in pvp or wvw, substituted for valor or virtues.

Its much more realistic to ask for one nerf (AH/MF) and one serious buff to innate capabilities. As you your self say Anet isnt known for buffing guardians so why ask for buffs to almost all utilities and all traitlines.

What do you think we have the best chance of achieving?

Adress the issue which is overall survivability due to long cd on heals and low health pool.

I don’t think you’re getting the point here. AH and MF are by no means overpowered to begin with.

No i think you are not getting the point.

Im not saying they are overpowered or even powerful.

I say as long as they are as relatively strong compared to the other utilities and traitlines they prevent build diversity.

If you reply to my posts please at least read them.

Straightforward question:
If virtue of resolve gave you 365 hps passive and 4k heals active and medis gave you 1k heals per use would you be more or less inclined to use other utilities and traitlines? Ofc you would be more inclined and that is actually my point. Not that medi or AH is overpowered.

If you nerf AH/MF, you remove our ability to be competitive running builds that use those traits. If you buff other traits/skills, you have still removed our ability to be competitive running builds that use those traits.

If you’re insisting that you’re not labeling them as OP, then what purpose would nerfing them serve? The best-case scenario would be that they’d just go out of fashion entirely, and then you will have accomplished nothing other than rotating the meta to the next 1-2 builds.

Just don’t cry for nerfs on something when it’s not overpowered. I really don’t see where there is difficulty in understanding this.

If for instance VoR was buffed and MF nerfed the absolute effectiveness of a medi guard compared to other professions would be kept intact.

BUT the relative effectiveness of the medi guard compared to our other utilities would be reduced.

I asked you a straightforward question, why not answer it as Arken did. If you do i believe that you get the point im trying to make.

I did answer your question. It would incentivize the use of other builds, but it would come at the cost of rendering current builds ineffective. You’d be doing nothing but taking all of our eggs out of one basket and placing them in another. Both AH and MF do a very good job of supporting their respective builds. The goal should be to bring other builds up to par with that, so that AH and MF are still good options, but just not the only options.

Too slow without GS? I would argue that it’s too slow with GS. Sword and scepter together hit much faster and more consistently than GS, which makes for more VoJ procs.

Besides, the only thing really keeping it strong is the fact that burning in general is currently too powerful and allows for burst DoT (which is supposed to be a contradiction).

Brutaly.6257:

Black Box.9312:

Brutaly.6257:

Black Box.9312:

In order to make the class competitive without Valor, they’d have to go beyond undoing every healing/sustain nerf we’ve ever received,

All they have to do (an example) is to make passive resolve the same as warrior passive healing from their signet and buff the active to heal for 4k.

If they do that i wont ever again trait into valor for medis, even though i will use medi utilities in my builds when i go for burst builds.

There is nothing wrong with medis as utilities and they are pretty much in balance with both consecrations and shouts. Signets and SW are behind as we all know. Its having more or less 10k instant heals that makes them unbalanced with other lines and utilities.

Make them heal for 1k innate and let monks focus give you swiftness (instead of heals) for 15s when using a medi. That would help both roamers and burst builds greatly.

And this is on topic. I think asking for changes that makes DH in balance with valor or virtues is unrealistic due to the strength they have. Seriously i would need some sort of tactical nuke in DH-traits to ever use it in pvp or wvw, substituted for valor or virtues.

Its much more realistic to ask for one nerf (AH/MF) and one serious buff to innate capabilities. As you your self say Anet isnt known for buffing guardians so why ask for buffs to almost all utilities and all traitlines.

What do you think we have the best chance of achieving?

Adress the issue which is overall survivability due to long cd on heals and low health pool.

I don’t think you’re getting the point here. AH and MF are by no means overpowered to begin with.

No i think you are not getting the point.

Im not saying they are overpowered or even powerful.

I say as long as they are as relatively strong compared to the other utilities and traitlines they prevent build diversity.

If you reply to my posts please at least read them.

Straightforward question:
If virtue of resolve gave you 365 hps passive and 4k heals active and medis gave you 1k heals per use would you be more or less inclined to use other utilities and traitlines? Ofc you would be more inclined and that is actually my point. Not that medi or AH is overpowered.

