FtoPScrub.5476

It's very obvious they simply forgot to add the option to complete the achievement for people who have done Burden of Choice, which is an extremely easy mistake to make, and should be an easy fix. Burden of choice is a several years old achievement and and can be easily overlooked by an overworked designer particularly if their documentation is not good. Yes, it is possible that there is more to the issue, but what's more likely? That some rewards designer using one of their internal tools forgot to add options to this dialogue tree or that there is a large unresolved bug with their dialogue/reward system that is only occurring now despite said system being used in the exact same manner multiple times over the course of a decade? Let's not pretend like this is some massive underlying issue, because they've made this mistake countless times in the past and have fixed it quickly nearly every time.

Any chance you could get an eta for us? @Rubi Bayer.8493

Balance team has made it clear that they no longer want these traits in the game, but they forgot about a bunch of guardian cd traits. Honorable Staff Zealous Blade Invigorated Bulwark Power of the virtuous Stalwart Defender Focus Mastery

But they won't nerf other classes down to 40k. People have been asking that for months and the numbers keep getting higher. There isn't a point in keeping DH low relative to other classes that are being powercrept. I grow tired of this argument.

I can't see how this is anything but a simple fix. Not sure why it would take so long.

A greedy DPS specialization that does less DPS than FB/WB DPS specs which also bring more utility? This original theme of this class was a greedy power dps spec with significant control abilities, but daze on trap got nerfed a long time ago, and wards are useless against defiance bars. Okay, then surely it does amazing damage right? Except in a post SOTO world we have PWB doing 43.5K+, CFB doing 42K+ and DH still here barely touching 40K, not to even mention other classes that are pulling well in excess of 45K. From wingman data, right up until Soto release, it was the 3rd least played spec in raids, only Mirage and Untamed were worse. It has no support option. It has no condition variant. It has limited utility. It has below average CC. It brings almost zero group boons. You can't even fully play ranged due to the nature of traps + needing greatsword. It does one thing: power damage, and it doesn't even do it that well, so if I were to recommend a guardian spec to a new player, why on earth would I ever recommend DH? In addition to that, there are 2 major usability issues with how DH plays: 1) Reliance on resolution for damage. DH cannot maintain 100% resolution solo without making some big compromises. You need to pair yourself with another resolution giver, which aren't that common. This is needlessly restricting and is in opposition to "bring the player, not the class" philosophy Anet has going on right now. 2) Reliance on standing inside hitbox. Ranged classes are strong right now. Melee classes are a bit worse, but power guard takes that to a new level, because it isn't good enough to be in melee range, you have to be inside the enemy's hitbox to get optimal gs2 damage. Why is this an issue? Because there are several encounters that target the closest player, ie, usually the guy inside the hitbox. Sabetha's bombs will target the closest player. There are some encounters where there are damaging aoes inside the hitbox. Standing inside the hitbox on Whisper of Jormag, for instance, can be a death sentence. And of course there is at least one raid encounter where the boss has collision and you aren't even able to stand in the hitbox. Really hoping that DH gets some positive changes soon. I'm fully expecting outlier dps specs like 49k scourge and 44k soulbeast to get the nerf bat, and I don't want DH to approach those levels of OP, but even before Soto DH was just not a good spec. It has a very niche use with fractal speedrunners and thats about it

SW3 with full aftercast is 1400ms, but the "optimal" cast time is 1160ms which you have to stow or move in order to cancel. Seeing as how GS5/FOCUS4 were changed to remove the aftercast, it would make sense to fix this one as well, as right now anyone using sword has to stow in order to achieve optimal damage.

Not really. June 28th patch buffed CFB again. 40k cDPS and 33k qDPS. People just don't know it yet...

[PvE] DH has no diversity. Builds like WB can pDPS, cDPS, alacDPS. FB can cDPS, qDPS, HB. DH only has pDPS. It should come with a bit more utility to make up for that. Sharing some basic boons like might/fury on trap usage with be nice. I heard Piercing Light trait recently has been nerfed so there might be a convenient spot for that. Test of Faith is also weak despite being a somewhat interesting skill. Even if an enemy takes 1x crossing damage its still less than PoB which doesn't require enemy movement.

