Zephoid.4263

Try playing one then. I assure you literally nothing you said there is relevant to this discussion.

Are there ANY viable builds left for guard that don't use trapper? I understand people hate stealth and can commiserate, but when every other build gets nerfed and all guard has left is the meme build, its hard to say even that should go. Before anyone says 'well they could buff guard if trapper was nerfed' thats not how Anet works. They will nerf a class into oblivion and leave it there for years (ele, druid, chrono).

Guards only have ~6 sources of burning in the entire class. So yeah, the primary 2 sources getting nerfed is a big deal. Power guard has ~3 abilities that actually do reasonable damage. And none of them are very burst focused. Guard has almost no actual sources of block, just F3 and shield 4 give aegis. Guard has the standard 1 heal and only gets anything more if they take staff (very low damage) or meditation grandmaster trait in an awful line. If they take the grandmaster trait, they lose access to DH because 2 other damage lines are necessary to actually function. Overall, power guard is bad. Medi guard has been C-D teir for pretty much forever and has been collateral damage for every guard nerf in the past 2 years. So no, they aren't tanky and they don't do much damage.

Yea damage was nerfed because 90% of the players didnt enjoy dying in 0.5 seconds (best case scenario).They want to move/hit and get hit/dodge/tank/heal/out maneuver and bla bla bla.The one shot fiesta that later became insta kill or be insta killed roulette is over because only people that cant play and need1 click 1 kill enjoyed it.Welcome to the pvp experience you know that duels from legit 1shot classes like power mesmers usually took good 30s?then feb rolls in, and 2 berserker holos duel for 20minutes and cant even kitten kill each-other, and the peak of victory is getting your enemy to leave to resustain for 10s, after struggling for kitten 2minutes.I played duoQ with my new to gw2 firend, me powerslb, him weaver. out of 8 random players, ALWAYS at least 6 are tanks/supports, 1 is a troll build and 1 is a dps.And this is established norm over 20+ games, there is a huge problem here. 30s? More like <1s. Both of these kills were from stealth <1s instant down on 1200T ~27k hp. I hate the current meta, but its still better than pre-nerf. The initial nerf was good, then nerf down the outliers (ranger pets really needed a nerf, they did more damage than whole classes), then start buffing up numbers slowly. The last part never happened, despite Anet promising they would be watching PVP. So we are stuck with a meta where whole classes struggle to do any damage and everyone is a bunker.

DH doesn't use Torch. Core guard can, but core guard has even LESS cover condis than DH, no stealth, and medi guard really has never been a top teir build.GS is god awful. 2 is your only source of damage and that has a self slow on it.Hammer has been nerfed so many times its not in the discussion. It was barely viable at the best time in its history in PVP, but apparently that warranted multiple rounds of nerfs. So how about we talk about RELEVANT unlockable, of which guard has only 1.Hits must be generated for condis to be applied. So if the hit is blocked, the burn is blocked. What you fail to mention is that stun locking DHs is trivial. They also have really bad condi clear with only F2 on most builds.

Right... shield has more dps than necro. I'd say it was a good joke, but it isn't.

Ppl use shield excessively, bow is not bad atm for a support but hammer which could be awesome just doesnt hit much. Weapons are decent, nerf sword 100% doesn’t have to be a lot 25% nerf to damage condi + power and shield w.e nerf leave rest of them the same but wouldn’t mind hammer hitting more often Please, find me a remotely meta build that uses shield.There is no build that uses bow. Healbrand was nerfed out of existence.Spirit Hammer has been bad for literally forever. And it actually got nerfs at one point, despite being straight unused. Just to make sure it never was.Sword has been the only viable one. Guard is only viable atm because of the CC nerf. Lets bring CC damage back and watch how guard goes back to straight useless. Having little to no stab, no prot, few stun breaks, and little condi cleanse makes a pretty awful build. Burn guard was almost always the bunker breaker and almost every class atm is a bunker due to the lack of damage across the board. Fixing the zero damage CC problem solves a lot of the most UP classes too, as any sort of dps warrior was hit way to hard by that silly change. Are u insane - metabattle.com literally the guard meta be it cheese or not has shield as an option and it’s more often abused than almost all the variants? Some ppl use the bow on supports- I see some ppl use bow on their variants of meta like blackjack a very good guard which is only reason I really mention it. 2/4 spirit weapons are meta 3/4 good 1/4 just don’t work much cuz it’s animation is bad, but this is gw2 and that’s good for most things especially guard. My statement stands...Metabattle has it in the flex slot... with procession of blades in the running for that same slot. Literally everyone complaining about traps on this forum complains about procession, which should give you an idea of where that flex slot is going. The metabattle build is literally taking the 2s of protection on Test of Faith over procession which is.... questionable. There is also only ONE active cleanse on that whole build and contemplation of purity is in that same flex slot. No one is taking shield. I've seen it ONCE in the last 40 games and that was on an pretty awful core guard.

