Guild Wars 2

Nike.2631:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey fellow Engis,

I am reading here and the ranger forums heavily. As others have called out (accurately), working on the last two elite specializations to be revealed is taking up the vast, vast majority of my time, even with assistance from the rest of the team.

This weekend you’ll be able to test out a lot of the theorycrafting (some of which had my eyes widening – in a good way) that you’ve been doing and offer even more awesome feedback.

Things you’ve brought up, like the Scrapper’s lack of a stunbreak on either their utilities or traits is getting acted on, as well as a few more changes to core Engineer and bugfixes.

Ok, see that? I try not to indulge in comparisons between the professions, but there is fundamental philosophy at work here and it needs to be applied uniformly.

Put A Stunbreak On One Of The Traps. Test of Faith is a good candidate, because even as an active supporter of Dragonhunters getting traps, that one is garbage as things currently stand.

IDK about a stun break on traps.

Boon support in the form of AOE regeneration, protection, stability or fury however could work fine.

Stun breaks are just to much of a have to have it when u need it type of thing to rely on an enemy triggering the trap.

Black Box.9312:

Ghotistyx.6942:

One could assume that if a good player ends up taking a trap, then it’s probably one of the better skills to take for their expected situation. It’s not entirely about skills being outright better than others, but rather taking the skills for the given situation you’re putting yourself in.

It’s a hypothetical response to a proposition that assumes that a good player would take traps in the first place. The good player could take the traps, but in practice the good player won’t take the traps.

This ^ exactly.

Why take a trap that only does damage when you can take a meditation that can

1: Heal you
2: Give you fury
Then do 1 of the following

1: Do damage (physical or condition based)
2: Remove a condition (or convert them into boons)
3: Stun break and teleport you to your target.

Traps have to offer something more then just damage.

Fragments of faith is a perfect example of this. It deals damage, cripples and offers AEGIS to allies.

The other traps need to do one of the following at base depending on the trap

1: Apply bleeds
2: Apply boon support
3: Cleanse conditions

And their trait needs to do something to help keep enemies within their radius much the way the ranger trait “Trappers expertise does for rangers”

Ghotistyx.6942:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

1: Give them some real support via boons/heals/condition removal or offensive support via immobilize/stun & conditions (depending on the trap) as well as a way to remotely detonate them (which would obviously not do damage but still trigger the supportive effects)

or

2: Give them damage so overwhelming that it equates to or outshines the support provided by other skill types.

Number 1 aren’t traps. They’re a different skill type.
Number 2 can be done by hybrid burn builds.

Black Box.9312:

Of course a good player can make traps useful. Any player who’s good enough can make something bad work. The point is that any player good enough to make traps useful would still be better off taking something else.

One could assume that if a good player ends up taking a trap, then it’s probably one of the better skills to take for their expected situation. It’s not entirely about skills being outright better than others, but rather taking the skills for the given situation you’re putting yourself in.

Traps can actually have boon support & things like knockdowns and still be traps.

Look at the ranger ability healing spring. It is a trap that applies a metric f ton of regeneration in AOE.
There is also their spike trap which in addition to bleeding also knocks the target down.

As for hybrid burn builds doing more damage, ya they do. Which is why traps like dragons maw & procession of blades should have some damaging conditions on them at base. (so they work decently with various gear types)

Corelion.7460:

1h sword is actually the second on dps behind on greatsword.. problem is the skills are meh at beast and GS brings a lot more.

That’s before you factor in traits.

Due to the symbol traits in zeal and honor mace & hammer can actually pull ahead of greatsword. (especially if your using an off hand torch)

Black Box.9312:

draxynnic.3719:

Stunbreaks that have activation times break the stun as soon as they start activating, and you can start moving from there. Trust me, I used Rite of the Great Dwarf as a stunbreak back when it had a 2.5s activation.

Black Box.9312:

The problem is that the utilities are poor, though. Traps are, from a mechanical standpoint, the worst utility skill set in the game.

Also, it’s kind of funny that you put signets and spirit weapons in the category of “useful”. I don’t think you’ll see very much agreement with that.

No, I put them in the category of “at least no less useful at range than in melee”. Just how useful they actually are varies.

As for traps being the worst utility type: There are people who like them, and can make effective use of them. ArenaNet is planning on making more than one specialisation per profession, so it’s not a disaster if this one isn’t everything you wanted.

