Build:Dragonhunter - Power DPS

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Strike damage, Utility and Burst damage

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on September 28, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

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 Vulnerability. In addition, it brings very high defensive support for a DPS class, with a party wide block in Shield of Courage, a strong burst heal in Wings of Resolve, and the ability to bring Guardian utilities such as Wall of Reflection and Hallowed Ground.

Dragonhunter is reliant Resolution for maximum damage. It provides ~45% uptime itself, but ideally will be supported by other Guardians, or Renegades with Spirit Boon.

Skill Bar

Greatsword

Sword/Focus

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Shield provides a knockback, which can be useful for helping with pushing (e.g. seekers on VG), at the cost of damage.

Skill Variants

Healing

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

Utility

• "Stand Your Ground!" provides more Resolution as well as a stun break and Stability.
• Hallowed Ground can be used for more Resolution and Stability.
• "Advance!" 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.
• Hammer of Wisdom provides additional CC if needed.
• Wall of Reflection or Shield of the Avenger if projectile defense is needed.

Elite

• Use "Feel My Wrath!" 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.
• Signet of Courage can be used for great passive healing for your team.

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Specializations

Specialization Variant

Radiance can be swapped out for Virtues. This deals significantly more damage, but is dependant on being able to maintain high uptime of Aegis, which is unrealistic on many encounters.

• You will need to adjust gear to make up for the lack of crit chance (see below).

Equipment

Head
Dragon

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Dragon

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Dragon

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Dragon

Accessory
Dragon

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Dragon

Ring
Dragon

Ring
Dragon

Greatsword
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Sword
Berserker

Focus
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Equipment Variants

• Dragon stats gear is a very minor increase in damage over Berserker stats, so running full Berserker stats is totally fine. The optimal balance of Dragon/Berserker will also depend on your buffs so a gear optimiser will be needed to know exactly what you'll need.
• Swap Sigil of Superior Sigil of Force for slaying sigils or Sigil of Superior Sigil of the Night where applicable in fractals.

Virtues Variant

Head
Assassin

Shoulders
Assassin

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Assassin

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Assassin

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Greatsword
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Sword
Berserker

Focus
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Consumables

Food

Utility

• • is slightly stronger if running the virtues variant.

Usage

Rotation

While the rotation may seem complicated, it can be boiled down to short windows where you have damage buffs from Big Game Hunter and Symbolic Avenger which you try to fill with your highest damage skills such as Whirling Wrath, Zealot's Defense and Procession of Blades.

Opener

1. Precast Shield of Wrath
2. Sword of Justice
3. Procession of Blades
4. Spear of Justice
5. Ray of Judgment
6. Symbol of Blades
7. Zealot's Defense
8. Weapon swap
9. Symbol of Resolution
10. Whirling Wrath
11. Sword of Justice
12. Dragon's Maw
13. Binding Blade
14. Sword of Justice
15. Auto-Attack chain twice
16. Leap of Faith
17. Symbol of Resolution
18. Whirling Wrath
19. Weapon swap
20. Proceed to the Sword Loop

Sword Loop

1. Zealot's Defense
2. Symbol of Blades
3. Auto-Attack chain three times
4. Symbol of Blades
5. Zealot's Defense
6. Weapon swap

• Only cast Ray of Judgment when the tether from Spear of Justice is active.

Greatsword Loop

1. Symbol of Resolution
2. Whirling Wrath
3. Binding Blade
4. Leap of Faith
5. Auto-Attack chain twice
6. Symbol of Resolution
7. Whirling Wrath
8. Weapon swap

• In some intervals towards the end of a greatsword section your cooldowns will line up so that Whirling Wrath is ready but Symbol of Resolution still has a few seconds of recharge and you have nothing but auto-attacks available. In these instances, simply cast Whirling Wrath and then Symbol of Resolution before weapon swapping.

General Tips

• Procession of Blades and Spear of Justice should be cast together on cooldown.
  • You can delay these skills a little to pair them with other high-damage skills for an overall increase in DPS.
• Never interrupt your greatsword autoattack chain.
• Symbol of Resolution and Zealot's Defense can both be cancelled by walking or stowing your weapon. This dramatically speeds up the aftercast of the skill.
• Use Whirling Wrath and Binding Blade (especially if the boss has adds) inside the boss's hitbox.
• When swapping to sword, Zealot's Defense will always be your first and last skill cast.
• Use Sword of Justice with Spear of Justice 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.
• Renewed Justice will recharge your Spear of Justice. This allows you to have a higher Big Game Hunter uptime when there are adds around. Always try to keep Spear of Justice up as much as possible if it's being recharged with this interaction.

Breakbar

• Bane Signet is your strongest hard CC, but it should only be used in emergencies since it's a considerable DPS loss, unless you are running Perfect Inscriptions which will offset the DPS loss via the sharing of the passive.
• The pulls from Spear of Justice and Binding Blade can be used for CC if needed. However, you will lose the uptime on Big Game Hunter.
• Piercing Light adds Slow to all your traps, dealing 100 more breakbar damage with each second. This is both soft CC and hard CC.
• Dragon's Maw pulls and applies Slow on your target.
• Shield of Absorption deals 150 breakbar damage and knocks back enemies.

Video Examples

• Zeal rotation

Encounter-Specific Tips

Spirit Vale

Vale Guardian

• Binding Blade can be used inside of Vale Guardian's hitbox while seekers are nearby for bonus damage.
• Shield of Courage can block all the blue AoEs.
• Wings of Resolve is a good gap closer as well as a strong heal, use it wisely.

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.
• Procession of Blades can hit you quite hard due to 24px Retaliation from Gorseval. To negate that you can use Litany of Wrath, which allows you to output DPS in the CC phase without losing health.

Sabetha the Saboteur

• Use your Wings of Resolve 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.
• Time your burst for when Knuckles is stunned.
• 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 Symbol of Punishment on turrets should make a significant impact without ruining your positioning.

Salvation Pass

Slothasor

• Binding Blade can be used inside of Slothasor's hitbox while slublings are nearby for bonus damage.
• Shield of Courage 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 Spear of Justice. 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 "Stand Your Ground!" 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 Bane Signet, Spear of Justice, Shield of Absorption, 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 Wall of Reflection 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 Wall of Reflection up in time without having to rely on Alacrity is replacing Radiance with Virtues and using Master of Consecrations. 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 Wall of Reflection 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.
• "Stand Your Ground!" 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 "Stand Your Ground!".
• 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

• You can assist in pushing the orb into the rifts by pulling them with Spear of Justice. 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 Bane Signet for CC without any drawback since after each CC phase,there will be some DPS downtime.
• You can share aegis with Shield of Courage 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

• Wings of Resolve can be used for mobility.
• Bring "Stand Your Ground!" 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 Shield of Courage to 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 Hammer of Wisdom for more CC. You can also consider Perfect Inscriptions.
• Consider bringing "Stand Your Ground!" for 10 player stability.

Deimos

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