Guild Wars 2

Hey all!
Jebro here and heres my Ranger Beastmaster Burn/Condi build!

Build video: http://youtu.be/VeR3fP2fhgg

Game Play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLNCbi7BWD4&feature=share&list=UUYcZuPaZfonVRjeqFpRukqA

Build: http://intothemists.com/guides/4016-beastly_burn

Game play is inc soon Ill update this thread when its done.

Cheers all and pls leave comments! I am not saying Im the best ranger neither am I saying this is the best build, this is one that I love to play and that I built personally.

Jebro

itd be really great to try and get the ranger forum flowing again, any comments on this build? Even if you disagree its fine!

I will look later if I have time to convert from Into The Mists builder to something more readable for me. Not a fan of the Mists

Hey Jebro, I’m from the SOAC podcast channel, and one of the ranger casters. Just a heads up that we communicate regularly, and sorry I didn’t respond earlier, I’ve been MIA enjoying the start of my summer off with the gf.

Anyhow, it’s a solid build setup, I’ll give you that. I do have to be honest and say I’d argue with a few of your choices though.

Nothing major. I just personally don’t see flame trap as necessary for the build. Torch 5 already acts as an on demand flame trap and isn’t your only source of burning, and while I totally, totally understand more burning, my preference would be to pick up Signet of the Hunt since it also increases the movement speed of pets and would raise your cats DPS on a moving target significantly.

I also wouldn’t want to go with Protect Me either, mainly because with a heavy investment into Beastmastery, using a utility with a high probability of killing the pet and heavy dependency on the pet being fairly intact when activating it has always seemed counterproductive to me. I’d personally probably replace it with Signet of Renewal, if you are using it for the stunbreak feature, and then it doubles up as an AoE full condi removal that also cleanses allies in range.

Sic’ Em is fine, no argument there. Other than that, there is always the option of working in Signet of the Wild for the passive healing for you (higher passive heals on the pet) and the pet and then activating it for the increase in damage on the pet (25% more damage due to the enlargement transformation it gets).

Still solid though, I’m not going to sit here and nitpick it all day. I just wanted to provide some feedback and some stuff to maybe think about lol. Like Geomancy is usually your typical option for sigils, especially on your sword set. You could probably drop energy sigils with all of the vigor generation the build has. Not a requirement at all though, you’re just making the build more dodge capable and therefore annoying to kill, which is never a bad thing haha.

Glad to see you’re enjoying the ranger though! Especially since they’ve recently fallen out of the EU “meta,” at least for ESLs.

Edit: One last criticism; you should try out Celestial now on builds like this. It’s surprisingly effective, even though you’ll lose a little condition damage and toughness. The vitality gain and damage stats gain seem to more than make up for it, and help rangers compete with the current “tanky” meta builds a bit better than full condi investment does.

Every ranger should switch their pet to “avoid combat” imo. Many times the pets first attack is the “more useful” skill, such as canine knockdown, spider immobilize, drake blast finisher, and being able to control that with F1 is quite a big advantage.

Protect Me isn’t too bad with spiders just coz spiders don’t [die/take a lot of dmg] very often as they are ranged pets. Might not want to pop it when using cats though.

Besides that, I think jcbroes got most of the stuff covered.

I tried it a bit in spvp and it’s a solid build but from playing it and looking through it I have a few critiques:

First of all, if you’re going that high in healing power it makes a huge amount of sense to take signet of the wild – you’re looking at a ~120 independent heal every second for you and around 350 for your pet which is rather invaluable for survivability.

Looking at traits, there’s a strange synergy in your build: ‘protect me’ works incredibly well with spiders but rather poorly with cats; due to the fact that the damage the pet takes is calculated from your toughness and absorbed by the pets hp. ‘Zephyr speed’ on the other hand, works amazingly with cats but it’s not great with spiders, this is because with ’zephyr’s speed’ you’re looking for burst – cats are good because their first two attacks should be their F2 and maul; spiders however, waste a lot of the quickness on casting their aoe poison so you lack burst there.

So pet wise, I don’t think cats work with ‘protect me’ unless you barely use the invulnerability – but then again you might as well run lightning reflexes instead – as they lack the hp (they have around 16k) and by the time it’s needed they would have absorbed some ambient damage. I think river drake would work a lot better as you have the burst from the f2 and tail swipe (around 3.5k crit and burst finisher with heal spring and the added benefit of weakness which you currently lack access to) in addition to having 24k hp which would allow them to work with ‘protect me’. I think spider is fine as you’re clearly using it for the cc and poison but other options are cave spider (for the weakness + cc) or marsh drake (burst, use of ‘protect me’ and they have poison). Canines are an option – good cc and good damage but problematic with their low hp.

Flame trap has been already covered so I’ll skip that but I will mention that it probably makes more sense to take ‘off hand training’ over ‘oakheart salve’ as the difference in bonfire size is huge but then again you might not feel you have enough access to regeneration with heal spring being your only other source.