If you nerf AH/MF, you remove our ability to be competitive running builds that use those traits. If you buff other traits/skills, you have still removed our ability to be competitive running builds that use those traits.

If you’re insisting that you’re not labeling them as OP, then what purpose would nerfing them serve? The best-case scenario would be that they’d just go out of fashion entirely, and then you will have accomplished nothing other than rotating the meta to the next 1-2 builds.

Just don’t cry for nerfs on something when it’s not overpowered. I really don’t see where there is difficulty in understanding this.

Brutaly.6257:

Black Box.9312:

In order to make the class competitive without Valor, they’d have to go beyond undoing every healing/sustain nerf we’ve ever received,

All they have to do (an example) is to make passive resolve the same as warrior passive healing from their signet and buff the active to heal for 4k.

If they do that i wont ever again trait into valor for medis, even though i will use medi utilities in my builds when i go for burst builds.

There is nothing wrong with medis as utilities and they are pretty much in balance with both consecrations and shouts. Signets and SW are behind as we all know. Its having more or less 10k instant heals that makes them unbalanced with other lines and utilities.

Make them heal for 1k innate and let monks focus give you swiftness (instead of heals) for 15s when using a medi. That would help both roamers and burst builds greatly.

And this is on topic. I think asking for changes that makes DH in balance with valor or virtues is unrealistic due to the strength they have. Seriously i would need some sort of tactical nuke in DH-traits to ever use it in pvp or wvw, substituted for valor or virtues.

Its much more realistic to ask for one nerf (AH/MF) and one serious buff to innate capabilities. As you your self say Anet isnt known for buffing guardians so why ask for buffs to almost all utilities and all traitlines.

What do you think we have the best chance of achieving?

Adress the issue which is overall survivability due to long cd on heals and low health pool.

I don’t think you’re getting the point here. AH and MF are by no means overpowered to begin with. They just seem so strong because we have nothing else that can compare. Every successful PvP Guardian build ever has had to rely on extra sustain outside of our heal skills because our healing skills are garbage (block from Shelter notwithstanding). Since launch we’ve been crippled by high cooldowns and low healing coefficients simply for the sake of allowing our heals to affect allies, who typically don’t even really need them because of their own healing skills being much more accessible. Anet has tried so hard to make Guardian the healer class in a game that doesn’t support the dedicated healer role (and really doesn’t even need one currently), and the result is a kitten set of skills that heal for under 2k a piece and are locked behind high cooldowns because “otherwise they’d be overpowered because you could just heal your allies the whole time”.

The class is just so fundamentally flawed that it’s a wonder that it’s been able to stick around in the meta for so long despite its shortcomings. Anet has been so afraid of Guardian players becoming OP juggernauts just from getting some fine tuning that we’ve been the guys who are “in a good place” who get hyped up for every balance update just to see that we’ve gotten some “updated skill facts”, and after 3 years we’re falling behind because we aren’t getting nearly as much TLC as any other class has up to this point.

This is why I don’t want AH and MF nerfed. Because if that happens, we’ll have nothing left to make us competitive at all, and we’ll just fall out of the PvP meta entirely. And the Dragonhunter with its bogus traps certainly won’t do a kitten thing to prevent that.

It’s a good extra layer of defense. If your 4 skill is dodged/blocked or your 5 skill is quickly broken, you might need the extra damage mitigation.

It would have been much better suited on shield, though. This only widens the viability gap between the two.

Toss-up between asura and charr, depending on whose animations I end up liking better. Or maybe I’ll just make both.

If I even get HoT (which is still an if at this point, to be entirely honest), then I will almost certainly be switching my main to Revenant. At this point I regret picking Guardian as my main, because I’ve been pretty consistently disappointed with Anet’s “in a good place” attitude toward the class and their desire to frame balance around the class theme, instead of doing the opposite as they should be. And it certainly doesn’t help that they completely dropped the ball by giving us the dumbest, most uninteresting elite spec of them all, and then added insult to injury by giving us traps. It’s a sinking ship at this point, so off to the new one I go.

