Guild Wars 2

Trepidation Lost.3469:

that moment when you type somthing really long and it comes up as that above gg

Your formatting is borked. It could be as simple as a space that isn’t where it should be. More likely, it’s because one of your brackets isn’t closed.

Now onto the real stuff:
I’ve played Guardian in every game mode since launch. Movement is not a huge issue. However, it’s worth mentioning is an intended weakness of the profession. Just like Revenants with condition removal or Thieves with active defenses, Guardian has a weakness in mobility. However it’s extremely easy for the Guardian to overcome that weakness. Even if you don’t want permanent Swiftness, you only need 75% uptime to equate +25% movement speed. After that, we have all the combat mobility of blinks and to a lesser extent leaps. It’s not as huge of an issue as it’s being made out to be.

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

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

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

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

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

Guardian also can easily get perma swift. No need for +25%

Making builds on cellphones is easy. That’s how I’ve been doing it for months.

Now, as far a that build goes, it’s fantastic at just absolutely not dying. However, there isn’t really content where you need such extreme performance.

This kind of synergy was the first thing I thought of when I saw Runes of the Dragonhunter. There’s a lot of potential there.

Radiant Retal and Perfect Inscriptions might need some work, but these are not the solutions.

Guardians were using shield in pvp to bunker since launch. It might feel new because it’s in the Messenger forum, but every other class has long since dealt with it.

If all you want to do is tank and nothing else, can’t get much worse than this Honey Badger

I had actually created some builds that used these synergies before I found this thread. There’s definitely some obvious matches.

Thuggernaut.1250:

(1) Distracting Strikes + Body Blows + Skull Grinder (or Gunflame):

Why not hybrid? It certainly fits better considering Mace.
Hybrid cc Berserker

(2) Rousing Resilience + Outrage/Headbutt/Savage Instinct:

There’s definitely something here. In this build you can Heal 5k per stun break while getting stability. If Shake it Off is the one that procs, it’s 7.5k. And of course, because you don’t need stats to drop cc of your own, you can get away with the lower power. Ultimate anti-cc

(3) Burst Mastery + Smash Brawler:

Not exactly a specific build in mind, but anything that allows you benefit from and chronically drop bursts works well. YOLOFlame for instance.

SrebX.6498:

Besides warr on rare cases, no profession would actually use shields up until now.

Rare cases? Every profession with a shield has been using it for years. Guardians (even moreso with Aegis change), Engineers, Warriors, and now Revenants too.

Mesmers getting access doesn’t make this a new or unique issue.

Your signature says “PvE deserves harder content” and you’re complaining about the difficulty of the content. Sounds like you’ve got some experimenting to do.

I probably should’ve said more, because I did like it. It’s always nice seeing Dragonhunter play.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Weird, whenever I have checked wanderer’s in pvp it always had toughness, condition damage, precision/expertise.

I may have to check to see if Anet updated it in pvp or if its just the build editors not noticing the complete difference between pvp/pve versions of the stat combo.

It wouldn’t be the first time. However, I wouldn’t expect it to be the case based on recent efforts to homogenize those differences. Super Rabid seems like an odd combo also, since they have Trailblazer right there.

Dente’s music was better

According to the build editor Wanderer has the exact same spread in pvp as pve. 1050 power and vitality, 560 toughness and concentration. Considering how recently it was updated I wouldn’t expect the actual Wanderers amulet to be any different.

Nephar.3746:

well not everyone is english native, so u should have a little open mind and trying to understand trough grammar mistakes.

Trust me, I’m quite familiar with people not speaking English natively. However, there’s a difference between typing a well thought out point and insisting people understand only what you can be bothered to type. I have no sympathy for people who don’t even try, native speaker or not. I had learned some French and am becoming more fluent in Chinese, so it’s not like I’m being arrogant in this matter. I know full well what it’s like to communicate in a non-native language.

i used caps to just highlight the burning damage factor.
the point of the post is “im astonished there are people that can defend the actually DH as not being op”

That’s part of the point though. You typo’d the scaling on Burning, made it all caps, and insisted Burning had anything to do with Dragonhunter. The core Guardian is much better at Burning than the Dragonhunter and your video has nothing to do with the performance of Burning. Likewise, plenty of classes get high performance out of Burning and other conditions. It’s no surprise thata Guardian’s Burning would be high if that’s the only damaging condition they have access to. Plus, there’s the video itself where it certainly appears like the best idea you can come up with is attacking the Dragonhunter head on each time.

