Guild Wars 2

A video of the Longbow auto-facing issues

There are huge synergy issues with the cast times of Dragonhunter Virtues and regular traited Virtues with effects that need to instantly happen on cast.

For example Blind on F1, using it to quickly react to an incoming attack and Blind it, or to secure a stomp, both are impossible with the casting version of F1.

F2 and its condition removal is ruined by the cast time; got caught in an immobilize and some condi damage? You used to be able to instantly cleanse and keep going, now you need to ground target, cast and wait for the leap, then cleanse. This is terrible when you are stuck in immobilize, instead of the synergy of cleansing and leaping away for a heal we jump on the spot and then attempt to cleanse, but most likely just get cleaved down while trapped.
Plus it’s not even a leap finisher! For its long cool-down it should drop a water field.

F3 and its Stability, the stun-break works instantly at least but the Stability and Protection are not instant, again this has huge issues when securing stomps and trying not to waste precious Stability stacks or quickly reacting to CC.

Plus all the cast times mean you can’t use the Virtues while channeling any attack or Renewed Focus.

In addition to the above points there are two more issues with auto-facing.

Punture Shot doesn’t auto-face a target when standing still.

However, Warrior Longbow, Thief Shortbow, Ranger Longbow and Shortbow all auto-face with the auto-attack and all other target skills.

Deflecting Shot also doesn’t auto-face, so you can only fire it in-front of you in a 160 arc, if you attempt to fire to the sides or behind it will fail, which is an utterly horrible mechanic as it’s already the only projectile skill-shot in the game, making it not auto-face too is an oversight.

Why do you expect it to utterly replace Scepter as a ranged weapon? That would be terrible design, it’s meant to add other options for a different play-style.

As a longer range damage dealing option with some mixed soft and hard cc support it’s design is good, a few tweaks here and there are needed is all.

Sure we could have won with Scepter Torch perhaps.
Would it have been as effective 2v3+pet? Probably not as the Scepter and Torch suffer vs more than one target, the longbow excels in multiple target fights as the auto bounces, 2 and 3 pierce, 4 and 5 are AoE.

Well, I wouldn’t write it off so soon.

I just feel an auto-attack velocity increase and making the Virtues instant cast again would solve the biggest issues with the Dragonhunter and it’s current clunky feeling and take it back to the smooth instant effect of regular Virtues.

If Dragonhunter F1/F2/F3 need to retain the channel for balance then the F1 Blind, F2 Condi removal and F3 Stun break / Stability from the other trait lines need to activate instantly while the Dragonhunter parts activate after the cast.

The Longbow feels good in concept but the auto-attack projectiles are far too slow and have similar tracking issues in moving combat that the Scepter does.

The auto-attack projectile velocity needs to be increased to counter this and improve it’s ranged accuracy.

Symbol of Energy should fire behind also, like Warrior Longbow and Thief Shortbow.

Dragonhunter Virtues are clunky and awkward and lose all synergy with Virtue traits because of their cast times. The F1 blind, F2 condi clear, F3 stun break and stability (especially when stomping). F2 leap is also clunky and delayed because of the cast time.
And of course activating Virtues while channeling Renewed Focus is impossible with these.

The Dragonhunter Virtues need to be changed to instant cast.

Also, Puncture Shot and Deflecting Shot should auto-face when standing still

Looked like Test of Faith and Procession of Blades were down to 30s cooldowns.

Lights Judgement added 10 stacks of Vulnerability at first for 2s I think and then pulsed every 1s, so it maxed at 20 stacks of Vulnerability.

Symbol of Energy couldn’t be fired behind the Guardian, unlike Combustive Shot, Arcing Arrow + Cluster Bomb, Disabling Shot, Choking Gas, Infiltrator’s Arrow.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magnetic_Wave

Do we have a reason for this skill to be:

– 3 conditions cleared
– Damage
– AoE 5 second Cripple
– Low cooldown (25 sec)
– No cast time
– 3 second personal reflection
– Blast Finisher

Do we have a specific reason, why is this skill so brokenly unbalanced?

x indigo x.6981:

Don’t remove the bolts. It’s aoe condo clear, it’s more hits for virtue of justice for burning builds, it’s projectile burning when in a fire field…. If the enemy is using retal good fire them.. I would spin on an enemy that has retal be it with bolts or no bolts. What you’re saying here is " I want to take down an enemy that has retaliation because I can’t bother to wait 2 seconds before my burst."… Grow up and learn when to burst and when to not and stop coming up with these stupid ideas to nerf an already limited class! … OuR only damaging condo is burning .. And burning procs per hit .. Now you want to take away our burst of hits?? Your logic is flawed! Just wait out the retal before you spin like every other competent guard :/

Way to go resorting to personal insults because you can’t comprehend the idea of people having a different opinion to yourself.

