Guild Wars 2

Nike.2631:

Isarii.2804:

I could just as easily point out the knockback, leap, Pure of Sight (more damage to distant enemies) trait, and addition of snare mechanics to the specialization. The Dragonhunter is clearly meant to maintain range (even the chanelled skills are evidence of this, as the self-root makes using them in close range not smart)…

Agreed on all point so far.

…and in any non-zerg situation, that means kiting – not to mention that kiting is usually a large part of getting things to actually run into your traps.

And here we part company. This looks like good choice of placement is key to me – placement of yourself and placement of your traps. I realize GW2 tends towards the hyperkinetic end of the spectrum (Wildstar being more so, most MMOs being less). As I implied above with the LotRO comment, I’ve played this model before and if the rewards for placement-over-scurrying skills are high enough it can be a very fun and effective playstyle… and quite different from what most GW2 builds offer. I don’t think the Dragonhunter is quite there yet as a competitive example of the breed, but the changes we have seen all point towards that being the place they want to get to.

I’ll admit there are certainly other avenues for making the Dragonhunter on par with other specs – at some point, other utilities, if increase enough, would have to make up for that deficiency – but I do believe that putting our movement speed on par with other ranged classes is one of the simplest and best ways of achieving parity (on an unrelated note – oh my god, I just realized the words “par” and “parity” share the same root).

Mobility is an extremely important part of the Dragonhunter specialization, and while offensive “mobility” via snares and knockbacks can contribute, they don’t really get the job done – especially with consideration towards trap synergy. The Dragonhunter already has cast times rooting it in place, and I’m absolutely not against that, but it does need increased speed to be able to maintain distance while those self-roots hold it back.

Obtena.7952:

ShalymaAr.3685:

That fact that they don’t have a 25% movement speed passive trait and their bow skills root you in place when you use them and you have traps that drop at your feet just screams poor design.

I don’t see why any of that screams poor design … MANY of those elements already existed in the game for other classes and aren’t regarded as ‘poor design’ in those cases.

The issue is they now all exist in one class.

Nike.2631:

Isarii.2804:

I still find it odd that one of the only classes without a 25% move speed passive bonus is supposed to have a kiting based elite specialization now; this functionality needs to find its way into the class somehow.

Wouldn’t the absence of a 25% speed trait tell you it’s NOT intended to be a kiting build? Wouldn’t the presence of not 1 but 2 “you cannot move or you will interrupt this cast” skills make even suggesting its a kiting spec sorta laughable?

I could just as easily point out the knockback, leap, Pure of Sight (more damage to distant enemies) trait, and addition of snare mechanics to the specialization. The Dragonhunter is clearly meant to maintain range (even the chanelled skills are evidence of this, as the self-root makes using them in close range not smart), and in any non-zerg situation, that means kiting – not to mention that kiting is usually a large part of getting things to actually run into your traps. The absence of a 25% speed trait doesn’t tell me that it’s not a kiting build – it tells me that the Dragonhunter doesn’t have all the tools it needs to do its job.

I still find it odd that one of the only classes without a 25% move speed passive bonus is supposed to have a kiting based elite specialization now; this functionality needs to find its way into the class somehow.

My personal preference would be a new F4 skill providing 25% move speed passively, with a kiting oriented active. While I originally wanted an AoE immobilize here, that makes less sense with F1 passively gaining immobilize now, so I’m thinking a backwards evade similar to Elementalists’ Fire Staff 4 would do the trick – helping with kiting, as well as giving Dragonhunter’s a good way to drop a trap in the fray and then get the hell out.

At least you got your 5. I’m pretty sure most of us got absolutely nothing.

Agree though, the rewards seem laughably undertuned. I imagine you’re supposed to get 5 multiplied by your buff amount, and the buff isn’t working.

Hurrakan.4259:

For ascended stuff you will need to level some crafting professions to 500. And then to make an ascended item will cost around 200 gold.

More like 70 gold.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/7940

Hahahaha. 10/10, would get trolled again.

Agree with the general sentiment here. While a few mobs had interesting abilities, their usage of them was entirely predictable, and the AI seemed exactly the same as in every other zone in the game. It wasn’t challenging, it wasn’t interesting, and it wasn’t anything new. Disappointing, and I hope they fix it.

CandyHearts.6025:

Isarii.2804:

I don’t think the DH needs stealth, but for a build that’s somewhat reliant on kiting (yet for some reason has to stand still to use its Longbow skills), it’s very odd that we’re still one of the only classes that doesn’t have a 25% movement speed increase.

