Dragonhunter - Power DPS

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Part of the current metagame.

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great.

Focused on: Direct damage, Utility, Burst.

Designed for:

Raid

Fractals

Expansions required:

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Overview

Dragonhunter is a heavy burst damage power DPS that excels in short fights (such as fractals) and raid encounters with short damage windows. It has strong CC and good mobility, and provides a good amount of AoE

Might and

Vulnerability. In addition it brings very high defensive support for a DPS class, with a party wide block in , a strong burst heal in , and the ability to bring Guardian utilities such as and .

Dragonhunter's biggest weakness is that its damage drops off after the initial burst, which causes it to have weaker dps than some builds in long fights. It is also somewhat reliant on Support Chronomancers and other Guardians to help it maintain

Retaliation.

On fights where you are confident in maintaining

Aegis for and have a Thief - Boon Thief, consider running Virtues instead of Zeal.

Skill Bar

GreatswordHealingUtilityElite

Sword/Focus

Weapon Variants

Shield provides a knockback, which can be useful for helping with pushing (e.g. seekers on VG), at the cost of damage.
Scepter provides ranged damage, which can be useful and is recommended on bosses where sword might be too risky, e.g. Deimos with the Rapid Decay mechanic, or where mechanics might force you out of melee range, e.g. Xera (clearing shards), Dhuum (Death Marks), and Cardinal Adina (pillars).

Skill Variants

Healing Skill

can be used to blind mobs that can knockback (Sabetha and Gorseval) or deal a lot of damage (Xera).
can be used to help nullify niche mechanics, such as Slothasor's shake attack.

Utilities

provides more Retaliation as well as a stun break and Stability.
can be used for more Retaliation and Stability.
can be used to Aegis big hits for your group like the knockback from Gorseval, the timed bombs from Matthias or the shockwave from Deimos.
provides additional CC if needed.
or if projectile defense is needed.

Elite Skill

Use to help slacking Mesmers keep up Quickness. It can also be nice at bosses where the group is split, such as Sabetha when doing cannons or Matthias in general.

Specializations

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Virtues Variant

Bring Virtues instead of Zeal if you are confident Aegis can be maintained for and you have a Thief - Boon Thief providing you boons.

Equipment

6x

Superior Rune of the Scholar

18x

Mighty Infusion

Variants

When running this build overcaps crit chance with fury, retaliation, , , etc. If you are confident in the uptime of these buffs, you can run more Valkyrie gear for extra survivability.
Swap for slaying sigils or where applicable in fractals

Consumables

Food

Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

Nourishment (1 h):

+100 Power+70 Ferocity+10% Experience from Kills

Consumable

Utility

Potent Superior Sharpening Stone

Potent Superior Sharpening Stone

Nourishment (1 h):

Gain power equal to 3% of your precisionGain power equal to 6% of your ferocity+10 Experience from kills

Consumable

Usage

While the rotation may seem complicated, it can be boiled down to short windows where you have damage buffs from and , which you try to fill with your highest damage skills such as , and .

Opening Rotation

Precast
Weapon swap

Loop Rotation

Autoattack chain twice
Autoattack chain twice
Weapon swap
Autoattack chain 5 times (until comes off cooldown)
Weapon swap
Autoattack chain twice
Weapon swap
Autoattack chain 3 times (until is almost off cooldown)
Autoattack chain once
Weapon swap
Repeat from step 1

Notes

Never interrupt your greatsword autoattack chain.
can be cancelled by walking or stowing your weapon. This dramatically speeds up the aftercast of the skill.
Use and (especially if the boss has adds) inside the boss's hitbox.
Use with so it benefits from the damage multiplier. If all charges are full and you don't have Spear of Justice up one charge can be used.
will recharge your . This allows you to have a higher uptime when there are adds around. Always try to keep up as much as possible.

Breakbar

is your strongest hard CC, but it should only be used in emergencies since it's a considerable DPS loss, unless you are running which will offset the DPS loss via the sharing of the passive.
The pulls from and can be used for CC if needed. However, you will lose the uptime on .
adds Slow to all your traps, dealing 100 more breakbar damage with each second. This is both soft CC and hard CC.
pulls and applies Slow on your target.
deals 150 breakbar damage and knocks back enemies.

