Reasonable DH Changes

[Vinny.7260]

Y'all are missing the things that actually need hit. You keep claiming things like Dragon Maw being WAY too good, but forget they're sacrificing their sustain. You'll get after things like "i GoT oNeShOt" as if you're a martyr.

 

Here are the things that need fixed. Plain and simple:

Hunter's Premonition: This trait is currently BUGGED and does not need to be equipped to grant Aegis. Many DHs, in secret, are abusing this and using other traits. Fix the trait, DHs have to sacrifice F2 damage or cripple on CC. Looks like they fixed it. 🙂

Spear of Justice: We're in an age where there are plenty of new players unable to sightread the same way a lot of veterans are able to. This skill just needs a glowy projectile on the wind-up and the actual projectile being sent out. That'll make it more obvious for what people need to dodge and when.

Test of Faith: There are actually a couple ways to go about this getting an adjustment. Do NOT do all of these at once. Pick one of them.  Looks like they did a smaller adjustment than I suggested, maybe it'll work out cuz they hit True Shot too.

• Reduce the duration to 3 seconds instead of 6 seconds.
  • This reduces the amount of time a DH basically can own an area; it still allows them to punish people via quick combos but gets rid of the safety net against things like phantasms and pets.
• Reduce the pass-through damage by 45%.
  • Currently this skill has one of the highest coefficients in PvP. Reduces the damage from 1,619 (on Heavy Armor with none of the modifiers calculated) to 876 (on Heavy Armor with none of the modifiers calculated).
    • On Marauder Amulet with Lynx Rune and Aegis (+7% Strike Damage), 90% or more health (+7% Strike Damage), Retribution (+10% Strike Damage), Inspiring Virtue (+10% Strike Damage), Inspired Virtue (~5% Strike Damage), Zealot's Aggression (+10% Strike Damage), Pure of Sight (+10% Strike Damage), Big Game Hunter (+15% Strike Damage). Approximately 102% Strike Damage Increase. These numbers are hypothetical and against Heavy Armor.
      • Current Damage (non-critical hit): 3723
      • Current Damage (critical hit): 7197
      • Purposed Damage (non-critical hit): 1770
      • Purposed Damage (critical hit): 3421
• Recharge Increased to 35 seconds.
  • This would force Dragonhunter to have more down time and weigh in on whether to place the trap or not. It's currently able to drop the trap on a node, rotate to the next node and have it almost ready or it is ready.

Pure of Sight: This skill got a free boost in one of the recent patch most likely to accommodate hammer changes. I don't expect this to happen.

• Reduce it back to 5%, it does not need a free 10% damage boost.

 

From there, things should be easier for those who are inexperienced with DH and how it plays. Feel free to roast me DH lovers, I know ToF is kind of a touchy skill.

Edited January 30 by Vinny.7260
Updated from Balance Patch

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

36 minutes ago, Vinny.7260 said:

Hunter's Premonition: This trait is currently BUGGED and does not need to be equipped to grant Aegis. Many DHs, in secret, are abusing this and using other traits. Fix the trait, DHs have to sacrifice F2 damage or cripple on CC.

Also add an ICD of 1 second to this. Bugged implementations though, lmao

Quote

Spear of Justice: We're in an age where there are plenty of new players unable to sightread the same way a lot of veterans are able to. This skill just needs a glowy projectile on the wind-up and the actual projectile being sent out. That'll make it more obvious for what people need to dodge and when.

Can't argue with this, will give weird looks at people that argue it. Probably wanna adjust the tether pull cd based on how obvious this becomes.

Quote

Test of Faith: There are actually a couple ways to go about this getting an adjustment. Do NOT do all of these at once. Pick one of them.