It’s really great that we have such fantastic people like yourself in our community.

To address your concern over burn procs anyway; those 7 small bolts hit for 65 damage each in a condi build, they will proc VoJ twice assuming you have it traited with Supreme Justice for 689 burning x2. So 1833 damage between small bolts and burning.

And you’ll take 1925 damage in return from Retaliation. Still worth those procs?

Your posts are for the most part utterly irrelevant to this thread, we’re not here to discuss the condition Guardian, you wanna talk about your viability or your personal success or failure as a player, you can do that in the condition Guardian thread you maintain.

Retaliation is so abundant and in PvP it is essentially guaranteed, especially in a group fight.

No other melee skill lands so many small hits in AoE.

As for buffing conditions? Rofl… the easiest form of PvP game play with the least risk vs reward and easiest gear setups that require only one damage stat and offer the most forgiving play style for mistakes needs a buff? Seriously?

I think a reduction in Whirling Wrath burn stacking would be a positive change against the current burning insanity. Burn stacking across several professions needs to be toned down anyway.

No.

Message Body length must at least be 15

The Whirling Wrath tooltip states:
Damage (7x): 2xxx
Number of Impacts: 7

As we know this skill inflicts 14 attacks; 7 large and 7 small. The small attacks are approximately 37% of the damage of the large ones. (325 vs 868 for example).

Against Retaliation with an average damage of 275 per hit in PvP this skill will deal around 3850 damage back to the Guardian per target with Retaliation attacked.

It is in fact possible to commit suicide by using Whirling Wrath against 3 enemies that are doing nothing except standing in a group with Retaliation. Push 2 to respawn.

I propose that this skill is changed to only have the 7 large impacts, the damage from the smaller ones is merged into the large ones. The skills is still susceptible to Retaliation against grouped AoE enemies but not to such a ridiculous degree.

I think 1925 damage from a full spin against each enemy with Retaliation is a little more acceptable than 3850.

The accuracy of your Shortbow and Longbow are nothing in comparison to how abysmal the Scepter is in terms of velocity and tracking.

Meta Ele counters Medi Guard pretty easy, if Smiter’s Boon is your complaint then really, you have issues that aren’t gonna be solved with tissues. Is the Medi Guardian low health? He’s probably going to heal then, don’t be in melee range.

Practice more and you’ll wipe the floor with just a basic rotation and better sustain.

Back in beta GS 5 used to auto-pull if an enemy tried to run further than 600 away, I would like to see that mechanic come back. The cast time needs to go or become 1/4 at least. Into the Void for Mesmer has no cast time to pull enemies and it also pulls 5.

Get in a ranged fight with any other profession and their ranged weapons.

Enjoy how terrible your Scepter and Torch are at 900-1200 range compared to everything else.

No surprises that this guild is exploiting the hell out of the bug.

I only play WvW.

This condescending vegetablist needs to be taken out of all game development decisions regarding PvP.
He’s clearly a carebear that would give everyone veggie burgers if he was in charge of a burger joint.

Guess it explains why EotM is a thing

Scepter 1 and Torch 4, a tale of ranged woes.

Everything Black Box said.

And I still think Virtues could be slightly faster as the profession mechanic when fully traited.

Around 18s / 36s / 54s

I’d like to see Virtues with lower cooldowns too. More like 17.5s, 35s and 52.5s when traited.

At Medi Guard average stats of 2450 armour, the 150 Toughness from Strength in Numbers is worth around a 5% damage reduction.

As this trait got severely nerfed with the internal cooldown of 1s making it offer at best, 2 procs with Shelter, and 3 procs with Shield of Wrath (unlikely).

Isn’t it about time the Might gained was changed back to 3 stacks as per the first iteration of the change?
Scene as in heavy fights we used to be able to generate 10-15 stacks of Might with a well timed Shelter, the nerf down to 2-4 stacks is utterly laughable.
At least 6-9 would be noticeable.

And as for the dev comment about ‘Guardians have other ways to generate Might now’

No one is taking Zealous Scepter, it utterly locks you into one ranged weapon that has the worst accuracy of every ranged weapon in the game to generate Might with when every 5th attack manages to land, and most PvP DPS specs won’t be seen with Honor in their traits for Empowering Might.

