If you are mainly interested in exploring Maguuma you could consider getting the Speedy Mushrooms mastery. They give a 40% boost to swiftness for around 15 seconds and they are around every corner.
I also get the weird colors on the UI by the way. For example, when I open the BLTC or friendslist. Just like you, it happens every hour or so.
I have the same problem. Also using a GTX 960. My specs are very similar to yours. Random crashes every hour or so. Usually before I crash I have the weird graphics bugs but I’m not always aware of it. The crash happens everywhere.
LoW actually sounds like it would be great for keeping seekers away on vail guardian. Same with other wall spells like spectral wall with necromancers.
Edit: actually a dragonhunter running longbow/staff would be able to control seekers for a rather long time while still doing decent damage. (not max damage obviously but as far as control builds go for pve it would be pretty kitten nice)
A problem I could see happening is that the seekers don’t always come from the same direction. I think a shield could also work since you would push the seekers back in a circle around you. Shield of Absorption has a cool down of 20 seconds (traited) which is also nice compared to the 40 seconds on line of warding.
On topic: Line of Warding works nice in PvP when you’re on a point as a support guardian. Especially when you can corner them just off the point.
They are at least changing the way pets and minions work so that will affect spirit weapons as well. I don’t think we should get too excited about other changes to the core specializations. I made some suggestions in the beta feedback thread regarding some traits and utilities that definitely need to be addressed. Like signet utilities and retaliation/symbol traits.
Map completion chests gave out XP at 10% of your current level so you got a little over 25K per chest without boosters.
I personally don’t see this being a major issue like in the betas as we cannot re-roll instant level 80 characters with map completion done for city maps.
It’s not a major issue. Nonetheless, it’s a nice boost you can do right now to get a head start on mastery progression. Some might complain about it.
Regarding the chests, you can just keep the maps at 99% completion and leave the easiest Point of Interest open. So when the expansion launches you can quickly waypoint between the cities and get 4 chests at the time before going to the Heart of Maguuma.
During the Beta’s it was possible to get progress on the mastery tracks simply by visiting the cities and get the world completion chest. After getting world completion chest you could go to the Heart of the Maguuma and open the chest to get progression on the new mastery tracks, like gliding for example.
I wonder if we are able to do that as well when the expansion goes live? Also does it work retroactively?
Making something unblock able is just lazy design, and I do think they’ve put out too many reflects on other classes, which has caused them to make this decision. Then again they have made other attacks undodgeable and what not which counters thief mechanics as well, but seems raids are focusing on more sort of damage reduction and regeneration rather than outright avoiding damage all together.
the problem I see is that they have to make them unblocakble because if they dont dragonhunters would trivilize most encounters. you just huddle up and chain F3 roman battle formation style.
but I am not that concerned overall. the minmaxers will sure find a set up that will exclude 40-50% of the classes anyways. 2 revs, 2 eles, 2 mesmers, fill up with whatever brings the best gap fillers and the diversity is already gone.
we gonna do the raids in our guild for fun and the challenge itself until we make it work with whatever classes people want to bring. It will take time until the strategy guides are out but after that with a little practice I do not see it matter much.
An even if it is something not everyone is to complete with his favorite classe then so be it.
Some utilities would indeed trivialize the raid. We shouldn’t wish for another one-shot Giganticus Lupicus scenario. But I have to agree with TheLastNobody that it is lazy design. A good AI design should be able to analyze their opponent and see when they are unable to hit their target and thus create a counter-move or temporarily suspend their attack. Let us make use of every utility instead of making everything, literally everything, unblockable. Right now it seems we’re getting the short end of the stick. Personally, it does concern me when the meta is going to be revolved around three classes. Although we will have to wait and see what the rest of the raid has to offer.
On guardian I’d like to see taunt on either a spirit weapon, a signet, or one of the shouts (Save Yourselves—> it would draw all conditions and foes to you!). These would be good choices. I can’t really see taunt being placed on any of our weapon skills without drastically changing the mechanic of that weapon.
I like these idea. Save yourselves always felt a bit lackluster to me. Having taunt could make it more useful to support guardians. The taunt would fit perfectly with Signet of Judgment; passive to reduce incoming damage, active to taunt enemies to attack you instead of party members. Not a big fan of spirit weapons but anything to help their cause I suppose.
Tried the raid as a guardian & must say hunter is right.
Pretty much every mechanic needed for the first boss is done much better by someone else.
Really at this point all the guardian does better then others is aoe stability & some AOE quickness.