Of course a good player can make traps useful. Any player who’s good enough can make something bad work. The point is that any player good enough to make traps useful would still be better off taking something else. Traps are mechanically defunct in this game; they rely on an opponent that will trigger and then fail to react to them. When you use a trap you are literally depending on your enemies to kill themselves. This game’s combat is too mobile and fast-paced for something so slow and static, and we already have trap builds that go largely unused that prove this.

^^^^^^^^^^

What black box said.

The are only 2 ways traps would really be worth using vs shouts/meditations. (consecrations are more of a niche thing that are either godly or crap so I won’t compare them & signets/spirit weapons aren’t worth comparing anything to)

1: Give them some real support via boons/heals/condition removal or offensive support via immobilize/stun & conditions (depending on the trap) as well as a way to remotely detonate them (which would obviously not do damage but still trigger the supportive effects)

or

2: Give them damage so overwhelming that it equates to or outshines the support provided by other skill types.

Number 2 would obviously be OP, so unless they start working on number 1 or change them altogether it’s doubtful many people will take traps other then for extremely easy encounters.

Arken.3725:

Biggest reason I went with wop being in zeal is because all of minors are symbol related. My opinion but I consider zeal to be the unofficial symbol line.

Which is the main problem with zeal.

Due to the minors being symbol traits you feel like your wasting allot of potential if your not using a mace or hammer.

Minors shouldn’t make a tree feel like that. They should boost the effectiveness of something the class is capable of no matter what weapon set they are using.

1: Symbolic Exposure. Just get rid of it it doesn’t last long enough to stack up anyway.

2: Fiery Wrath. Move it into Symbolic Exposure’s slot (the first major will never be a choice with it being there)

3: Wrathful Spirit. Make it give something useful like might stacks (guardian already has an abundance of retaliation)

4: Zealous Scepter. Give it some type of active effect to go with the passive (it discourages activation of justice)

5: Symbolic Power. Merge it with Symbolic Avenger (as is using anything but a hammer or mace with zeal feels like a waste)

6: Healer’s Retribution. Redesign it (guardian has a ton of ways to get retaliation as is)

7: Perfect Inscriptions. Change it (Light aura is pretty much useless, Resistance or protection would be great however)

8: Radiant Retaliation. Scrap it & create something useful (even if the guardian were to have a viable build that used dire gear this trait would only account for a 3% retaliation damage increase over what could be achieved with power)

9: Strength of the Fallen. Scrap it ( its actually a bad thing to have this trait in PvP due to how much longer it will take to respawn after being downed)

10: Valorous Defense. Change it (protection would be so much better then a single AEGIS)

11: Stalwart Defender. Change it (Strength in numbers is so much better due to effecting allies. Perhaps if defender reduced shield CD’s and caused 4 to taunt enemies)

12: Retributive Armor. Scrap it and make something that helps the guardian survive (valor line is about survival after all not damage)

13: Protectors Impact. Scrap it, its useless for fights and for most everything in game.

14: Empowering Might. Increase the duration of the might applied to 8 seconds base.

16: Purity of Body. Make it a flat 15% endurance regen gain all the time ( as is it discourages you from using resolve)

17 Retaliatory Subconscious. Change it (Instead of AEGIS it would be great if it applied protection since a Dh trait will be dropping AEGIS when controlled)

18: Glacial Heart. Really could stand to be moved to another tree (if the changes listed above are made zeal will have an opening)

19: Battle Presence. Change it (as is it discourages the use of resolve. It needs an effect on resolve activate)

Bezagron.7352:

Ghotistyx.6942:

^ which was the effective explanation given way long ago. Virtues are like signets that you will always have equipped. Because they’re always equipped regardless of skills or traits, they can’t really be as powerful as a skill or trait you have to choose to equip. There’s no tradeoff for getting that base benefit. Something that I particularly like is that they generally have support for improving the passives and for improving the actives. That way, you can choose what playstyle you want to use. Signets don’t have near that level of trait support (though Perfect Inscriptions comes close).

This is true, & if virtue improvements were spread across all core specialisation lines I feel would be justified. But at the moment looking purely at the base virtues active they just don’t provide enough benefit for me to want to activate at the cost of losing the passive.

Also I feel profession mechanic should be skills your actively using most of the time in every fight. With current virtue cooldowns I find VoR (50 sec) & VoC (75 sec) just to long going through 2-3 separate fights before the passive is back in effect & active available for use. On a whole I believe the base virtues should be skills that can stand on their own, if their signet like let them be signet strength at base.

Some change I would like to see are:

1. Reduce cooldowns – VoJ 25 sec No Change, VoR 40 sec, VoC 50 sec.
2. Make Inspired Virtue baseline.
3. Add a single condition cleanse to VoR baseline remove 1 from Absolute Resolution so it still cleanses a total of 3 with AR traited.