It’s really not even that great as a group support option, sadly. My Fresh Air Ele can heal and block projectiles and grant team protection more frequently, more effectively, and with more uptime with just an offhand focus alone. The only thing our shield really has going for it is the AoE knockback, which is just not worth sacrificing the potential gains from focus or even torch.

Anet seems to think that reducing the cooldowns is suddenly going to make our shield viable, but the fact is that people don’t use it because they don’t like how ineffective the skills feel, and no amount of cooldown reduction alone (aside from 100% uptime, maybe) is going to change that.

Players already should be paying attention to the boons that their target has. A prime example of being punished for not paying attention that already exists is Aegis. Stability is another one.

Now, I’m all for adding more counterplay in the form of things like boon removal, but trying to balance around the lowest common denominator has already proven to be problematic. If someone wants to succeed, they should have to work for it. Players aren’t entitled to do well just because they pressed 2 on their keyboard.

Fiery Wrath absolutely needs to be a minor trait, because nothing else in its class will ever be taken over it.

As for the other minor traits, Shattered Aegis, Wrathful Spirit (with a buff, because 3s retal is laughably bad), Binding Jeopardy, and Kindled Zeal would all make for far more appropriate minor traits than the symbol-based ones we have now.

Obtena.7952:

Black Box.9312:

Obtena.7952:

The comparison here isn’t with other professions so yes, medi is very good.

This would be a good point… If we were playing a game with exclusively Guardians.

We’re not. We have 8 other classes to account for, and yes, they ALL need to be accounted for when working with balancing.

… Adjusting the medi heals on Guardian only gives devs MORE incentive to put other goodness elsewhere in the Guardian traits to maintain the balance among classes AND provide build diversity.

Except they won’t do that. When has Anet ever compensated elsewhere for a nerf they’ve given us? The only thing I can think of is the spec change a month ago, but they did that for everyone, let alone the fact that we actually lost more than we gained (especially regarding damage potential). Guardians have seen an overwhelming number of nerfs in comparison to buffs, and I can almost guarantee that they won’t give us anything in return for eliminating the viability of the one traitline that we can actually depend on to help us stay alive in fights, especially since we can’t run from them anyway because of a bullkitten “first in, last out” philosophy that is completely counteractive in a game where any other class can simply run away from a fight that they’re not winning.

Back before the original buff to the healing value on Monk’s Focus nobody used meditations. You’re basically asking for the build to be put to rest, when instead you could be asking for stronger alternatives that don’t force us to build our sustain around our utility skills and a GM trait in Valor. It’s pretty evident that you can’t successfully build a Guardian without either AH or MF, since there hasn’t been a single meta build since LAUNCH other than Healway (which, ironically enough, was quickly nerfed hard with no compensation) that doesn’t take one of those two traits.

In order to make the class competitive without Valor, they’d have to go beyond undoing every healing/sustain nerf we’ve ever received, which is simply not going to happen. We can’t kite successfully, we can’t chain CC successfully, and we can’t outrun our enemies successfully, so our only option left is to out-sustain them, and a 4.5k heal on our lowest healing skill cooldown of 30s is just not nearly enough to do that, especially on a low HP pool.

Better than what we have, but I still wouldn’t use it.

Obtena.7952:

The comparison here isn’t with other professions so yes, medi is very good.

This would be a good point… If we were playing a game with exclusively Guardians.

We’re not. We have 8 other classes to account for, and yes, they ALL need to be accounted for when working with balancing.

Traps need a stun on activation (or at least an immobilize), not a daze. People will continue to just walk right out of them and render them useless otherwise.

Brutaly.6257:

Black Box.9312:

Brutaly.6257:

And nerf meditations (-25%) and AH (-35) but let AH apply the heal to allies as well. This will open up for more builds where DH with traps can play a role.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

Nerfing effective builds in attempts to level them with ineffective builds just renders the whole class obsolete. This is a horrendous idea.

I totally agree. That is the exact point. That will show devs and players whats really wrong with the guardian and that its not in a good state.

