Guild Wars 2

Gwaihir.1745:

You should be taking master of consecrations and pf. That’s your biggest nuke.

Core burns cant 1v1 very well, but they do live long enough for a teammate to back up the point. You excel the moment someone downs on either your team or the enemy and they all pile up. Load up the symbols on them with pf and its a team wipe every time the moment they go for their downed.

Though you’re correct, it may not work very well against competent players. In those cases smite is a better option. Especially if you’re going against good Mesmers
in pvp. There’s certain classes Burn Guard will never beat and Mesmer in an open field is one of them.

I myself have gotten pretty good with GS + PF. It’s by far my fav burn burst build, I just got to stay clear of foefire’s mid – 0 mobility and 0 range kills the build unless you find a downs to cleave.

At the moment, I can’t run burn burst in Leagues. The build is just too risky compared to power DH.

mrauls.6519:

Yeah, it’s tough man. Not sure what to do lol. Just gonna have to go harder. Lost hella MMR yesterday. Maybe it’s time to carry less traps xD

I know you usually run procession of blades right? It’s usefulness dropped down now that there’s 0 Stun effects.

I’ve always run ToF/Smite/CoP for ages and never had issues with sustains or damages. In fact, I last long enough to get another ToF combo in or another purification proc. I recently swapped to Paladins with Lynx runes as oppose to Marauders & Pack runes. I haven’t noticed a big difference in the rune/amulet performances between the two so I caved and stuck with Paly’s+speed increase.

Boom

“Guardian—Virtue of Justice: Fixed a bug that caused Permeating Wrath to use 2-second burning in PvP instead of the intended 4 seconds.”

I’d enjoy it, though, there would probably be troll names going around.

My issue isn’t sustains, it’s that we had a bit too much of it. 560 vita is the sweet spot.

Deadshot is a better amulet than Sage for burn burst guard.

nicknamenick.2437:

Saiyan.1704:

Nenshoukarasu.6598:

the thing is.. you don’t even have to run into his traps.. he can pull you into them from a 1200 range no matte what you do… even invisibility doesn’t help because his pull still targets the thief for example…

the player can dodge immediately when pulled.

Yeah well i always get pulled into the air.. where you cant dodge..
hope they fix this bug because its just another CC that shouldnt be there

If you can’t do a somersault swan bird dive through the air then you’re doing it wrong. I know a pro guy philanthropist who can teach you.

Buts seriously, that too needs fixing.

Anet will moderate a player’s network history to discover habbits of interest to use in matchmaking’s algorithm.
In theory..

Nenshoukarasu.6598:

the thing is.. you don’t even have to run into his traps.. he can pull you into them from a 1200 range no matte what you do… even invisibility doesn’t help because his pull still targets the thief for example…

That still doesn’t remove 90% of a players health (unless they’re a thief maybe) and the player can dodge immediately when pulled.

List a class vs a full trap DH who you think has issues with and i’ll show you what you’re doing wrong because full trap DH are utter jokes.

JayAction.9056:

you can literally evade/block/LOS most of their skills and they place these instant cast traps and boom ~90% hp gone.

It’s actually quite easy to instagib someone on DH or +1, but you don’t see that happen as often as could be because even at legend in s1-s4 it was quite obvious that most DH are horrible.

For instance how often do you see a DH use traps to prevent a res? Rarely, if ever…

I guess i’m that 1% of the DH population who can do what’s deemed uncommon to you. I beg the question though… what trap in the game that causes 90% health gone? I mean, you’d have to get hit with literally 4 traps+additional dps for that scenario to happen.

Had a full trap DH insta die to 2 guys on point today. I had the time to type, “lol, full trap dh?” Before I fought the 2 guys and won the 1v2 fight.

People complain about full trap DH… Literally every single class in the game can counter it.. I just can’t fathom how people are having issues.

Wolfric.9380:

Or you just make it a world wide pvp and we all play together ….

Considering the type of game GW2 is, that would just hurt the player base. A lot of players like it to be non-confrontational like that :p even viewing it openly.

MacLeod.5386:

Has anybody mentioned the worst class matchmaking I’ve ever seen in a MMO?

I mean I have been in matches that have 2, 3, or more heavies on one side and none on the other most of the time. I will switch out to something else, but honestly, what is the kitten point of it if nobody else does?

That was one of the main outliers when trying to pin-point a person’s mmr and improve matchmaking.

• Builds are so diverse, do we calculate certain build’s effectiveness and treat them as an additional mmr variables?
• Not everyone can multiclass and swap on the dime, but do we make static mmr for each class on an account?

