Guild Wars 2

Guys, the patch, for various reasons, created a precipitous drop in the price of mats for regen / condi ranger. I don’t know if this has been pointed out yet, but just look:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/37906

Rangers, unite! We will rain conditions upon our foes without mercy. So say we all.

Chopps, I value your input on Rangers. So before I get too hyped about Apothecary gear, could you explain where there “Condis Suck in PvE” theorycrafting comes from?

Probably a good investment for WvW anyway, yeah?

I’m in southsun cove doing well against karka with nearly full apothecary. It gives my pets a lot of longevity in battle with the standard oakheart salve / Dwyana rune build. I prefer fortifying bond and agility training over maxing beastmastery (in pve I’ll usually take signet of the beastmaster). Sometimes I even take 20 in nature magic because spirits work very well in pve, despite the claim against them. It’s not a banner, no, but it’s something. And something is better than nothing, particularly when it procs at 70% rate for the entire group.*

The reason conditions work well against karka, and in wvw, is because conditions counter high toughness / low vitality. In contrast, in many dungeons, bosses have high vitality and low toughness, which favors the reflection. Oh, man, is reflection strong or what? 47 second Lupicus kill with 2 mesmers in the group? WHAT!?!

The other unique thing about this build is the way it offers burst. Usually, it’s hard for professions to deal with a bunker but usually that’s not an issue because the bunker can’t really do much damage, particularly if you have condition removal. But a ranger, well, the cat hits like a truck no matter what gear you wear and with perma regen, you’re easily one of the most formidable opponents on the battlefield. Sigils of nullification and other boon removal (dare I say wvw boon removal traps?) will become a counter to all boon builds, of which there are many types.

Right now they are still awfully expensive though, so I’d hang on for a while. There’s plenty of time and regen / apothecary ranger is here to stay in the meta for probably a long time.

*What I find with spirits is that if you place them out of cleave range you are usually okay. They will eventually despawn – you don’t have to recast right away because the spirit boon will stay up for a short duration. When the boss / champion is at roughly 20% health, feel free to re-cast right on top of him. Do not be afraid to use your powerful healing power loaded healing spring right on top of the spirits. Why not? Keep that frost and stone up. Even if the boss drops them, you will have gotten off their secondaries and by the time the boon goes down, the boss is dead anyways. I use spirits all throughout Arah—except Lupicus, where I don’t want them anyways. Usually I need SotW, SoS (traited with signet of beastmaster), and SoR or QZ. I find lighting reflexes too unpredictable to be of great use in many boss fights, however, it’s great in wvw. A lot of people dislike ranger utilities but I often have trouble deciding which ones to load out. They’re all really good.

PsionicDingo.2065:

Chopps, I value your input on Rangers. So before I get too hyped about Apothecary gear, could you explain where there “Condis Suck in PvE” theorycrafting comes from?

Probably a good investment for WvW anyway, yeah?

I’m not chopps, but run rrr build in full apoth gear. He probably is refeRring to how the max 25 stacks on conditions get applied faster fRom other professions and you will see diminishing returns. But I’m solo wvw its op.

Goldmember.4368:

PsionicDingo.2065:

Chopps, I value your input on Rangers. So before I get too hyped about Apothecary gear, could you explain where there “Condis Suck in PvE” theorycrafting comes from?

Probably a good investment for WvW anyway, yeah?

I’m not chopps, but run rrr build in full apoth gear. He probably is refeRring to how the max 25 stacks on conditions get applied faster fRom other professions and you will see diminishing returns. But I’m solo wvw its op.

Dude, I don’t know everything. Feel free to chime in. There’s tons of really good rangers that browse these forums: Sebrent, Xsorsus, Durzlla, jubskie, dojo, kenshie, and on and on and on. Faux, gasmask, valroth, and on and on and on. You guys are all awesome IMHO.

Conditions aren’t terrible in PVE, but you don’t need more then 1 Condition user in your group if they can apply 25 stacks of bleeding instantly.

Karka Shells aren’t to bad, and Apothecary gear itself is reasonable.

What isn’t reasonable is Passion Flowers.

… Dont forget Puandro. This comunity really changed to the better since a coupple of month. Taking good advice all the time

Condition gear is bad in PvE because direct damage is always superior. The condition cap is just another nail in the coffin but not the main culprit.