Reflects, AOE healing, projectile blocks, condition damage etc… are all done much better by others.Unless the other bosses have allot of need for stability I doubt how much a guardian will be wanted vs other specs.
For me the worst part of the raid was that none of our utilities worked.
- Wall of Reflection didn’t reflect anything
- Stability didn’t prevent me from getting teleported (if I recall correctly)
- Blinds are useless on champions
- Too much AOE spam for aegis to work
- No conditions to cleanse
So that leaves us with the hammer’s protection (which comes with an annoying light field) and Shield of Courage. Of course we can still do DPS but, like you said, other classes fulfill that role much better.
quickly throw spear of justice (thanks to super speed)
Super speed isn’t quickness, it doesn’t speed up your animations.
Whoops, you’re right. In that case they are more supportive towards a kiting build.
The runes could work in combination with the new pull on Spear of Justice. You lay down the traps, gain stealth and super speed from runes, quickly throw spear of justice (thanks to super speed), then burst down your opponent.
I didn’t know about this nerf – I doubt many people do and now ive read it as someone who is sitting on a lot of champ bags and quietly levelling a character to level 53 I feel really hacked off..
‘Despite keeping a heavy sink of materials in the new endgame weapon journeys, the changes were nowhere close to balancing the current numbers . To help get us closer to where we want to be, we’ll simultaneously roll out changes to the salvaging of some materials’
Have I actually got this right? the well known pretty rubbish loot drops in this game are actually going to be nerfed? as if 2 blues and green wasn’t bad enough they are now going to salvage into less sellable mats because thewy think we need more scarcity?
Why arnt people seeing the potential here that drops are going to be even worse? why arnt people getting annoyed? have I missed something here?!
Maybe you missed the rest of the blog post? “Some of these changes will reduce output to help us maintain scarcity, and some will rebalance heavily input materials with more rare materials to help even out some of the variation of scarcity we currently have.” Less gossamer and thick leather sections, more wool and linen? Who knows?
It’s likely we will get less mithril ore, elder wood logs and thick leather sections. Maybe less (minor) runes as well. I assume we will get more cloth. It would make sense if we could get access more easily to lower tier cloths such as wool and linen. Although I’m not sure if they would just give those to us by salvaging level 80 greens. Last but not least, I’m hoping they will add certain parts of the precursor crafting to the champion bags as well. Which is probably why I’m going to save the champion bags.
I’ll look back at this thread when the expansion launches. Then everyone can either laugh at me or envy me.
I don’t understand why they made the Shield of the Avenger follow the enemy. It would make more sense if it followed the guardian on a tight leash. Especially since it got a low health pool so when it get’s next to the enemy it dies in a few hits. On top of that, when it is knocked back it just stands there doing nothing useful while you have to wait a whole minute for the cool down.
Hello everyone,
I have been saving up some champion bags in my bank for the last couple of few weeks. I was wondering when I should open them. From my own analysis I could split this decision into two parts:
- In the economy blog posted by Arenanet there was some information about an upcoming nerf to salvaging. Since every champion bag gives a green item this should without a doubt affect the value of the bags.
- Also, I was wondering whether the content of a champion bag is determined on drop or determined when you open it? Will I get potential new HoT drops from the champion bags I got in the last couple of weeks?
John Smith likes items that have well balanced supply/demand. He considers silk to be one of his best successes. It was a super common material that sold for below vendor value. Now it is selling for nearly 4s a scrap!
So what other items are similar to silk that he will be looking for fix? The things I have identified as most likely to increase in value are:
Silk was never balanced with regards to supply and demand. At first supply was way too high, leading to people selling the silk scraps to the vendor.
When ascended armor and ascended backpack crafting arrived Arenanet tried to make silk more useful. Unfortunately they overshot it with their solution. Basically any class using light armor had to foot the bill paying more than 100 gold more to make their ascended armor. I would most certainly not call that good balancing. It took them many months, maybe even more than a year, to come up with some kind of fix with Silverwastes farming adding more cloth supply into the game. As we all know cloth is the only type of material (compared to wood and metals) that can’t be farmed and requires more materials to craft (compared to leather).
So no, I am not looking forward to what John is going to change to shape up the economy. Knowing how bad the rewards from dungeons were divided from the get go and seeing how badly changes for Silk have been implemented I am going to be very skeptical to see what they are planning to do.
Unfortunately none of these really blew my mind with regards to design. The pistol is definitely a welcome addition next to Quip. Also having a legendary effect going up to the arm is not something I expected and is pretty unique. However, having the arm effect overly present on every new legendary could be viewed by some as over the top.