Anet left these alone, probably because it was too intricate and risky.

Faux Play.6104:

You will have some outlier matches every so often. Either you would play teams that you could easily smoke or you would play vs. better teams. Your performance in those matches will affect your MMR the most.

That last bit isn’t true though. There is no in game performance measurement (not even a smidge) so even if I do get those matches that tests me, i’m still entirely dependant on my team; whether or not that 1 player on my team is running some yoloQ glasscannon psycho build, it’ll be impossible to win when the going gets tough.

Evan Lesh.3295:

JMcore.4652:

Bug or just bad matchmaking?

Neither. This is how MMR works. The more accurate it gets, the less it moves.

Question, if we generally have a 60% win rate but happen to have a sheer run of bad luck in our placement matches, our mmr wouldn’t settle until we’re at a level closer to 50% win rate correct?

So if I generally lose 4 games out of 10, my mmr wont “settle” until it’s closer to 5/5?

xKratos.4758:

Saiyan.1704:

Best players NA measured by 5v5 Conquest does not translate to best duelist. I nominate Lettuce, Kratos, & Rain.

Haven’t played in months but i’ll grind the leaderboards.

There will be a 5v5 version too but due to budget restraint and no official support from ANet yet so those will have to wait. And while part of what you said is true, I would argue that toker rar and Ipno would rekt anyone out there. And thanks for nominating me but I have to run the tournament lol

Meant kronos from Fear but he may not play anymore actually, never see him on.

Interrupting downed players with Purification or Test of Faith were eons more helpful. Getting slowed by other Guardians is just annoying. Slowing other players, well, there’s no type of synergy there all.

Each trap should have their own condition applies. Slow, Stun, Cripple, Bleeds, etc.
ToF – Stun,
Procession of Blades – Bleeds
Light’s Judgement – Cripple
Fragment of Faith – Slow

Would have been lots better and we’d have some form of synergy. For example, Light’s Judgement is a trap nobody uses in any gamemode but it’ll synchronize well as a 3rd movement impairing effect considering they do little to no damages.

Best players NA measured by 5v5 Conquest does not translate to best duelist. I nominate Lettuce, Kronos, & Rain.

Haven’t played in months but i’ll grind the leaderboards.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Tiefsee.3647:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I will wait a couple days before raging. I’ll be spending that time fixing bugs anyways.

Can’t you just say they would be features?

I’m actually getting nervous about the lack of bugs.

Permeating Wrath on Guard nullifies the increased base condi duration in-spite the tooltip being correct.

Tooltip says 4s, burn only lasts for 2s.

Feersum Endjinn.4179:

I’ve met a lot of player that try to play scrapper, its not often I meet one that I can’t beat, whereas I have a DH that takes zero skill to be able to beat even semi competent players. 8k + hours, well done, bet you still just stand on point, so you can probably less than halve that time as you may as well go make a cup of tea while ‘playing’.

It’s pretty clear that you don’t play DH and you’ve already soiled yourself by claiming DH got a buff, when it was the opposite.

Only bad players sit on point and don’t contribute to their team. Worse players don’t know how to outrotate the sitting player.

And you’re a scrapper.. how can you not, at the very least, bunk the point vs a DH?

Yup confirmed bug.

Enabling Permeating Wrath will not effect the 4s VoJ burn tooltip, but burns applied are only 2 second duration rather than the 4 seconds listed.

Hope it gets a hotfix fast.

Kuya.6495:

Anypne try running vanilla bunker guard with staff and see if it works out?

A little healing increase on 1 ability isn’t going to suddenly make bunker guard meta

Shaogin.2679:

I’ve only played one match so far, but it was a pretty close game. My team was doing pretty bad at first and we were falling behind, so I just had to start rotating everywhere to pick up the slack. I love how it shows who got what top player achieve on the scoreboard at the end, because next to my name at the end of the match was every single top player achieve possible. I am guessing I was matched with a bunch of low skill players, and that this will get much harder as I progress. I am really looking forward to this season.

I too. I’m impressed with the Defense stat they have, “in a fight near the point”.

I hope they evolve the statistics to make them more intricate. Who knows, maybe there really will be some form of in-game skill measurement some day.

In all honesty, it’s the exact same issue Overwatch has with the exception that it doesn’t average your previous finished seasons from pass leagues.

The 10 placement mayches really is more about luck than anything else. The Devs have even said it takes numerous games to accurate place a players skill level. Not just 10.

Bugs? Oh darn.. forgot to pick up my Lays.

OP, reread the notes.

