Guild Wars 2

It was designed around defensively holding small circular areas the size of our symbols.

Years ago, before huge amounts of power creep through more damaging and debilitating conditions. Lots more range damage. Lots of unblockable skills. Increased availability of Evades and Reflection.

Since then the Guardian has mostly stayed in 2012, while most others saw a variety of power creep across several mechanics, traits, build types and weapon sets.

Guardian recently got an offensive version of ‘holding a small circular area the size of our symbols’ for a couple of months, and then it was nerfed through several extra patches and main patches until once again, the Guardian was no longer competitive at top tiers.

TheGrimm.5624:

Yeah, but you are telling me you are happy to have to have 2 Masteries to do this with? Why wasn’t auto-loot already working from the Mastery that was added. Why was a separate WvW track added for this? Call a spade a spade, this was a cope out. We do need more options to use WvW ranks for, but this should already have worked and now adds some ill will versus good will.

Yes, I am happy it’s a WvW mastery.

I spent a day in HoT on launch and can’t stand those zones and PvE.

This way I was able to instantly get the mastery for the game mode I play from the game mode I play, without having to go into the awful PvE I don’t like.

Just like others will be able to.

Can it please cast while on the move?

The whole reason for it to have obscene damage was because you had to stop and crouch down to fire which was painfully obvious in a small fight scenario.

Of course in WvW mass fights this can’t be seen and so the crazy high piercing damage was an issue, at least until everyone chose every reflect trait, utility and weapon skill available and kept them up all the time.
Even so, the damage nerf from this perspective is justified.

But now for 1v1 or small group play the damage is low for the obvious animation and rooting sacrifice.

It’s time for it to go.

If full mobility isn’t cool then make it the same as Whirling Wrath where your character moves at walking pace while channeling.

Aww, he linked a PvE picture. How cute.

Burtnik.5218:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Burtnik.5218:

Sword fix. When? Its been over 2 months. How long are we supposed to wait for this gamebreaking bug?

It’s not even close to a game-breaking bug. All of the sword skills were carefully tuned based on this bug and they’ll have to rebalance it once they do fix it; you won’t suddenly get much stronger.

Pretty sure they were tuned up based on tooltip number and not an actual damage. Besides, targeting random structures in the world (kyhlo map says hi) is not gamebreaking? Interesing that blinding blade doesnt suffer from this issue yet no fix for precision strike. Not to mention many other bugs going on like phase traversal failing to teleport for no reason while other teleport abiltiies goes off in the same places without issues.

Because 10k Precision Strikes getting a 25% damage increase sounds so balanced.

DH Virtues are not applying their passive effects when they refresh right now.

Though the fact that no one noticed this for so long does indicate how terrible they are and that the profession passives are not all that effective or noticeable.

Mintyfreshsmell.1568:

Do dragon hunter, camp a point and no one will stop you unless they have massive condi damage. DH is cancer.

This is only the case against people who have bound dodge to ‘Alt F4’.

You seem to have an incredibly limited understanding of game mechanics.

The Immobilize removal was added to Wings of Resolve during beta because Immobilize prevented the DH from using Wings of Resolve at all due to it being a leap, even if it was traited to remove 3 conditions.

You claim the DH Virtues are all better with no trade-off while conveniently not mentioning that all DH virtues can be interrupted and go on full cooldown for no benefit, something that never happens to regular virtues.

The entire document is riddled with confirmation bias or poor knowledge and understanding.

Your Scepter changes show that you have never played a Guardian with a Scepter and don’t understand its PvP flaws at all. Changing might stacking to a damage boost and cooldowns is generic and boring, it’s hilarious that your document claims you will add more interesting ideas to the Guardian, but for the most part you just change everything unique back to boring % passives.

The Mace trait change is especially hilarious, removing the ability to stack 500 healing with block control and changing it to utterly random single condition cleansing?

We have loads of ways to cleanse conditions on ourselves or allies.

Our problems are that every build must been boon generation with AH or burst with MF to be viable. All our survivability is in those two traits and if you don’t have on you are like paper.

We also have terrible Might stacking abilities when solo and our group contribution is pitiful next to Warrior and Herald.

SkyShroud.2865:

it is because DH is really easy to play as the trap and bow are really painful.
i remember playing DH the very first time, after a long break from my guardian ever since i got the champion title, my DH gotten straight wins, forgotten how many wins though.