I would’ve rather seen a mace, focus or fongbow in the first batch instead of the Axe though. The Frostfang is fine and didn’t really need to be prioritized in my opinion.
Really looking forward to what other legendaries we’re going to get.
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Wikipedia states it pulls enemies in. Although I can’t really remember it pulling more than one enemy in.
I was mostly using hammer with Writ of Persistence traited. Hammer mainly because of the protection upkeep with some extra healing from the trait. Together with Mace + Shield (to knock back the seekers). I can understand that the light field can be annoying though. However, the 33% damage reduction is still very nice to have on top of a druid healing.
What annoyed me is that during the third phase, where the boss has a break bar, I couldn’t reflect the huge amount of flying orbs. I also tried stability to prevent getting teleported. Not sure if that worked either. Correct me if I am wrong though.
I found Shield of Courage and Wings of Resolve very useful though. Shield of Courage to protect the party if too many seekers are nearby or during certain attacks in the third phase. Wings of Resolve to jump towards the orange circles.
We basically just stole Scorpion Wire with no additional cost to ourselves. Only our Scorpion Wire pulls multiple foes if we line up the initial shot right. If there’s a case for something-for-nothing to be even better, I’m willing to wait until we’ve actually played with it a few weeks on live.
I wonder whether we can pull tethered thieves in stealth. Imagine throwing Spear of Justice on a thief, he stealths, you put down the Light’s Judgement trap and pull him to reveal him. We can already pull stealthed enemies with Binding Blade so I imagine it could also work with Hunter’s Verdict.
These are great changes Karl. Well done.
These are some minor points that might need to be addressed:
- I am looking forward to try Hunter’s Verdict. Have you thought about it how it would work in combination with some other traits? For example, when you pull an enemy with Hunter’s Verdict while you have Heavy Light (knock back) traited the enemy will be pulled towards you and then knocked back again. Is this too much CC? Or should the knock back perhaps be removed or put on the Longbow skill #3 Deflecting Shot (they have the same cool down).
- Like others have said, the Purification trap is not something I would use over Shelter. Simply because a trap is not the right utility to use when you need to quickly react to heavy incoming damage. Why not let this trap work the opposite? When deploying Purification, while standing inside, the trap will give regeneration as long as no enemy triggered it. On trigger give it a small HP boost.
- Good work on Fragments of Faith and some other traps! They are definitely more versatile now that it delivers some sustain.
- Are there any core changes coming still? I added some feedback in your last thread regarding a few utilities and traits that need some love. Unfortunately I don’t see any results here!
Good luck with the remaining few days towards the expansion!
Core changes:
Traits
- Put all Symbol related traits into Zeal. This includes moving Writ of Persistence, Glacial Heart and Invigorated Bulwark traits to Zeal.
- Some traits need to be moved out of Zeal. Binding Jeopardy and Expeditious Spirit (which shouldn’t be a grandmaster) belong in Radiance. Consolidate the retaliation traits (they are weak). Zealous Scepter should be a Virtues trait (instead of Glacial Heart) because it triggers on justice passive.
- Strength of the Fallen trait should not decrease degeneration in downed state. Instead let is decrease initial cool down on recharges (downed skill 2 & 3).
- Make Battle Presence also increase passive radius of virtue to 1200 (weak Grandmaster trait) and let it work when the virtue is activated.
- Some traits are never picked: Wrathful Spirit, Healer’s Retribution, Retributive Armor and Perfect Inscriptions. These need some attention.
Utilities
- Lower cool down on Sanctuary and Hallowed Ground.
- Increase health on Spirit Weapons. Decrease the distance on the leash so they stay close to the guardian. The leash is especially important for Spirit Shield and Spirit Bow.
- Rework Signet of Judgment & Mercy actives.
just dueled a dh with cele d/d meta, one (basically instant) trap did 11k dmg. dh blocked ~75% of the time. dh was using longbow and gs, longbow capable of doing 20% of my health with true shot. dueled ~20 times? duels 90:10 in his favor? …. Traps not viable? Long bow not viable? what?
Did he have full zerker, full might, and full vulnerability on you or something? Because I can never pull those numbers off with my traps. True shot is an easy telegraph and a Dragonhunter with traps is not going to have much sustain. Longbow is definitely viable. Traps are too easily avoided or dodged/evaded/blocked so I don’t agree with you on that.