Core Guardian got buffed,

DH Guardian’s traps got a nerf, dh is not effected by the core buff,

Thinking guards got a buff, you died to one, and complained on the forums… You just placebo’d yourself.

miaow.5019:

my situation is even more fun, game crashes takes two minutes to get back in thanks to load screens, back in to help team WIN and get the defense award but I get a dishonor and a loss. So that’s a bunch of BS.

Yea, it definitely shouldn’t be a loss if you comeback and win it for your team. Unless the dc negatively effects the in-game statistics but we have not been told that in game stats are a factor for placement/mmr.

were winning by 150 points mid game, until we got a dc and eventually lost by 50 points at the end.

I’m going through my placement matches and… it just puts a sour taste in my mouth. Will my MMR at least not be effected or is there nothing in place for this?

It’s a reflection of what happened in S4.

Ele was bad, people jump ship to DH = a dh surplus
Rev is nerfed, people jump ship to Ele = a ele surplus

Differences? Ele is still bad and don’t stack as well as DH can… nothing to see here, move along.

Can I play with you? I never get matched with esl players and I need the challenge…

Lordrosicky.5813:

Are there any other games like this? Surely 8 years ago they should have sat down and designed a system they were happy with as the final pvp system in gw2. Then all their actions should have been to add features to get to this point.

But instead….just constant going back on themselves. What is going on? The amount of wasted effort must be huge.

This is a PvE game from the ground up. PvP is just a by-product… always has been with most MMO’s. WoW uses the same strategy.

There simply had never been a successful 100% PvP mmorpg game, so developers never go that route. You’re seeing all these changes because the game’s mechanical structure is Very hard to work with so… decisions are made.

Too bad SH was a flop, it wasn’t popular enough to have its own thread. This post belongs in it.

Zintrothen.1056:

1 day till Revs play one game and immediately QQ with a dozen threads saying that they’re now worse than season 1 Warriors.

Yet they’ll still be among the top 5 picked class in tournies; the majority of players in yoloQ simply struggle playing the class efficiently.

Lalainnia.3598:

Yes to the targeting not sure how they could “actually” fix it to work with how the game functions. Leave the blue fire alone tho please I always loved the fact that guardian flames are blue.

Code is code. It’s whether or not the man hours is within Anet’s budget for just 1 off-hand weapon. In the end, they decide if it’s worth 1 post every year or if they should work on that 3 post item they get every month.

Or option#2: Make the projectile faster, but long distances still effects the hit rate. – just a placebo effect at best.

Or option#3: Make it a skill shot like LB#3… done.
The best & most cost effective option.
Make GW2017 great again

They made Leagues difficult to track individual skill thanks to Conquest, they made a class who’s dodge+burst mechanics hard to counter so there’s extremes in balancing Rev, they implemented HoT’s power creep like dh traps and the like and are now tracing their own steps.

Anet is their worse enemy lol.

Mikhael.2391:

I think by simply using my 2 medis for clear condis and heall cleansing condi trait plus focus4 and dh last trai for condi removal on bock is enough for any burn guard. Never lost to one on a 1vs1. MAybe a hybrid would do better.

I think most power dh don’t run Smite Condition & Contemplation. That’s probably why he’s beating so many Guardians in wvw. A power dh should never lose, even if chain pulled in PF.

If his passive Stability in DH tree is off cd he can just cleanse the 9 burst stacks easily, avoid symbols and attack from range. Burn guard lacks stability & stunbreaks,ToF activation > LB#3 F1 pull, the burn guard can’t do a thing.

Ghotistyx.6942:

The longer duration and lower stacks signifies that its meant more for application, and less for damage. It makes it more susceptible to cleansing than what shorter duration but more stacks would be. I don’t think they intend that one skill chain to apply 18 stacks of burning every 10s.

If Anet initially designed the start and end engulf flame solely for application then why did they keep its initial design’s damage in line with other burn applications? It used to do 4x the amount of damages.

What world are you maybe we can duel. I’m on JQ.

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

I’m thinking, why should we take deadshot? With carrion we can get over 50% crit chance with radiance.

Because the 900 Vita is too much sustains for what burn burst guard is. And 15% of your crit is only for your main hand weapons. 50% is not enough for Carrion’s 900 power for good raw damages.

If you’ve tried Wanderer’s you’d want to use it if it only had vita instead of toughness.

Legiion.7385:

Ok after patch im playing my Burn guard again <3
But how does it works now vs ele ?
They was the biggest counter to Burn guard .

I think power dh are bigger counters in comparison. Ranger counters us, good Revs still counter us (they’re getting a nerf though) then you have pro Mesmers; power DH kills Mes twice as easier than burn dh because we lack the range dps and clone bursts.

