Guild Wars 2

draxynnic.3719:

Terra.8571:

This is fair commentary, I need to do the math on Assassin’s Annihilation. I accept there will always need to be some stuff for PvP but there’s is still room for improvement.

Did a quick run of the numbers, and while I made a couple of assumptions that may not turn out to be accurate (such as AA scaling with power/prec/ferocity at a similar proportion to other damage sources) it does seem the AA is definitely worthwhile if you have a reasonable expectation to be able to get flanks. Swift Termination possibly pulls ahead if you have the potential to AoE multiple opponents, and if you’re not likely to get flank (such as when you’re on your own in PvE and not using orbital hammers).

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Assume that a 12-second period against a single target that’s below 50% and which can be easily flanked (so one of those Nuhochs, say) involves 1 usage of UA and 4 repeats of the autoattack chain. This is a rough estimation, but until we get good information on the aftercasts, ~2.5s for an autoattack chain seems fairly typical.

UA does 7×202 = 1414 damage (it grants might, too, but I’m assuming that scales everything equally)
Preparation Thrust does 293 (and grants vulnerability, but that will increase all damage)
Brutal Blade does 183, but strikes twice, for 366 total
Rift Slash against a single target does a total of 440. (Against multiple targets closely packed, this can rise to 660 through overlapping explosions)
Total damage from autoattack = (293+366+440)x4 = 1099×4 = 4396
Total damage over 12 seconds specified = 5810

In practise, the actual damage will be higher, but assuming Assassin’s Annihilation scales proportionally with power, precision, ferocity, might, and vulnerability, the proportional numbers will be the same (if the actual number is, say, 50% greater due to power, vulnerability, and crits, it is likely that the same will be true of Assassin’s Annihilation procs).

Assassin’s Annihilation ideally strikes once per second. In practise, some of that is almost certainly going to be lost by not striking at precisely the same time. Let’s say it triggers 8 times over the period. So that’s 243×8 = 1944 extra damage.

Swift Termination gives a flat +20%. That grants an extra 1162 damage.

Now, this ignores some of the complexities of interaction with Assassin’s Annihilation. There are few things that can increase the damage of AA further apart from decreasing the average time between finishing ICD and triggering again. AA doesn’t scale further with Impossible Odds, nor does it scale further when striking multiple targets (while I think every revenant set is good at striking multiple targets) and it is vulnerable to being shut down entirely if your target is facing you (unless you have Vengeful Hammers running). On the other hand, it still triggers if your target is above 50% health, and the extra healing is not to be sneezed at.

It’s also pretty rough with a lot of guesstimates regarding timing, but I suspect the ballpark is accurate, at least to the level of doing a comparable amount of additional damage.

Of course, this is assuming that Assassin’s Annihilation scales with berserker stats with a similar ratio proportional to base damage as the skills. If it can’t crit and doesn’t scale with power (or not as much) then Swift Termination will pull ahead with more berserker-oriented builds, but AA may still have its place for builds that are not quite so focused on DPS.

AA is a lifesteal and as such it cannot crit. This means if you’re going for a pure damage spec with zerker and such your best bet will probably be ST. However it’s still a lot of extra damage and healing, and can be a really good option for certain weapons, as being a lifesteal it ignores armor, it’s great for fighting certain classes like guardians and eles. It can also boost Mace and hammer damage, as mace’s physical damage is on the low side and AA works kind of like a condition, ignoring armor; and for hammer, the CD lines up with the cast time on the auto attack, meaning all your autos will proc it asuming you hit the foe from the side.

NotoriousNaru.1705:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Please enlighten me on why should virtues be fixed, as in, how are they broken? Yes, shield of courage could go without a cast time. Maybe the spear, but I’m not that keen on that as it has an actual “throwing a projectile” animation. But other than that they are very strong and pretty much superior to the regular virtues.

The regular virtues always give you the heals/boons. These new virtues get interupted, you don’t get anything(no heal/regen/prot/aegis/stab) AND they get put on full cooldown. They are not better than the regular virtues.

This happens with literally any skill that has a cast time and gives any small benefit before finishing the channel. Shelter, for example, if it gets interrumpted by an unblockable cc like necros have, will go on full CD because it already gave you a block. Same thing happens with the virtues. If you interrumpt wings of resolve even before you land, you will already have gotten part of its movement as well as the immobilize removal it has built in.
Shield of courage is better than regular Virtue of courage in every single way except having a cast time, which you can pretty much cover with a trait anyway.
Spear of justice is just different than VoJ, these two are probably the most equal of the lot as they both have different uses.
Wings of resolve are really useful as well, I’m not sure if it’s just me but I feel like their heal is stronger than regular virtue. Having a long range leap is great for guardian as well, and great ranged support. If you see an ally in trouble you dont need to run to them to activate your virtue, you can just leap right at them.

