Seriously. I’m having like 30-40% of matches in which one or more of our random pugs leaves the game before the 5 minutes mark.
Will be the honor system restored at the Heart of Throns release date? If not, probably most of random players will leave PvP once the leagues start: no reason to play (outside conformed teams) if the pool of players will be full of unpunished afkers and leavers…
im not hearing as much bashing, and actually hearing praise. Its crazy how many DH im seeing in VB, and im the only berserker ive seen all day…
I’m quite amazed about how easy to kill they are. Took me like 30 min to get back to my regular builds after trying a bit the DH. For sure is one of the weakest specializations from HoT, but isn’t as bad due happens with half of them.
But I guess that is fine, due prevents HoT from being mandatory.
This is from a Ranger and Warrior perspective.
You can add the Guardian to that perspective. I’ve been playing against a competent Mesmers at roaming and in duels in WvW and as a Guardian is nigh impossible not only to beat a confusion Mesmer but also to make a signifcative dent on their HP.
I’ve fighting tough Eles and I’ve lost after a while, due their superior sustain or just because they were better players, but not before exhausting my skills and making serious hurt over their HP. Against confussion Mesmers is always the same: in less than 60 seconds I’m dead, will all my cleanses depleted and the mesmer having 75%+ of their HP. I had much better chances in WvW playing against a condi Thief or even against 2 power thieves at the same time than against a single confusion Mesmer.
Stealth alone can be a problem (I can`t do damage without a target) and never understand why is so spread over several clssses (outside Thieves). But confusion just shouldn’t exist; is designed to force players to not use their skills, a high reward/no risk tool which can be spammed mindless.
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I feel like its a game of stealth and death on my thief whenever I try to go toe to toe with you guys in pvp
Is easier using a Thief build based on condis with pistol as main weapon. And if you don’t mind changing class any Guardian is a park walk for condi Mesmers.
These are all very reasonable changes. We got shield buffs that’s we have been asking for forever
I think that what most of Guardian players have been asking for forever to the shield is changes: a block, maybe a shield bash or instead an area blind or some cripple or chill…
Polishing cooldowns and making a few iterations over the current shield skills will not make me to wield a shield, no even if they turn both skills to 10 seconds cooldown.
I need from the shield something useful for duelling/roaming/pvp, otherwise I’ll be anchored in the focus forever, and that is sad, due the shield is supposed to be one of the iconic feats of our class, of our lore, and instead what defines this class to me is “the character that never uses mace or shield”.
So, in light of the Druid live stream, what are your thoughts on the Guardian and by extension the Dragonhunter?
Didn’t saw the stream, but this same question was posted with every specialization.
The thing is: outside the Chronomancer, and maybe the Daredevil, I didn’t saw too much awesomeness in the new specs, and anyway aside fro roaming and dueling (against non-Mesmers, due duelling -decent- Mesmers at the current Guardian state is a insta-defeat) I don’t have plans for my two Guardians at the moment. DH are weak but also are the spirit weapons and the signets, leaving meds, shouts and a consacration or two as the only usable skills for this class. Basically the same as three years ago, minus the proficiency once we had.
So far I would pic Revenant over any other class in terms of team gameplay (or maybe Med Guard for PvP); really don’t care if Druid will be now good at the things that Guardians used to be great, because anyway “tanking” and giving support in this game is a thing that i find pretty much boring.
So, call me when the Guardian shield becomes something playable. Until then I don’t care too much about the “well spoted Guardian”, as ANet likes to say.
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I don’t think so. I did stop to use my guardian in WvW more than a year ago due was boring as hell and any roamer will rekt you in pieces if you were catched with a raid build outside your team, so lately I was playing Warrior in raids while keeping my Guardians for roaming and PvP.
In that sense, I don’t think that Revenants are threat to Guardians, due I don’t like their role in WvW and I don’t find them competitive in PvP/roaming.
Im sorry if im using strong language right now but im clearly upset. but i think im right nevertheless. my favorite class is being turned into a joke in front of my eyes while most other classes receive exciting mechanics and the like.