These would make the active worthwhile to activate at a cost of a 40 – 50 sec cooldown & lost of passive effect.

This ^ so so much.

As is there is just no way to justify activating the core virtues due to extremely long CD’s and passives outweighing actives by so much.

They need to make a few of the on activate traits base line (or at least partially so) and or lower the cool downs.

Varathiel.9128:

Lyger.5429:

If Karl doesn’t want to make all traps ground targetable, how about adding an F4 where you can slot one trap at a time to be placed using ground target, maybe that could work?

This is my thought for F4:

Virtue of Perseverance
Active: 25% Increased Movement Speed
Passive: Teleport an untriggered trap to your target.

Then the trap trait could be a GM that lets you teleport all untriggered traps to the target. Not sure about the cooldown. Probably high. This would make traps more interesting and give Guardian the much needed move speed increase(though I would prefer that particular boon to be for the base Guardian).

The idea of adding a new F4 skill is nice….. but it should not be tied to traps as traps are very situational at there very best & crap most of the rest of the time. Not to mention many players may not even have traps equipped.

As for a 25% movement speed increase, it really should be tied to a trait.

There are several majors that could still use quite a bit of tweaking.
There is also the two latter minors which should either be merged into existing majors or just plain deleted.
A movement speed trait could easily go in any of these spots.

Frankly I’d change perfect inscriptions to the following

Perfect Inscriptions: Reduces signet cool downs, gain protection (4 seconds) & either remove a condition or gain resistance (4 seconds) when activating a signet.

As for signet of mercy & signet of courage.

I’d change them to the following

Signet of Mercy Passive: Increase boon duration by 25%.

Signet of Mercy Active: Grant Regeneration (8 seconds) & resistance _(5 seconds) to nearby allies. Cast time 3/4 second, CD 50 seconds.

Signet of Courage Passive: Radiate healing to nearby allies every second (about 15% of what it does now every 10 seconds) , (360 radius)

Signet of Courage Active: Grant protection (6 seconds) to nearby allies and heal them (say around 3-4k with moderate-high healing power) . Radius 360, cast time 3/4 second, CD 60 seconds.

Seconded and have been suggesting it since launch.

They need to change the 3 into a triple melee slash.

There is a reason people QQ about guardian skills

That reason is allot of them suck

Spirit weapons are quite useless with the exception of shield in some niche situations

Signet of mercy sucks & nobody in their right mind would use more then one signet at a time outside of PVE

2 out of the 4 consecrations (hollowed ground & sanctuary) suck and are not worth using.

The sword, scepter and torch all have LOS issues that have been around since beta

The new elite spec looks like it was an afterthought at best when you look at its traps and traits.

D I V A.6018:

How about these:

• Retaliation stacks in intensity (max 3 stacks)
• Retaliation reflects 20% of condition damage dealt to you.
• Retaliation deals 33% more damage. If retaliation is removed, deal X damage (300 radius)
• While under the effects of retaliation, you apply bleed on being hit. (3seconds, no ICD)
• While under the effects of retaliation, additionally reflect 10%of damage back to the attacker.
• Retalation deals x damage in a 300 radius for 1 second every time you are hit. (1second ICD)

If I had to pick something I would say the 4th or last would be best.

Applying bleed on hit would be great for condi guards.
Similarly turning retaliation into an AOE damage pulse could also be great.

Also the idea that retaliation damage could apply vulnerability could be quite fun to work with.
I love the idea of offense through defense.

Frankly I’d say combine it with Judge’s Intervention.

Judge’s Intervention: Beak any current stun effects on you and teleport to your target burning nearby enemies (3 stacks for 3 seconds) and healing any nearby allies.

After that they could hopefully create something useful from scratch.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I said that assuming it would gain properly balanced scaling on land.

Ah well with properly balanced scaling (for power & healing power) it could be rather nice.

It would just have to scale a heck of allot better then it does now because even with will ascended armor and weapons it barely scales at all.

By chance what would you suggest they do with the #2 ? Leave it as is or change it ?

Arken.3725:

Possibly, that’s why I suggested a very short duration.

Still though, with the sheer amount of ways the guardian has to apply retaliation it would be like reflects…… for everything.

Even if it only copied the damage you were to take and applied it back on the attacker it would be insanely powerful.