DH is indeed unbalance since close range, there are traps, far range there is bow, both are damaging. not to forget that there is still damage mitigation from guardian skills. along with medi which was already a offensive build for the guardian prehot. it makes guardian too powerful in offense compare to other classes, especially in aggressive play style.

but the video dh seems really paper, i dont remember mine that paper. i can even take on 2-3 ppl when i pug rank. also, the whole video is just…bow……

The difference is that you played against people that didn’t dodge, face-tanked Traps at close range or ate Longbow at range. Against such poor players the DH tears them up sure.

Against competent enemies that use their evasion skills, blinds, blocks etc it’s a different story.
And especially now that most people know how the Longbow and Traps work, DH has a very simplistic play style that’s easy to counter. People know the True Shot tell and dodge it every time, they dodge roll onto the Trap placements by predicting them.

Guardian high damage skills have always had clear slow animations, Longbow continues the trend.

DH was an early release noob cannon. But now the new factor has worn off it’s simple to counter and not competitive.

Back in HoT beta Wings of Resolve was changed from a 600 range leap to an 800 range leap.

However, the visual effect was never updated to also land at 800 range, it still lands at 600 range. Behind the Guardian.

Simple fix please.

Ummm Berserker Druid with Longbow, GS, Bristleback and Smokescale has far more sustain than a Medi Guard.

Amazing healing from various sources, great mobility, control, 1500 range high damage and high damage melee. + The ability to stealth.

The only thing DH has that’s better is Longbow 5.

This Elite spec sounds absolutely fantastic, you show some real insight into existing in-game mechanics and interesting mechanics that the often bland Guardian really lacks.

And you show detailed knowledge of the Guardian class and the kinds of areas and playstyle + build diversity we are lacking now.

Not only would this offer a unique playstyle to the Guardian but it also synergises very well with other things, and synergy is something Guardian builds have really been lacking for a while.

I like the idea of a Trident, but this could also work with the Spear, the animation could work similarly to the Rev Hammer where a light spear is thrown by the animation.

The mechanics for the Wells are awesome, it would be nice to see us getting some corruption and conversion through AoE mechanics, the ability to manipulate both boons and conditions, it plays into our point control playstyle.
And we are offered the unique mechanics of cooldown manipulation depending on playstyle.

You need to add a 4th utility Well, as all utilities have 4 options (except Revenant because they get 6+2 elites)

Because of that it would introduce the option that changing the utility skill will change the Virtue.
That way you have the mechanics in place so that swapping in a different Well will change one of the Virtues, but also that if you don’t have a Well chosen as a skill, the Virtue will stay as the standard Guardian Virtue, or will F4 and F5 not be available at all if you don’t have 3 utility Wells and the elite Well?

I really like the ideal of critical healing too, not seen that since EQ1.

I think blowing up the Well should be a flip-over skill like Zealot’s Flame is right now on a timer that is limited to the Well’s duration. Rather than being tied to the Virtue, the Virtue active should be separate, which will be easier to balance and manage.

And I think some Wells should be fire fields to help address our lack of Might stacking and perhaps one as a Lightning field to address the Swiftness access.

@draxynnic.3719 Dragonhunter has two Trap based traits in the entire specialisation and I wouldn’t take that as some kind of benchmark to design along, I would take it as a sign of some lazy and poorly thought out design with the specialisation.
Many of the Dragonhunter traits are lackluster or boring, and could use a total re-design.

We don’t have clear playstyle trait lines like the other professions were designed with.

Why wouldn’t you say it’s intended? Stun breaking breaks you out of a stun or being knocked down, but as you cross a hard CC threshold you need a stack of Stability to cross unimpeded.

That’s how all the CC works and it works both ways. For and against the Guardian.

If I simply Stun Break Gravity Well I still get pulled up by the next pulse.

Yep, we haven’t really gained much defense or ways of sustaining in solo play or profession v profession as our survivability escalation was with Shield of Courage and the 5s frontal blocks.

But there has been a huge power creep in unblockable.

Nec/Reaper unblockable marks and a shout that makes all their attacks unblockable for 6s.

Warrior signet for 6s of unblockable attacks.

Thief had a huge dagger damage increase and then unblockable added to their CC elite.

There are various unblockable skills among Mesmer, Thief, Engineer, Elementalist + Thief / Ranger Traps, Nec Corrupt and Epidemic.
Revenant can go unblockable with skills and auto-traits.

Add all this to the surge in Reflection that’s been added to the game or now traited / equipped by players and the DH Longbow with it’s projectile skills, slow obviously telegraphed damage has become an early noob cannon that’s now a joke that everyone has easily adapted to dodge rolling out of traps and evading the obvious squatted True Shot and its 1 second cast time.

Plus Sword also fairs poorly against reflection, with the 2 largest damaging skills (auto 3 and Zealot’s Defense) both being reflected back at the Guardian but with no projectile benefits, only the negatives.