And what is exactly the problem? Most of specialization AREN’T as powerful as the vanilla builds, specially in PvP/roaming. Outside Chronomancer and maybe the Daredevil most of the other specs displayed are weaker than the current meta builds.
You did buy the expansion due you want a better Guardian? Sorry to hear that. Some people will buy it due the new PvE zones, other ones due the Guild Halls, etc. Some people would wish for a revamp of the Spiritual Weapons and they got nothing. I would like to have a propper shield with viable shield skills, but got nothing. And I’m not mad at it.
.
I told some of my Starcraft 2 buddies and moba buddies what their thoughts were on a MMO like gw2 being a Esport and having ESL back them, the face they gave me followed by the laugher….
Does Starcraft 2 buddies still exist outside South Korea? Colour me surprised… If I were a moba buddie (I’m not) I couldn’t laugh about GW2 being esport due I would be too busy laughing over the notion of having Starcraft II buddies.
Same here, almost 1 second of delay in some basic weapon skills (playing guardian, i.e.: Leap of Faith).
I wouldn’t bother running any kind of Medi build at the moment, you will die in every 1vX fight unless you’re going against baddies.
In this game, if the skill is high, you will lose any 1vX in which “X” is > than 1, no matter which class or build you are running.
Medi is fine for roaming.
Guardian = defensive group support
Warrior = offensive group supportDPS Guardian vs DPS Warrior = Warrior takes Signet Of Power (unblockable attacks every 25seconds) + Berserker Stance (immune to conditions, blinds/burns a favorite of the Guardians), Guard is now RIP because he can’t block your attacks and can’t blind them either. Warrior Endure’s Pain, GG.
Sounds like a Power Necro in Lich form; if you are in cooldowns you are dead, but if you have your skills ready you can stand yourself against for 20 seconds easily and then outplay a class which rely too much on passive skills and will lack Elite for another ~3 minutes.
But I can’t be sure about because Power Liches are common and I have a ton of experience fighting them with my Guardian, whereas almost no Warrior I saw in the last months seems to use Rampage.
If the topic creator was also using a Thief I would advise him to focus on that class: is meta at every time in the PvP, has his role as scout and in the focus party in WvW and is one of the best roamers in the game being also decent as a duel class. In open world WvW 1 vs 1 situations a propper Thief with skill can only have two results: you either win or just disengage.
HOW ABOUT A SHIELD?!
+100000
This. I would love to have a viable shield to build and bear the awesome legendary shield. I have near 4k hours in the game, which 2156 of them are for my main guardian and another 75 from my second one, and I always find weird that in all that time none of them did use a shield at all (I’m being hyperbolic here: maybe I did use it like fourty minutes or so).
Assuming they make the Longbow viable, and make Dragon Hunter viable, and our traits, virtues, traps viable…
I will most likely be very unoriginal and use Wings of Dwayna XD
The one from the WvW tournaments rewards, the longbow from fractals, Azureflame and Tempest seems the ones which fit the best in terms of visuals. I also like a lot the aetherblade bows, but what they have in modelling complexity they lack in particles effects (and I’m on the side that if you are a long term player with thousand of hours in the game and thousand of achievement points, the more fx effects and light sources you have in your main character, the better).
I don’t think that burn guardians are OP. I’ve tried it with one of my guardians, in both PvP and WvW and after a week or so I returned to my power zerker medi guard build.
I don’t even think that guardians are meta in the current PvP landscape: only Orange Logo uses them and in the two latest finals (World Tournament in Colgne and the ESL monthly finals this week) they were trampled at 0/4 and 0/4. In the WT OL became aware of how useless the (second) burn guardian was and they swiched to Mesmer, but wasn’t enough.
After the traits changes in the patch of Jun 23 everyone was amazing about “how much spike damage can deal now”, “Mesmers are OP”, “burning damage is OP”, and so, but the reality is that the two strongest tournaments in the last month were won by heavy sustain builds, which was the same case as in previous metas.