Really they need to do 1 of the following along with AI improvements in the case of 1 or 2

1: Revert them to invulnerable but with low damage other then on command skills
(Fairly easy to do, makes them semi useful (though less useful then other skills) no matter what mode your in)

2: Simply triple their base health
(by far easiest to do but least inspiring, they will still insta die in PVE, but won’t be as easily nuked by cleave in PvP)

3: Redesign them to be more akin to elementalist summoned weapons
(Could make them quite good & allow their core uses to be maintained. Would also get rid of reliance on AI which is always great)

4: Redesign them to be a mix between warrior banners & ranger nature spirits
(They would be invulnerable, provide a passive AOE buff and could be commanded to grant a special buff to the guardian or on his/her location)

Any of these would be vast improvements with 3 & 4 being the possible best if done right especially since they would get rid of reliance on an AI that can be easily nuked by incidental cleaves.

Pregnantman.8259:

I think it shouldn’t limit players for going condi or not. The way I think it should be is ‘Retaliation scales on condition damage or power, whichever is higher.` with some another effect to go with it. It can be `Retaliation now also deals damage when you hit a foe`, `Retaliation deals %25-33 more damage` or `apply Might (5-10 seconds, 1 stack) when you apply Retaliation to an ally` or any other crazy idea, but in any case it shouldn’t be limited to condi only.

Arken.3725:

Or…could make it more skillful that only lasts 1/2 second that reflects the actual damage dealt to you? I’d assume that’s exactly what retaliation should be. Just my 2cents.

These ideas would either be far too powerful or really wouldn’t fit the idea of retaliation.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I’d very much like it if the trident’s auto-attack (Light of Judgment) became the staff’s auto-attack. It wouldn’t be hard to implement and it would also fit the staff’s theme and gameplay-style nicely.

IDk if I would want the trident’s auto attack.

It doesn’t really scale well with any gear set.

A spammable, faster moving, non detonating orb of light however would be decent for damage if you gear for it & provide decent healing (over the course of a fight) if your using some healing power gear.

If people want cleave for tagging stuff they could just make wave hit several times harder and put it on a 3-5 second CD with possible utility tacked on.

The idea is nice but the radius is laughably small & if it were made larger it would quickly become overpowered.

Frankly it would probably be best to just get rid of the trait and create something useful from scratch.

Frankly I’d love to see it and wave get swapped around & both of them get adjusted/changed.

Orb : Would be the spammable attack & would no longer detonate, but would move much faster and have a slightly wider effect radius.

Wave: Would have a 5 second CD but hit 3 or so times harder & also have some sort of utility tied to it. (could remove a condition from allies it passes through, cripple enemies or knock back enemies.)

Bear on the job.6273:

They still need to buff the shield trait though.

My recommendation is to combine the current shield trait with communal defenses into a single trait. Then fill in the gap with a new trait, or bring back one we lost.

My vote would be for the trait to cause shield skills to gain an additional effect.

4 could taunt enemies it hits & 5 could grant resistance to allies within the radius at the start.

The guardian could definitely use a taunt (its the only heavy armor prof without one) and what better to taunt with then a shield.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

I want a symbol on my under-tuned sword too!

ummm….okay….

Having flashing blade drop a symbol wherever you end up would be nice.

Something with similar damage to symbol of protection but granting might stacks instead.

Unless they do some drastic changes to signets/spirit weapons & consecrations and their corresponding traits I foresee using my guardian less and less as everything the guardian can do is done just as well by others if not better.

According to Dulfy they misspoke when they said the channel on shield 5 would be 1.5 seconds.
That is what it currently is, they will be changing it to 4 seconds.

All that being said these changes are nerfs & the “positive” changes don’t really fix anything.

If they would just change the shield trait to do a taunt on #4 and AEGIS on #5 then shield would be great.

Arnath.2319:

Obtena.7952:

^^ I read it and it doesn’t make any sense IMO.

So change traps to marks which will MAKE them visible, then create a GM trait to make them invisible. … Because that’s somehow BETTER than having traps that are ALREADY invisible without a GM trait.

Um, no.

Marks are far superior. The only advantage Traps have is them being invisible, which is only useful in PVP, that is why i suggested making a trait making them invisible for those PVP players.

Marks are ground target-able, blast radius, instant effect, short cooldown, condi heavy skills that thematically fit this elite spec better.

This is pretty much true.

Looking at necro marks you can also see that they can be rather decent for support, burst damage & utility as well.

That being said its not impossible for them to fix traps, they just need to actually do more then adjust numbers.

If they were to look at each trap individually and give them one or so of the following then they might be worth using

1: Reduce how obvious the animation is. (right now you may as well have a billboard with lights above you when you drop one.
This is a must for PvP at any serious level, they don’t need to have no animation at all, just a little less obvious one.