I do extremely well in pve with a condi build outlined in link below, Can use life or corruption stacks. If anyone needs me to make a video soloing a ridiculous amounts of mobs or 80 champs with this build let me know, I’d be happy to do so.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.0|c.1f.h1k.f.1f.h5|7.1f.h1k.8.1f.h6|1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d|31m.0.31m.0.31m.0.31m.0.31m.0.2u.0|0.u18b.u47c.a3.0|0.0|4j.52.50.4r.0|e

I usually go with pets deal more condition dmg instead of crits, etc

The PROBLEM has always be the flowers… -.-" with only x3blooming spawns = meah

so don’t farm the flowers, farm the gold to buy the set of TP, all you need is armor/weps, then get the trinkets with guild commendations/fractals etc

Goldmember.4368:

I’m not chopps, but run rrr build in full apoth gear. He probably is refeRring to how the max 25 stacks on conditions get applied faster fRom other professions and you will see diminishing returns. But I’m solo wvw its op.

I value all input. I’m trying to learn more about the DR and stacks with conditions. I never paid it much mind (as I run direct damage on my Thief and Ranger), ankittenrying to learn so I can branch out.

Xsorus.2507:

Conditions aren’t terrible in PVE, but you don’t need more then 1 Condition user in your group if they can apply 25 stacks of bleeding instantly.

How exactly does that work? Burning isn’t stacks, it’s duration, right? Same as poison?

Puandro.3245:

Condition gear is bad in PvE because direct damage is always superior. The condition cap is just another nail in the coffin but not the main culprit.

That’s how I’ve been…conditioned.

Chopps.5047:

Dude, I don’t know everything. Feel free to chime in. There’s tons of really good rangers that browse these forums: Sebrent, Xsorsus, Durzlla, jubskie, dojo, kenshie, and on and on and on. Faux, gasmask, valroth, and on and on and on. You guys are all awesome IMHO.

Absolutely. It’s one reason I’ve gravitated towards the Ranger over my Thief since Christmas. The community is helpful, generally open-minded, patient, and there’s just good general knowledge about the game that I can’t find anywhere else.

Well, that and so far the Ranger reminds me of my LOTR Warden, in a way. Coolest class I’ve ever played, even if WoW was my go to MMO until GW2 hit.

You can get an apothecary ascended backpiece now. Do the 25 Southsun achievs and get the exotic version, and then in the mystic forge you use it+250 karka shells, 100 passion flowers, and 50 ectos.

Besides that, use laurels and guild commendations for ascended apothecary gear. There’s no point in getting ascended stat combos that you can get with exotics since the stat difference is not that big.

I just need 1 more week to have full ascended Apothecary.

Zenith.7301:

You can get an apothecary ascended backpiece now. Do the 25 Southsun achievs and get the exotic version, and then in the mystic forge you use it+250 karka shells, 100 passion flowers, and 50 ectos.

Besides that, use laurels and guild commendations for ascended apothecary gear. There’s no point in getting ascended stat combos that you can get with exotics since the stat difference is not that big.

I just need 1 more week to have full ascended Apothecary.

Glad you said something, i would of never bothered with the Southsun thing, guess i know what i’ll be doing now.

Xsorus.2507:

Zenith.7301:

You can get an apothecary ascended backpiece now. Do the 25 Southsun achievs and get the exotic version, and then in the mystic forge you use it+250 karka shells, 100 passion flowers, and 50 ectos.

Besides that, use laurels and guild commendations for ascended apothecary gear. There’s no point in getting ascended stat combos that you can get with exotics since the stat difference is not that big.

I just need 1 more week to have full ascended Apothecary.

Glad you said something, i would of never bothered with the Southsun thing, guess i know what i’ll be doing now.

I did it for the flower backpiece. Looks awesome on my ranger. Ascended backpiece doesnt have an infussion slot ive read. Cant confirm atm.

PsionicDingo.2065:

Chopps, I value your input on Rangers. So before I get too hyped about Apothecary gear, could you explain where there “Condis Suck in PvE” theorycrafting comes from?

Probably a good investment for WvW anyway, yeah?