The thing with burn guardians, they’re such a niche build. If players avoid PF and know not to stack with each other for permeating wrath to do it’s job then the build becomes SO under performing compared to power DH.

The same issues apply in season 5 but we’ll have safer bursts without needing to rely on our utilities for dps. We’ll basically be what Burn Guard was prepatch, insane auto-attack dps with complementing utilities. It’s great but we still lack Stability & Stun breakers for HoT’s power creep. Hopefully the dps increase would out-weigh this.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Saiyan.1704:

Same goes for our Torch’s blue flame activation, that still gives a litle 1 stack of burns when it should be 3.

Zealot’s Flame applies burn once at the beginning and once at the end in a pbaoe. Zealot’s Fire is where the real damage is, which is why it has good power and burn damage. The Flame is just there to apply burn for those on-burn effects, which is also why its double the duration of the Fire. Or another way to put it, it doesn’t need to apply 9 stacks of burning alone with proper timing. 18 when used after the traited toss.

I would agree if pre-hot the start and end burn didn’t do as much damage as every other 1 stack burn Guard had. At the time, approx 800 dmg per burn tick.

It’s clear they’re touching up on the items that missed the burn upgrade. F1 activation is 3 stacks instead of 1. Same for Purging, Judges’s, etc. They just missed Torch’s blue flame and I don’t blame them, I did too for awhile.

There’s no proof (nor does it make sense) that they left it alone for on-burn effects.

Burn Burst Guardian was “meta” for a time before HoT released and that build didn’t use Indomitable Courage; though, a lot of Guardians did in tournaments. It’s why Tage underperformed as well as he did (sry Tage your build sucked).

RabbitUp.8294:

They also increased the active portion from 1 stack to 3 stacks of 4s burning.

So F1 active can apply some decent pressure.

F1 needed these 3 stacks rather than a little 1 stack of burn for sure. Same goes for our Torch’s blue flame activation, that still gives a litle 1 stack of burns when it should be 3.

Edit
Added spoiler S5 burn build in OP

“Virtue of Justice: Increased the Burning duration of the passive effect from 2 to 4 seconds in PvP only.”

Deadshot Amulet
1050 Precision
1050 Condition Damage
560 Vitality
560 Expertise

Now, correct me if i’m wrong but did Anet just increase core guard’s F1 burn-on-every-3-hit passive effect of 2s to 4s? The burn duration equivalent of 100%? That’s 15% more than the burn duration of Bal rune’s 45% + duration sigils, + 20% in Radiance. They’re also finally giving us the Marauder equivalent for burn Guards.

I’m going to jump back to my original Burn Burst Guardian main in SPvP with changes like these (gone power DH since HoT). I’m curious how much of an impact performance core burn guard can make now.

On a pvp standpoint apart from comparing weapon damages, I agree with Ezrael. I used to use Torch before HoT because #5 actually helped supported (to an extent) while also dealing respectable damages. Now I can’t use the offhand because there’s little benefit to cleanse classes who don’t need cleanses and I now need more defensive utilities to help against HoT’s power creep.

RabbitUp.8294:

You should include the new rune and amulet in the OP, they seem good for burn Guardian:

Deadshot Amulet
1050 Precision
1050 Condition Damage
560 Vitality
560 Expertise

Rune of the Lynx
175 power
100 Condition Damage
+25% Movement Speed

Thanks I added them in the OP and gave thoughts on both

What’s funny is I asked for Deadshot’s (not the name, that name is way more cool) exact amulet stats months ago. Looks like some one agreed!

Paul.2054:

Guardian:The buffs to virtues scare me as it makes Guardians stronger even though they are already strong and the daze nerf doesn’t seem like a significant nerf to me. Guardians retain a majority of power while other classes get nerfed and they get buffs.

Players have complained about Traps and just traps. It’s unhealthy gameplay (not because it was OP [it wasn’t]) is the #1 reason why Anet felt the need to make the change, and a domino change from other items that resulted from it.

EDIT
It’s Core virtue changes… not DH Virtue changes. We read it wrong… DH Guard is going to be in a weird spot while Core Guard, well, idk what Anet is wanting from them.

The irony is that Stronghold was initially well received during Alpha/Beta tests until three weeks after release. If there was a public test realm that held Stronghold for a month or two before releasing it, they would have seen its flaws sooner. Players appreciated Conquest more lol.

Malediktus.9250:

They are traps, why should traps be instant gratification aoe damage (+cc+boons/healing)? They should take time to setup but be rewarding if you manage to make someone step into them.