So our survivability comes from blocks and our damage from telegraphed projectiles in a game where unblockable and reflect have seen a power creep.

Change the auto-attack to only hit 3 enemies in front, but the wave bounces back and heals the Guardian + 2 close allies. (Blue return bounce animation, no sound).

Base damage increased by 20%.
Returning wave heals for 150. Healing value increased by 1 per 100 healing power (like symbol heal scaling or it would be easy to get out of hand).

Orb of Light is an awful slow moving skill when it works, and useless when it fires into the ground. Just change it to function like Pillar of Light, keep the animation etc, it’s a fantastic looking skill.
10 second cooldown, ground targeted.

Line of Warding – Bring back the old beta trait idea for wards. This should be added as base functionality for Line of Warding and Ring of Warding.
Wards deal damage to enemies that cross.

Sometimes auto-attacking just stops while using the Action Camera also.

Tested by teleporting to a Golem in HoM using Judges Intervention, with no action camera I auto-attack till it’s destroyed, with the action camera I just stop for no reason after several attacks (at this point the targetting reticle changes, but I haven’t done anything). The issue is that in a standard view the reticle is so high in relation to your character, when an enemy comes into melee range the reticle decides you aren’t targetting it anymore (unless you look straight down).

This game creates such a strain with the need to hold down the RMB to turn, but the action camera changes too many things like total movement, auto-attacks and messes up target based teleport skills. Need to run a script to hold down the RMB instead.

Obtena.7952:

Jeez … Guardian was never NOT in the meta. These ridiculous ideas are from ranters trying to convince everyone that Guardian/DH is a horrible class. Funny that they got some of you.

Then why were there no Guardians in any of the teams during the most recent tournament?

The kitten is F4?

While using the action camera and with a target in my sights, using a teleport like Judge’s Intervention carries about a 50% chance of working.

Like this video shows the teleport often activates but doesn’t teleport the Guardian at all.

https://youtu.be/camBR9VqAe8

I love the action camera, but this problem with utility and sometimes weapon teleports is very frustrating, to the point that I don’t use a certain skills simply because they don’t function reliably with the action camera.

This bug can affect any profession that can block while also under the effects of Aegis, but it has the most relevance for Guardians because blocking is so built into our profession and balance.

Aegis is consumed when another block is available, like a weapon block
(Shield of Wrath or Protector’s Strike). Or a skill like Shield of Courage.

The main negative implications are:

Two blocks are consumed when only one attack was negated. This has a large impact when our profession is balanced around having these weapon, skill and profession mechanic blocks.

Although two blocks are consumed we only gain the beneficial trait effects of one block being removed because of the 1s internal cooldown that was added to these traits back when the trait system was overhauled before HoT.

With Aegis removed but the Guardian still blocking we lose beneficial effects like Unscathed Contender, even though we may be using weapon or skill blocks to negate attacks and should still have Aegis and the 20% damage bonus active.

Shattered Aegis activates early, even though the Guardian may be blocking with another skill.

https://youtu.be/wstnq_V5MSE

Aegis needs to be changed so that it is the LAST block to be consumed.

Blocking needs to be changed so that different blocks are not consumed together.
(Shield of Wrath loses one block even if Shield of Courage is up.)

In fact, if you had Aegis, Shield of Wrath, Shield of Courage and Protector’s Strike all activated… ONE incoming attack would take away the Aegis, one charge of SoW even though SoC is up and actively blocking and Protector’s Strike would activate…

One attack consuming 4 active blocks

If Wings of Resolve had Evade during the Leap, it would be fixed.

Guardian underwhelming weapons, utilities and traits still not addressed even though the balance patch said it would address all these things.

Mace auto chain 3 is slow and doesn’t cleave, the heal is pretty pitiful and scales poorly for healing power.

Sword auto chain 3 has projectiles which carry only the negatives of reflection or destruction by other abilities, no benefits like combo finishers.

Sword – Zealot’s Defense still poor damage with the rooting and damage at range / vs moving targets

Hammer – auto chain 3 still woefully slow, ruins PvE with the combo field on auto, needs to speed up and move the Symbol to Mighty Blow.

Torch – Cleansing Flame is awful, it needs to also cleanse the Guardian of conditions.

Utilities – Signets still a very poor choice and all but never used.

Spirit Weapons – Were the iconic Guardian utility, never used, a total joke compared to Engineer drones. Poor damage, slow attack speeds or beneficial effects, slow movement, low HP.