Many reasons. First is that conditions themselves are a natural counter to high toughness and low vitality – since they do relatively low (or at least lower) damage that ignores armour. Most monsters in PvE don’t have particularly high toughness, but most of them (particularly the more difficult ones) have a metric kittenton of health. So in most cases a power based build will beat a condition build in downing any enemy.

Second is a technical issue: most conditions only stack duration, and bleeds have a 25 stack cap. So having more than 1 condition build in any group generally significantly decreases their effectiveness. “White damage” has no such caps.

In short, don’t bother with conditions for PvE. They are quite good at PvP though!

Thanks for that, Proxy.

They are still very expensive but probably this event will stay up for a while and their price will go down a lot more since there is a ton of people in southsun.

Zenith.7301:

You can get an apothecary ascended backpiece now. Do the 25 Southsun achievs and get the exotic version, and then in the mystic forge you use it+250 karka shells, 100 passion flowers, and 50 ectos.

Besides that, use laurels and guild commendations for ascended apothecary gear. There’s no point in getting ascended stat combos that you can get with exotics since the stat difference is not that big.

I just need 1 more week to have full ascended Apothecary.

Grats! Get yourself a torch and axe while you wait. I also like shortbow: 100% combo finish in frost trap FTW.

ProxyDamage.9826:

PsionicDingo.2065:

Chopps, I value your input on Rangers. So before I get too hyped about Apothecary gear, could you explain where there “Condis Suck in PvE” theorycrafting comes from?

Probably a good investment for WvW anyway, yeah?

Many reasons. First is that conditions themselves are a natural counter to high toughness and low vitality – since they do relatively low (or at least lower) damage that ignores armour. Most monsters in PvE don’t have particularly high toughness, but most of them (particularly the more difficult ones) have a metric kittenton of health. So in most cases a power based build will beat a condition build in downing any enemy.

Second is a technical issue: most conditions only stack duration, and bleeds have a 25 stack cap. So having more than 1 condition build in any group generally significantly decreases their effectiveness. “White damage” has no such caps.

In short, don’t bother with conditions for PvE. They are quite good at PvP though!

Be aware, this has been changing. Southsun is full of enemies counter by apothecary builds and I’m willing to bet R Hrouda and Co .’s new dungeon will bring more of that.

Chopps.5047:

Be aware, this has been changing. Southsun is full of enemies counter by apothecary builds and I’m willing to bet R Hrouda and Co .’s new dungeon will bring more of that.

Actually it’s mostly just the Karkas in Southsun… the rest seem like typical HP sponges, particularly the breeze riders.

I hope so, though. It would be nice to have different forms of damage being better and worse in different areas of the game. Instead of having “white” damage be king and queen, and conditions being the red headed step children of the group…

Apothecary gear regen build will not perform as good in WvW as in Spvp due to higher crit damage will out damage your regen and condition duration reduce food are real good counter to any condition build; as I understand thats a solo roaming build but a lot of good solo players in WvW use condition reduce food, you can beat bad players all day with any kind of build anyways. As I stated before It also will make you pretty useless in group fight, if you talking about general in WvW power build will be better for a ranger than condition build cuz that will make longbow aoe actually hurt, still if you insist on going trapper for choke point holding then you dont need that heal effect stats in WvW because if the zerg go through choke point you wont be holding your circle with you regen anyways not like in Spvp you can sometimes hold a 1v2 on point if you are a better player. So be careful on spending your gold on Apothecary gear in PvE/WvW

Ooo this is good news. Might have to go there on my ranger. Do you think an upscaled level 35 would be OK on the island? I would probably be with 1 or 2 other upscaled players too.

Possibly. Just be cautious.

Southsun is a pain. It seems like everything hits harder than similar mobs anywhere else. Karkas are incredibly annoying, and the stupid drakes pull then stack confusion. My own personal gripe is that its just difficult to get around. There are no roads and after all this time I still haven’t fully mapped it.

Ah ok thanks. If I was to go on my 80 guardian instead for example, can I get the bits for my ranger? Is the whole island good or certain parts of it better?

Basically, is most of the stuff account bound and would I miss out on much by not doing this on my ranger?

