Make "Deflecting Shot" knock back without "Heavy Light" (Dragonhunter)

The only/main reason people take Heavy Light is so that Deflecting Shot knocks back enemies. Making Deflecting Shot knock back without the trait would allow Dragonhunters to take Hunter's Fortication or Big Game Hunter for PvP. This would be a good, balanced buff. Dragonhunter is currently pretty balanced when compared to other elite specs, but needs a missing extra oomph to be competitive.

Skills Mentioned:Deflecting ShotTraits Mentioned:Heavy LightHunter's FortificationBig Game Hunter

I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

@"mrauls.6519" said:The only/main reason people take Heavy Light is so that Deflecting Shot knocks back enemies. Making Deflecting Shot knock back without the trait would allow Dragonhunters to take Hunter's Fortication or Big Game Hunter for PvP. This would be a good, balanced buff. Dragonhunter is currently pretty balanced when compared to other elite specs, but needs a missing extra oomph to be competitive.

Skills Mentioned:Deflecting ShotTraits Mentioned:Heavy LightHunter's FortificationBig Game HunterActually I dont understand threads ' My hot spec not being meta, buff it till its becomes good' . You see army of scrappers? Army of chronomancers?Tempests? etcYou should had realized PoF specs must be better than others for sales and only get nerf before release of another expansion.P.S why buff DH when what is need nerfs its POF specs... ?

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

It's not really a choice when one of the traits is clearly better than the other two

:/

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

Welcome to GW2. every other class suffers from this, even mirage.

Especially Herald.

Either take the safest, most versatile option, or one of the other two for niche builds.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

Okay. Are we not supposed to make suggestions? If other things can be changed I think threads/posts should be made to bring awareness to them too. Not sure why we shouldn't voice our opinion for trait/skill changes when it might be a good change for a profession..

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

I am half genuinely serious about it being fine as is, and half bitter at the thought of having big game hunter while tethered by longbow do 20% extra damage to me, lengthen the tether, put vuln on me per auto only to be yanked through and then pushed back out of test of faith with deflecting shot.Don't take it as an attack on your suggestion. I'm critiquing it because it's a free damage buff to any longbow DH.

I haven't seen any DH struggle particularly poorly in a while.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

I understand. A lot of people don't like fighting Dragonhunter.

You probably don't see them struggling since there are barely any around :P. I still get the occasional flame for playing DH in ranked...

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

I think that's more because Firebrand compared to DH is like comparing a professional football player to mvp of the team in Peewee.Theyre both good, but one is a better version of good.Add that to the masses of "If you arent playing X you're gimping the team" and here you are, lel.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

LOL. That made me laugh.

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

Just do it like me. Disable ingame chat for PvP + disable in-world bubbles + use offline mode. I'm DH main since S1. After PoF launched had to deploy this measure against being flamed for playing the spec that I can achieve the most with. Tired and frustrated of people telling me I'm trash without them seeing me actually play. And DH needs no buffs, it's perfectly balanced, or even slightly OP in the right hands. It's some of the spam-to-win PoF garbage specs that need adressing (aka nerfing).

No. It's good as it is. We all know you want that juicy +20% dmg +2s duration on f1, NOBODY would pick Hunter's Fortication over that.

It's not that Heavy Light is too strong compared to BGH or HF, it's that its 100% necessary for basic functionality. Like buying a new car and having to choose between 20% better MPG or having tires. There is zero point in running LB without Heavy Light and zero point in running DH without LB. With that said, right now I think the better option is to nerf current meta specs but knowing Anet they much prefer to increase power creep so I don't see a change like this being out of line given their current balancing philosophy.

@"mrauls.6519" said:The only/main reason people take Heavy Light is so that Deflecting Shot knocks back enemies. Making Deflecting Shot knock back without the trait would allow Dragonhunters to take Hunter's Fortication or Big Game Hunter for PvP. This would be a good, balanced buff. Dragonhunter is currently pretty balanced when compared to other elite specs, but needs a missing extra oomph to be competitive.

Skills Mentioned:Deflecting ShotTraits Mentioned:Heavy LightHunter's FortificationBig Game Hunter

Completely agree with this.

+1This is needed. DH has been handicapped by this trait for long enough. For anyone afraid of "The Noobstomper" coming back, that really shouldn't happen as long as nobody goes and buffs traps.If a dev happens to be reading this, I would really like to know why this wasn't done originally.

Thanks guys. Let's hope for change. Don't give up!

:D

I got to agree here. Would be a nice balanced buff.

I agree with this change. Heavy Light can be changed/added on to to make up for it no longer affecting Deflecting shot.

Here's the thing: this isn't a well-crafted balance issue of it being difficult to pick a good GM trait, this is an issue of us not being able to use longbow at all in a competitive environment unless we take that trait.

People don't take Heavy Light because they particularly like the effect, they ONLY take it for the functionality. Even if you removed the stability it grants on CC and the only thing it did was make Deflecting shot cause knockback, DHs running longbow would still take Heavy Light. I don't see this as a limiter of longbow DH potentially being OP, I see this as a requirement on DH to even run longbow and be viable and that is arguably a balance issue if you ask me.

@Alehin.3746 said:No. It's good as it is. We all know you want that juicy +20% dmg +2s duration on f1, NOBODY would pick Hunter's Fortification over that.

Hypothetically, if a DH could take both BGH and Heavy Light at the same time, it still wouldn't be anywhere close to OP. If knockback was made baseline on Deflecting shot, then the Heavy Light trait could be reworked/added to resulting in an excellent anti-boon/anti-stability trait (since the idea is a trait that rewards CC) that people would have a tough time choosing between it and BGH. That would be more balanced than what we have now.

Great points @Arcaedus.7290

since your avatar is a snowman, I find your claims credible and legitimate.

Hehe. Assimilating was a good idea

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@"mrauls.6519" said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:I think the current placement of heavy light forcing them to pick that traitline is suitable. As it stands now, you have to choose between control, damage, and defense for your grandmaster.

Not every skill and trait choice has to be good for every build in every mode. It's very OK for each tier of trait in a line to be more focused to PvP, PvE and larger scale, if anything it might actually make balance easier having less to worry about. Big Game Hunter is a PvE trait, Hunter's fortification is....weird, but not entirely unusable and would definitely be the go to choice without longbows.