And as i said in my previous post, its the fastest way to:
1 Balance traitlines and open up for more diversity
2 identifying and implementing innate capabilities to compensate.

This is how you effectively handle imbalances in business, you dont reinforce the weak stuff first, you balance the strong stuff and have a plan on how to fix the foundation when you got balance. Any other route just waste resources and work as patches.

Or you could just skip the part where you make Guardian suck entirely and just tweak the things that actually need work; these being things that people already know about and have been telling Anet to make changes to for a long time now.

Traps are terrible. Traits are getting better, but are still pretty meh. Bow is cool, but not cool enough to justify sacrificing an entire traitline to be replaced by meh traits IMO. Name is garbage. Glove and bow skins are garbage.

x indigo x.6981:

Black Box.9312:

Wasabee.5786:

I sort of see the Dragonhunter as the commander character specializing in setting up the kills for his group and swooping in where needed while providing battlefield control with traps. I try to see the traps more as a new form of symbols, to help with zoning control and kill setup, which also allows to stay at range against enemies easier, but also provide the melee Dragonhunter with new “symbols” to lock down enemies and make them vulnerable, taking on a more offensive support role.

See, but that’s kind of the issue. More area denial is the last thing this class needed. So even if they buff the hell out of traps, it still will just be more of what we already have.

Guardians have area of denial ? …

Symbols, wards, consecrations, etc. Static AoE pressure has never been something that we’ve lacked. The problem has always been how easily avoidable it all is, and these all-or-nothing traps that can be rendered useless with a single dodge don’t do a thing to add any extra depth to the class.

Brutaly.6257:

And nerf meditations (-25%) and AH (-35) but let AH apply the heal to allies as well. This will open up for more builds where DH with traps can play a role.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

Nerfing effective builds in attempts to level them with ineffective builds just renders the whole class obsolete. This is a horrendous idea.

Wasabee.5786:

I sort of see the Dragonhunter as the commander character specializing in setting up the kills for his group and swooping in where needed while providing battlefield control with traps. I try to see the traps more as a new form of symbols, to help with zoning control and kill setup, which also allows to stay at range against enemies easier, but also provide the melee Dragonhunter with new “symbols” to lock down enemies and make them vulnerable, taking on a more offensive support role.

See, but that’s kind of the issue. More area denial is the last thing this class needed. So even if they buff the hell out of traps, it still will just be more of what we already have.

It’s kind of sad how much of a rip off this is. The entire purpose of the Acrobatics traitline was to provide extra dodging and power through evasion. They’ve essentially taken away something that we already had only to bring it back, but lock it behind a price gate of $50.

What they really SHOULD do is change the Zeal GM minor’s functionality so that symbols have that initial burn pulse on all symbols, instead of the crap 33% chance per hit bullkitten. Or better yet, do the same thing but merge it into Symbolic Avenger and put something non-symbol dependent as the minor.

NapTooN.6283:

Everything needs a Weakspot, for Revenant that are Conditions. If there are reliable ways for a Profession to cover that Weakspot, it is no longer a Weakspot.

This is the logic I used to justify Warrior’s weakness to conditions at launch. Then they apparently decided that a high HP pool and heavy armor weren’t enough so they gave them access to some of the best condition removal traits and skills in the game.

/shrug

I think the changes show that they’re finally on the right track, but I do still agree that it doesn’t seem worth taking considering what you would have to give up in order to use it.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hey all. Following up on what we talked about last week. Here’s a few more things that we’re looking at doing:

Longbow update

Deflecting Shot: The last time I posted, the note I had on this was a vague ‘damage increase’ thing, which met with fair opposition. We’ve had a little more time to look into the ability and have tweaked it a fair amount so that it can retain its primary defensive functionality and still reward you for reactive play. Here’s what we’ve got -

• Reduced missile velocity by 25% (it traveled too fast to really block much). Reduced after-cast by 300 milliseconds. Increased base damage by 13%. Destroying a projectile with this ability increases the damage it deals by 100%. Increased the blocking radius by 33%. The attack radius of this ability has not been increased.