The movement skills change with conditions was supposed to make all leap skills move the same distance all the time regardless of conditions or boons on the player.

However, when leaping under quickness we still travel a shorter distance.

https://youtu.be/3E5H1bYZa8s

Thaddeus.4891:

Guardian base hp is 10 900, while Warrior is 18 500, so the difference is more around 60% and not 100%. You need some vitality on your warrior to reach 23k hp.

The difference is that Warrior almost have zero active defense. You have your dodge, an evade with GS and some vigor when trait or with the right skill. So most of your defense come from your big HP pool.

The guardian is at the other extreme and is the king of active defense. Aegis, Blind, Reflect, Condition Removal, Invulnerable, Block, etc The Guardian even with the DPS oriented meta build is packed with a lot of active defense and most of those not only help yourself survive, but also help the team.

Personally, I have a far easier time to survive with my guardian in dungeon, than my Warrior.

It’s a 70% hp difference.

And Shield Block, Berserker Stance, Endure Pain, Defy Pain (trait), Whirlwind (evade), Defiant Stance, Cleansing Ire and Shield Master (trait) say ‘hi’ for active defense comparisons.

starlinvf.1358:

Guard traits are incredibly broken at the moment… so the Meta is in flux until its completely fixed and reenabled.

Wanna see how broken?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDM1gMJ06cY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbHZXHw220w

You don’t even wanna know what they can do to structures.

You linked a video that is pre-patch.
And then a video showcasing an utterly broken trait that was disabled more than 24 hours before your post…

Are you a member of The Party working for the Ministry of Truth?

Ignorance is Strength! right?

You need to lower the damage gain from the Condition Damage stat.

We knew condition damage would get a huge boost with stacking.

But for Condition Damage to also see bigger numbers than before with 700+ (which is a low number especially when you only need to build with 1 damage stat for conditions) of course it was gonna be too strong. 1800 Condition Damage isn’t hard to get, even with Dire gear.

The fact that we can build Dire and get Condition damage as the only stat for damage necessary and take two full defensive stats is crazy.

Direct damage needs Power, Precision and Ferocity to see high damage before you even consider any defensive stats, you’re already 3:1 for stats.

Yeah I’m sure in the last 48 hours they quickly just coded in some Ascended item stats swapping as a mechanic.

I also don’t agree with the cool-down increases, however unlike the previous poster I did at least have the decency to read your entire post rather than throwing my opinion around after reading one line.

A lot of the mechanics you suggest have great merit, the chain skill idea for Symbol of Energy is fantastic, it provides emergent play and is counterable, it has both offensive and defensive options.

Some of your trait ideas are fantastic and provide real line synergy, something the current traits are blatantly lacking after the Chronomancer and Reaper were showcased with 3 clear paths.

The new heavy light is a clever idea, Hunter’s Agility is very well thought out and provides excellent synergy with several skills, it would in fact provide a huge quality of life change for the Guardian with Sword, Staff, Hammer, Longbow and (Elite Signet) that would make the whole class feel much more fluid in combat. It alone could in fact be one of the best traits to Guardian simply because it makes it so much better to play.

MMOGamer.6175:

Nethion.3158:

…………….ignore the fact that you get a useless copy of the original………..

You mean new players getting the original on my dime without compensation to me.

That is the issue.

You’ve been playing the game for almost 3 years for a one time purchase, there have been several major content additions free of charge since then.

All these arguments conveniently glaze over these facts because it utterly unravels your ridiculous arguments that bare no merit.

Entitled manchildren.

Some gamers have become so extremely pathetic and entitled these days.

As Karl mentioned in Ready Up the shout traits like Pure of Voice and trooper runes will activate at the end of Healing Breeze, this is a huge oversight as it removes mechanics like being able to clear poison before using a heal when you have specifically picked both a trait and rune for a particular heal set to be able to do things like that.

Also applies to the trait Smiter’s Boon, again this trait should activate as soon as the heal skill is touch so that it goes off before any heal, this way you can also aim to play with some skill and try to remove a condition (specifically poison) before healing.

Though with the boon removal / conversion looking like it’s gonna be random now I think conditions might just turn into an absolute kittenfest anyway, more damage than now, more spam than now and now random conversions and removal that you can’t even aim your removal at?

Time Warp is also an AoE pulsing Slow as well now.