Sure, I can’t win against a good mesmer or a good burning guardian in the current patch, but I can still outskill bad ones, and taking in consideration that probably both of them will end nerfed I find preferable to not invest (emotionally or materially) in those builds, because the most the nail excels the harder the hammer will finally hit.
I use this one:
Is a bit tankier than a full berserk build due the Force of Will trait and the celestial gear, and still is able to have great sustain due the healing on evades, cleric pieces and evades, but still have a lot of punch. In PvP I’m currently using a pure berserk build due after the changes in the atribute points from the traits the cleric amulet not longer is viable for a meditation build. I’ll change to full serk in WvW as soon as I can (re-gearing in ascended gear is very expensive).
Meanwhile my other guardian character uses a fire based meditation build:
…But with exotic gear instead of ascended (again: is expensive). Citadel of Flames and Sorrow’s Embrace are a good starting point to get the gear in exotic quality. A popular variant for roaming runes is the use of the Traveler ones (which I also have in another build). They are good for traveling between points, but they will not grant you to be able to disengage from faster classess, and don’t expect to be able to beat a similar geared and skilled guardian which is in use of Pack runes. Combat wise, Traveller runes are subpar.
Rom.
He chose (for his team) to not fight their close in the three last matches, focusing the fights in kills instead of point domination, leading to a huge score disadvantage in the apertures, which doomed the whole matches.
Going full mele seems a good way to get poked to death.
So I’m hoping you all saw the livestream featuring the Shiro moveset for revenant. Lets go over some basic points
-High mobility
-Life leech instead of heal
-Lots of unblockable attacks
-Blocks on their Offhand -sword-
Yeah its like they are our evil nemesis from a twisted alternate dimension. Also can we trade our shield for that sword?
Also, What do you think the best way to fight these guys is gonna be because I forsee HORDES of them in pvp
Seems like a poor’s man Warrior if you ask me: a lot less options.
I highly doubt about their popularity: only found a single Revenant in PvP along the beta. Hell, is not supposed that condi Guardians are OP? I’m just doing fine playing zerk.
Zerk Guardian here. My only complaint about current Mesmers is their access to stealth. I’m fine with the damage they deal or the sustain their have, but I’m not fine with their stealth, because the invisibility means that outside mele range they became invulnerable to my attacks while they still are able to do damage. I don’t have that problem with Thieves, because they need to expose in order to do substantial damage (so both of us fall in the same realm: high damage traded by high risk). But current Mesmer’s stealth means high damage and NO risk, which is unfair.
After a week using both a med burning build and a med zerk build I still prefer the most the direct physical damage approach. This is the build that I’m currently using:
Berserk amulet with pack runes; Zeal 223, Valor 322, Honor 233, GS/scepter + focus. You can die fast if you make mistakes, but also you can kill really fast. As a rule, the only two classes that give me headaches are elementalist and mesmers, and mesmers only due stealth.
Does ArenaNet have the intention to merge the Stronghold map in the same pool of matches of ranked queques?
Because no way I’ll keep playing the PvP if the queques are the same. Currently I’m leaving every ranked match in which the game tries to force me to play that PvE mode…
Anyone else have this happen to them? I’m 100% sure it was an interrupt and I’ve never had this happen pre patch, yet post patch it’s happened at least half a dozen times.
Just to clarify, it happens during the invuln phase, after I cast it but before the invuln ends. I’m also 99% sure it’s a mesmer skill.
Is a well known bug which still exists since the release.
Basically: most of skills that interrupts and trigger a knockdown, or a push or throw you will cause two effects while you “are casting” (instant) Renewed Focus. First, you instantly LOSE the invulnerability; second, you Renewed Focust enters in cooldown.
This is not a problem of net lag, or latency. If that were the case, that would mean that you get the hit that interrupts you before casting the skill (despite what your PC is rendering on display), but then RF would never be put on cooldown (due you are suffering the interrupt before casting your elite). Or, if you RF enters in cooldown then that must grant you 2 seconds of full invulnerability.