Ppl use shield excessively, bow is not bad atm for a support but hammer which could be awesome just doesnt hit much. Weapons are decent, nerf sword 100% doesn’t have to be a lot 25% nerf to damage condi + power and shield w.e nerf leave rest of them the same but wouldn’t mind hammer hitting more often Please, find me a remotely meta build that uses shield.There is no build that uses bow. Healbrand was nerfed out of existence.Spirit Hammer has been bad for literally forever. And it actually got nerfs at one point, despite being straight unused. Just to make sure it never was.Sword has been the only viable one. Guard is only viable atm because of the CC nerf. Lets bring CC damage back and watch how guard goes back to straight useless. Having little to no stab, no prot, few stun breaks, and little condi cleanse makes a pretty awful build. Burn guard was almost always the bunker breaker and almost every class atm is a bunker due to the lack of damage across the board. Fixing the zero damage CC problem solves a lot of the most UP classes too, as any sort of dps warrior was hit way to hard by that silly change.

Ah right.. all those ppl using hammer, bow, and shield. You know, literally no one. Therefore we need to nerf them.

Anet nerfed DH after HoT release. They have never buffed it into viability again. It took a nerfing of EVERY class to put it in a state where it could compete. It doesn't take ages, it doesn't happen. They are perfectly content to leave a poorly performing class out of viability (chrono since nerf). My 2nd point in no way agrees with you. A build is the culmination of its parts, no matter where it comes from. Most specs don't have more than 1 viable build. Requiring more is ignorant of how the game works and anet's dedication to 'balance'. You don't buff a class that already has a meta viable build. None of that agrees with you.

I am always confused by people arguing like this. If this is true, then DH can never get buffed without making it OP, because of the rune. Change/delete the rune, then buff the rest of DH - slightly, noone likes passive trap bots, but the pushing/pulling playstyle was fun and challenging. This also enables more build diversity, because the rune is less of a straight up addon to some few burst builds. Thats not how Anet has worked since the game came out. They will delete the rune and leave DH with its current awful state for years. If DH currently HAS a viable build, it doesn't need buffed. Therefore your logic is flawed.

trapper runes have been this way for a long time. Its a glass cannon build with 1 stun break, almost no condi cleanse, low quality boon generation, and usually no invuln. The problem is that no class can do damage right now, so the ONE class that can burst people who literally can't respond to basic game interactions is considered OP. Its sad, but thats what is left of PVP population. Without the rune, DH is straight garbage teir again. It was on par with core engy and chrono for lack of viable builds. Lack of swiftness anywhere relevant in guard skillset makes Lynx necessary, which completely kills build diversity. Bring back damage on CCs (abet at a lower value than pre-feb) and see if DH is still viable. I expect not.

DH isn't competitive without Trapper. Power has one trap that does good damage, the rest have had their boons and condis nerfed to the point of near useless while their damage has never been good. Condi is a meme glass cannon build and is almost strictly worse than core. Removing trapper removes DH.

Are there really people saying guard shouts are OP? One of the least useful sets of skills in this game. My god we have fallen low.

Its not called viable, its called kitten. Not really an argument or justification. If you are just mad, we can just ignore this thread. I am not mad, just think its bad design. Explain. Traps are nearly straight useless in pvp without the rune. The rune creates a whole build in a class that has been underperforming since the first set of nerfs it got after release. It also gives condi, which doesn't work with any traps (unless you are going condi, in which case you are glass cannon with almost no defensive traits and are using power traps for condi damage). using a trap gives 3 seconds of stealth and superspeed, with no CD. DH runs 4 traps. Some condi ranger runs about 1-2 traps but one trap has 10 second CD. If you dont think this is brainless, then I have nothing to say. 4 traps= 1 stun break and nearly no condi cleanse. So you are running a glass cannon build that keeps breaking its own stealth. You have superspeed, but no swiftness so you have to rely on using traps for map mobility. Nah, the problem isn't trapper. 1) F2 = Condi cleanse.2) Yes, it is a bit cannot build. But given its high super speed uptime and stealth, it can kite around. But yea, of course, if all you know is stay on node, then everything dies pretty fast. F2 cleanses 3 condis and has a .5s delay. Any condi build is easily going to overwhelm that. If you are playing power trapper, you have bow which is a rather UP weapon. Most tank necros can 1v1 you indefinitely and you aren't putting up great damage numbers unless people stand in your traps without inv/block. You have a pretty good hit and run build, but no skilled player is complaining about our damage. If you are playing condi, you can't kite and do damage. Almost all of your burst comes from Zealot's Flame and its lesser version. Zealots fire is an unguided slow projectile. So no, you can't kite and expect to be viable. Any class with a range weapon doesn't care about you. Only ele and rev aren't running a ranged set and many revs are bringing shiro and have superspeed access too. 1) You simply said there was NOOOOO condi cleanse, and I was responding to that. 2) I really have nothing to respond to your second point. You dont even kitten understand what build I was referring to. And kittens like you overwhelm the forum and therefore might bias the balances patches. And maybe this is why the meta becomes more and more unfun to play.Please re-read the quote you are referencing. I never said there was 'NOOOOOO' condi cleanse. You weren't referencing any build. You were making conjectures about a nebulous build you never specify. The problem here comes from your imprecise assertions.