• Reduce the duration to 3 seconds instead of 6 seconds.
  • This reduces the amount of time a DH basically can own an area; it still allows them to punish people via quick combos but gets rid of the safety net against things like phantasms and pets.
• Reduce the pass-through damage by 45%.
  • Currently this skill has one of the highest coefficients in PvP. Reduces the damage from 1,619 (on Heavy Armor with none of the modifiers calculated) to 876 (on Heavy Armor with none of the modifiers calculated).
    • On Marauder Amulet with Lynx Rune and Aegis (+7% Strike Damage), 90% or more health (+7% Strike Damage), Retribution (+10% Strike Damage), Inspiring Virtue (+10% Strike Damage), Inspired Virtue (~5% Strike Damage), Zealot's Aggression (+10% Strike Damage), Pure of Sight (+10% Strike Damage), Big Game Hunter (+15% Strike Damage). Approximately 102% Strike Damage Increase. These numbers are hypothetical and against Heavy Armor.
      • Current Damage (non-critical hit): 3723
      • Current Damage (critical hit): 7197
      • Purposed Damage (non-critical hit): 1770
      • Purposed Damage (critical hit): 3421
• Recharge Increased to 35 seconds.
  • This would force Dragonhunter to have more down time and weigh in on whether to place the trap or not. It's currently able to drop the trap on a node, rotate to the next node and have it almost ready or it is ready.

Reasonable, as long as this is followed:

Quote

Do NOT do all of these at once. Pick one of them.

Edited January 29 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Kuya.6495]

None of the suggestions seem unreasonable to me but then again I don't run dh so I wouldn't be impacted. I appreciate that they address what actually gives people problems rather than a bucket list of pet peeves.

Edited January 29 by Kuya.6495

[Bunbury.8472]

I mean, people don't dodge gunflame... where the warrior lights up and shoots a massive glowing ball

why u think glowing light on spear will make people dodge? they wont

they will still get pulled into a trap bomb and die

so yeah, these changes will help players who are trying to improve and play better, but that's also not the same players who are crying about DH. so I mean, good suggestions, but even all of them together won't stop the tears 🥲

Edited January 29 by Bunbury.8472

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

32 minutes ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

I mean, people don't dodge gunflame... where the warrior lights up and shoots a massive glowing ball

why u think glowing light on spear will make people dodge? they wont

they will still get pulled into a trap bomb and die

so yeah, these changes will help players who are trying to improve and play better, but that's also not the same players who are crying about DH. so I mean, good suggestions, but even all of them together won't stop the tears 🥲

We don't want to stop the tears, we want to create a general aura of shame and embarrassment around people that self report not dodging the big obvious glowball and, instead of quietly working on that, demand that Anet make the big obvious glowball harder to land (or hit them for less)

Stopping tears? impossible. Making it -real- easy to laugh at people that don't do basic game mechanics? Possible, feasible, worth doing.

Edited January 29 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Master Ketsu.4569]

18 hours ago, Vinny.7260 said:

 This skill just needs a glowy projectile on the wind-up and the actual projectile being sent out. That'll make it more obvious for what people need to dodge and when.

This is a problem on at least 25% of the skills in the game, not just SoJ.

It's part of an overarching "Poor animation balance" neglect issue where skills with high tells are often unimpactful in PvP and skills with low tells have major impact. So now you have all this visual clutter from skills that literally do almost nothing while the abilities that actually win games have either no windup, look indistinguishable from auto attacks, are instant cast, look too similar to other abilities, only play a strong visual tell after the skill has already hit, or a combination of these. Then you have some skill that summons a giant turtle covering the point that does almost nothing and should usually be ignored. This is something Anet has been consistently failing more and more on with every expansion.

They really should just consider adding toggle-able skill bars/skill icons to the game. GW2 is has gotten to the point where the combat unironically feels less intuitive than GW1 did despite the fact that GW2 has action combat and a dodge bar.

Edited January 30 by Master Ketsu.4569

[maxwelgm.4315]

Good proposal. Personally I'd take the duration reduction with the bug fix - it would remain effective in bursting without too much of the leeway we currently have. Reducing the damage would mean hammer bonk teleport (which you have to give up sword/shield for) and true shot are the only remaining big bursts, which would be ok if they reduced burst across the board (we know it won't happen).

It's also fun to see people in all these threads claiming GW2 has good skill telegraphs for clout 🙂 Skills are telegraphed extremely badly in a general sense and for this very same reason we have so many traits which passively mitigate/sustain so you don't really even need to be able to see everything with the amazing falcon vision forum posters claim to possess.

[Frequency.6407]

I'll go with aegis fix. Other changes will kitten DH too much.

[Bunbury.8472]

 

2 hours ago, Frequency.6407 said:

I'll go with aegis fix. Other changes will kitten DH too much.

well they did that, and nerfed true shot and ToF. wonder if the complaints will stop? I doubt it