But nothing of that happens: you get interrupted, you suffer the damage and ulterior effects and still you Renewed Focus is wasted (doing nothing). ANet wasn’t able to fix this in near 3 years, I guess that they just aren’t able to do it, or they don’t mind it due affects mostly to PvP players.
Arken’s build is impressive at the current state of the game:
If you don’t want to see the whole video (is worthy, belive me), this is the build:
Virtues 323
Radiance 221
Valor 322
Carrion amulet + Balthazar rune
Scepter + Focus/Sword + Torch
His discuss about the patch is also useful:
@varas: notice that albeit the burst can be “staged”, the video only involves 1 vs afk or 1 vs 1 and every burst stats in optimal conditions from both players.
In a 5 vs 5 PvP landscape landing a burst over a player busy with more antagonist or over a player which flees from other combat after losing significative amounts of health would end in a “insta gib” in a shocking amount of times.
Is not only the problem with the amount of damage in a fair duel between gentleman, but the whole picture of what will happen when you put n vs n in a landscape in which most of the roster is able to do over the top damage. Double and triple focus will usually end in people being deleted in seconds.
I think that a middle ground between the previous meta of bruisers capable to endure long fights while delivering high amounts of damage over time and the new meta of insane spikes of damage is possible.
I also think that in this game the differences between being a cloth, leather or metal armor user is too small. I would glady trade damage for more sustain.
Saw it entirely, amazing work, I appreciate a lot this kind of exposition.
And yep, it’s ridiculous: being able to kill characters in like 3-5 seconds seems more in line with a first person shoothen than with a MMO. The power creep is real.
Will see. I wasn’t fan to the changes due the new trait system would diminish the build variety, but also seems pretty evident that the rearrange of the attribute points would be fuel for all kind of nightmares for the PvP meditation guardians (which is the only build I would use with this class, anyway).
I guess guardians will be in a “good spot”.
I respectfully disagree. WvW is a structured competition with very clear objectives.
If I was on a server that had battle ques I would also be upset if a large body of people were blocking my teammates from entering the battlefield because “they” were using the environment for “selfish reasons” to GvG or 1v1.
WvW is NOT a competition. A “competition” involves a struggle between equals or at least a match in fair terms.
CurrentWvW results are determined by population coverage, and the final scores on every matchup are more or less aguaranteed. GvG and dueals are the only things remotely close to “competition” in WvW.
Anet has said straight out that ascended gear will be the highest tier of gear, so it really can’t be called a treadmill. For example, if you already have ascended gear, and many people do, they’re not having to go out and get new gear.
There was already a difference between exotics and ascended, Anet is, if these new patch notes turn out to be accurate, increasing that difference. But does that make it a treadmill. No. Because once you have that gear, you won’t have to get it again. It’s the last tier. You get it, and you’re done. Thus not a treadmill.
I would agreee with this definition under the rule of a constant paradigm of equally balanced stats.
But due the balance patches for stats, skills, runes, sigils and traits the viability of the stats the game is oftenly changing, and making some of them usefull and another ones useless.
Since the release of the game I found myself wasting entire sets of armors due they nerfed some contents or buffed some others. I remember a time in which having 2 monk + 2 water + 2 HotW runes did provide a 45% increase of boon durations, which paired with cleric gear worked very well in my WvW raid Guardian. Then those runes were nerfed, and the resources spent in the set became wasted. Same thing happened multiple times.
I did forge my first ascended armor between January and March, this year: a full celestial set. It cost me ~350 gold coins. The developers already spoked their intentions of nerfing the cuerrent celestial stats around a 10%, so soon my ascended set will became subpar, forcieng me either to fight in disadvantage or to rebuild again my gear.
So, I think that is fair to say that the game has a gear treadmill, since it periodically forces you to regear your toons if you want optimal results.
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Posted by: Buran.3796
Ros campain is like 2 hours, also hot brought way more feature than what you mentioned, guild hall,mastery, specs, new class, new region, adventure. yeah it blows Ros out miles away.
I’m over 3800 hours in GW2 and over 1300 hours in DIII+RoS, but I must said that since the beguinning of this year RoS is increasingly filling the space of GW2. And HoT is doing nothing to change my mind.