Video Examples

Encounter-Specific Tips

Spirit Vale

Vale Guardian

can block all the blue AoEs.
is a good gap closer as well as a strong heal, use it wisely.

Ghost events

Try to look useful!
Pull stuff together.
You might want to use Greatsword + Sword/Focus for higher mobility.

Gorseval the Multifarious

Consider playing the virtues variant here because it is possible to maintain 100% aegis uptime when dodging his knockbacks and pulling in the adds quickly.
You can use Shield of Courage to share aegis for his knockback attack.
can hit you quite hard due to Retaliation from Gorseval. To negate that you can use , which allows you to output DPS in the CC phase without losing the Scholar Rune buff.

Sabetha the Saboteur

Use your to jump on the launchpads fast if you want to go up to a cannon.
Try to use Aegis for cannon shots or kicks from adds that people might not be able to dodge.
If you use your burst for it you can one-shot Karde's turrets in the last phase. However, this is not advised unless turrets are overrunning the platform. Simply dropping your on turrets should make a significant impact without ruining your positioning.

Salvation Pass

Slothasor

is useful against the slublings.
can block everything at Slothasor which is especially useful when he does his shake attack, as many have trouble dodging it. It can also block the fear that Slothasor applies after the CC phase which is valuable, especially for the last CC phase at 10%.
If needed, you can pull slublings with your . Keep in mind that it pierces, so multiple slublings can be pulled with it if used optimally.
potentially stronger and cheaper than
as killing slublings occurs frequently.

Bandit Trio

Run for this fight to mitigate all the annoying CC.
Since you are somewhat tanky and have a lot of useful CC in the form of , , , and traps, it is a good choice for you to deal with the mortars, as you are able to solo the snipers on the bridge that respawn between mortar #2 and #3 really quickly and reliably.

Matthias Gabrel

You can take the role of the main reflect in this fight; however, you have to keep in mind that the cooldown of is 30 seconds-the same as Matthias' invulnerability bubble. Thus, you need decent Alacrity uptime and must cleanse chill as fast as possible if it is applied to you.
- A way to always have up in time without having to rely on Alacrity is replacing Radiance with Virtues and using . You will lose quite a bit of DPS in doing so though.
- On a sidenote, all of Matthias' attacks in abomination phase have longer cooldowns. Accordingly, you don't have to worry about not having up in time.
In the phase from 40% until the end blocks become very valuable. A well-timed Aegis can block the undodgeable timed bombs. The same principle applies to the damage from the ghosts, which is blockable but not dodgeable.
can be brought for 10 player stability, which can help greatly during abomination and rain phases.

Stronghold of the Faithful

Escort

Since almost all the mobs have some kind of annoying CC it is definitely recommended to bring .
If you need help with capturing the towers, a Shield is useful for knocking mobs out of the capture circle or away from each other.
Use your immobilizes and cripples to slow down the wargs engaging from the front.

Keep Construct

Consider playing Guardian - Power DPS here, since you can keep up Aegis for pretty easily in the burst phases as long as you avoid the statues.
You can assist in pushing the orb into the rifts by pulling them with . Be careful with it though, as the impact of the spear hitting the orb will push it away from you a tiny bit before you can pull it in.
You can use everything you have including for CC without any drawback since after each CC phase,there will be some DPS downtime.
You can share aegis with to help your team when the room is filled with small AoEs before the last burn phase.

Xera

You can deal with Xera's adds extremely effectively by pulling them in and/or bursting them down with the Greatsword.
Try to perform your rotation in a rhythm that allows you to be on Greatsword when Xera is spawning adds and on Scepter when she is the only target.
Your pretty decent ranged damage with Scepter allows you to assist with clearing shards and standing on the buttons surrounding the big shards that you have to destroy both before the fight and when you get teleported to the other platform.

Bastion of the Penitent

Cairn the Indomitable

can be used for mobility.
You can use to block red circles or body block shards.
Bring for 10 player stability.

Mursaat Overseer

Consider playing the virtues variant here as keeping up aegis on this fight is very easy.
You can use to share aegis and block the explosions from adds.

Samarog

Consider playing the virtues variant here as you can easily keep up aegis by dodging Samarog's attacks and jumping the shockwaves.
You can bring for more CC. You can also consider .
Consider bringing for 10 player stability.

Deimos

You can share aegis to block Deimos's pizza attack or Mind Crush.