Power DH after the 6/28 patch (PvE)

[Falseprophet.1502]

About a year to year and a half, DH had a really cohesive rotation where cool downs lined up well with spear, Procession of Blades, or could easily swap to signet share. Within that year or so, we saw that rotation just become so much less fluid and just awful to play due to the following changes:

 

What happened?

1. Scepter has been gutted for power (because Arenanet stated that previously that a ranged weapon should be the best weapon up close, this now seems contradictory in this patch).
2. Procession of Blades received cooldown and damage tweaks throwing off the alignment of other CDs
3. Greatsword symbol received cooldown and damage tweaks throwing off the alignment of other CDs
4. Defender's Dogma nerfed (this wasn't too bad but it helped when you could game it during certain encounters to bring F1 off CD)
5. Signet share was changed to no longer be stackable and now removed

 

Two side notes:

1. "But Unscathed Contender????" To rely on 100% aegis is ridiculous and unrealistic for mostly everything in this game. A spec shouldn't be competitive based off the design of a gimmicky trait. 
2. Power Willbender feels like it suffers from similar issues, too. Good luck using offhand sword and be competitive. 

 

As someone who could always get to 90th percentile of SC benches, I can't even break 27k with my DH now. I'm pretty concerned that the next balance patch is three months away and I am not very optimistic that DH or several guardian weapons will be overhauled to the like of engineer's rifle. Doubly concerned because there will be droves of people along with their blue class pitchforks, too. 

[Massimoni.9453]

Yeah, DPS guard seems pretty RIP on basically all variations this patch and there probably won't be any buffs anytime soon, as ANet has to fear the raging anti-blue-class crowd. Seems like sadly the reasonable thing to do as players is actually just to move to more competitive specs such as Power: Bladesword, Soulbeast; Condi: Specter, Harbinger, Soulbeast/Untamed (?) and just keep guard in the back pocket for support use cases (even there idk if QFB will make the cut anymore). We will see as more and more benchmarks are released but the power imbalances we are seeing already are far beyond what they were pre "balance" patch.

[Animism.7530]

Funny how the balance patches keep breaking the classes I'm playing and forcing me into other ones as they become so superior... 

[GativideoVHS.4978]

Agree 😔

[Raizel.8175]

On 7/2/2022 at 11:24 PM, Massimoni.9453 said:

Yeah, DPS guard seems pretty RIP on basically all variations this patch and there probably won't be any buffs anytime soon, as ANet has to fear the raging anti-blue-class crowd.

???

cDPS Firebrand (and probably also cDPS Willbender) is still perfectly fine. There's (probably) a reason why this thread is about Dragonhunter because Dragonhunter truly is in a bad spot, but please don't generalize that every Guadian DPS build sucks now - that's just wrong.

[Sporks.4395]

The problem is power damage has been getting gutted for over a year. Condi builds are just superior now. Hitting 40k on a DH days are done. Unless you are running condi, you will not see 40k dps benchmarks. Unless you are a virtuoso.. enjoy that for a few months till that gets nerfed to the ground. Condi WB is a great build. You can even compete with other alac classes as a condi WB. It's a good build. DH has no condi build. That's an overall game design. This patch made it worse. They took away unique multipliers for power group builds, and gave practically nothing in return. Play condi or underperform in pve. That is the current state of the game tbh. 

[Carnifex.3275]

On 7/2/2022 at 5:49 AM, Falseprophet.1502 said:

About a year to year and a half, DH had a really cohesive rotation where cool downs lined up well with spear, Procession of Blades, or could easily swap to signet share. Within that year or so, we saw that rotation just become so much less fluid and just awful to play due to the following changes:

 

What happened?

1. Scepter has been gutted for power (because Arenanet stated that previously that a ranged weapon should be the best weapon up close, this now seems contradictory in this patch).
2. Procession of Blades received cooldown and damage tweaks throwing off the alignment of other CDs
3. Greatsword symbol received cooldown and damage tweaks throwing off the alignment of other CDs
4. Defender's Dogma nerfed (this wasn't too bad but it helped when you could game it during certain encounters to bring F1 off CD)
5. Signet share was changed to no longer be stackable and now removed

 

Two side notes:

1. "But Unscathed Contender????" To rely on 100% aegis is ridiculous and unrealistic for mostly everything in this game. A spec shouldn't be competitive based off the design of a gimmicky trait. 
2. Power Willbender feels like it suffers from similar issues, too. Good luck using offhand sword and be competitive. 

 

As someone who could always get to 90th percentile of SC benches, I can't even break 27k with my DH now. I'm pretty concerned that the next balance patch is three months away and I am not very optimistic that DH or several guardian weapons will be overhauled to the like of engineer's rifle. Doubly concerned because there will be droves of people along with their blue class pitchforks, too. 