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Posted by: Buran.3796
You guys should compare WoW expansion reveal to HoT
Yes lets compare to the company that over-monetizes every product they ever made. WoW with a monthly fee, cash shop, micro-transactions and indirect gold buying and they still top it off with paid expansions… so where is that sub fee going? Sure as heck not to content updates as there have been some droughts of over a year.
Or HotS, with it’s overpriced champions and even more overpriced skins.Anyone remember Diablo3 and it’s real money auction house? And lets not get started on Heartstone. I think SC2 is the only game Blizzard has that is very reasonably priced and monetized. But that might be because they make a ton of money from the esports aspect so they don’t squeeze the consumers as much.
Diablo III Reaper of Souls came with a full new campaign (not as long as the original four acts, but arguably better than any of them) a new profession, two free character slots, a free stash slot, the adventure modes and the nephalem rifts. This, along with the removal of the AH, the whole revamp of the loot system and the later added seasonal ladders hughely improved a game that was in critical condition. I did almost tripled my time with DIII after the RoS expansion, and I find it totally worth of the price.
I don’t finf HoT equally appealing. No new dungeons, no radical changes in the WvW scoring system, didn’t like Stronghold, no new slots to level the Revenant (the whole star of the expansion). The best part is the Guild Halls, but I can wait months for price cuts and get access to that content later.
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in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Buran.3796
Yes u can go without it and not bother to purchase it, but if the balance is Whacko, and u just get slaughtered in pvp and Just do no DPS in comparison to the Elite Speccs the games Entertainment will fade for you. but u wont know those terms til its released.
If I found problems of balance due not having the expansion I can either to accept playing in disadvantage (no big deal anyway because some classes already have relevant handicaps in some areas of the game) or just stop playing (which also isn’t a big deal due I currently do play other games along GW2).
Really, there’s not big drama here: ArenaNet did they choice with the price of HoT, and now is our call about if the expansion about the value of the content. I’m WvW/PvP centric; I’m not interested in the PvE parts, I didn’t like Stronghold and have not much interest in the specilaizations or the new WvW map. What appeals me the most is the new class, but I have no intention to delete one of my TEN characters to free a slot for the Revenant, and I find the lack of that extra slot for free laughlable (Diablo III RoS gave me 2 free new character slots because the game assumed that I’m interested into play a Crusader without deleting previous characters).
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in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Buran.3796
i mean Guild wars 2 by far is the cheapest investment of MMOs… and In comparison to other forms of entertainment on the majority MMOs as a whole are cheaper, so i feel like u cant really accuse GW2 for ripping people off, they are charging u alot less.. for the exact same amount of stuff any other MMO generally delievers in expansions in todays prices.
Doesn’t really matters how GW2 fares against other games or entertainment products.
What truly matters is how the expansion fares against the current game. And for some people (including myself) HoT doesn’t provides too much value for the price. So I can stand without buying HoT for a long time, and later could pay for it at lower cost and also buy a slot for the star signature of the expansion (the new class).
Guardian can actually do condition stacking with the change to burning.
Guardian lacks any weapon with conditions in their auto-attack. Stacking conditions without them is useless. Take a look over the condi Warrior: they can stack tons of bleeds, plus torment and fire, and still they are weak despite having bleeds attached to sword’s auto.
Is not that I’m against conditions (I’m not), is that Guardian lacks the tools.
The new trait system is a hell more restrictive that the current one; after the changes the only “viable” build in duels/PvP will be pure zerker meditation based ones.
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Nope. I did the conversion from my current build to the new one and the only things I’ll lost from my 01661 build will be Justice is Blind and Inspired Vitue, which means becoming less deffensive, but is balanced due in exchange the gs strikes will provide more damage, a bit of sustain (healing), I’ll do a lot more damage while fighting thn gs #4 and the reduction of cooldown in the focus skills will worth the loss.
What bothers me is how the attribute points from the traits will be placed in the armor. For sure will be very expensive to rebuild my gear again.
As general rule, meditation guardians hardcounters this class (specially with greatsword/scepter+focus).