Offhand sword is really weak in terms of PvE damage. Worse than focus, and when paired with MH sword worse than longbow. Could really use some tuning up otherwise I don't see any power guardian elite specs using it in PvE outside of mobility. It already sees very little use in PvE and nothing changes by unbinding it from WB

Condi Firebrand benchmarks: Prepatch: 40,685 Postpatch: 42, 009 Difference: +1,324 Quickness CFB benchmarks: Prepatch: 34,526 Postpatch: 37,200 Difference: +2,674 Dragonhunter benchmarks: Prepatch: 36,275 Postpatch: 36,897 Difference: +622 If you're wondering why people play CFB over DH, this is why. If people with spreadsheets can predict the impact of damage buffs in advance, there's no reason Anet devs can't.

This^. Wingman isn't perfect but with a ratio of nearly 10 FBs per 1 DH it paints a pretty clear picture of the imbalance. This is due to years of Anet disregarding concerns that CFB was overshadowing other specs and that power guard was poorly performing. Most guards have longed transitioned to CFB primarily because performance reasons. They've since finally admitted something was wrong but instead of taking substantive steps they instead A) Choose an overly cautious(and inconsistent relative to other previously underperforming specs) approach to buffing power guard, giving minor coeff increases that have not materialized into putting the spec on par with it's peers. B) For some reason decide to continue to give CFB buffs that surpass that of power guard They tell us they're noticing people playing condi over power and want to change that, yet their actual changes are clearly reinforcing the idea that you're clearly better off playing CFB. Given that, if you're at all performance inclined, why would you play DH or WB? On Tuesday the patch will go live without any further buffs to power guard, DH will see a marginal and irrelevant increase of ~600 DPS, CFB will see much more, potentially 2K more than current. Power guard will still be taken in only low numbers because it is both weak and because CFB will be busted(given no additional changes). 3 months from now we'll all be huffing that copium that finally the next balance patch will fix power guard, we'll all watch the livestream, see as the devs say with a straight face that power guard is underperforming and that they'll aim to fix it, only for the actual patch notes to read something along the lines of: "increased an autoattack coefficient by .1". Meanwhile power slb, holo, weaver, warrior will be doing more damage using a rotation that doesn't require stows and animation cancelling.

It's funny revisiting these posts that turned out to be accurate. Anet, your buffs were pitifully inadequate to fix power DH, posts like these were present to give you feedback indicating so, not only did you completely ignore them, you tripled down. Now it's February, 2 balance patches later and like Deja Vu, once again pGuard gets minor coeff buffs that do not meaningfully make it up to par. Are you just going to pretend that the math works out when it clearly doesn't? Or do you really think a 600 dps increase will fix power guard? By the way, I saw some estimations earlier than CFB, with it's new mantras, could see a 2K DPS increase. If true, it's going to be hilarious watching Condi Quick FB beat DH. Remember what was said in the livestream: they were seeing CFB being taken over pGuard, so they wanted to address that, yet they did the exact opposite and gave significant buffs to CFB, and token ones to pGuard. I guess thats what happens when you ignore feedback.

Once again, the buffs were woefully inadequate. See you in 3 months for our quad-annual .1 coefficient increase to a AA chain while FB randomly gets 2K DPS buffs. And they wonder why people are choosing condi guard over power 😆

This is a follow up to my feedback from https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/120231-aug-28-patchpve-dh-still-sucks/page/2/#comment-1776156 which was based on an older patch. Since then DH got some decent buffs, but to keep it concise, it simply wasn't enough. Currently DH is not terrible as it was back then, but it's still just mediocre and sees very little play. According to wingman, in raids DH has only .82% spec representation. That's lower than all other elite specs except for BS, WB(also guard!), and UNT. There are few, if any, reasons why groups should take a DH over other competing specs. There are specs out there that can do more damage, there are specs out there that have more utility, and there are specs out there that do both better than DH could ever hope to. But the solution is easy, DH is a damage orientated spec with mediocre damage, so all that really needs to be done is increase some modifiers. Some simple suggestions that people have brought up before: * Increase the base damage bonus of Pure Of Sight * Increase the damage bonus of Big Game Hunter * Increase the damage of traps Anything from a ~5-10% increase in damage would make DH a strong contender. Please consider buffing DH in the next patch, as we're going on 3 years now of Condi Guard dominance. Thanks.