That’s a bit of a fallacy because they already do take time to set up. Setting up F1 pull, Shield#5 push, or LB#3 push to cross over an activated ToF. Or Stuning enemies who are trying to rez downed players, etc.

Currently there’s 2 extremes with Power Traps for Guardians.

• 1.) Any new DH player can spam them against any other new player and do better, even if they’re the same skill level.
• 2.) An experience player can completely NULL a trap by avoiding it and outsmarting the DH player in general… making it more difficult for a pro DH player to go up against players of equal skill level.

They should have made traps disappear quicker when activated and have their cooldowns halved with a shave in damages. With the trap’s limited time frame it would force players to use them more skillfully. Spamming them randomly wouldn’t be nearly as efficient.

Thread in PvP: “Upcoming Changes to Skills”.

Guardian

We’d like to give the guardian some core buffs to encourage non-elite spec play, ideally pushing them towards a potential support role. As for Dragonhunter, we’re seeing a disproportionate amount of play across all skill levels. We’re mostly happy with their damage output, and have decided to instead shave some of their utility.
Piercing Light: This trait no longer causes traps to daze enemies and will instead inflict the Slow condition on enemies for 1.5 seconds on the initial ‘trigger’ of a trap.

• Virtue of Justice: Increased the Burning duration of the passive effect from 2 to 4 seconds in PvP only. Increased the amount of burning of the active effect from 1 to 3 stacks in PvP only.
• Virtue of Resolve: The cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 45 to 30 in PvP only. The healing contribution of this ability has been increased by 87% in PvP only.
• Virtue of Courage: The cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 60 to 40 seconds in PvP only.
• Shield of Courage: Fixed a bug that allowed this ability to grant benefits without going on recharge.
• Detonate Orb of Light: The healing contribution of this ability has been increased by 67%.
• Line of Warding: The cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 40 to 30 seconds in PvP only.
• Signet of Courage: The cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 180 to 120 seconds in PvP only.

New Amulets

• Deadshot Amulet
  1050 Precision
  1050 Condition Damage
  560 Vitality
  560 Expertise
• Rune of the Lynx
  175 power
  100 Condition Damage
  +25% Movement Speed
  ____________________________________________________________

My Thoughts
VoJ’s passive burn duration buff helps burn DH a lot considering core burn Guard builds ran circles around DH burn Guard in PvP. It’s now possible to have increased damages by running with Scavenging runes. The higher the burn duration the more gimmick the burn build gets so it would be optimal (damage multiplicative) to run Scavenging runes rather than have a 12+ burn duration with just 3 burn stacks.

• That said, it’s still unclear whether or not DH Burn Guard will be more or less optimal than Core in SPvP… the damages, however will still be less than core DH

The trap stuns was a big nerf in group skirmish fights but considering the nerf of certain other classes, this change wont exactly kill DH for a 5th spot in PvP. I personally think the slow needs to be 2.5 seconds for better synchronization with other classes like Necro’s Chill abillities.

As for Support DH, I think it will remain in the same spot as before.

Amulet thoughts
Carrion is a good amulet (best we have) but I always felt it offered a bit to much sustains for what a burst burn guard was. From experience Wanderer’s amulet offered great dps only we gained nothing for having toughness to support our 10k health pool. Deadshot is the Wanderer’s equivalent, only we actually benefit from its stats. At a 17k health pool, it’s the Marauder equivalent for Burn Builds

Rune of the Lynx sounds like a good speed boost alternative over Trav runes. DH burn damages and duration are multiplicative as you increase it thanks to F1 proc burn stacks. So I personally would sacrifice movement speed for something like Scavenger runes on point.

Emdrix.6124:

Chaotic.9742:

Sounds like a revenant main is throwing in the QQ towel a bit prematurely. Wait to see what happens before you flood the forum with complaints.

sounds like a Dh main who will keep facerolling his keyboard cuz the nerfs are pathetic compared to those of rev.

Yet Revs still beat DH ez. How about we don’t hop on that QQ train until the patch hits.

Just curious, why not choose Virtues/Valor/Radiance with Judges/Smite/Contemplation? You’ll have enough condi cleanses in 1v1, more sustained pressure damages and “god-like” condi bursts when you hit in groups.

You’ll lose out on Stability but your condi sustains will virtually remain unchanged. I feel the dmg gained outweighs its cons.

I don’t like the ideas that gives Torch supportive abilities for the Guard, rather, improve its concept design. I think burn dh in general is lacking compared to core, it’s why I want Dull Senses buffed (pvp only).