@BlusterWolf

You should be mostly killing enemies with your cat (CC/chill/cripple FTW). The condition damage is just there to finish the job.

alexparris.3754:

Ah ok thanks. If I was to go on my 80 guardian instead for example, can I get the bits for my ranger? Is the whole island good or certain parts of it better?

Basically, is most of the stuff account bound and would I miss out on much by not doing this on my ranger?

I like ranger for run speed (my catchphrase is basically “you can’t catch a ranger, son!”, pet tanking, and due to the obsession I have. But with guardian reflections and retaliation, you will be golden down there. Afaik everything is account bound. I might actually start taking alts through Fotm now. Just slap on that evil tentacle looking back or the flower with a +5 AR? Good to go!

Yeah, I am loving the ranger but don’t want to end up having too hard a time being upscaled 45 levels I guess I will give it a go and see!

Thanks for the info.

alexparris.3754:

Yeah, I am loving the ranger but don’t want to end up having too hard a time being upscaled 45 levels I guess I will give it a go and see!

Thanks for the info.

Upscaled players usually are more powerful than level 80s. The reason is A) compensate for less utility and 80 players are penalized harder for not havig full exotics than underleveled for not having full rares. In other words, it’s quite common for an upscaled player to “look better” on paper than your typical 80. We also run dungeons on upscaled avatars. This is the strikeforce way.

BlusterWolf.2103:

Apothecary gear regen build will not perform as good in WvW as in Spvp due to higher crit damage will out damage your regen and condition duration reduce food are real good counter to any condition build; as I understand thats a solo roaming build but a lot of good solo players in WvW use condition reduce food, you can beat bad players all day with any kind of build anyways. As I stated before It also will make you pretty useless in group fight, if you talking about general in WvW power build will be better for a ranger than condition build cuz that will make longbow aoe actually hurt, still if you insist on going trapper for choke point holding then you dont need that heal effect stats in WvW because if the zerg go through choke point you wont be holding your circle with you regen anyways not like in Spvp you can sometimes hold a 1v2 on point if you are a better player. So be careful on spending your gold on Apothecary gear in PvE/WvW

The kitten are you talking about? condition reduction food or not, conditions still faceroll players regardless of the amount of condition removal/reduction they run due to the constant re-application. I can stack 7 different conditions on someone not to mention keep a player weakened/poisoned an entire fight, now you tell me that this in itself won’t sway a fight outcome immediately.

Crit damage etc has nothing to do with it, regen outheals most conditions especially with close to 1800 healing. I can eat Eviscerates all day due to high toughness, the only class thats difficult to counter are insanely high condition engineers that reach 2k+ condition dmg since they negate toughness, and there aren’t many of those rolling around. And the only class I seem to draw with are boon guardians, and by draw i mean fight for 30mins and get bored and leave.

Furajir if you keep talking like that, everyone will think ranger is OP. shhh A growing core of spvp players are already calling for nerfs. But really a great couter is sigil of nullification or general boon removal. If you can avoid the CC and cat you will live. This is just a hard thing to do. Basically, the way you counter regen ranger is conditions and boon removal.

Interesting interesting, mind sharing your build Chopps? I am still learning the ropes as a new ranger myself.

All I am saying is it’s not hard to counter -% condition dur food buffs on other players, I carry Rare Veggie pizza just for that alone. In my video you will see me swap to it mid fight against eles/guards or anyone running a buff that attempts to counter conditions.

There is also a portion where my camera gets stuck while recording and I fail to move in time and eat a frenzy hb from a warr + a killshot and he stil gets stomped. Theres a counter for everything.

PsionicDingo.2065:

Puandro.3245:

Condition gear is bad in PvE because direct damage is always superior. The condition cap is just another nail in the coffin but not the main culprit.

That’s how I’ve been…conditioned.

I love you

Can someone please explain to me why Apothecary is better than cleric’s? It’s condition instead of power which I thought only affected our personal self since our pets don’t get our stats. So won’t it only affect our bleeds or poison?

I run GS/SB and I do stack some bleeds but is it THAT much better than cleric’s (especially for the price tag)? And pvp it seems hard with the SB to get the flanking to make the bleeds trigger enough leaving just SB 4 and GS 2 (maybe SB 2 with poison but if not aoe not sure how the damage is on a single target).