• Symbol of Energy: Removed the burning on impact (no other symbol has an additional effect, so this felt weird). Increased damage dealt by 10%.

Virtues:

• Spear of Justice: Increased missile velocity by 100%. Reduced the casting speed from 3/4 second to 1/4 second.

• Shield of Courage: The shielding effect now occurs the moment this ability starts. Lowered after-cast by 200 milliseconds. We’re also looking into a better functionality for the shield.
  Where we’re at: Currently, you block all attacks for allies within the radius, but you don’t get any feedback for it… so we’re looking to improve that. The shield also doesn’t really benefit you, other than missile blocking (which is good, but feels like it should do more, being that you’re giving up instant casts). The current idea is to block attacks from the front (within the shield you’re projecting), but be vulnerable from the back to ensure counter-play.

• Wings of Resolve: We’re waiting to see how the current implementation plays out, being as the ability has a greatly increased healing application and has access to 3 seconds of immobilize.

Traits:
There’s been some merging and creation of new trait types for the Dragonhunter line. There are now a couple of direct defensive options, in addition to some stronger power/damage ones. The goal here was to give different clear avenues (damage, utility, virtues… with some overlap)

Adept – Piercing Light: The bleeding effect only really benefited a couple traps, where we wanted the effects of this trait to enhance each one in the same way.

• The bleeding functionality has been removed and will now daze enemies for 1 second when traps enter their ‘activating’ state.

Adept – Dulled Senses: Moved here from the Master tier! Enemies you knock back are crippled. Enemies you cripple receive Vulnerability. Reduced the vuln from 3 stacks for 5 seconds to 1 stack for 8 seconds.

Master – Hunter’s Determination: Drop a Fragments of Faith trap at your location when you’re crowd-controlled.

Master – Zealot’s Aggression: Deal extra damage to crippled enemies. Damage bonus increased from 7% to 10%. Justice’s passive effect cripples enemies (1.5s).

Grandmaster – Hunter’s Fortification: The area effect protection was bland and, while defensive, didn’t really portray the more selfish dragonhunter nature that likes to hold an advantage over their enemies. We’ve replaced this with a bit different defensive nature that’s also more synergistic with Hunter’s Determination.

• Remove conditions when blocking attacks (1 per block, ICD 1 second). Receive 10% less damage when you have no conditions on you.

Grandmaster – Heavy Light: Merged the aspect of Hunter’s Determination.

• Longbow arrows knock back enemies that are within the range threshold (10s ICD). Gain stability (1 stack, 5 seconds) when you knock an enemy back in this fashion.

Please keep in mind that (as before) these things won’t be in the next BWE, but in a future update. As always, thanks for your constructive feedback!

Cheers,
-Karl

Better. This is much better. Finally seeing some decent progress here, especially with the easier access to cripple without having to resort to Heavy Light/longbow combo. Some things still need more review though:

Defender’s Dogma and Pure of Sight are both way too niche to be minor traits. If they’re meant to be taken with every Dragonhunter build then they need to be widely applicable enough that they’ll actually be put to use in every build.

Daze on trap activation sounds cool, but really doesn’t solve the issue of traps being too easy to avoid, because a dazed player can still dodge out of the AoE. Make this an immobilize instead, and you’ll have something worthwhile. Since it will be in direct competition with Soaring Devastation anyway, you won’t have to worry about an overabundance of immobilize.

It’s still a little problematic that Heavy Light is so reliant on a passive ICD and isn’t an on-demand knockback for when we may potentially need an interrupt. I do like the idea of it being specifically linked to True Shot or Deflecting Shot instead of just any arrow attack that hits once every 10 seconds.

Also consider making the self-aspect of the Wings of Resolve instant as many are suggesting. It really hurts to not have that heal/triple condi cleanse when we need it, and while the condi removal on block sounds amazing, I don’t think it’ll be enough to make up for the loss of that on-demand utility that the instant Virtue of Resolve provides.

Nike.2631:

Black Box.9312:

Obtena.7952:

Yes, that’s why you have the choice to not use it. Working as intended. Almost all the negative feedback I see for DH seems to start with the premise it’s suppose to be better or players must find a way to incorporate it into their game. Not true.