So that’s what I’d do. Passively provide 25% movement with an active PBAoE cripple.

Yessir! Gimme that please!

I’m so sick of Rune of the Traveler. We are the only class left that really needs it via HoT. (I would of included Rev but with Herald swiftness upkeep you simply don’t need it)

If it were so game breaking to have +25% run speed then they’d of never made the rune for use in the first place, right?

Gimme my zoomzoom.

It would definitely be enough to get me to overlook some of the trait line’s other flaws. Longbow and Traps would still need work to get me to actually consider using them, but at least the trait line itself wouldn’t feel like such a waste to have.

I don’t think the DH needs stealth, but for a build that’s somewhat reliant on kiting (yet for some reason has to stand still to use its Longbow skills), it’s very odd that we’re still one of the only classes that doesn’t have a 25% movement speed increase.

So that’s what I’d do. Passively provide 25% movement with an active PBAoE cripple.

Godservant.8736:

I’ll have to give this a try. Right now, I think staff works pretty well with Tempest. I’m running Water/Arcane/Tempest. My strategy with it right now is to support from afar before dashing in using the Overloads, then retreating to range again.

Meteor Shower > Overload does seem to have a lot of potential on a point, but first we need to get to a point where we can get away with using Overload.

There’s a huge flaw in the OP’s reasoning – none of these abilities take up a utility slot, and they aren’t balanced against the skill that do. As a result, all of those comparisons are total garbage.

It’s a bug fix; this is exactly how Condis worked before this week’s patch. Then they broke it. Now it’s working again.

I’m going to link you the build I started out with for open world / WvW content. It’s important to note that this isn’t a perfect or optimized build, and you really shouldn’t be running dungeons with it unless you’re playing with people who you know won’t care. This is far below what your top potential DPS can be as a Guardian.

That said, you’ll probably never die using this.

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApWotCxZI8DNRCRk1M2fhpXHcdA-TFDEABTcBAS4ACUoSwoUawkygmUipoaFNqqCAHqgHeCCxs/gb6aCAgAczbmNvZ28m38mP6RP6RP6R7mH9mH9m3sUAMpMC-w

The cornerstone of this build is Altruistic Healing, a wildly misnomered trait that heals you whenever you apply a Boon to allies. The build focuses on shouts, and you also pick up a trait that makes your virtues apply boons. Your symbols will also heal you, as they apply boons to allies – and your staff Empower is basically a full heal button when standing in the middle of a zerg.

There are a few other sources of healing as well. You’ll heal on the end of your dodge roll, and your weapons are double slotted with Sigils that heal on crit (thus the choice of Knight’s gear for Precision and Toughness – which also contributes to Precision via a trait). Neither of these are huge heals, but they all add up to a lot of sustain. If you wanted to get really over the top, you could switch Two Handed Mastery to enable symbols to heal, but I think this is probably a bit over the top.

On top of this, you’ll basically never have a condition. Your signet heal (which you’ll rarely have to activate) will passively remove a condition every ten seconds, all of your shouts will remove conditions for you and your allies via the Rune of the Trooper (you can also adjust traits to achieve this effect via traits, to replace the runes or double up on the effect).

Now you’ll eventually probably want to start moving towards a more DPS enabled build as you gain more experience, but as a new player starting out, this a solid place to start out without being dead all the time. My main concern is that the sheer amount of damage you can sustain may teach you some bad habits, so be conscious of the fact that you should be avoiding damage, rather than face tanking it, to grow better at the game.

Hope this helps.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I agree, they’re pretty bad.

But mostly because I can’t choose a district/instance and can get shunted repeatedly into a dead instance where nothing is happening. And if that’s the case, I can’t do many events defending the forts because they’re not balanced for a single player to hold things off very well.

Other than that, I really kind of enjoy the map. In small doses. Which is just about how I enjoy the rest of the game – in small bursts of activity, then take a break until the next day.

Just use the LFG to find a taxi to a full instance.

While I agree with your individual points in regards to ways the Silverwastes could have been better done, it’s far from a poorly made zone, and in many ways is one of the best done zones in the game.

The Silverwastes are a zone made for grinders. This is absolutely true – and this is the reason you don’t like the zone (as made evident by this being the focus of all of your follow-up responses). You simply are not the target audience for the zone – and that’s fine. There is a wealth of content throughout the rest of the game for you to enjoy.