Thanks in advance for the education.

(Also in pve/dungeons it seems bleeds are usually in over supply anyway)

Ozymandias.5704:

Interesting interesting, mind sharing your build Chopps? I am still learning the ropes as a new ranger myself.

I run apothecary regen ranger like this (people tailor this to their playstyle and there are several other iterations of this build)

0/10 (agility training)/20 (shared anguish + oakheart salve)/15 (nature’s bounty)/25 (mighty swap, commanding voice, or master’s bond if I want to get nasty)

Frost trap / signet of renewal (muddy terrain in a zerg) / signet of the wild

Apothecary or clerics (in today’s meta I prefer apothecary)/ Superior dwyana runes

Greatsword of Life / Rox’s :p Shortbow of Chilling (100% projectile finish chance in ice field from frost trap)

Pets: One cat and one miscellanious (siamoth is good in zergs, dog is good when roaming, drakes are good in aoe and zergs, red moa is good in zergs, etc)

Loxsus.3841:

Can someone please explain to me why Apothecary is better than cleric’s? It’s condition instead of power which I thought only affected our personal self since our pets don’t get our stats. So won’t it only affect our bleeds or poison?

I run GS/SB and I do stack some bleeds but is it THAT much better than cleric’s (especially for the price tag)? And pvp it seems hard with the SB to get the flanking to make the bleeds trigger enough leaving just SB 4 and GS 2 (maybe SB 2 with poison but if not aoe not sure how the damage is on a single target).

Thanks in advance for the education.

(Also in pve/dungeons it seems bleeds are usually in over supply anyway)

The only time I prefer conditions is when I fight high toughness low vitality enemies but keep in mind that apothecary regen is a beastmaster build so you will get most of your DPS from the pet. This is true with karka and true, mostly, in wvw since many run toughness to counter the zerk builds that have been prevalent since professions like warrior made them popular in dungeons. Speaking of dungeons, I run the existing ones mostly in clerics with rune of mercy. I become a PUG reviving beast in Arah.

Chopps.5047:

Loxsus.3841:

Can someone please explain to me why Apothecary is better than cleric’s? It’s condition instead of power which I thought only affected our personal self since our pets don’t get our stats. So won’t it only affect our bleeds or poison?

I run GS/SB and I do stack some bleeds but is it THAT much better than cleric’s (especially for the price tag)? And pvp it seems hard with the SB to get the flanking to make the bleeds trigger enough leaving just SB 4 and GS 2 (maybe SB 2 with poison but if not aoe not sure how the damage is on a single target).

Thanks in advance for the education.

(Also in pve/dungeons it seems bleeds are usually in over supply anyway)

The only time I prefer conditions is when I fight high toughness low vitality enemies but keep in mind that apothecary regen is a beastmaster build so you will get most of your DPS from the pet. This is true with karka and true, mostly, in wvw since many run toughness to counter the zerk builds that have been prevalent since professions like warrior made them popular in dungeons. Speaking of dungeons, I run the existing ones mostly in clerics with rune of mercy. I become a PUG reviving beast in Arah.

So people run apothecary to bypass toughness over power which does more against vitality, am I right?

I do a regen bunkerish build as a BM as well with cleric’s and was wondering if I was missing out on a lot by not doing apothecary?

Currently doing 0/0/30/10/30 (used to do a 0/20/20/0/30 which had more damage and was fun but I seem to live easier as the former)

Condition isn’t only for damage. You can stack so many other conditions on enemies with a condition build that slow them down, lower their endurance regen, cause them glancing blows, stack vulnerability, etc. A lot of people don’t understand how strong these types of conditions are. You are essentially making it so your enemy cannot avoid your strongest attacks or pet while subsequently preventing them from moving, causing them to take more damage from pet, and do less direct damage to you. Condition weapons stack these more often than power-based weapons. By traiting for condition damage, you can more effectively utilize these weapons. That’s the real strength of apothecary builds.

Simply put, condition builds let you control your opponent. They are literally at your mercy due to the sheer number and frequency of conditions you can stack on them between your condition-based weapons and those applied by your pet.

So condition stacking stacks condition duration too? And does this still affect my SB/GS way of things?