As it stands, guardian has 2 more offensive oriented trait lines and 3 defensive ones. Which means it’s already geared to a lot more defense and support. Even if DH is more of an offensive line, the way the new virtues work bring even more defensive options as well. With renewed focus you can have 12 seconds, 12!, of complete frontal invulnerability through shield of courage and a high amount of CC.

So, no I don’t agree with your assumption that DH doesn’t expand on the core class

Guardian is far from being the class with the biggest problems on their core spec by far, I dont know what people are talking about. There’s a reason why guard has always been part of all the metas as eles have.

So glad I’m seeing a few more DH vids this time around! Great vid.
On a completely unrelated note, I loved the song, but I couldn’t stop thinking how similar it sounded to another song from a game I love, you be the judge :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAeeCdCSMQg

Lol you guys are hilarious. Yes keep crying you lost a skill that one shots everyone. That’s totally alright.

Please enlighten me on why should virtues be fixed, as in, how are they broken? Yes, shield of courage could go without a cast time. Maybe the spear, but I’m not that keen on that as it has an actual “throwing a projectile” animation. But other than that they are very strong and pretty much superior to the regular virtues.

Black Box.9312:

Dirame.8521:

Black Box.9312:

Dirame.8521:

Black Box.9312:

Dirame.8521:

fireflyry.7023:

Dirame.8521:

fireflyry.7023:

This spec does nothing to compliment the Guardian play-style as originally promoted and actually goes totally against the grain with very little synergy, 3 years of timesink after the fact.

It’s either you just haven’t found the right build yet or maybe you haven’t even tried. But trust me, you are so wrong, the Devil would be envious of how wrong you are.

It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about subjective preference.

If that is the case then you should’ve worded your statement differently. To say the Dragonhunter has little synergy or does not compliment the Guardian entirely is wrong.

If your statement was “I don’t like the Dragonhunter’s synergies” then we’d be having a different conversation.

Except DH really doesn’t synergize with the base class. Hunter’s Fortification is just about the only thing that has any sort of cohesiveness with what we already have, and even that isn’t as reliable as things like Absolute Resolution and Pure of Voice/Rune of the Soldier. Hell, one of the new traits actually provides aegis on CC, which is literally something that the base class ALREADY HAS. It’s almost like they didn’t even look at what class they were dealing with when they came up with this elite spec.

Dulled Senses + Wards (Ring of Warding, Line of warding etc), Pure of Sight + Scepter, Hunter’s Determination + Pure of Heart or any aegis trait, Soaring Devastation + Binding Jeopardy.

It’s either I’m crazy or I’m a genius.

Do you seriously expect wards to provide reliable cripple access?

Really?

As for Pure of Sight, a scepter/longbow build would get murdered by anything that can close a gap, and no other build would benefit enough for it to be worthwhile. The other two work, but are nearly negligible in terms of actual impact. There are far easier ways to apply aegis and 3 vulnerability from WoR is not going to change the course of battle.

The goal is supposed to be to make Dragonhunter worth taking over other Guardian builds. Right now, I don’t see a single situation where that is the case.

I’m not sure if I can convince you that a lot of those synergies are and can be powerful so I’m just going to walk away with the fact that you’ve agreed that those are synergies with the base guardian.

You can say they are weak synergies all you want (I still know for a fact that you are wrong based off of experience) but I’m just going to take my little victory and walk away.

Look at Chronomancer.

Look at Reaper.

Now look back at Dragonhunter.

It is nowhere near being on the same level.

Chronomancer makes me feel like it could actually be worth giving up Domination, Dueling, or Chaos, and still have an amazing Mesmer. It’s still a Mesmer, but it’s also a new spin on a Mesmer that you won’t find with anything else.

Reaper is even more enticing. I don’t even play my base Necro, and I’m quite interested in its applications. I’ve seen builds that could work by making the most out of both Reaper and base Necro mechanics.

There are 60 base Guardian traits. You managed to list two of them that DH has some degree of synergy with. Worse still, those two that you mentioned aren’t even unique properties that you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of without taking DH. I flat-out do not see any sort of build combination involving Dragonhunter that doesn’t end up actually being more of a handicap to the base class than anything else. And that’s certainly not how you’re supposed to design an addition to an existing class.