Played some more today and these are my main suggestions to make traps more viable:
- Big Game Hunter should allow us to pull tethered enemies into our traps to make activating virtues more interesting. This would solve some issues with the synergy between longbow and traps as well.
- Wings of Resolve should let us jump back and forth. Then we can jump in with Wings of Resolve, put down traps on the enemy, and jump back out. This is necessary for situations where enemies do not automatically run into the traps. For example, when you’re fighting in a group, fighting a ranged enemy or simply PvP. Make it a flip skill: press F2 to jump in, press F2 again to jump back to the original position.
In my opinion this should take away the majority of complaints for traps.
My feedback for the 3rd Beta weekend:
Traps:
I want to talk about traps first because the functionality of the traps is definitely something I am worried about. If there is something I want the developers focus on in these three weeks left it’s definitely traps. The damage is nice, I also like the added daze but unfortunately that still makes these utilities awkward to use. These are my main concerns:
- Traps lack synergy with Longbow. I have problems with my traps and fighting (ranged) enemies in groups (very important in an MMORPG). I can’t control the enemies to get them into my traps. It feels very unnatural to run up to my enemy to place the traps and then go ranged again to use longbow. We need some kind of pull (see virtues) or a jump and retreat kind of skill (Wings of Resolve is nice but only does half the work). Or you could also say that the Dragonhunter specialization lacks synergy with melee to use melee with traps. If the Dragonhunter could be motivated to run in with a melee weapon and place their traps it could definitely help. I still prefer this solution over ground targeted traps.
- Something hilarious happened when I put my traps down yesterday. I engaged a Veteran with a group and after putting down my traps a neutral Moa ran into the traps and activated each one of them before the Veteran ran into it. Even something as silly as an Armadillo critter can activate the traps. This shouldn’t be happening!
Traits:
- Heavy Light, stability is not useful when you knock back an enemy. It makes more sense to have something offensive to follow up on a knock back. Like quickness, might, fury or even swiftness to get away. On top of that the knock back on this skill feels too random. Merge the knock back on Heavy Light with Deflecting Shot (#3 Longbow) so we can time the knock back (they have the same cool down).
- Bulwark looks rather weak. The radius increase is too small (make it a full circle instead) and two more seconds does not feel like it adds a lot to this trait. All in all, I would probably never pick this trait. Let it reduce the cooldown on Shield of Courage so it syncs up with the traps. What I like to do is jump in with Wings of Resolve, use Shield of Courage to block attacks while I lay down my traps on the enemy. But most of the time Shield of Courage is not recharged.
- Defender’s Dogma feels very weak. I have no ideas for it. Although I hear a lot of people asking for swiftness.
Virtues:
- It feels unrewarding to activate Spear of Justice with all the passives going on. Especially when having the Cripple on Justice passive and Defender’s Dogma you never want to activate it again. Big Game Hunter should allow us to pull tethered enemies into our traps to make activating virtues more interesting. This would solve some issues with the synergy between longbow and traps as well.
- Wings of Resolve should let us jump back and forth. This way we would be able to jump in with Wings of Resolve, put down traps on the enemy, and jump back out. This is necessary for situations where enemies do not automatically run into the traps. For example, when you’re fighting in a group or fighting a ranged enemy.
Longbow:
- Change the sound on Skill #1 Puncture Shot when it hits more than one target. It is the same sound as Staff #4 and it doesn’t feel it belongs there. It confuses teammates expecting might/heal from staff.
- Skill #3 Deflecting Shot, in theory it sounds like an incredible skill but in practice 80% of the time I can’t deflect the projectile. It still feels like the arrow moves too quickly. It would help to lower the velocity some more or let it zig zag.
- Skill #5 Hunter’s Ward, move the barrier to the middle of the cast. This means the enemy still has a one second chance to dodge out of this powerful attack. Otherwise the channeling takes too long to justify for the Dragonhunter to stand still for almost three seconds.
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Can't finish last file of Nov 5th patch. [Merged]
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Noah.4756
I am also Dutch and got the same problem after installing the game on a new computer. I did play the game while it wasn’t finished downloading yet. So maybe that has something to do with it.
I have the same problem. Getting random BSOD’s in Guild Wars 2 (mostly in dungeons) after playing fine for two years. It started to happen since yesterday.
I’m using Windows 10, i7 860 cpu, 4GB RAM, Samsung SSD and AMD Radeon HD 5700. I suspect it has something to do with Windows 10.
I tried reinstalling everything but the problem still occurs. Contemplating on downgrading back to Windows 7.