People have every right to be disappointed that the shiny new playstyle that they were promised is garbage. Sure, people can choose to not use it, but that doesn’t give them any less right to be disappointed at how subpar it is.

I am so looking forward to taking up this conversation 3 months after HoT launches – there’s really only two outcomes: either the revised and refined Dragonhunter has at least one meta-worthy build constructed around the tools it offers… or we’ll have the accumulated metrics data to show that it needs to be buffed until that is true.

That wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that Anet has a terrible record of doing things in a timely manner. Besides, they decided they wanted to make traps more “traplike”, meaning that they’d have to go back on their word to make them anything more than barely functional, which is also doubtful.

Obtena.7952:

Yes, that’s why you have the choice to not use it. Working as intended. Almost all the negative feedback I see for DH seems to start with the premise it’s suppose to be better or players must find a way to incorporate it into their game. Not true.

People have every right to be disappointed that the shiny new playstyle that they were promised is garbage. Sure, people can choose to not use it, but that doesn’t give them any less right to be disappointed at how subpar it is.

If the leaked skills are what we’re getting, then I see no reason to really take Acrobatics at all. They’ve essentially made an entire existing traitline obsolete, which is silly.

I’d be less upset with this if not for the fact that my torch 4 throw still gets obstructed by thin air.

Gray.9041:

Black Box.9312:

Nike.2631:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

“Batman” is more appropriate than “Daredevil”

You want to name the new E-spec a “butler”?

Weird.

If Batman has been the butler this whole time, then I have my superhero comic lore incredibly mixed up.

the term “batman” is an older term referring to a military position similar to butler. here

Ah, thank you for the clarification. I figured that there had to be more to it.

Nike.2631:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

“Batman” is more appropriate than “Daredevil”

You want to name the new E-spec a “butler”?

Weird.

If Batman has been the butler this whole time, then I have my superhero comic lore incredibly mixed up.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Try not to put all the blames for bad Thief profession on one designer because it is a team effort when it comes to balancing it. As far as we know, Karl might have a lot good ideas for Thief that other designer like Robert and Roy just shut down — thus it looks like their professions look a lot better.

Again, this is just a speculation but I won’t be like one of you guys who blames a particular designer.

However, all the blame will always fall on the head of the balance team — that is his responsibility.

Do I think it’s 100% his own fault? Probably not. I don’t think people are saying that it’s literally his and only his responsibility. But as the lead of his team, he represents them as a whole, and therefore must accept the credit/blame on their behalf, and clearly there’s a disparity in feedback between the things his team is working on and the things that Robert’s team is working on.

Expect about the quality of traits you’ll find in Tempest or Dragonhunter. Or lack of quality, rather.

Your Guardian brethren welcome you, OP.

Obtena.7952:

Black Box.9312:

Wandelaar.3746:

Black Box.9312:

Nike.2631:

Black Box.9312:

Bingo. The entirety of Dragonhunter is about as disjointed from the rest of the class as it can be without being two entirely separate entities.

And yet about half of my Guardians are gonna be rockin’ variations using this spec. It’s almost like some people have a broader vision of what the class could mean or be used for. It’s already proven good fun on my zerg-leader for WvW. As the changes get patched in it’s just gonna get better.

Name 3 things in the Guardian’s base traitlines that effectively synergize with the Dragonhunter spec, or vice versa. It has to be at least equally effective in comparison to a non-Dragonhunter (i.e. Absolute Resolution doesn’t count because it’s not nearly as reliable on a DH).

You are not obliged to take traps if you’re going into the dragonhunter trait line, if you just get the longbow and run a regular shout setup (replacing virtues with dragonhunter line) you’re able to support the backline way easier. Sharing stability, condition cleanse, more boons and strength in numbers with people who are usually too far away from the melee. You’ll also be closer to your ranged people to pick them up with the bubble when they go down. Longbow is a more reliable way to pump out aoe ranged damage than scepter no matter how you look at it.