Off the top of my head there’s already two traits in Zeal that synergize with dragonhunter, which is the main reason to take zeal with it in a pve zerker environment. Damage to burning foes and damage to foes standing on your symbols, which can be accomplished with a single skill on the longbow, or with the tether from your spear. And this is just from memory I haven’t even checked yet, I’m sure there’s lots more.
Honestly Bbox you just keep repeating yourself but you literally haven’t even given the class a chance from the start, and you haven’t seen how it improved in the last beta. Of course some things are flawed and there’s plenty of feedback about it already, but you’re just blindly hating on it at this point.

Nike.2631:

That’s three buttons . And a fourth (burn heal for adrenaline) or a lot of hits beforehand.

Not to mention it was also bugged as the trap hitting multiple times

Yes because having a one hit kill button is so balanced.
Come on guys be serious.

There’s literally 5 threads on this ON THE FIRST PAGE already. Please people how hard is it to check.

Thank you sir.
I am currently in the middle of an all ranger raid night on my wvw server and we’re having tons of fun, they just cannot keep up with the range pressure. I proposed an all DH raid when it eventually comes out and the concensus seems to be positive as it’s basically the same as longbow ranger but more CC.

Tearthy Flame.1463:

New ways to play!? Everyone is totally blown away by traps, my goodness it is so new! Enemy’s just walk over it and things happen! What!? But wait, we don’t have animal sidekicks? What!?

Oh right, none of that is original or new game-play. Druid has a better place in the game than DH (That’s a different story about Druid). I’m sure the damage DH brings makes a difference in your Zerker Meta of a life. But this isn’t what Guardian is at the Core. It is a weird class that brings support but likes to be a block-a-holic and hit things as it burns them. Guardian is confused but It managed to work! If a Elite Specialization truly took advantage of the basic core ideas of Guardian something insane will happen with the F Skill Ability’s. I can give you a great example with Confessor Elite Specialization
DH just adds to the horrid Zerker Meta and is not a new play style overall even from the beginning of GW2 Time It is not a new way to play challenging content.
CC through traps isn’t exciting new game-play to me.

You sir have completely missed the point I made. Precisely because it’s something different compared to the rest of the class it is a new playstyle. I don’t enjoy going support guardian anymore which is why I appreciate a new, more aggressive option which, mind you, I used in pvp and wvw to great effect, and not in pve to catter to the zerker meta you seem to hate so much.

Dirame.8521:

Black Box.9312:

Dirame.8521:

Black Box.9312:

Dirame.8521:

fireflyry.7023:

Dirame.8521:

fireflyry.7023:

This spec does nothing to compliment the Guardian play-style as originally promoted and actually goes totally against the grain with very little synergy, 3 years of timesink after the fact.

It’s either you just haven’t found the right build yet or maybe you haven’t even tried. But trust me, you are so wrong, the Devil would be envious of how wrong you are.

It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about subjective preference.

If that is the case then you should’ve worded your statement differently. To say the Dragonhunter has little synergy or does not compliment the Guardian entirely is wrong.

If your statement was “I don’t like the Dragonhunter’s synergies” then we’d be having a different conversation.

Except DH really doesn’t synergize with the base class. Hunter’s Fortification is just about the only thing that has any sort of cohesiveness with what we already have, and even that isn’t as reliable as things like Absolute Resolution and Pure of Voice/Rune of the Soldier. Hell, one of the new traits actually provides aegis on CC, which is literally something that the base class ALREADY HAS. It’s almost like they didn’t even look at what class they were dealing with when they came up with this elite spec.

Dulled Senses + Wards (Ring of Warding, Line of warding etc), Pure of Sight + Scepter, Hunter’s Determination + Pure of Heart or any aegis trait, Soaring Devastation + Binding Jeopardy.

It’s either I’m crazy or I’m a genius.

Do you seriously expect wards to provide reliable cripple access?

Really?

As for Pure of Sight, a scepter/longbow build would get murdered by anything that can close a gap, and no other build would benefit enough for it to be worthwhile. The other two work, but are nearly negligible in terms of actual impact. There are far easier ways to apply aegis and 3 vulnerability from WoR is not going to change the course of battle.

The goal is supposed to be to make Dragonhunter worth taking over other Guardian builds. Right now, I don’t see a single situation where that is the case.

I’m not sure if I can convince you that a lot of those synergies are and can be powerful so I’m just going to walk away with the fact that you’ve agreed that those are synergies with the base guardian.

You can say they are weak synergies all you want (I still know for a fact that you are wrong based off of experience) but I’m just going to take my little victory and walk away.