Traits – Wrathful Spirit is awful and pointless, Zealous Scepter is still poor as the least accurate weapon is meant to proc it, Blinding Jeopardy is too niche, Expeditious Spirit (see Spirit weapons being terrible).

Healer’s Retribution brings more horrible situation Retaliation, Retribution is terrible situational 10% dmg, Perfect Inscriptions wow 20% bonus on top of poor active effect utilities and their passives! Radiant Retaliation – Haha!

Stalwart Defender – why more toughness to compete with group 150 toughness!
Just merge this and Strength in Numbers together, move Glacial Heart to Valor and create some Hammer builds with Valor and Virtues! Retributive Armour is bad, pure stats don’t compare with healing, make it a different healing option somehow to open up builds.
- Regeneration procs, healing on criticals, something to move away from Shout heals and Meditation heals.

Honor – Empowering Might is low duration group Might and pointless next to Revenants and other professions ability to grant group Might.
Remove the ICD, make it self only 8s of Might.

Virtues – With Glacial Heart now moved you can add a new trait for Virtue of Courage.
Gain 25% movement speed while Virtue of Courage is on passive.
Or activating Virtue of Courage grants 20 seconds of Swiftness.
Or enemies that remove your Aegis are Chilled for 5 seconds.

Can we get this animation normalized between male and female characters.

There’s currently a clear difference in animation clarity with males crouching down and females standing up with the same animation as the auto-attack.
Making the key DH damage skill have a large tell for males and a subtle one for females.

Either make both stand or both crouch.

Also shoots through the floors of towers.

WvW issue, so expect this to never get fixed.

Wow 4 changes to two classes, a change to a map and a bug fix on a rune set.

And it won’t all manage to make it into the patch.

Steady on guys, someone’s in danger of actually doing some work.

The fact that you felt introducing 1 class and 9 elite specialisations counted as a ‘balance patch’ when it put the balance into it’s worst state ever shows just how disconnected with class balance you guys are.

So an 8 second cooldown 1200 range Leap high damage AoE Blast Finisher with Chill that also counts as an Evade.

Playing Revenant has blinded you to what is ‘balanced’.

You are completely wrong

/thread

Avoiding traps

Dodge across the point to trigger the traps.

Trigger the traps under invulnerability.

Trigger the traps with a pet.

Teleport out, stunbreak roll away, use a skill with an Evade through the most likely trap locations (on the point).

The Mace is a melee weapon with a channeled Block that has a secondary attack activated on a Block.

There are 3 more skills like this.

Warrior – Sword Riposte
Warrior – Mace Counterblow

Ranger – Greatsword Counterattack

For the Guardian when hit by a ranged attack it consumes the Block and activates the melee ranged attack, most likely hitting nothing and blocking only one attack.
This also occurs with the Warrior – Mace Counterblow.

For Riposte and Counterattack when hit by ranged attacks they continue to Block and are able to block any number of ranged attacks during the duration of the channel.

Why is there such a disparity? Surely all of these skills should either Block for the duration of the channel or all Block just one attack whether ranged or melee.

People are learning.

I just played against a condi PU Mesmer using reflection heal and reflect on dodge.

The Stability is only triggered by Heavy Light, which is only triggered with the Longbow.

I’m sure this game is rated T for teen?

Yep, there it is at the bottom of the page.

Yet here we are, page 55 in the megathread of whiny children that spent 9 months complaining about wanting to play HoT and are now complaining about having to play HoT…
Modern gamers, I’ll never understand your sense of entitlement.

Valor trait still bugged and doesn’t refresh the Virtue when you revive someone or rally.

Confusion is a terrible mechanic, punishing people for using skills and abilities in a game all about using skills and abilities.

The fact that Perplexity has a passive proc to inflict it long duration only adds to the crazyness of the interrupt proc.

And since the condition changes it was buffed! >.< to also inflict damage over time even when the character isn’t using skills, double punishment and a terrible implementation of combat mechanics. It’s literally the worst mechanic in the game in its current iteration.

Playing Perplexity Terrormancer is a hilarious example of these kitten mechanics.

Ghotistyx.6942:

I like the video. Shows a lot about the potential of Dragonhunter.

(Also doesn’t exploit the damage FoF had)

Traited FoF exploding multiple times.

Blind functions the same as Aegis as its opposing condition.

It’s absolutely fine as it is now.

Can you imagine if Blind stacked too? That’s the gameplay you would need to create if you let Aegis stack.

No change is needed.

RevanCorana.8942:

People miss the point
Mighty Blow is a melee skill
True shot is a ranged skill
When the ranged skills deal more dmg than melee you know there’s something fishy balance-wise.