There are better ways of getting your message across, like not using caps and typing out complete words in the forum language (which happens to be English). Also, actually making a point is very helpful but obviously not required as evidenced by the many posts in the profession forums as a whole, let alone this thread.

Looking back at your post, I’m having a hard time resisting the urge to be a sassy Sally. Like, it would probably be easier to give up food for a day than to not just go to town.

No, they might not need to make tradeoffs between damage and mobility, but they each have their weaknesses. Revenants and condition cleanse, or Reapers and anti-cc.

Communal Defenses doesn’t grant yourself Aegis, so that’s purely a team fight trait. Stalwart would be better if you’re acting solo.

Who said you have to have stealth to bunker? He could easily do exactly what you said with sneakily decapping points and then moving back to a +1. He didn’t exactly specify how he was bunkering so there’s lots of possibilities for what’s actually occurring. Just like how not every bunker guard or DH are the same.

You keep the passive. The active changes to pulse Burning on whomever you have tethered. It’s pretty easy to test for yourself

Welcome to every other profession with a shield.

A good spot? Yes.
Could it be better? Sure.
Most of what I’d change are qol improvements only, but otherwise it’s quite serviceable in every game mode.

The main post always has updated info. Meta is Zerker with some assassins, but Marauder is also a good option if needed.

You could try runes of Fire and Surging for more Aura uptime.

Atin.1237:

Just because an effective playstyle is well known doesn’t mean its OP. its just popular.
Now if I can figure out that rangers build that was hitting my Dh with 12-14k mauls back to back that would be neat.

Probably Marks+Skirmishing with Quickdraw and Remorseless for a start. Because it’s GS then you might want to assume BM too. Zerk or Valk depending and perhaps Sigil of Intelligence.

Hammer is a fantastic cc weapon which also has quality damage. You’ve got Immobilize, knockback, and a ward. When traited you also inflict chill. That’s a lot of variety. A lot of pve content might not need that cc, but it’s something that future content (i.e. raiding) can take advantage of. I personally have used Hammer 3-5 to keep Ralena and Vassar separated during AC story runs. I’ve banished holograms into the clockwork oakheart on TA Aetherpath. You can often use RoW to cc and group up mobs against walls (or two well placed RoW) for easy nuking. Because the damage is getting loaded into the auto and Mighty Blow, you can save your other skills for when they’re necessary. Scepter has similar design. Not every weapon has to be like GS where you use every skill in a dps rotation. Look at Sword especially. Anything other than the auto is a dps loss.

Public Service Announcement:

• You don’t have to have Ricochet to be a Gunslinger
• P/P is currently viable and has diversity
• Even if you don’t think p/p is a viable set, there are changes on the way. The only way things get better is if they’re improved. With enough improvements, suddenly it becomes good. Who would’ve thought?
• I can’t really say that I’ve seen anyone on these forums who actually understands what “preserving the purity of pistol” actually means. Chances are it’s best not to open that can of worms.

If they aren’t boons, they aren’t affected by concentration. There is a use in solo pve where you become the all powerful boon bot for your pet and let it do the damage for you. It might not be setting the record books on fire, but it’s there.

And just in case anyone was wondering, aggro is determined by an unknown formula. However, we do know that Armor, Damage dealt, and proximity are all among the factors that contribute. In GW1, we know some mobs reversed the traditional expectations and went after the players that were weakest, or farthest away.

Aza.2105:

Skill 3, 4 and 5 need to not be situational in pve. Because they don’t have a consistent use, hammer users are bound to using skill 1 and 2 95% of the time. That is bad design.

It isn’t necessarily bad design. Weapons are designed to be different, and not every weapon needs to have skills 1-5 be applicable in all situations.

There’s a tooltip bug where the cast time doesn’t Sisley unless… you have the Virtues line also? Something like that. Basically it’s just a display error. Mechanically it’s working correctly.

It was beautiful.

And not to kick you while you’re down, but the music was indeed the weak point.

You know what’s more annoying than not having 25% move speed?

Posts that complain about it.

T raw.4658:

You do know Guardians have been a hard counter to thieves for like over 1 year right? Imagine a class you have zero chance to beat no matter what you do, and it stayed that way for over 1 year. So for over 365 days in a year every time you fought that class you lost b/c Anet deemed it so.

Now imagine HoT dropped giving out all new specs/elites/weapons…..and now that class that hard countered you for over 365 days now hard counters you even MORE.