I can asure you, you can’t convince him since he hasn’t even bothered geting HoT to test for himself yet :p

I will judge any revenant who doesn’t use this armor. Specially charrs. Too sexy on charr.
In fact I’m thinking of using it on guardian too. For some reason the armor and blindfold seems to match my idea of dragonhunters lol

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Once you have done lvl 50 fractals, raids, ESL pvp, played the class for a few years and posted allot of insightful ideas then played the spec and compared it to other options then will respect your opinion.

Till then however I’m going to assume that your one of the people who either doesn’t really play a guard that much or just tried it out in open world PVE where you can literally run around nakid without traits and still do ok.

PS: All those people that I mentioned above, you know the people who play ESL, high lvl fractals & raids are saying that the DH was crap with the exception of the longbow & a couple traits.=

I played the dragonhunter in both fractals and the raid and had absolutely no problem with it. And I certainly am not gonna let people tell me to enjoy things less because they play their ridiculous kitten competitions

Why would anyone not go scholar on necro. They’re literaly the class with the easiest time keeping the buff up, as your shroud shields your health.

Dismantle fortifications should be moved to the corruption line as a GM that removes all stability stacks when using a CC. I mean we can already remove stab by using banish enchantment but this would give a reason to use corruption with hammer and staff.

Someone comented about underwater spear. I gotta say I absolutely adore this weapon as it is and it made me want to play more underwater combat. 11/10

I think JI works pretty well with DH. Teleporting to someone and dropping a trap on them instantly is pretty hilarious

Nike.2631:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Playing a trap ranger is a new way to play?

A trap ranger with PERMA-STOW for their pets.

Hell yes that’s a new way to play!

This made me chuckle. xD
Idk I never really had a problem with pets myself.

fireflyry.7023:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Also, by new I meant new for the guardian, not new in general.

Therein lies my problem with the whole spec.

If I wanted this playstyle I would have rolled a ranger or thief 3 years ago. Thing is I’m not into pewpewing and setting traps and it was my understanding that this class was a support based melee class, with a ranged option like all the classes no doubt, but still founded on being most effective when wacking things face to face in the heart of battle while also having the ability to throw out team support.

Awesome.I’m in thanks.

This spec does nothing to compliment the Guardian play-style as originally promoted and actually goes totally against the grain with very little synergy, 3 years of timesink after the fact.

I know many are loving it, more power to them, but it’s like giving ele’s a “Gun slinger” elite spec when they clearly rolled the class to cast fireballs and freeze dudes.

Like wtf?

That’s exactly my point. Dragonhunter is definitely more on the damage/control side on a support oriented class. Which is totally fine by me. Why would you want MORE support, you already have plent of options. Plus, you’re not entirely right anyway, as dragonhunters can also spec for support, it’s just in a different way. The new virtues are actually better than the old ones when it comes to support, you’re just looking at the utilities and thinking those are too offensive, which you are right, since they are traps after all. And even so, there’s still a support trap, and most traps also bring a lot of control which is in its own way a type of support.

I gotta say I’m happy with dragonhunter bringing something different, precisely because I was tired of playing guardian as a support and only being wanted for that. It’s just new options we can play with, it’s not like you’re losing your old utilities and weapons.

PS: before tempest was revealed there were a LOT of eles requesting a spell slinger kind of spec. In fact looking at tempest, which brings a lot more of what eles already had, and the negative feedback it got should give you a clue that oversaturating a class with the same stuff can end up not being that beneficial at all

The V.8759:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

The V.8759:

I played full zerk with defensive traits and 2 shouts
That actually was new playstyle for me and I loved it.

I did start with shouts myself too but I was quickly realizing if I wanted that sniper playstyle I needed the fury to make sure true shot would crit. So I swapped over to meditations for fury and got some teleports and condi cleanses along the way so that was also good for my build. It also helped that the medi trait is in the same line as the shield trait which, with the recent buffs, works pretty well for this build!

I mainly used Rune of the pack for fury uptime:) seemed to be enough for me. Ofcourse its personal preference. And yes shield is cool. Got some more synergy with aegis now, also from that trap with fragments

My immediate thought was using runes of the pack too, but since I was using meditations, the swiftness buff was mostly wasted, plus the way to get fury from said rune set is by getting hit, which you didn’t want to happen. So I opted for rune of rage instead.
Build editor has had its traits updated so here’s the specific build I was running (sigils may have varied a little):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAT8ensABVDhlDBeDBkdilGi6aYXgAQ+4L+oPL+uv8D-TpBBwAG3fAwDAoxRAocZgAHEAIXAAA

Aeolus.3615:

pve’ers love DH, people will love in other game modes if they have stuff that can be “exploitable”.

Altough Anet gona nerf that KB+5sec criple on bow for sure even if it is on 10 sec cd, when people start to use it to make players out of point capture.
It will be like playing curling with a downed player > out of the circle now, no more deaths on circle.