2: Give them something to keep enemies within their radius, at least for a second or 2.
(a daze wont cut it, make it an immobilize or stun)

3: Give them either conditions, boons or utility support depending on the trap.

If they would do this then all the dragon hunter would really need is a bit of adjustments where traits are concerned & possibly an adjustment of longbow skill number 5.

Given that druids in GW lore are all about nature & purifying things so they return to nature I’m betting druids get some form of consecration skill.

This could be quite beneficial if done right. Lets just hope that they don’t end up like guardian consecrations were 2/4 of them are never used due to absurdly long CD’s and lack of usefulness vs other things.

Really they should just make the 3rd AA a true multi hit cleave with normal melee range.

As for #2, it would be nice if it also dropped a symbol where you teleport to.
One with low/moderate damage that stacked might per pulse (with 3 pulses) would be awesome.

As for the #3, if it blocked everything it would be worth the root, but if they are willing to get rid of the root then it would be alright as well

Lastly it would be nice if the sword trait caused critical hits with the sword to apply a short duration bleed (say 4-5 seconds). This would mean they could look at the number of burning stacks the guardian can do and possibly adjust them. (meaning less burst but more condi cover)

The only 3 things the guardian really does better then the rev is

1: AOE stability
2: AOE condi cleanse
3: Projectile reflects

The rev however does the following better then guardians

1: AOE might stacking
2: AOE fury
3: AOE swiftness
4: AOE protection
5: AOE regeneration
6: Condi damage
7: Vulnerability stacking
8: Crowd control

So unless the new raids have a ton of conditions & projectile attacks I’d much rather take a rev then a guardian.
As for PvP and WvW, guardians will still have a place. It will be less of one though given the sheer amount of bruiser specs out there.

SkraM.8794:

Karl McLain.5604:

Oh yeah, I should mention that the auto-targeting stuff has been fixed. We were testing out some new tech with it, but have since pulled that as it wouldn’t allow your character to auto-turn toward your target if they’re behind you. Tech did its job too well.

Karl, please bring us some news about ground target traps please, this change will improve a lot the gameplay with Longbow + Traps

When they took ground targeted traps away from rangers they did so because they said they felt too much like grenades.
In the remote chance they did give them to guardians they would be faced with such a b!%ch fit from thieves and rangers they would likely need to give them ground targeting as well.

Even then several of the traps would not be worth using on guardian.

A much better solution would be to look at each trap individually and give it one or more of the following

1: Utility effects (condi removal, boon removal etc…)
2: Boon support
3: Conditions
4 Combo fields.

Karl McLain.5604:

Additions to the initial notes:

Puncture Shot: Increased damage by 10%.
True Shot: Increased damage by 25% (instead of the 12% increase we had indicated) note: The overall damage potential of the ability wasn’t quite up to where we wanted to test it at, so here we are!
Wings of Courage: Increased leap distance to 800, up from 600. note: This has been in discussion for a bit. Now’s a good time to check it out, being as there’s a lot of conversation on it here already.

-Karl

Given that it’s called wings of resolve & not wings of courage your continuing to feed allot of fire to the speculation that you & very few people on the guardian design team actually play a guardian.

Allot of us are saying/thinking this because so few of the dragonhunter skills/traits have cohesion with existing guardian skills/traits.
We are also thinking/saying this because its been 3 years and guardians still have a myriad of skills that range from being useless to extremely undertuned or just badly designed.
Examples include Spirit weapon health & functionality, several of the consecrations (hollowed ground and sanctuary) , the actives & passives on a few of the signets (courage, mercy & bane) and numerous traits.

Ezrael.6859:

Nike.2631:

• Still hoping symbol is slightly larger to assist from long range. Melees tend to scramble around. Help us help them.

To be honest, I think all Symbols need to become 240 radius as baseline, like the same love Necro Marks got with the June patch. Combat is far too paced now for these tiny 180 Symbols, even in sPvP and standing in circles the gamemode, people are still hugely mobile in combat and only stick around when it’s all over.

Something needs to compensate Writ of Persistence though, maybe make the boons 2s per pulse.

Necro’s weren’t alone in getting that love.
Engineer bombs also now also cover a minimum of 240 range.

The fact that they encourage so much mobility in combat & give them that change but don’t touch symbols is kinda a slap in the face.