I have yet to see where Apothecary is better in PVE/WvW. In tpvp, Apothecary (named shaman’s there because keeping names static makes too much sense) is one of the strongest builds rangers have available.

But in PvE, where bleeds stack to max on bosses, and without traps, rangers are a bit lacking in AoE sources against mobs.

Where as right now, I’m in a nice knights/zerker mix with ~3k toughness and power, with 50% crit chance and damage, with piercing arrows so I can strafe around mobs hitting multiple enemies, and power based so I can still be relevant against bosses.

So unless Apothecary has some use in dungeons (which I could care less about, and I doubt I’ll ever do a dungeon run), I haven’t seen any instance (outside of s/tpvp) other than maybe roaming in WvW (and personally I don’t play WvW for 1v1/small skirmishes, since I get enough of that in s/tpvp) where Apothecary outperforms my current setup.

It’s sad, because I love ranger regen builds. But I’m personally finding that it doesn’t equal out to me. Though that’s only my impression and I could be wrong, which is why I’m posting in this thread; I’ve been following it to see if it would compel me to splurge for Apothecary. But at this point, I’m still convinced I should hold off and keep piling up money, so that if something interesting gets changed next patch and a new build comes into play that’s fun/viable, I’ll have money to drop on it if I need/want to.

Loxsus.3841:

So condition stacking stacks condition duration too? And does this still affect my SB/GS way of things?

No…

SB/GS can’t stack soft CCs like a sword/torch/axe/dagger combination can, and condition damage doesn’t really complement GS very well being that it’s a power weapon.

So then if I want to run a regen build I am better off sticking to cleric’s probably.

jcbroe.4329:

I have yet to see where Apothecary is better in PVE/WvW. In tpvp, Apothecary (named shaman’s there because keeping names static makes too much sense) is one of the strongest builds rangers have available.

But in PvE, where bleeds stack to max on bosses, and without traps, rangers are a bit lacking in AoE sources against mobs.

Where as right now, I’m in a nice knights/zerker mix with ~3k toughness and power, with 50% crit chance and damage, with piercing arrows so I can strafe around mobs hitting multiple enemies, and power based so I can still be relevant against bosses.

So unless Apothecary has some use in dungeons (which I could care less about, and I doubt I’ll ever do a dungeon run), I haven’t seen any instance (outside of s/tpvp) other than maybe roaming in WvW (and personally I don’t play WvW for 1v1/small skirmishes, since I get enough of that in s/tpvp) where Apothecary outperforms my current setup.

It’s sad, because I love ranger regen builds. But I’m personally finding that it doesn’t equal out to me. Though that’s only my impression and I could be wrong, which is why I’m posting in this thread; I’ve been following it to see if it would compel me to splurge for Apothecary. But at this point, I’m still convinced I should hold off and keep piling up money, so that if something interesting gets changed next patch and a new build comes into play that’s fun/viable, I’ll have money to drop on it if I need/want to.

Obviously an apothecary build isn’t meant for zerg surfing and grouping, it’s meant for 1vx and skirmishing, which is why you prefer your sb setup, two diff builds for diff play styles.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Condition isn’t only for damage. You can stack so many other conditions on enemies with a condition build that slow them down, lower their endurance regen, cause them glancing blows, stack vulnerability, etc. A lot of people don’t understand how strong these types of conditions are. You are essentially making it so your enemy cannot avoid your strongest attacks or pet while subsequently preventing them from moving, causing them to take more damage from pet, and do less direct damage to you. Condition weapons stack these more often than power-based weapons. By traiting for condition damage, you can more effectively utilize these weapons. That’s the real strength of apothecary builds.

Simply put, condition builds let you control your opponent. They are literally at your mercy due to the sheer number and frequency of conditions you can stack on them between your condition-based weapons and those applied by your pet.

This.

Furajir.3815:

jcbroe.4329:

I have yet to see where Apothecary is better in PVE/WvW. In tpvp, Apothecary (named shaman’s there because keeping names static makes too much sense) is one of the strongest builds rangers have available.

But in PvE, where bleeds stack to max on bosses, and without traps, rangers are a bit lacking in AoE sources against mobs.

Where as right now, I’m in a nice knights/zerker mix with ~3k toughness and power, with 50% crit chance and damage, with piercing arrows so I can strafe around mobs hitting multiple enemies, and power based so I can still be relevant against bosses.