Most virtues get downgraded, that’s true, but wings of resolve heals for about 50% more, so if you can accurately cast this it should be better than your regular f2.

You should give dragonhunter and longbow some of the credit it deserves.

A Shout Guardian that takes DH is sacrificing either Valor, Honor, or Virtues. DH currently has none of that sustain, condi clear, or team support that those 3 traitlines do, so you’d be effectively devaluing yourself for the sake of a ranged weapon that won’t make up for your lack of damage anyway.

Honestly, I don’t think that matters if you want to hang back and play your fiddle with a longbow ANYWAYS. It’s a completely different approach to playing the class. It’s not about devaluing yourself; it’s about giving people something different to play. I don’t even think a build focused on LB would even include shouts. Who would even benefit from that? Think about what you are doing if your using a LB. It makes no sense.

You all need to understand that if you don’t want to play your Guardian different than you do now … there is literally NOTHING for you in the DH spec. It’s a PVP spec focused on ranged defense of points and being screened. If that’s not what you want to do, just drop the whole “I hate DH” (because … it’s NOT going away or changing concept/name/skills/whatever) and stick to what you do now. In fact, be HAPPY about it because it’s your best option and it’s a kitten good one too.

He specifically mentioned running bow with shouts. And also I do want a different way of playing Guardian (or at least a different variation of one of our current builds), but it has to be one that isn’t objectively worse than what we already have. Neither of those are going to be provided by the Dragonhunter.

They’ve missed the mark so many times with the class that I don’t even really play it anymore (which is sad considering the fact that thematically it’s still far and away my favorite). I was really, really hoping for a nice refreshing change of pace with the elite spec, but I’ve clearly been disappointed by the lack of effort brought forth. It’s pretty sad when I’m more excited for the elite specs of my two least played classes (Warrior and Necro) than I am for my main.

The set of traits we’re being given is such a bust. Any one of these (or all of them) would be much more interesting.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

They are named Dragonhunter for a reason. The skills are tailored to range and cc the flying dragons in HoT.

This only makes the irony of traps even more rich.

Wandelaar.3746:

Black Box.9312:

Nike.2631:

Black Box.9312:

Bingo. The entirety of Dragonhunter is about as disjointed from the rest of the class as it can be without being two entirely separate entities.

And yet about half of my Guardians are gonna be rockin’ variations using this spec. It’s almost like some people have a broader vision of what the class could mean or be used for. It’s already proven good fun on my zerg-leader for WvW. As the changes get patched in it’s just gonna get better.

Name 3 things in the Guardian’s base traitlines that effectively synergize with the Dragonhunter spec, or vice versa. It has to be at least equally effective in comparison to a non-Dragonhunter (i.e. Absolute Resolution doesn’t count because it’s not nearly as reliable on a DH).

You are not obliged to take traps if you’re going into the dragonhunter trait line, if you just get the longbow and run a regular shout setup (replacing virtues with dragonhunter line) you’re able to support the backline way easier. Sharing stability, condition cleanse, more boons and strength in numbers with people who are usually too far away from the melee. You’ll also be closer to your ranged people to pick them up with the bubble when they go down. Longbow is a more reliable way to pump out aoe ranged damage than scepter no matter how you look at it.

Most virtues get downgraded, that’s true, but wings of resolve heals for about 50% more, so if you can accurately cast this it should be better than your regular f2.

You should give dragonhunter and longbow some of the credit it deserves.

A Shout Guardian that takes DH is sacrificing either Valor, Honor, or Virtues. DH currently has none of that sustain, condi clear, or team support that those 3 traitlines do, so you’d be effectively devaluing yourself for the sake of a ranged weapon that won’t make up for your lack of damage anyway.

Don’t kid yourself. Pure of Sight was absolutely made with longbow camping in mind. Scepter is too slow to be effective beyond that range and no other Guardian weapon can deal consistent damage from that far away. It’s a poorly designed trait used as an excuse so that real effort wasn’t required to think of something actually imaginative.

The entire traitline kind of assumes that you just want to play bow/traps and don’t care about any of the stuff we already have that’s actually any good, which is one of the reasons why people hate it so much.