Ya you can expect some lip especially since DH takes literally zero skill to play.

Mesmer would like to say “Hi!”. But no, there’s no reason for the lip. Saying DH takes no skill tastes an awful lot like sour grapes to me.

Mallis.4295:

Hammer Spirit Weapon instead of signet.
Sigil of Air/Fire.
Condi duration food and utility buff.

When you’re making a statement high numbers look prettier than what might actually be more effective.

That being said, I don’t know why thy food and utilities didn’t show up. Armor should also be Viper’s instead of Sinister for ~105% condition duration

Rodzynald.5897:

This is also a nice change but bruh… MB damage is already weak, why would anyone think of nerfing it even more ? With 40% dmg decrease it would be just like AA.

That’s the entire point. MB is faster than SoP (by 40%), so you drop the total damage by 40% so the DPS stays the same while providing more mobility and blast finishers. All that damage goes back into SoP which has now taken MB’s spot and recharge. Due to the cast time, it has 50% uptime untraited, and 100% uptime with Glacial Heart+Writ of Persistence (keep in mind I’m also proposing GH be in a supposedly easier spot to trait for). It inherently lasts longer though, providing area denial at a given time. With SoP on Hammer 2, you can at least intentionally place your Symbol after a preferred combo field.

You can heal for a lot as a Guardian, but it would be foolish to only attribute healing as your means of support.

I like the idea. That’s all I really wanted to say.

Swap Symbol of Protection with Mighty Blow
Decrease Mighty Blow damage by 40%
Increase Symbol of Protection duration to 3s, reduce cast time to 1s
Proposed changes #3-5 from Ragnarox

Not saying I would actually want to run this, but it would be interesting for sure. Also take into consideration a fantasy trait change:
Glacial Heart swapped with Retaliatory Subconscious. Retaliatory Subconscious functionality changed to "Activate Virtue of Courage when affected by [Control Effect].

This has nothing to do with piercing. What is likely happening is the attack hotboxes are beginning in an area where it’s not considered the front of the Dragonhunter despite the character models looking like they’re facing each other. You’re essentially swinging through the character to hit their flank. I’d expect any melee weapon to be able to accomplish something similar.

Unless of course the Necro was using Nothing Can Save You! or the like in which case problem solved.

1) Burning is naturally much more damaging than Poison or Bleeding. The disparity is inconsequential
2) Kindled Zeal is a Master trait while Target the Weak is a Grandmaster. The percentages for stat increase traits are normalized across the entire game
3) Supreme Justice is built around passive procs as opposed to the active. You’ll deal much more Burning without activating VoJ, especially once you combine it with Permeating Wrath
4) Guardians can already stack obscene amounts of Burning. When put together in a cohesive build, your Burning damage is a significant amount of the total.

In extreme cases you could be looking at something like Glass Burn Guard

Evilek.5690:

I play DH and must say yes this is game breaking. Guardian has with this “bug” 20+ sec block/invulnerability in row without limits.

It has plenty of limits, like not blocking unblockable attacks, or not blocking from the flanks, or having around 10% uptime.

Why do you insist a skill that is working correctly is a bug?

Unfortunately I cannot test anything, which is why I spend my time theorycrafting on the forums

ZD isn’t an offensive skill
Flashing Blade has the exact same range as Leap of Faith
The auto chain procs VoJ quickly. There’s plenty you can use that for.

Guardian forums have been infested by the saltiest of people. Don’t let their mixture of sodium and chlorine deceive you.

Sword/Shield is perfectly fine to use. Here’s the key though: look at what the weapons offer you. Don’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Maybe you should go play a Revenant then. Maybe it’ll keep you from making useless posts.

There is much more to support than just healing.

Pvp amulets have the minor bonus as the same amount as celestial amulets. In pve/wvw that should be 639 Precision, or 30.428% (ascended, exotic is 608-28.95%).

Knights has 0 vitality though. Mauraders might be better. Then again, no one said you had to do damage. Tanking is perfectly acceptable and Guardians excel at it. With Mace, Aegis traits, AH, and Writ of Persistence, you can shrug off a significant amount of damage while healing up the difference. You could also keep your Soldier gear and stack as much Precision as you can find. There are a lot of options available to you.

Drekor.5217:

Not really LB3 and F3 utterly destroy P/P thieves… they can’t put any damage down.

That’s actually where traps+Trapper runes shine. Unlockable traps and stealth without initiative cost (to circle around the flanks). There’s more to P/P than just power DA/CS/Trick.