Really a simple fix would be to make it

1: Heal every second like a virtue of resolve that effects nearby allies.
&
2: Change the active into a 1k heal that also applies protection & regeneration to nearby allies for 8 seconds. After which the CD and cast time can be greatly reduced.

As it stands the passive heal is just too spaced out & cannot be counted on while the active heal just takes far to long to cast to be relied upon.

PS: It would also help if perfect inscriptions were more useful.
Signets used to give condition cleanse when traited, and the light aura they give now is near useless given how easy it is to get a light aura in other ways. (if it gave a CD reduction, condi cleanse & protection on use allot of people would gladly take it)

Making traps ranged won’t fix them.

Adding additional effects like combo fields, conditions (damaging, debilitating & movement hindering), condition cleanses & boon support effects onto them will fix them.

Nike.2631:

I’m a little unclear on the lust for condi damage on traps. The ranger traps rely on condi damage and that’s part of the reason they’re held in such poor regard, while the last set of changes the DH traps got was straight up and substantial buffs to their direct damage. While longbow 4 does some burn, the other skills are all direct damage. Why not stick with a more power/precision based set of traps rather than splitting the stat focus?

Its not that people want them to rely completely on condition damage, they want them to have some condition damage.

That way they will be fine if you want to use pure power/prec/feroicity. But if you want to use rampager or carrion they will be fine too.

As for how many traps most of us think should have this, procession of blades, dragons maw and test of faith are the clear cut offensive ones which could stand to do this.
The others people would like some more support on

Arnath.2319:

I don’t think Traps should get condi cleanse or any supportive features. We already have access to plenty of that in our other skills, Traps are meant to be different, offer something different.

Whats the one thing Guardians lack? Conditions.

This quote taken from the Dragonhunter reveal post… “the new elite specialization gives them access to some conditions and functionality normally reserved for professions of a more physical nature.”

I think Traps should be our most superior damage skill option with lots of bleed, burning, cripple and other condis mixed in.

Traps need a major rework, similar to how Tempest Rebound just got a revamp, but i think it would be a mistake to offer us even more support on top of our already impressive supportive core skills

(i still think traps should be changed to marks, or symbols, or wells, or wards)

I agree with the bleeding burning & cripple on some traps, but I do feel that a couple of them should be more supportive or at least have a mix of support and offense.

For instance.

Procession of Blades, it should bleed on each hit and cripple on activation.

Test of Faith, it should pulse damage & create a burning fire field within it’s radius.

Light’s Judgment, should do a bit more damage, bleed enemies (short duration) and apply protection with each pulse.

Dragon’s Maw, should effect up to 5 enemies and do a couple stacks of bleeding.

Purification, should just be a copy paste of healing spring with a light field instead of a water field.

Black Box.9312:

Nike.2631:

It interacts poorly with the my-god-touch-nothing meditation meta build. There’s lots of other things Guards do that have enough flex to them that you can shuffling things and have something interesting to work with. I’m not kidding when I say this constant “but it’s not exactly like medi-meta!” is going to get medi-meta nerfed.

Except people aren’t arguing that it’s just “not as good as medi”. They’re arguing that it’s just terrible in comparison to anything that is currently played at the competitive level.

It would be a different story if Guardians were dominating the meta. But Medi Guard is all but dead, and Bunker Guard is slowly being pushed out the door again by more self-sufficient classes that can function without the need for significant allied support. We’re not asking for the world. We’re just asking for something that can actually effectively work with the game we’ve been given.

+1k

The traps are more more or less crap. (only one people seem to like is fragments of faith)
The traits have very little cohesion with other guardian traits. (especially compared to what other classes got)
The bow is kinda meh. (its getting better but 5 is still a bit off)

Overall the spec feels like
1: It wasn’t thought out
or
2: The people designing it don’t play guardian much if at all and don’t even realize how it plays (The daredevil that Karl worked on feels awesome)
or
3: All of the above.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Nike.2631:

I love the dammed if you do dammed if you don’t situation Anet is having to dance through — Dragonhunter is “all over the place” to some Guardian players because it’s not more of the same while other players favoring other professions are complaining Dragonhunter is basically the only Espec that genuinely brings something new to its core profession and why can’t their Espec offer a whole new playstyle like Guards are getting? The grass really is greener over the hill I guess.

From the complaints lately, it isn’t just a grass is greener. Its more like the grass is greener and its coming to get you because the dev gods never loved you. With the release of the Scrapper you’d swear the world is coming to an end.

The complaints are so myopic, envious, emotionally charged, and flat out incorrect that it is baffling. At what point did the median age of the forums become prepubescent? I consider myself a smart person, but darn it other people aren’t supposed to be this dumb.