You cannot knockback a downed player. The only kind of CC that works on downed is Launch, which we already have on hammer to begin with.

lilz shorty.1879:

DH Dragon Maw Elite:

Finish downed players would make it an elite worthy of guardian. Either that or ripping stability/protection or applying vulnerability.

Been seeing this suggestion being thrown around a lot and I dont think people realise traps dont activate on downed players. Sure you could proc it on someone trying to res a downed player but it still feels completely out of place.
Ripping stability on the other hand sounds great, but it might be borderline op then.

brannigan.9831:

fireflyry.7023:

Setting traps and pewpewing are new?

Go figure.

Well, to be fair nobody plays a trap ranger so it’s like they don’t exist. He must have forgotten about them just like A-net apparently did to think this would be viable. Hey lets take something that nobody uses on Rangers (traps) and give to Guardians along with an inferior longbow to rangers.

Apparently you people didn’t read. I wasn’t using traps. I’m just talking about the big hit son range, sniper kinda deal you can do on dragonhunter. Not unlike killshot on warriors.
Also, by new I meant new for the guardian, not new in general.

I’m also down for the 25% movement buff, as guardians are currently the only class who dont have this even with elite specs (chronos got it).
I’d also like to see guardian get super speed when they have someone tethered with the spear, kinda like marking a target to chase or take down. They are hunters after all, they should be “on the hunt”.

Skyline Crash.6254:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Pure of sight should just be made baseline to the bow, because it’s clrealy meant for the bow. This one does need to be changed/removed.
I enjoy defender’s dogma as it is. Using your shield of courage and keeping your justice active can, with the right traits, trigger aoe burn and cripple for its duration, so there’s some combo potential there.

what about rather than recharging the passive, reduce the CD of virtues every time you block? like 3-5 seconds for justice, 6-10 seconds for resolve, and 9-15 seconds for courage?

That’s actually a really good idea! There was a similar trait on reaper shroud kills reducing the cooldowns by a flat amount.

Pure of sight should just be made baseline to the bow, because it’s clrealy meant for the bow. This one does need to be changed/removed.
I enjoy defender’s dogma as it is. Using your shield of courage and keeping your justice active can, with the right traits, trigger aoe burn and cripple for its duration, so there’s some combo potential there.

So I’ve got a couple suggestions myself for traits and the bow. They’re focused on my experience this weekend with an offensive, “sniper” kinda playstyle so bear that in mind. I have no feedback on traps as I didn’t use those at all, except for the elite which was fine as it is IMO (maaaaybe a bit more daze on the trait).

Puncture shot - This should just be like the thief’s shortbow and bounce regardless of position. It doesn’t do that much damage and while having a soft cc on auto is strong, it only bounces once. So I’d like to see this bounce up to 3 targets, or keep it just two but in a radius instead of on the back.

True shot - Perfect as it is I think. I don’t mind the root, I kinda think it’s necessary for the short CD, but I’ll touch a bit more on this skill later.

Deflecting shot - This one is also fine. I honestly find it strange having this being basically the only skillshot in the game, but it’s actually kinda unique because of that. At first I thought its mechanic was weird, but after the added damage on projectile destruction I’ve gotten some pretty nasty hits with it if I pulled it off right, so I wouldn’t change it.

Symbol of Energy -This is the big one. It’s just a contradictory skill no matter how you look at it. It’s a ranged symbol with a support boon. Who am I supposed to shoot this at? My allies to help them dodge? My enemies to burn them? It does none of those things right honestly. My suggestion is changing the boon on this one to fury.
Here’s why: let’s say you have 50% crit chance. Most of the bow’s damage comes from a single, big hit. Similar to reaper’s Gravedigger, you REALLY want it to crit. With 50% crit chance, using a multi hit like whirling wrath will mean some of its hits will not crit, but you wont lose ALL of your crit damage bonus at once because at least some of them WILL crit. Having just a single, big hit, means low crit chance is a lot riskier, as there’s a flat 50% chance that you will lose all your damage. For example, with the setup I was running this beta my non crit True Shots would hit for a mease 2k, while a crit would hit for 8k, in some circumstances even up to 10k. A WW critting all hits can do as much as 20k (probably even more), a WW will still hit roughly for 12 to 15k if some of its hits dont crit. The diference in damage is huge.
For that reason, I propose giving this symbol fury, as True shot is very crit reliant, and at least this way I can shot the symbol on myself while I’m sitting duck charging up true shot. This will also aliviate the need to go medi for fury and could open up other utility possibilities.