As has been mentioned, tasks are invisible. All information regarding traps, plus actual gameplay involving traps reinforces this.
Traps have no need to be ranged. Not DH’s, and not any others. Plus, “not far” is 600-900? That’s 1/2 – 3/4 max range.
Why do traps have to “synergize” with Longbow any more than they do? What other utilities synergize with a specific weapon? Traps feed into the Dragonhunter’s purpose, they don’t need to at optimal performance with Longbow.
Traps have 0 reason to have symbols associated with them. They’re fine how they are, especially in concept. There could be room for a smidgen more polish, but otherwise their basically finished products.
I agree with most of what you said. Although there is one thing I don’t fully agree with. The Elite Specialization is specifically designed with traps and longbow in mind. They should be seen as two complementary attributes, together with the traits, forming the core of the elite specialization. The traps can’t be used without equipping the Dragonhunter specialization.
With that said, to answer your question “Why do longbow and traps need more synergy?” Well, because these two core elements of the specialization serve different purposes. Longbow is a long range back support weapon while traps are a short range burst skill. Therefore, in a lot of situations they severely lack in synergy. The idea behind it is that enemies you engage will run towards you into the traps. However, I can think of many encounters where this simply won’t happen. For example, this can be said about ranged enemies, group encounters and PvP.
I don’t think making the traps ranged is the solution. Also symbols sound too complicating. But the guardian does need some form of control to get enemies inside their traps without relying on the enemy itself.
You can rotate between blocks and blinds. Bunker guard should have access to the following:
- Virtue of Courage
- Shelter
- Retreat
- Focus #4 & #5
- Renewed Focus (if you didn’t take Feel My Wrath)
- Dodges (switch weapons for Sigil of Energy proc)
- Tank a bit with protection from Hold the Line
I suppose in some situations it could be useful to stay on the point. But if you have more team mates around I would recommend kiting him off the point.
Instead of changing trap’s functions I believe all trap builds require some access to means of relocating foes into their traps. Through this players would have some control of forced relocation of foes into their traps. Add good position, placement & luring & I think you’ll have a more successful, useful & reliable trap gameplay.
I agree with your statement that the dragonhunter needs to be able to relocate foes into traps. I was thinking about this and my suggestion would be to add a trait to the elite specialization that gives guardians the following:
Switching from a ranged to melee weapon pulls your target towards you when Spear of Justice is activated (ICD 30 seconds).
Similarly to how the thief’s Scorpion Wire works.
After playing the beta this weekend these are my main points of critique:
Errand Boy
When I tried to engage in a group I had troubles figuring out what my role was. The longbow is used as back line weapon while my traps are front line utilities. This play-style forced me to run back and forth like an errand boy. So when fights involve more players the enemies don’t automatically come to me. This forces me to move towards the enemy. The same problem occurred when I was individually fighting ranged enemies. Unless I took advantage of poor AI by benefiting from LoS. Surely this shouldn’t be promoted by the developers. I do like the extra damage coming from traps. Although in its current state the symbiosis between longbow and traps is questionable. A solution could be to add a long range pull option to Spear of Justice. The mechanics could be similar to Greatsword #5 Binding Blade, but with a longer range and single target only.
Poor Melee Synergy
I could switch from longbow to greatsword midfight to engage enemies in melee while utilizing the traps. This could solve the problem as described in my previous paragraph. Unfortunately the Dragonhunter traits are solely focused on ranged making the synergy between melee and traps non-existent. This also works the other way around. For example, Zeal does not give any benefits to longbow or traps. On top of that, the short range traps collide with the long range specialization traits. For example, Pure of Sight requires my enemies to stay outside the range threshold to receive a damage bonus and Heavy Light knocks enemies back. I feel like some bridges need to be build here to fill in some gaps.
On the Horizon
The most important sustain for Dragonhunter should be to keep your enemies at bay. It does look like Karl addressed some of these issues. For example, by giving traps daze and adding cripple to F1’s passive. Daze and cripple could definitely contribute to the Dragonhunter’s unapproachable strategy and I am looking forward to testing this out in BWE3. Also Wings of Resolve should definitely have an increased Leap range on activation. It should be in line with Engineer’s Jump Shot rifle skill.
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I am still not sure what kind of tactics they want us to use with the Dragonhunter elite specialization. Having a long range longbow and short range traps has a very niche usage (capturing nodes in PvP). The synergy is lacking in all the other game modes. I am quite disappointed. I had more fun with the Mesmer, Necromancer and Elementalist elite specializations.