Really though you have to admit that if you look at the skills/traits the DH brings & how it interacts with core guardian stuff it ranges from uninspired to just plain bad compared to many(or most) of the other classes and their elite specs.

Even the thief got much better stuff with the daredevil & they have the same designer.

That tells allot of us that they either don’t play the guardian all that much or simply did not put nearly as much thought into it as was done for other classes.

Personally I’d be fine with the decreased boon duration if & only if they reduced the base Cd in PvP to 30 seconds.

Sure that may seem powerful but with the amount of conditions flying around you could easily kill yourself if your not playing smart.

Instead of spear of justice doing the pull many people I know would prefer if they changed the longbow number 5.

Instead of a AOE with a long cast time and long CD that is very easy to avoid it should be similar to hammer number 3. (just faster and with a wider wave)

Basically it would be a targeted wave with a decent sized cone that cripples & teathers every target it hits (up to 5) then gains a flip over skill which pulls them all to your location & immobilizes them again.
The cool down could be say 25 seconds, the first cripple/tether would be say 5 seconds & the immobilize would be 3 seconds.

That would make the bow much more friendly with traps & be something quite useful (imagine the combo’s it could be used for)

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Minor traits of other Elite specs:
Herald
Improved Endurance Regeneration (while using class mechanic)
Improved Boon Duration (global bonus that works at all times)
Work with every Build, synergy with Runes that provide boons, stacks with Runes that provide Boon Duration.

Chronomancer
Improved recharge(Alacrity) (while using class mechanic)
Improved Movement Speed (global bonus that works at all times)
Reduced Movement-impairing conditions
Work with every build, stacks with Runes that reduce Condition Duration on you.

Reaper
Extra Chill on Fear (similar to an extra sigil)
Improved Chill Duration (equivalent to an extra sigil)
Reduced damage from Chilled foes
Work with every build, synergy with Sigils/Runes that cause Fear, stacks with Sigils/Runes that increase Chill Duration.

Berserker
Instant Adrenaline gain once (Not that great of a trait)
Improved Attack Speed (while using class mechanic)
Work with every build.

Tempest
Swiftness on Overload (while using class mechanic)
Protection on Overload (while using class mechanic)
Work with every build. Same action provides both boons.

Daredevil
Health gain on successful Dodge (while using class mechanic)
Endurance gain on Steal (while using class mechanic)
Work with every build. Synergy with Runes that provide Boons on Dodge.

Scrapper
Boon on Revive/Finish (while using class mechanic)
Improved Stun Duration on foes (equivalent to an extra sigil)
Reduced Stun Duration on you (equivalent to part of a Rune’s effect)
Work with every build. Stacks with said Sigil and Rune.

Dragonhunter
Defender’s Dogma
1. Does NOT work anymore the moment you press F1.
2. Has no effect if you were already at full stacks of Justice. (20% of the time)
3. Inflicts only 1 stack of Burning for only 1 second to only 1 foe on your next attack.

Pure of Sight
1. Among the damaging skills, does NOT work with over 60% of them because said skills can never reach beyond that range threshold in the first place.
2. Only works on at most 1 skill on each of our Melee weapons, said skill having 15-30s cooldown on said weapons, and whose damage value is only worth 1 auto-attack.
3. You still have to fulfill the range threshold requirement on the skills it even works with. (Which means it does not always work on skills it even affects)
There are more builds where this does NOT work than builds where this works.

If you still do not see why so many people here find Dragonhunter Minor traits lackluster(even useless) you must really not be Pure of Sight.

+1000000

They really should merge defenders dogma & pure of sight into other traits then create something that is actually useful & nice like other classes have.

Eh when it comes to what weapons we could possibly get for another spec I highly doubt they would make an off hand into a main hand no matter how much we want them to.

There also are not many other options for what weapons the guardian could get.

Personally if tomes (kits) were to come back I’d love to see the staff get an alternate set of skills that mix long range damage with some support. (ala battle mage meets monk)

Kits are quite powerful and would need some kind of limiting factor.

They either need a limit of how many can be equipped at once, some kind of cool down between activation or very long CD’s for the abilities they give access to.

Nike.2631:

Obtena.7952:

But all kidding aside, it seems that it wasn’t clear to people this was intended with all the calls for various elements not aligned to that concept. There should be no question now with the proposed additional crippling effects, etc…

The new cripple on Virtue of Justice’s passive is amazing.

Those changes are really good but I don’t get the shortened duration of traps … I guess the 1 second placement was too much of a PVP tell?