Hunter’s Ward - I like this one as it is, maybe a bit of a damage boost on the barrage. The ward is very strong in zerg play so I understand the long CD, but I found myself interrupting the cast, as there’s a very short window right after you finish the barrage animation (but the channel progress bar is still going) where you can move, thinking the skill is over, and interrupt it, meaning you miss the actual ward creation.

Traits on another post!

The V.8759:

I played full zerk with defensive traits and 2 shouts
That actually was new playstyle for me and I loved it.

I did start with shouts myself too but I was quickly realizing if I wanted that sniper playstyle I needed the fury to make sure true shot would crit. So I swapped over to meditations for fury and got some teleports and condi cleanses along the way so that was also good for my build. It also helped that the medi trait is in the same line as the shield trait which, with the recent buffs, works pretty well for this build!

Arutha.9874:

So your statement here is that using meditation with a longbow is a new spec?

You start saying that it feels like a sniper, then bring up using blinks(all of ours being forward to melee range blinks) meaning you will only spend perhaps 5 seconds in range, and then you describe the typical meta guardian build.

And claim it is a new build???

You are in describing the fact that there are NO NEW builds just the typical meditations and you will spend just one second in over 600 range then give up and go back into melee.

Well yes, using JI right before a true shots was kinda hilarious, but that’s not allthere is to it. I mean using your teleports and wings for mobility, closing the gap when needed or teleporting/winging away for bigger shots. The new shield buffs also helped with this gameplay.
To be more specific, I was taking virtues and valor on the other lines, for increased damage with Unscathed contender as well as some other traits like shield CD reduction and meditation for fury.
Something like shield 4 for aegis, smite condition for fury and then firing away. Or if in need to close the gap, JI together with dragon’s maw was a really good setup for more burst. Shield of courage also does a lot for sword users now IMO.

Arnath.2319:

Azure.8670:

Arnath.2319:

Not a single Guardian or Dragon Hunter in the world first raid kill.

I tolled you this would happen, with the constant nerfs to Guardians, the horrible Dragon Hunter, the constant power creep every other profession has received, and the new powerful elite specs others have received, there is no reason to bring us anymore to PVE content.

What is the role of the Dragon Hunter?

It offers less DPS, less group support, less healing, less everything! Our core traits, skills and virtues are far superior in every way! The only reason to go DH is if you want to roleplay or do open world zerg content.

what professions were used?

“Group comp, 4 Condi Engi (1 tankier hybrid), 3 Revenants, 1 Druid, 1 Chronomancer, 1 Warrior. Everyone was in Berserker, except the Condi Engis of course.”

So by your logic, Guardians, Necromancers, Elementalists and Thieves are all useless now because they weren’t used in the first ever raid kill and that’s forever gonna change the meta.
GG man you have absolutely no clue how this game works.

…it does NOT expand on the guardian.

So at first glance I too was puzzled about this spec, but after toying around with builds I think something finally clicked on me. It’s not supposed to expand upon the class the way, say, chronomancers expand on mesmer. I think it’s more on the line of druids, giving us a new, completely diferent gameplay option. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Guardian was the first class I played, but since it was my main on release, I got bored of it as time went on. It also didn’t help that guardians were always “in a good place” and as such didn’t recieve many noticable changes in gameplay. But I finally gave dragonhunters a try this beta and made a really glassy build for wvw/pvp (also used it in pve on a slightly altered version), and I gotta say, it was actually the most fun I had with guardian since release! It was just a completely unique gameplay style that the class just didn’t have before. It felt like the sniper elite spec thieves have been asking for. Sniping people down while teleporting everywhere with your meditations and sword blink. It made me think more positionally, be aware of my skill recharges and know when to pop my shield of courage to get my shots off.

I know many people are upset about the class “bringing nothing to guardian”, when in truth, it’s the oposite. It’s something completely new. On the other hand, Tempests, which brought the eles a lot more of the same they already had, are also quite poorly received.

I guess what I’m trying to say is just toy with it, find NEW builds, just don’t shoehorn DH into your existing builds because they may very well have conflicting playstyles.

PS: traps are still super lame as utilities though, I did get a good use out of the elite one however.

Played revenant a lot more again. My opinions haven’t changed much.
Sword keeps getting worse the more I use it. Part of its damage is a projectile which means if you’re near a wall you lose half of it. And then there’s UA which is… bad. In PvE you will fail this skill 80% of the time and even when you hit it doesn’t even do that much damage really. I feel like every time I use it it’s a dps loss and that should absolutely NOT be the case. Precision strike is okayish.
Overall my thoughts on the sword are still “it’s the weapon to look cool, brings absolutely nothing and is boring as hell”.