Some other minor issues I had:
- I can’t move while using True Shot and especially Hunter’s Ward which allows my enemies to pound on me for 3 seconds.
- Spear of Justice should redirect itself to nearby enemies. Enemies almost never line up in front of you anyway. So it almost never attaches to more than one target.
- Leap on Wings of Resolve is too short. It needs to be an 800 range skill.
- Knockback on the Heavy Light trait is too short. I rather have a longer cooldown with a longer knockback range.
- Traits like Hunter’s Determination and Hunter’s Fortification give us boons we already have easily access to. It doesn’t feel rewarding to use them.
- The auto-face issue feels like a bug. I don’t think any of our other weapons force us to look towards a target.
- Dragon’s Maw elite trap doesn’t have its own symbol on the ground. It’s the same as the symbol from Test of Faith (two crossing swords).
1. In most cases I am still using Renewed Focus in both PvE and PvP. Especially now that virtues became even more powerful with the latest virtue specialization. Guardians can get the following buffs not once, but twice: condition removal (Absolute Resolution), stability and a stunbreaker (Indomitable Courage). Not to mention the other passive and actives plus invulnerability you get from virtues. It is just too good to give up. We have a full trait line dedicated to just virtues. If we have an elite skill that can make this trait line twice as useful than it becomes a trivial choice what to use.
In some cases encounters don’t require support as much. That’s where the new elite shout Feel My Wrath is pretty useful for the Quickness on a low cool down.
The active on the new healing elite Signet of Courage takes too long to cast. Especially in PvP where people get burst down in matter of seconds. This elite takes over 4 seconds to cast. When you notice that someone is low on health, you cast it, and by the time the signet finishes your teammates have most likely died already. In the meantime you’re just standing there like a stick-in-the-mud while everyone can hit and interrupt you. Like Exedore mentioned, the reason why people used the healing tome was because you could spam skill 1 and heal people in an area around you, not because of the full heal on skill 5.
2. I definitely think there is potential for some new guardian builds. Bunker might find his way back in the PvP meta and there is some more variation for meditation builds. Burning condition build looks interesting although I haven’t really tried it out myself.
3. Not so sure what to think of the new symbol meta. I feel like guardians are being forced into symbols while not having many options for weapons that do not have much access to symbols like sword and scepter. Personally, I think the mace feels a bit clunky and light fields feel useless. I do appreciate all the consolidations of traits that has been done with the new specializations. Although some traits still do not feel at the right place or sometimes even messy. Glacial Heart has nothing to do with virtues and the retaliation traits feel very weak. Writ of Persistence feels more at home with the other symbol traits in the Zeal line.
4. Overall I think we are heading towards the right direction but there is definitely room for improvement.
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I feel like there is so much missed potential with making the shield more viable. Now it feels like there was a last minute fix attempt done without doing the proper background research. I think the developers should go back to the drawing table and figure out what makes the shield not used as much as the other off-hand weapons.
The cooldowns on the shield skills were quite bad a year ago when they were still around 40-50 seconds. I am not saying that reducing the cooldowns again is a bad change. Although I am not seeing a significant improvement by reducing the cooldowns even more.
As most players in this thread indicated, the main problem is Shield of Judgment (shield #4). It gives a relatively short duration protection buff with little damage potential. Ideally I would like to see some kind of aegis application to increase the potential of a shatter aegis build.
Shield of Absorption is useful for node capturing/defending and securing resurrection on teammates. Although it would certainly help if it wouldn’t root us in place. I know the developers changed this for the Engineer shield #4 Magnetic Shield a while back, so that engineers can move while pushing. I don’t see why it couldn’t be applied to guardian shield #5 as well.
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The meta is going to change for sure. The question is how to effectively distribute the points in every specialization in order to maximize DPS. I do feel that many on this forum are being a little bit too dramatic right now regarding the announced trait changes. Although I have to admit I am somewhat less excited than before.
- It is almost certain that the Zeal specialization will become standard for dungeons. Symbolic Avenger and Fiery Wrath add a significant amount to personal damage so it simply can’t be ignored. The question remains how to effectively utilize Symbolic Avenger. Will it be Hammer, Mace or Greatsword?
- The Honor specialization can add a lot for Symbolic Avenger as Writ of Persistence gives the guardian a permanent symbol while adding a bunch of other attributes to symbols. The usefulness of this specialization will also depend on whether Empowering Might will get an ICD or not.
- The Virtue specialization will definitely be useful with Unscathed Contender and Virtuous Mallet. Otherwise more supportive traits like Absolute Resolution and Indomitable Courage can leave utility slots open for Bane Signet, Retreat or Wall of Reflection.