Don’t knock it. The precision with which some players can read casting emotes is terrifying. I’ll take any edge they’re willing to give me when it comes to slipping traps into play once the fight is underway. I fully expect the stealth from Runes of the Trapper to be used dropping 1 trap to mask dropping another trap nearby and then building some distance with the speed buff and 6 second of stealth.

Unless traps get some more utility and become allot more front end heavy I doubt many people will want to use em, especially at higher end where many other options are more viable.

As for the changes to justice, yes it is great and will even help melee guardians allot by providing a spammable cripple.

The change to piercing light is nice in some ways but bad in others.

Traps needed something to reduce their CD true, but the loss of access to bleeds hurts condition & celestial guardians allot.
The only thing that kept it from being good before the change was the fact that most traps don’t hit more then once.
If they had changed to to effect all hits with the sword & the bow as well as traps then it would have been awesome.

The daze is also nowhere near enough to keep enemies in traps.
It either needs to stun or immobilize enemies.

Hey Karl, like allot of the changes. There are a few however that feel very meh and a few changes that still really deserve to be made.

1: Puncture Shot. The damage this does is quite low given the cast time.
(lower the cast time to 1/2 second or buff the damage and it would be nice.)

2: Hunter’s Ward. The cast time is rather long & so is the CD.
(what if instead it fired a projectile that immobilized (say 3 seconds)every foe it hits in a line similar to hammer 3 with a similar cool down)

3: Purification, just needs a rework.
(Make it it more or less a copy paste of healing spring minus the water field and then guardians may use it, short of that I doubt anyone will want to use it.)

4: Test of Faith: Really needs a reason to make enemies want to leave its radius.
(perhaps if it pulsed damage or a burn within its radius)

5: Dragon’s Maw. The fact it only effects one target is laughable.

7: Piercing light. The trap Cd reduction is nice but the daze won’t do any good for keeping enemies in trap effects. The loss of bleeding also hurts players who wanted to use + condition damage.
(it needs to stun or immobilize, it would be nice if it also caused traps to apply multiple stacks of bleeding when triggered)

8: Heavy Light. The knockback and stability really should be tied to longbow abilities.
(Trueshot for stability & deflecting shot for the knockback would work.)

9: Pure of Sight. This effect really should just be rolled into heavy light.
(perhaps in its place condition guards could get some love)

10: Hunter’s Fortification. Removing conditions on block is great, reduced damage taken while not effected by conditions is kinda meh once you look at the amount of stuff that practically spews conditions in this game.

11: Defender’s Dogma. This trait really doesn’t do much & isn’t even worth being a minor.
(what if it caused you to maintain your spear of justice passive after you activate it, or caused your attacks vs burning targets to also apply bleeding. Or caused you to daze enemies when you block their attacks)

12: Light’s Judgment. Really needs a secondary effect to make it worth using.
(perhaps it could grant nearby allies protection when triggered)

13: Procession of Blades. Also really needs a secondary effect to be worth using since as is whirling wrath or smite condition are much better.
(Perhaps it could grant allies a boon when triggered, or apply bleeding & cripple on each hit.)

Traps are already invisible, the enemy just sees the animation the player uses.

As for making them ranged, doubt it will happen because then they would need to do the same with rangers.

Also the reason they don’t synergize with longbow is because they don’t stun or immobilize. (daze won’t help).

Over all unless they add immobilize/stun and some useful secondary effects (like conditions, boons & condi cleanse) to traps it’s doubtful they will see much if any use because shouts, meditations & even consecrations will end up being more useful.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Y’know what? I think I like Ragnar’s idea better. If Pure of Sight is indeed going to be 360 range, then let’s just give a base knockback to True Shot to foes within 360 range. Even if Pure stays at 600, I wouldn’t be opposed to a short knockback on very close range enemies every True Shot.

Actually I have been suggesting deflecting shot get the knock back.

The Cd on it is already 10 seconds and it looks kinda like a wave so it would be perfectly balanced even if it did a knockback regardless of the targets range.

True shot is a bit low CD wise to be getting a knock back.

Zealot’s amulet would be nice indeed.

Would also be nice to see an amulet that adds + condition, + precision & + vitality.
(rabid is nice for some specs but others really need vitality)

Really they should just make purification a copy paste of healing spring (minus the water field).

Make it do a heal for the guardian on use, a condi clear for all allies within 300 radius when triggered by an ally then pulse 2-3 seconds of regeneration every second for 10 seconds to all allies within 300 units.

I think allot of guardians would consider using it then.