Shield 4 needs to apply 4 to 5s of Weakness to be any good, right now it’s just a poor application of damage and some ok Protection up-time.
But as a low hp class with little to no mobility by design the Protection up-time is basic.

What if the traited shield also made 4 apply 5s of Weakness and 5 became a reflection of ranged projectiles while the shield was up.

Will this Shout now transfer a maximum cap of conditions, or is this about to become such a horrific skill with the insane condition changes that are coming that no one will ever think of using it again in a group fight?

Or will it gain a decent amount of the new Resistance boon and have a chance?

It’s good, just as it is. The block/healing/cool-down is in a very balanced state and has been since launch. Hence the fact it’s received no changes at all.

It has counter-play, it requires some awareness to use when moving without Stability up.

So Might of the Protector has gone from a skill that could grant you anywhere from 5-20 stacks of Might for 20s with a well timed block (though if you’re gaining 20 stacks of Might from blocking 20 attacks in 2 seconds you’re probably in deep kitten anyway).

To, at most granting 4 stacks of Might for 15 seconds….

What the actual fk?

Virtue active effect ranged cut in half, why? You reduced the cool-downs from 30, 60, 90 to 25, 50, 75. We still have the longest cool-downs of all the profession mechanics by far and the necessity to heavily trait them in order to even make them remotely useful.

A 1500 heal on a 600 radius with a 50s cool-down and a single block on a 75s cool-down are hardly… what’s the word? ‘good’?

Zinkz is simply a serial whiner, just look at his post history.

He thinks all Thieves are mechanically OP and whines about medi guards about once a week.

Perhaps if he actually played the game and tried to learn skill animations and game mechanics instead of whining on the forums like a child denied candy he might overcome his gaming shortcomings and be able to win some fights.

Or perhaps he’s simply destined to remain fodder, both in-game and on the forums.

Shield 4 should also cause 5s of Weakness on the enemies it hits.

Shield 5 should use the new tech to create a bubble that follows the Guardian if not popped for the heal.

A player that Rapid Fire spams on Ranger and Heartseeker spams on Thief whining about medi guard, surprise surprise.

Learn to manage your cool-downs and use the evade and mobility advantage of the medium armour classes you play instead of blowing your load like a virgin.

Guard and Thief seem to be designed by the same person, so I’m sure the devs are aware of how different specs balance against each other and the overall profession vs profession balance. Consider that Guard has a spec that can kill Thieves and be a good counter to them, but also plenty that can’t. Guard also wasn’t just given an area reveal ability lightly, it’s all for a reason and factors into the greater picture.

Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Gear Shield – cooldown 20 seconds. Blocks all directions.

Shield of Courage – cooldown 90 seconds. Blocks in a targeted cone.

Saiyan.1704:

Bow has excellent Zerging abilities like perma Cripple on three targets, #5’s AoE pindown and finally a high damaging piercing shot that also reflects projectiles.

Bow appeared to hit 2 not 3 targets with the auto-attack.

Number 3 doesn’t reflect projectiles it destroys them.

It’ll be interesting if stacks will translate to seconds of boon for CoP instead of the basic timer we get per boon right now.

From the vid it looks like 2s of Resistance, 3s Protection, 5s Regen and Aegis and 10s Swiftness and Vigor.

From the Dragonhunter PvP stream we got to see Contemplation of Purity converting a bunch of conditions, specifically in this picture.

The Might and Retal were unaffected, the Fury is updated by using CoP.

So it looks like the conversions are literally from the condis above the new boons.

Chill > Swiftness / Vuln > Regen / Burning > Resistance / Immob > Aegis / Poison > Vigor / Bleed > Protection

Arrk.4102:

Would it not be easier for them to come out and say “We are not considering changing the DH name, kthnxbye” rather than keep these discussions going?

They literally did, JP came out and explained how they settled on the name and what it evokes for their design.
It’s as good as saying, we’re not looking to change it, and why should they.

But the old men role-playing girl guardians just can’t handle it.

No, the name isn’t going to change.

Before launch there were even more whiny underboob neckbeards complaining about the ‘Thief’ name, they wanted it to be Assassin.

It didn’t change.

Stop wasting your time whinging about the traitline name and spend your time giving them the kind of feedback they asked for:

Shelter and Healing Breeze- Which skilltypes should they be?

Tome of Courage and Wrath – What do you think of the Signet and Shout ideas.

Longbow skills, elite traitline traits.
Hunter’s Fortification GM trait, they don’t like the 4s Protection on Virtue use, how about ideas for a different trait?