Yup... same story on cWB. Always had about 90% of SC bench. Now i can barely push 31-32k on cwilly (and have in mind that it's very reliant on F1 and melee range, so quite hard to execute on some bosses.). Other classes can just sit at range and keep dpsin. Basically guard is now only qFB and HFB. Which is so funny. We needed a nerf on qfb/hfb and leave DPS specs alone atleast. But what we got now is that qfb/hfb will stay even more relevant and dps specs will be dead 🤦‍♂️ So funny to see how anet handles things 👌😂

Edited July 10, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Antina.5973]

18 hours ago, Dave.6819 said:

Yup... same story on cWB. Always had about 90% of SC bench. Now i can barely push 31-32k on cwilly (and have in mind that it's very reliant on F1 and melee range, so quite hard to execute on some bosses.). Other classes can just sit at range and keep dpsin. Basically guard is now only qFB and HFB. Which is so funny. We needed a nerf on qfb/hfb and leave DPS specs alone atleast. But what we got now is that qfb/hfb will stay even more relevant and dps specs will be dead 🤦‍♂️ So funny to see how anet handles things 👌😂

On other hand, if they nerf qfb/hfb too, we will be left with nothing relevant to play, so curb your enthusiasm >.<"

[Carnifex.3275]

2 hours ago, Antina.5973 said:

On other hand, if they nerf qfb/hfb too, we will be left with nothing relevant to play, so curb your enthusiasm >.<"

Well people seem rly mad about qfb and hfb. So i guess nerf them? lol.. (damage wise qfb is alright now). And hfb? HAM does alot more dmg as a healer and provides alac, so i also dunno where's the hate coming from. I think qfb/hfb is in a good spot after this patch. Qfb dmg went down and it's all good, idk what else ppl hate about it. I guess stability, bubbles and such. So ok, nerf those boons but bring back dps specs.. or even better - give those boons/utils to other classes so they'll stop whining about hfb.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Cynder.2509]

This really amkes me sad because power DH was the only dps based thing I could play but now I guess I have to completely relearn a different class only to be taken into raids again. I'm much more experiences as a druid healer by the way but sometimes you're just forced into playing dps as that spot is already taken. It's sad to see condi being so overpowered now because spamming condis is just very easy and requires no actual skill. 
I do play all classes with different builds each (over 35 characters does that apprently) but guardian, ranger (although it's onyl heal druid as I never liked ranger overall due to the bad stigma from old dungeon days and I don't like the pet stuff) and necromancer are the three ones I know most about and can handle the best. The other optional one was banner warrior but that got completely kittened over with the patch as well unfortunately. It sucks to now go with something completely new only to get accepted into raids again and not be kicked immediatly. I hate thief but it seems taht I need to learn condition specter because of the snowcrows benchmark. 
This is really infuriating. 
Sorry for my rambling, Ijust wanted to add my two cents to it as I'm very annoyed as well by the recent changes. 

[Antina.5973]

1 hour ago, Cynder.2509 said:

This really amkes me sad because power DH was the only dps based thing I could play but now I guess I have to completely relearn a different class only to be taken into raids again.

In short, don't. First - soon balance will stir things again. Second - I still play DH (it's my fav spec aside tempest since HoT) when I get the chance as it's my comfy and well known build I outperform 90% of people on those broken builds, who just spam stuff off-cooldown and don't understand builds 😛 And playing something I enjoy and know how to adjust to fights is imho more of value. Unless you find fun in learning new 😉

[Antina.5973]

4 hours ago, Dave.6819 said:

Well people seem rly mad about qfb and hfb. So i guess nerf them? lol.. (damage wise qfb is alright now). And hfb? HAM does alot more dmg as a healer and provides alac, so i also dunno where's the hate coming from. I think qfb/hfb is in a good spot after this patch. Qfb dmg went down and it's all good, idk what else ppl hate about it. I guess stability, bubbles and such. So ok, nerf those boons but bring back dps specs.. or even better - give those boons/utils to other classes so they'll stop whining about hfb.

So just because crowd wants to decapitate, we will kill? I personally love playing support and I find great joy in playing guardian as somehow (I guess it's the name and 2012 class preview videos) it perfectly matches support role. I personally would rather kill off all dps builds, and let it be the best support ever. And you will always get more opinions then people, and the crowd will never be happy demanding blood. Just leave hfb alone, there is ham, druid, maybe boost herald and tempest, so there is more variety, and not everything becomes HAMmered.

[Carnifex.3275]

13 hours ago, Antina.5973 said:

So just because crowd wants to decapitate, we will kill? I personally love playing support and I find great joy in playing guardian as somehow (I guess it's the name and 2012 class preview videos) it perfectly matches support role. I personally would rather kill off all dps builds, and let it be the best support ever. And you will always get more opinions then people, and the crowd will never be happy demanding blood. Just leave hfb alone, there is ham, druid, maybe boost herald and tempest, so there is more variety, and not everything becomes HAMmered.

Personally i think hfb/qfb is in a good spot. And now dps specs need a buff. All i said was community seems to still hate it, so probably more nerfs incoming in the future to qfb/hfb. Which is terrible.. just because it has abit more stability and utilities than others it means it has to be nerfed? Nope. Better buff up other classes (which they did, HAM is just as good as HFB) and leave guard alone. So thats my opinion. 

But in reality... if ppl will continue hating on it, it will get nerfed. Thats how it works with anet.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Antina.5973]

On 7/12/2022 at 1:26 PM, Dave.6819 said:

Personally i think hfb/qfb is in a good spot. And now dps specs need a buff. All i said was community seems to still hate it, so probably more nerfs incoming in the future to qfb/hfb. Which is terrible.. just because it has abit more stability and utilities than others it means it has to be nerfed? Nope. Better buff up other classes (which they did, HAM is just as good as HFB) and leave guard alone. So thats my opinion.

I'd like to hope they share your view, we'll see ^^