But for people who like to grind? The Silverwastes is awesome, and very, very well put together for filling that niche. It’s fun, it’s effective, and it does a great job of getting players working towards the same goal without blowing up their computers/compromising content difficulty by not only not forcing them all together into one small spot, but by making it both ineffectual in the early phases, and impossible in the final ones. The bosses are some of the best in the game (granted, this isn’t the highest bar to reach, but they seem to be improving), and the way the events build on each other are intense and fun.

You don’t like grinding. This, at its core, is the reason you don’t like the Silverwastes, and that doesn’t make it objectively a bad zone. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely – but what we have is still pretty good. Hopefully the next zone will fill your niche better.

Khenzy.9348:

This may also be relevant to your insterests (also posted on reddit): https://archive.moe/vg/thread/37561461/#37655720

(Please check out the date of the post before any judgement calls! It’s been said the poster has been legit before)

While I’m highly skeptical, I would absolute love what he’s describing there.

If it’s anything other than a longbow, I’m going to be extremely disappointed.

They’ve already said that they want the specializations to focus on roles that the existing professions aren’t very good at it, and there’s nothing the Guardian is worse at than ranged damage.

I really like the speculation above that the long bow would still be a support-esque weapon, but at the same time, as I imagine the specialization would have to come with a survivability trade off, I would hope that we see some serious damage potential made available for the weapon (and possibly the staff, if existing weapons are reworked at all).

After the patch this afternoon, I’ve been getting disconnected every few minutes. It is extremely frequent and I can’t get anything done. Another player on my home network is not experiencing the issue at all.

This is basically what I had come up with too. I think there should be a cast time that roots you in place though, and relatively long (5-10 seconds). The idea would be for it to more or less be a permanent choice, and not something you can hot-switch in combat. That would keep it more in line with the other weapon sets for engineers.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

Too bad I can’t open your link… It says: bad link.

So copy it into the URL bar?

This is the first time I’ve seen TC actually having a presence at night. Not gonna complain though. We seem to have a bunch of fairweather PvPers, because again, the first time we’ve had queues like this. It’s incredibly annoying lol.

But yeah, as someone clever said earlier – MOAR GARNISHED TOAST BUTTERLANDS!

You dueled the Thief, went about 50/50, and it came down to who messed up first? Sounds balanced to me.

The thief mechanics bother you, but it’s still 50/50 and he still loses after messing up first? Again – sounds balanced.

You’ve disproved your own argument OP.

This should be fun. Sittin’ in queues right now, so I’m guessing I’m not the only person thinking so lol. GL to FA and DB.

Just since we’re all a bit sick of Blackgate zerging around, I wish more people could have been there tonight to see them attack TC Garrison with 7 golems. They lost them all within a minute. It was hilarious.

Hi,

So the forums have finally started to work for me, so I figured I’d get your guys’ opinion on the build I’ve been working on for my thief.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAoYVlcmaPHey5E+5Ex2jeqTe6V4rdPiqWtKA;TMArCGYMxA

I realize it’s not all optimal (cough signet of shadows cough), but I’d like to hear feedback anyway to see how I could improve.

The playstyle is pretty straightforward really, with the goal being to make minimal use of stealth and no use of poisons, but to survive combat with an offensive-defense. Even without much gear, I’ve had pretty good success with this in PvE, as both Death Blossom and Cluster Bomb can provide a ton of leeching in a multi-target situation.

Also, it should be fairly obvious that I cannot stand waiting on initiative to regen.

My thoughts so far -

Originally this was a PW/Unload build, as both of those abilities have a ton of synergy with leech builds. Unfortunately, PW is now useless and dual pistols, besides being lackluster, can’t compare to SB in terms of single target, AoE, or trollish mobility. That said, I’ve tried to force this build onto DD/SB, and it seems to be working at least ok.

Even without much gear I’ve been able to do a pretty good job or leeching enough health to keep me alive, and since a lot of my traits are defensive, I feel I could get away with taking full Berserker’s and Infiltration runes. Now I know this build won’t be running around two shotting people though, so is that not worth it? Do you guys think it would be worth getting +healing gear for a few pieces to improve all the healing the build is set up to do?

Basically I’d really appreciate hearing from someone who has tried something similar – or at least is more experienced at theorycrafting than me – before I start buying gear, lol.