Killshot, Gun Flame, Rapid Fire, Coalescence of Ruin, Life Blast, Meteor Shower, Lava Font, Phoenix, Dragon’s Tooth, Mirror Blade, Mind Stab and Orbital Strike are all ranged, capable of doing huge damage and hitting multiple targets.

Mighty Blow is harder to dodge due to it being quicker and right next to you.
True Shot has a slow animation and a clear arrow, the further away it’s fired the more time you have to dodge or reflect it!
Cast time + travel time at range is around 1-1.5 seconds to target.

Oh and True Shot doesn’t do 2x the damage of Mighty Blow, if you’re getting hit by 8k True Shots you’d be hit for 7k Mighty Blows.

You’re a Ranger, did you consider using any of: Protect Me, Signet of Stone, Lightning Reflexes, Hunter’s Shot, Point Blank Shot or Dodge rolling to Evade damage and then gaining Protection against follow-up damage.
Or the 3 second ranged Block from Counterattack
Or using your pet to Fear or Taunt the Guardian.

Or was it just far easier to come and make a whine post of hyperbole on the forums?

Hunter’s Verdict is a fantastic flip skill that will give the traitline some great synergy for a variety of builds.

The Guardian has several ways to keep enemies away through weapon skills or the Longbow knockback trait.

Finally a new pull tied to a class mechanic, more than just GS5 is a welcome addition.

1 month, 2 weeks and 5 days.

Mallis.4295:

Whirling Wrath is weird because it hits 11 times not 7 and different hits do different damage. Plus it procs VoJ multiple times and is a whirl finisher.

It actually hits 14 times if you are inside the target.

As for True Shot, yes it’s ranged high damage, but that means one block nullifies it, one blind nullifies it, it can cause a huge return hit with reflection.
And the further away up to 1200 range the target is, the more time they have to dodge it with it’s obvious animation.

Now that we have two different skills in game which result in damage healing an opponent with Defiant Stance and Infuse Light.
Both of which only have a tiny icon to look for and generate green healing numbers on a UI which is already super cluttered with other numbers, the same green allied healing and a plethora of spell effects.

Can we have the numbers for healing done by these two skills come up with light blue text as a quality of life change for the UI, to make it very clear on screen that it is healing the enemy.

The bounce behind mechanic of Puncture Shot didn’t really work in actual PvP combat because people move around too much, it only worked vs NPCs. It should probably change to bounce in a greater radius, or just always apply Cripple with 1 or 2 hits.

And True Shot animation as a slow walk like Whirling Wrath? Maybe?

If it’s no longer a projectile how can it possible justify a 450 range?

Surely it’s down to 130 now…?

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Wings of resolve are really useful as well, I’m not sure if it’s just me but I feel like their heal is stronger than regular virtue..

You felt that 3890 on a 30s cooldown was more healing than 1625 on a 50s cooldown?
Well, I guess Benedict Cumberbatch will be ceding his role to you in the next series of Sherlock.

Fragments of Faith needs to do one big hit at around 7500 damage as the burst trap.

Test of Faith needs its animation toned down, it’s far too obvious and the only things that run into it are clones, pets and zergs.

Procession of Blades should be a Whirl Finisher.

Light’s Judgement should also Cripple.

All traps should be unblockable, just the same as all the Thief and Ranger traps.

If it’s only intended to hit once then it needs to hit harder.

It should hit for at least around 7500 in a Berserker set up. It’s a 36-45 second cooldown and it’s not unblockable like Ranger and Thief traps.

A condi spec Ranger will deal 12,000 damage to 5 targets and a knockdown with Spike Trap on a 20s cooldown, or 9200 damage with Flame Trap on a 12s cooldown.

A condi spec Thief will deal 6500 bleeding and 3700 Poison damage with Needle Trap + a 4s Immobilize! On a 24s cooldown.

And the Ranger and Thief traps are all unblockable.

Why can’t we have nice things too? Why must we be the most bland and pigeonholed profession after every reveal, every balance change.

Dirame.8521:

You guys ever heard of counterplay? Getting interrupted is part of the game. If you don’t want to get interrupted, pop stability or Aegis before using these skills.

SoC grants both Stability and Aegis, the fact it can be interrupted and put on full cool down therefore not goving you either buff is hilarious.

Nice video, here’s some of my clips from BWE3.

Dragonhunter and the Longbow felt much better compared to BWE2, there’s a lot to learn still and it’s a different playstyle for sure. Need to get used to using True Shot at near to max range, I often found people stepping past 1200 during the animation and it wouldn’t reach.

Superior Rune of the Traveler x7 for 2 years.

:(