- The Radiance specialization doesn’t seem to work well together with the Zeal specialization. There could be a possibility for builds with burning by using the torch. Radiant Fire and Amplified Wrath still look like very interesting traits. Although I am still unsure how our damage potential is with burning. Perhaps we can stack up burning first with the torch and then switch over to hammer to do sustainable damage together with the symbols.
I don’t think Zeal is the problem here. The problem is that the developers are shoehorning weapon traits into different specializations. Unfortunately the weapon skills do not always match to a certain specialization.
Another example, other than the scepter, is the new hammer trait Virtuous Mallet. It has been moved towards the Virtue specialization. The trait itself has absolutely nothing to do with virtues. It seems this has been done in order to balance our burst potential.
Of course this problem can be streamlined by adding a symbol to the scepter. At this point I don’t see any major overhauls happening to weapon skills though. The developers are primarily focusing on traits right now. But who knows it might happen in the future.
As of right now the meditation guardian is in a good position in PvP. They do nice burst damage while having sustainability with blocks, heals and condition removal. However, the meditation build is quite the contrary to the previous guardian meta build, which was the bunker guardian. I wonder what happened to the bunker guard as it is no longer part of the meta and replaced by shoutbow warriors. What exactly makes warriors better at bunkering than guards?
Shoutbow warriors are definitely not bad. They have a high base health pool, condition removal, great regeneration and their shouts support the team to a certain extend. Also warbanner is definitely a lifesaver. But if you look at the defensive support of the guardian it feels like guardian has a lot more to offer in team fights. We have decent support healing with virtue of resolve, empower and hold the line. Not to forget about stability, blinds and blocks. Staff is not that bad damage when you can hit three or more targets at once but I understand it has its limits in 1v1. Is this what kills the build? Right now team support doesn’t feel important in PvP while individual, independent builds have more to offer.
Perhaps once Heart of Thorns comes guardian bunker build will once again shine. Since we will be able to use three full defensive trait lines the guardian meta might shift.
@ Noah
Think he means that compared to other skills in allot of areas traps are just underwhelming.
There is also the fact that they have such long cool downs (something guardian already had enough of)
Lastly here is also the fact that you never want to use more then one on your skill bar because doing so means you lose self sustain, stability, condition cleanse etc… for damage that can be easily avoided by dodging.
I partially agree with you. It would be nice if the dragonhunter traits offered more sustainability. One of those changes I envision is to change one of the adept trait to allow traps to transfer your conditions to enemies. Stability is already almost permanent if you use Hunter’s determination so I don’t see how we need more of that.
Other than the dragonhunter elite specialization players can still invest in two other specializations. By investing into the Virtues traitline there is enough opportunities to get condition removal, stability and stunbreaks.
So don’t play it problem solved for you and the people that want to play dh. I think the class looks great, I’ll play it. You don’t like it? Don’t play it. Everyone is happy
No it is problem compounded. The game has been very stale and Guardian the stalest and needs a boost. Anets solution – introduce an ineffective elite class that you can’t even play cause its so ineffective.
May I ask you in which way the Dragonhunter is ineffective and why guardians need a boost? As far as I know guardians are part of the meta throughout every single game mode. I understand the dragonhunter elite specialization may not live up to everyone’s expectations but to say that guardians need a boost is something I can’t wrap my head around.
The purpose of the dragonhunter in PvP is obvious. Playing with traps, knockbacks and cripple are aimed at territory control. For a PvP game mode that is all about having all nodes under control I don’t see how this elite specialization is remotely ineffective. You might be right that it is inefficient for running around and killing people. Nevertheless, the dragonhunter’s effectiveness comes into play in PvP with the right team set-up and focusing on the goal of conquest.
It happened to us as well just now. We were in Fractal scale 50 and finished two other fractals. While we were doing the third fractal, Thaumanova fractal, all of our clients crashed to the desktop as we killed the skritts in the middle. Once logged in again nobody was in the fractal anymore and all of our progress got lost.
It must be something related to this week’s patch because I’ve never seen a full party crash back to desktop in Fractals before.
Are you getting the crash dialogue to send to ArenaNet? There was an earlier fix this week for a server side crash in fractals but this looks different.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, as soon as the game collapsed there was a pop up to send a crash report to ANet. This report was sent about 2 hours ago from this account if you need to look it up.