I have more issues with Sword/Focus players myself when playing S/D thief, but Scepter’s fine.
Another great counter to S/D thieves is your standerd pewpew LB Power ranger with 6-12 seconds of immunity if they time their attacks even slightly properly like Zephyra said.
You are right, in the sense that sword+ focus is stronger against S/D thieves. But works worse versus condition thieves and classes capable to kite at range or with tons of cc (cripple, fear, chills…). Going full melee has serious handicaps in this game (not only for med guards) due you do 0 damage outside close range, and with 0% stability and a limited number of stunbreks a med guard without scepter is easy to kite. Things are even worse taking in consideration how the different tiers of heigh in the maps can be used to deal damage at range and safety over melee fighters.
can anybody say some tactic beacause its stupid vs this broken build only evade/dmg/dodge/dmg/evade/dmg/evade until i die
You should share your class and build in order to known what’s failing and to get a better advice. Mind that thieves are usually tailored to perform extremly well in 1 vs 1 fights, with great dps (both in burst and sustained) and they also have great mobility and disengage tools. They damage mitigation is also good thanx mostly to blinds and evades.
As general rule, meditation guardians hardcounters this class (specially with greatsword/scepter+focus).
The central area of Foefire’s Legacy is probably much closer to what one could expect for a TDM map. Courtyard is too narrow in some parts and is full of obstructing elements that obscures the gameplay. Any random 5 vs 5 match in Foefire or WvW is better.
The gameplay mechanic is also clunky: as was said, there’s a snowball effect. To prevent this the game mode should work in “waves”: every team starts in their ·home", run towards the center, and after 2-3 minutes everyone gets a restart (if all of the memeners of a team dies then a new wave starts from the initial waypoints).
Leveling in GW2 is comparatively easy (I hve 10 characters at 80, with all skills unlocked and at least all traits to XII unlocked) in relation with other games (I only have 1 lvl 50 in AA, poorly equiped, and the leveling was tedious at best), BUT leveling in GW2 WAS easier in the past, and I feel sadness for players which have to unlock the traits with the revamped new system.
I just expect that HoT keeps my toons witch ALL the traits and skills I already have unlocked still unlocked because NO WAY I would spent time re-unlocking those again.
will also tear appart the greatsword and hammer rotations in meditation builds
Wut…
I didn’t mean using greatsword and hammer at the same time, I was talking about how that 20% cdr affects the rotations, but forget about it: I didn’t saw the Zealous Blade, Honorable Staff and Virtuous Mallet traits. Now for meditation builds is ~the same as before.
@Vizardlorde: I go 6 points in Honour and also cleric amulet (instead of zerk) in PvP with my physical damage meditation build. I known the meta, but playing ranking matches with random pugs (as I do) makes me to appreciate a lot more the sustain than the burst spikes of damage.
After seeing all the traits again I’m now more calm: the changes had a minor impact on the current metitation builds, which will still perform the best in the PvP arenas.
I mean, the lack of Two Handed Mastery trait in the expansion will not only hurt the support that currently provides the staff: will also tear appart the greatsword and hammer rotations in meditation builds.
I see no compensation for the dps/momentum lost with the lack of this trait (I known that some popular med variants doesn’t invest points in Honor, but I do and I saw this absence as a HUGE nerf in damage/cc).
I would advice you to take a look over the “Phantaram teaches Sodapoppin” video, due the large amount of info about the basic mechanics of every class (and due is basically a top tier GW2 player teaching GW2 PvP to a top tier WoW player):
I agree with this. They have to change nothing to allow duels, just having a option to invite a player to fight and reset the status of both to “friendly” once one of them falls to downed state. Just as in ArcheAge.
This also would improve a lot the population of some level 80 maps and some cities (which would be the main fields of battle), because since the megaserver changes some of the events and places (like the temples in Orr or Malkor’s) are permanently unlocked so there’s nothing to do on them.
Rangers are an old/out of date and redundant class/proffesion type.
Just delete it and be done with it for goodness sake.