Been using a lot more staff this time around as a melee weapon and I gotta say the changes to Renewing Wave made it a very strong weapon. The damage is pretty comparable to the sword considering all the extra stuff it has going for it. I didn’t use staff 2 much but I think that’s understandable in pve.

Ventari is good as it is imo. Maybe do the insta tablet summon on swap but that’s about it. Glint is solid as well, wouldn’t change it. Shiro is alright, it does what it does well, but like sword, I find it boring and it doesn’t bring much, it’s the selfish option.

Now the big change, Mallyx. I am still not okay with this, really. I definitely found myself dying a lot quicker because of the heal change, as I could use the self applied condis to heal ridiculous amounts before. Embrace the darkness is now one of the worst elite skills in the game. It just doesn’t know what it wants to be. I was using it more on damage specs for the % buffs, instead of its condi supposed focus. At least it has a cool animation -shrugs-. The only mallyx skill that improved is Unyielding Anguish as it can stack a lot more torment now (and the displace needed to go, chill makes this also a really strong skill), but the rest are definitely weaker in every aspect, as wells as losing their flavor.
I don’t wanna repeat myself, so yeah, just bring back the old Mallyx. At the very least for the elite.

Finally, I really wanna use Jalis, I really do. But having those hammers bug out so easily is a huge hamper in anyone’s chances or running Jalis effectively.

I like that revenant skills promote non-stacking, off the walls, position based gameplay for PvE, but this should NOT be because our skills flat out dont work or bug out against walls.

There needs to be a final trait pass.

That’s all from me for this beta on revenant.

Is the beta running longer than scheduled or something?

BobbyStein.2315:

Nebilim.5127:

BobbyStein.2315:

Khisanth.2948:

BobbyStein.2315:

• I can’t talk about the “huge awesome mega reveals” other than to say that since the wings are essentially a multi-part story you will learn things along the way. Anything vital to the raid story will happen naturally and unobtrusively, but we’ll also have some optional stuff scattered around to discover. You’ll see elements of this in the beta that are carried through the entire first wing.

Does that mean we won’t be forced to sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting for some NPCs to talk on every run through the raid?

This is something we’re very mindful of, so we’ve been working hard to find better ways of dispensing essential plot information and gameplay feedback without grinding things to a halt. You can get a feel for how we’re doing that in the raid beta that starts today. That stated, there is some optional stuff we’ve put in the raid so if you’re waiting around for your squad to get ready you can walk around, talk to NPCs (in the safe areas), and potentially find some cool things we’ve stashed in there.

We realize that there are a lot of players who want to get right into the action, so we’re doing what we can to allow for that. Play the beta and let us know what you think!

Can’t you do it like dungeons or fractals? Most of the stories were delivered completely in a non obtrusive way. Just add cutscenes whenever necessary and let us press a skip button.

We could except for the fact that we don’t build our cinematics like that anymore. We’ve instead opted for a more “in the moment” approach. Play the raid. You’ll see what I mean.

I’d like to point out, making us watch certain cutscenes, unskippable ones that is, every time should not be a thing. I am honestly fed up with molten duo introduction in fractals by now. I get that at the time this wasn’t intended to be a repeatable fractal, but for future cutscenes I hope this doesn’t happen again.

Dadnir.5038:

Minions will engage the target on which you attack with your AA now, still they won’t switch their target if you change while they are still in combat. Their responsivness have been greatly improved since last year.

I’ve soloed easily caudecus manor and ascalonian catacomb story mode last week thanks to them. You should give them a second chance.

They DO change target when you do, they have been fixed and improved greately. I find them quite reliable now, great for leveling specially.

Rain.9213:

Sword can make newcomers absolutely fall in love with the class once the skill 3 is unlocked. I know anime fans will definitely love it xD

However, on the other hand… the auto attack doesnt look as neat and cool as other AA’s and neither does Skill 2 so… Mace in that regard would look cooler. I guess it comes down to what a newcomer will find most useful in PVE at first.

So with that said… my vote for starting weapon is Staff! It’s fantastic for PVE, all the attacks look really cool, and I’m pretty sure Ranger starts with Longbow so I dont see a problem with setting it to a two handed

I agree with staff being the starter option. It provides moderate damage and a bit of sustain which teaches revenant newcomers that they have to keep moving to get the benefits from the get go.

After the change in focus of Mallyx’s playstyle, this trait no longer synergizes with it’s toolset. If self condis aren’t coming back, this trait should probably be changed to something different or triger on the number of condis on your target instead, helping hybrid builds.