So unless Apothecary has some use in dungeons (which I could care less about, and I doubt I’ll ever do a dungeon run), I haven’t seen any instance (outside of s/tpvp) other than maybe roaming in WvW (and personally I don’t play WvW for 1v1/small skirmishes, since I get enough of that in s/tpvp) where Apothecary outperforms my current setup.

It’s sad, because I love ranger regen builds. But I’m personally finding that it doesn’t equal out to me. Though that’s only my impression and I could be wrong, which is why I’m posting in this thread; I’ve been following it to see if it would compel me to splurge for Apothecary. But at this point, I’m still convinced I should hold off and keep piling up money, so that if something interesting gets changed next patch and a new build comes into play that’s fun/viable, I’ll have money to drop on it if I need/want to.

Obviously an apothecary build isn’t meant for zerg surfing and grouping, it’s meant for 1vx and skirmishing, which is why you prefer your sb setup, two diff builds for diff play styles.

WvW aside, does it have it’s place in PvE?

I completely go through all PvE content solo.

And to add to WvW, I only solo, and end up joining up with groups that end up being about 20 large, but I’m usually only with a few other people taking supply camps or unprotected towers.

I’m just trying to get as much information as possible before I make an ultimate decision, because in the future I might not have the money for Apothecary that I do now, so I’m trying to take the path I’ll regret the least lol.

I have been patiently waiting for this update in hopes flower prices would drop. I tried to theory build a condi/regen Ranger but needed apothecary gear.

And I was going to ask if it wouldn’t be best to use Axe/Dagger & Sword/Torch to keep the condi going but Faux Sheaux answered it already. So the 2nd question is; is it better to build for more condi damage or more condi duration? Or is it best to balance them? Say your gear is apothecary, weapons are giver and sigils are +10% xxcondi dmg type?

So my main Ranger is retired with its longbow and my alt Sylvari Ranger will have a go with the gear. (I created two rangers at launch because I loved the profession).

Infernia.9847:

I have been patiently waiting for this update in hopes flower prices would drop. I tried to theory build a condi/regen Ranger but needed apothecary gear.

And I was going to ask if it wouldn’t be best to use Axe/Dagger & Sword/Torch to keep the condi going but Faux Sheaux answered it already. So the 2nd question is; is it better to build for more condi damage or more condi duration? Or is it best to balance them? Say your gear is apothecary, weapons are giver and sigils are +10% xxcondi dmg type?

So my main Ranger is retired with its longbow and my alt Sylvari Ranger will have a go with the gear. (I created two rangers at launch because I loved the profession).

Did I say those weapons? I like greatsword too because I can close the gap and stun or even frost trap the enemy. GS is diiiiirty in the right hands.

Chopps.5047:

Infernia.9847:

I have been patiently waiting for this update in hopes flower prices would drop. I tried to theory build a condi/regen Ranger but needed apothecary gear.

And I was going to ask if it wouldn’t be best to use Axe/Dagger & Sword/Torch to keep the condi going but Faux Sheaux answered it already. So the 2nd question is; is it better to build for more condi damage or more condi duration? Or is it best to balance them? Say your gear is apothecary, weapons are giver and sigils are +10% xxcondi dmg type?

So my main Ranger is retired with its longbow and my alt Sylvari Ranger will have a go with the gear. (I created two rangers at launch because I loved the profession).

Did I say those weapons? I like greatsword too because I can close the gap and stun or even frost trap the enemy. GS is diiiiirty in the right hands.

Nah, I just tossed them in with my rant about conditions. I’m all about quantity when it comes to conditions. I based my playstyle off the method of winning through attrition. Absolutely destroying your opponent with conditions while you heal constantly at full health is one of the most troll ways to kill someone. However, combining power weapons with condition weapons is something I’m not too crazy about, but to each their own. I’m all about min-maxing, and builds with perfect synergy like the cleric and apothecary BMs are some of the best examples in the game. In-between builds like cleric BM with axe/torch or apothecary BM with GS aren’t quite cutting it as far as completely efficient builds go imo.

tldr: I started ranting on accident and am not too sure how much of this has to do with anything I’m replying to