Guild Wars 2

To those who get bored of Cleric/Apothecary very fast, how offensive do you go?

Have you tried clerics with berserker trinkets? What about mainhand sword?

Currently I am on 0/10/30/0/30 and knights armour with celestial trinkets. 1 is beryl though.
It feels ok. Always GS and S/D.
Around 49% critical damage and 50% critical chance.
But i dont know yet if I will be able to facetank much. I anticipate that yes, as healing doenst scale as awesomely as you woulld want it to. Ad I have stronger defensive stats than in full cleric, besides not having so much healingpower.

Also strong over 2000 power on full bloodlust stacks.

This is my general build: http://tinyurl.com/ctg34he

It is essentially an evasion tank with power/precision/toughness. I think this is a great general purpose build. It affords relatively high sustained direct damage, excellent survivability (due to toughness, vigor for dodges and 4 evades), and versitility.

I switch around traits depending on the situation and really enjoy being able to move from a skirmish/roamer build by swapping in different major traits (traps), utilities (healing spring, muddy terrain), and weapons to contribute to group/zergs without respecing.

I’ve played the popular BM/Regen variants and they are great, but I find them no more survivable than the evasion tank because you need to be in their face to do damage (fire field, bleed on weapon swap, reliable hits with axe).

Healing, even with 0 healing power, is decent (150 hp/sec passive, 280ish when regen procs). Warning though: for this build to work you really need practice, as it has no “autopilot” defense like the BM/regen builds have. You really need to learn how to dodge, time your evades, when to swap weapons and how to use your pets.

I find this build works far better against good opponents than the condition builds, but again, it requires a fair amount of practice.

Heres a link to my video section, as I am condi, can still be bunker with great offense. I usually use 25 stacks of corruption and veggie pizza if i want to pump out the dmg.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Video-Tupro-1vX-solo-roam-WvW/first

I just finished my own ‘beyond BM’ build, which first started as a BM + condition build using Rabid armor (Toughness/Precision/Condition), but after months of extensive testing I eventually refined it to weed out all the possible weaknesses (lack of power, lack of vitality, lack of healing power, correct use of traits, etc…) while maintaining that bunky-ness and pet attack power we all enjoy.

Link (copy/paste it):
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VH;4wEFy-p2gDF-0;9k2a;1J-O-O27;259;256-W-F6-JG6m8bRm8bRp-kW0-76;0aucMVRWWXa2g3m_0FWF72o;5k-0BF-23;9;9;9;9;7V6-6t

Note that I did not use apothecary in the past, however I found it to be the best equipment for the job, the main difference is that we want higher condition damage without obtaining unnecessary attributes like Precision, which is almost always guaranteed to be in equipment which have condition damage or [condition damage + toughness]. Besides healing power is always useful, if you can stack it high enough. Since this build is meant to work in PvE and WvW, the 20 into marksmanship can be traded for that lovely Bark Skin grandmaster trait on wilderness survival, but that’s up to you and how dangerous the situation is, perhaps you want to pierce all your targets, who knows. Also utility skills is a personal choice, I stick with fire trap to encourage all melee enemies to die faster under my boot, or step out and get in range of my short bow.

This is my general goup build at the moment.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.4|1.1k.h4|c.1k.h4.g.1k.h1l|1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d|2v.0.2u.0.21l.0.31l.0.21l.0.1c.67|0.p16.f3.0.u41c|39.7|4j.4p.4o.4r.55|e

Tons of heal but without empathyc bond (not an option as BM anyway) nor poultry soup, condis should be a problem.
Agility training does not stack with any other speedbuff the pet might get. Also Bark skin is gold worth. With companions defense you will get no damage at all under 25% (usually 4-5k hp). So I will really try to stick around the 0/10/30/0/30 setup and get precision and critical damage through knight and cavalier gear, sacrificing healing power.
Im trying to craft a build at around 800 (MAX!!) healing power. I feel that knights armour suits rangers way better than cleric. You get more direct damage mitigation and more dps. You will still heal good amounts with 2 passive regens, 33% longer regen. Even at healing power under 1240. I even feel that those 1500 healing power everybody is running around with are a big waste.

I will post my thoughts when i finished and tested the gearsetup. But it is going to be more about movement and toughness than tanking and healing. Perma evade on GS already mitigates 33% of the incoming damage -> the job shouldnt be that hard.

Zumy.6318:

Tons of heal but without empathyc bond (not an option as BM anyway) nor poultry soup, condis should be a problem.

Thats why i wrote groupbuild . . . .

I never think of group builds in the first line and wouldnt want to trade 10% critical damage and 4,6% critical chance for +700 hp and -40% condition duration, even having 4 shoutguardians and me in a group.

You should think about the agility training though. It doesnt really help you. Even less in a group (more swiftness buffs).

Thats ok and the easiest point to change , but you dont have to . My solo build is very similiar to yours .

Zumy.6318:

You should think about the agility training though. It doesnt really help you. Even less in a group (more swiftness buffs).

I think the pet damage output is higher , but im still testing it. If not i agree expressly .

After mitigating direct damage through toughness, i feel a high need to mitigate condition damage. The only way to do this besides doding (;)) and cleansing it, is shortening its duration. -60% through hoelbrak and poultry soup seem to be nice. Giving good amount of power and up to 7 stacks of might.

Mitigating both ways of incoming damage, i feel redundancy when getting even more tanky through stacking up passive regeneration that profits EXTREMELY little from healing power and investing it in critical chance and damage seems quite reasonable to me.

Nubu.6148:

Zumy.6318:

You should think about the agility training though. It doesnt really help you. Even less in a group (more swiftness buffs).

I think the pet damage output is higher , but im still testing it. If not i agree expressly .

As in attacking “faster”?

Yep seems so …

Sure it doesnt come from the 10% faster skill recharge you have traited?
Is this sth you figured by yourself or are there rumors that this is the case?

Not very important for me though. The reason I want to be less heal oriented is that I don’t want my pet to do the whole job. Big part of it yes, but not everything. Afterall it is AI.

Jep im sure . I do not know if there any rumors , i tested it by myself .

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Agility-Training-Better-than-it-seems

TL;DR

Pets Prowess and SotH give pets the maximum dps output, giving you another speedbuff for yourself too.

sure , but if u use SotH ur pet has no speedbuff anymore .

I mean passive SotH.
Agility training makes your pets dps higher because your pet needs less time to close the gaps to the moving target.
It does not buff the raw dps amount howsoever.
SotH does the same job, but giving yourself a speedbuff, too. The 5% difference make no difference.

Sure zumy , thats right . Infight i use SotH on cooldown and agility gives my pet speed.

The build u posted did not even include SotH. But okay. CBA mate. You’re fine.

Oooh sry Zumy , ure right .

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.4|1.1k.h4|c.1k.h4.g.1k.h1l|1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d.1k.71d|2v.0.2u.0.21l.0.31l.0.21l.0.1c.67|0.p16.f3.0.u41c|39.7|4i.4p.4q.4r.55|e

So you swap it for the only stunbreak and conditionremove you have? Why? SoS isn’t that good.

Cause in grp i need none. Its ok zumy you are right . See you soon.

Well, I never used cleric/condi stuff and you see how “I roll” with it :P

Actually I didn’t see you on your Ranger more than once. A reminder would be highly appreciated. A crafted build even better.