I love you for this Roy. Mace is so much more fun than sword anyway~

PS: Any chance Mace might get its power scaling tuned up a bit? I actually really enjoyed using it on a power set, but I felt like I was gimping myself despite the easy mightstacking

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Revenants will start at level 1 like any other character.

Out of curiosity, we know their starting legend will be Jalis, but what about the weapon? Will it be sword or something else? New characters usually start with the most simple/straightforward kind of weapon which in this case I think it’s sword for revenant.

Runiir.6425:

Vennyhedgie, sadly if you look at the charr from a biomechanical point of view them using many weapons make no sense. A staff would be too awkward for them, they don’t have the arm/body ratio to make proper use of a spinning weapon (their arms/legs are too short frankly). They even look awkward with certain 2h animations (anytime they raise a weapon over their head and swing down they would knock themselves out) of MANY weapons… guard hammer leap or war hammer blast come to mind as the but of the pole would slam their dome.

I agree with the OP, that animation needs tweaking.

To be more specific, it’s their saff auto attack animation that bothers me. The rest don’t look particularly bad, but on the third staff strike they spin the staf overhead, but their arms are completely rigid. Usually when a character does the spinning staff type of attack, their hands would twirl as if spinning the staff physically. This is not the case for charr.
For reference: https://youtu.be/0zvfijc3SN4?t=2241

I’ve already mentioned quite a few times the Revenant staff looked awkward, specifically for charr on their hands. Those animations still need tweaking.

It’s possible the new pets can be acquired on the new wvw borderland. Anyone with the base game will have access to those, and if I remember correctly, there was wyverns in there, as well as some other saurians, so it’s not strange they would be found there. Some pets can currently be found in the alpine borderlands.

0. Herald (this one’s actually the whole revenant profession so it’s not a fair fight, but I plan on maining rev. Although I’d like to point out that the herald traits are not of my liking at all, but I love the glint skills)
1. Reaper (necro main. Love everything about this, even the shouts. They’re actually really short CD with the trait, I would only change Nothing can save you to be instant cast and, if not asking for too much, party wide unblockable)
2. Scrapper (been wanting engie hammer since forever, drones need work though)
3. Daredevil (I dislike thief quite a bit, but this spec made me a lot more interested in the class, if they fix some of its clunkyness it’d very much be worth giving a shot)
4. Druid (still undecided about this one, I think what sold it for me were the new pets but those aren’t druid specific so time will tell)
5. Chronomancer (This one is cool, out of all the elite specs it’s the one that feels like it “adds” to the base class instead of “changing” existing stuff which makes it feel kinda mandatory? For this reason I feel neither excited or disappointed, it’s just there and I will use it)
6. Berserker (similar to thief, I dislike warriors because of how simple and boring they are, this spec makes them a little less boring)
7. Dragonhunter (Bow is nice, been wanting bow on guardian since release. Virtues are very meh, traits are improving slowly, traps are “who the hell thought this was a good idea” tier
8. Tempest (everything about this is bad except for some of the warhorn skills. The traits are dragonhunter trap tier -1)

Dont count on it. Even for beta 3 there’s still stuff that’s not gonna be finalized, as we’ve seen some traits are still in discussion. We dont even know if the jalis, glint and ventari skills will be usable underwater for beta 3 yet.

Currently an Explosives Master tier trait, the damage increase provided by this trait is only 5%. It’s the same damage increase as another adept trait in the same line “Glass Cannon”.
Also, compared to Revenant’s Devastation line’s Master minor trait “Targeted Destruction” which is literaly the exact same trait (X% damage modifier on foes with vuln, except TD is 7% instead of 5%) it’s also weaker while having to take up a major trait slot.
I believe when they did the trait rework they mentioned equalizing damage modifiers to 7% 10% and 13% depending on the tier if I’m not mistaken?
Someone please look into this, that is all!

To be fair Heavy armor is the one of the three that looks the best on charr
Charr also have awesome animations (except for the staff auto, seriously what’s up with that?)
Mistward armor looks sexy on charr

No more questions

So I might be nitpicking here, but apparently druid’s staff uses the same idle as revenant and daredevil’s staff. I dont mind this pose in itself, but I figured this was a way to distinguish melee from ranged staves. Shouldn’t druid’s staff use the regular staff idle as eles, mesmers, etc? Since it’s definitely a caster type of staff. It would also help a lot to tell staff combat styles apart

Donari.5237:

They said very clearly that the new pets are Ranger, not limited to Druid. They repeated it a couple of times to make sure we heard it.

Sucks that to tame them you need to be able to access the heart of maguuma though, so you HAVE to get the expansion for those
(Though I already have it so I dont care -shrugs- )