It happened to us as well just now. We were in Fractal scale 50 and finished two other fractals. While we were doing the third fractal, Thaumanova fractal, all of our clients crashed to the desktop as we killed the skritts in the middle. Once logged in again nobody was in the fractal anymore and all of our progress got lost.
It must be something related to this week’s patch because I’ve never seen a full party crash back to desktop in Fractals before.
I like the idea of your change in the adept trait Soaring Devastation. As of right now all the adept traits in the Dragonhunter specialization are offensive orientated. I would like to see more defensive alternatives there. Otherwise people will just go for the trait that will give them the most damage.
If I understand the Dragonhunter’s elite specialization correctly it’s all about keeping your enemies at distance while preventing them to come close to you. This could work nicely in node defending and taking nodes in PvP. So based on that I would use this bunker build in PvP:
Weapons: Longbow + Staff
Utilities:
- Shelter (block+heal)
- Fragment of Faith (trap with aegis)
- Test of Faith (cripple whenever enemy activates trap)
- Stand Your Ground (Stability+Condition Removal with Runes)
- Renewed Focus (invulnerability + virtues)
Cleric’s Amulet, Soldier Runes, Energy+Intelligence Sigils
Use the Longbow and traps to cap/decap the point. Then try and stay on the point as long as you can.
In PvP meditation hammer build is all about burst. Having that extra damage from Glacial Heart helps more than the short fury duration. Although I’m sure having Focused Mind isn’t that bad either since you will have a higher chance to get a critical hit on your opponent. Focused Mind might be better with a different faster weapon but with a slow hammer it feels like Glacial Heart has the upper hand. Also the range on Focused Mind is really narrow, so the chance you will give others fury is rather small.
(edited by Noah.4756)
I’m a bit reserved with regards to expectations on the Dragonhunter. Here’s my take on the new elite specialization:
- First and foremost I hope the developers will take another look at the traits. For example, 4 seconds protection on activating a virtue feels a bit weak for a grandmaster trait. Same goes for Piercing Light that gives bleed on traps.
- The longbow is a very welcome addition to the guardian’s weaponry. Scepter can be too easily kited and the staff is only good when you’re fighting a large number of enemies. Adding cripple gives guardians finally some of the CC that we needed.
- The traps fit well within the dragonhunter theme although I am hesitant of the utilization in a PvP surrounding. I was playing against a trap ranger today and I could easily see the ranger laying down the traps. Since most classes in PvP have at least one ranged weapon the traps are way too easy to avoid. Although I am interested in seeing the synergy between the longbow traits to keep your enemy at distance and traps to avoid enemies to close in.
- The theme of the Dragonhunter is unexpected and somewhat feels disconnected to the theme of guardians. Seeing how the guardian’s new specialization is so similar to rangers makes me wary. It’s not necessarily the name that bothers me but this specialization does not feel remotely close to the guardian’s playstyle. Also the synergy between the Dragonhunter specialization and the other guardian specializations is too divergent.
Would be great if it was a real tether – you could just run around dragging opponents behind you through the mud.
Diablo 3’s crusader class has a skill like this. It gives the crusader a temporary steed which tethers all nearby enemies and then continues to drag them along. It is pretty effective to pull multiple enemies together in a stack. I’d love to have greatsword #5 redesigned on guardian to allow this but it would probably be too strong.
I was kind of surprised to see they made Symbol of Energy a light field after all the complaining about light fields in the past. Although all the other symbols are light fields as well so it doesn’t really come as a surprise.
I know at one point the developers were reconsidering how combo fields work and I still hope they have plans to change it. Here is the link to it.
I like the shout. Although the passive signet heal seems somewhat obsolete when we already have Virtue of Resolve with Battle Presence to heal five players. Why not make the signet give everyone increased boon duration or decreased condition duration? Since the signet trait is in the offensive trait line I’d suggest something more offensive such as increased boon duration.
(edited by Noah.4756)
What we know so far is that we will get a bow and that the new guardian elite specialization will be a ‘crowd pleaser’. Bow and traps does seem like a logical combination as a sort of hunter archetype. Personally, I feel like this classification would better fit a ranger. Although if the traps contain any sort of soft/hard CC it would definitely be a welcome addition. The downside is that I’m afraid that the traps won’t work well in PvP because the enemy needs to run into them to work. Any enemy with a brain will avoid the traps if they can.
I’d love to see a dark knight kind of guardian with corruptions. Totally the opposite of what the guardian is now. Although that will likely not happen. Otherwise a monk with aura’s seems to fit the ‘crowd pleaser’ term as well.