I have at least a toon of every class up to 80, and albeit Rangers aren’t my favourites I must say that I saw some videos from Night Shift and Agression and both teams have been using Rangers for a while in a sort of anti-ranged party role (focused on hunting down necros, eles, etc.) with great success.
Going further, since the stability changes, I would even say that I’m finding the heavy train (classes which I main) less and less productive in the WvW raids.
is arenanet thinking of countering this issue in any way so we could have more build diversity?
i really hope new expansion fixes a part of this
I think that the Drennon post summarizes perfectly the problem. And I don’t think that the expansion will “fix” it, due the new trait system will be A LOT more simplistic, disabling room for innovation.
Currently the real problems isn’t build variety: you have tons of builds to make; the problem is the lack of viability for most of the builds you can create, due the skills are poorly balanced.
With the new trait system will be a lot less builds available, so if some of them are prevalent it will be even more easy to find out.
Dragonhoncho delivers in terms of ranged combat and soft cc.
But fails in terms of mobility and condition damage (the other three aspects,along the uselessness of the shield, which were required to be fixed by Guardian users).
I use this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR7dlsApcoVDxbI8DRRDRljNY/BZQXe9BkABAA-TJBBwAAeCAjLDUc/hNXEAA
The main differences are the use of cleric amulet and the 6 points in honor. That gives me ~17k base HP, 3K armor and a huge sustain (including heals for over 1k for each evade), at the cost of losing 35-40% of the burst damage.
If you use well the scepter this is a uphill match for any engineer; most of them will try to kite you at range or spam interrupts and surround their movements with AoE damage and cripples, expecting you to have a minimal amount of HP and sustain purely based on blinds and blocks… The fun usually starts over the 35-40 seconds, at which bad engies start panic. The good ones still can beat you if you make mistakes, but is a more fair fight that the current dps med meta.
Problem is, I don’t like playing a support role at all and Medi Guard always seemed really not-fun to fight against(as a Thief/Necro) and the few moments I played it on a Lvl 2 Guard also made it feel a cheesy(it censored bit and cheesy…).
Triple meditation guard is one of the best builds in the game if you want to avoid to provide team support. If you want to bring less support to the table then you probably must consider to “play AFK”.
I don’ t understand why you guys don’ t like the dragonhunter.
For me it has a nice design and it can be very strong both in pvp and wvw with his extra mobility.
Moreover MANY of you have always wrote that ranger is strong and without problems or limits.
Now dragonhunter reminds a ranger in its mechanics…..SOOO Why do you complain then ?
- I think that the mobility in Dragonhunter is VERY weak, due doesn’t have any permanent access to a 25% increased pace (aside from using traveler runes, which are terribad for pure combat purposes) and the jumps has cooldowns which makes them useless against things like Warrior’s sword #2 (8 seconds cooldown).
- I think pure condition Dragonhunters won’t be viable, due the class lacks a SINGLE weapon which inflicts conditions with auto attacks. Longbow is mainly a power weapon, which absolutely lacks in terms of condition potetial.
- The cripples and other soft cc in Dragonhunters seems to lack any PRESSURE: every cripple is attached to skills with a 45-60 second cooldown, which means thet will lack any potential to retain the pressure over your foe.
- The Dragonhunter seems to be a very STATIC class; traps are like a nerfed versions of wells, with much higher cooldowns. Take this in consideration: typical traps from Ranger had cooldowns from 15 to 30 seconds, and despite that they are barely used. You truly think that builds based on traps with 45-60 cooldowns will work? You remember when Glacial Heart cooldown was like 45 seconds? Was useless.
Overall, Dragonhunters seems to be a weirdo: lacks the sustain expected from a Guardian, is as weak as ever was in terms of mobility and condition pressure, and their utilities are abysmal compared against what shouts and meditations brings to the table in any aspect of the game.
Overall, I’m happy with Dragonhunters, because I was expecting nothing and nothing is what we get. At least I will not be forced to spent time in PvE to unlock crap skills with no use, so I will can focus the efforts in other characters with more viable or interesting specializations.