Sigils are largely personal preference but I do feel energy can be a waste if you’re not constantly getting focused to justify them especially since ranger have no offensive mechanic that takes advantage of dodge – i.e. unlike mesmer or ele.

Finally, I would personally move the 10 points from Skirmishing into Marksmanship. I don’t think you need as much vigour as you seem to think. This will give you 10% extra condition duration allowing you to drop the sigil of burning, freeing up a slot for something else. The important fact if you’re going for burning duration is to have >50% burn/condition duration as, if I recall correctly, it allows damage conditions to reach a threshold allowing an extra tick – which will turn bonfire from a 1 second pulse burn into a 2 second.

Either way, it’s already a solid build and it was rather fun to play. Even got a hate pm!

Hey Jebro, nice to see some enthusiasm for rangers.

Some things to consider:
- if you enter a fight with a stowed pet, you get the petswap quickness proc with the first hit, and it has no internal cooldown, which means as soon as it expires you can pet swap. It won’t be as effective on your build however, as you lack high precision, earth runes on shortbow, or high power to really capitalize on it. Dispite what most people let you believe you can hit pretty decent damage with a shortbow and quickness IF you are full zerker.
- if you like burning people you will find that they don’t stay in your triggered traps for long and it won’t apply long burns without traiting into it. You can however take advantage of your shortbow having 3 100% projectile finishers, and your autoattack, which is quite quick and also has 20% chance to be a projectile finisher.
- I would try out rending attacks instead of vigorous training. With shortbow #4 and Lynx F2 and auto you can stack some pretty decent amount of bleeds. It won’t do as much damage as yours since pets don’t share the ranger’s condition damage, but it will scare some people for sure. Lynx F2 also deals pretty good direct damage. And you do seem to have quite a lot of evades/dodges already.

jebro.6370:

Hey all!
Jebro here and heres my Ranger Beastmaster Burn/Condi build!

Build video: http://youtu.be/VeR3fP2fhgg

Build: http://intothemists.com/guides/4016-beastly_burn

Game play is inc soon Ill update this thread when its done.

Cheers all and pls leave comments! I am not saying Im the best ranger neither am I saying this is the best build, this is one that I love to play and that I built personally.

Jebro

Hey Jebro,

I don’t spend much time in the mists, but I do have one observation on your build that may be of use. You don’t appear to have any way to break immobilize. May I suggest Lightning Reflexes in place of one of your other utilities? This skill will also give a long-term dose of vigor, which may free up some of your other vigor-related traits for something else.

Good luck,

dingo

Hey guys

Thankyou so much for the feedback. Like I said even for myself as a noob really at ranger I enjoyed the build but all suggestions and points above are great!

Really thankyou so much for all the feedback.

Anyone trying the build much?

jcbroe.4329:

Hey Jebro, I’m from the SOAC podcast channel, and one of the ranger casters. Just a heads up that we communicate regularly, and sorry I didn’t respond earlier, I’ve been MIA enjoying the start of my summer off with the gf.

Anyhow, it’s a solid build setup, I’ll give you that. I do have to be honest and say I’d argue with a few of your choices though.

Nothing major. I just personally don’t see flame trap as necessary for the build. Torch 5 already acts as an on demand flame trap and isn’t your only source of burning, and while I totally, totally understand more burning, my preference would be to pick up Signet of the Hunt since it also increases the movement speed of pets and would raise your cats DPS on a moving target significantly.

I also wouldn’t want to go with Protect Me either, mainly because with a heavy investment into Beastmastery, using a utility with a high probability of killing the pet and heavy dependency on the pet being fairly intact when activating it has always seemed counterproductive to me. I’d personally probably replace it with Signet of Renewal, if you are using it for the stunbreak feature, and then it doubles up as an AoE full condi removal that also cleanses allies in range.

Sic’ Em is fine, no argument there. Other than that, there is always the option of working in Signet of the Wild for the passive healing for you (higher passive heals on the pet) and the pet and then activating it for the increase in damage on the pet (25% more damage due to the enlargement transformation it gets).

Still solid though, I’m not going to sit here and nitpick it all day. I just wanted to provide some feedback and some stuff to maybe think about lol. Like Geomancy is usually your typical option for sigils, especially on your sword set. You could probably drop energy sigils with all of the vigor generation the build has. Not a requirement at all though, you’re just making the build more dodge capable and therefore annoying to kill, which is never a bad thing haha.

Glad to see you’re enjoying the ranger though! Especially since they’ve recently fallen out of the EU “meta,” at least for ESLs.

Edit: One last criticism; you should try out Celestial now on builds like this. It’s surprisingly effective, even though you’ll lose a little condition damage and toughness. The vitality gain and damage stats gain seem to more than make up for it, and help rangers compete with the current “tanky” meta builds a bit better than full condi investment does.

DUDE!

Some EXCELLENT suggestions thank you so much!

I was using the signet indeed b4 going for the flame trap, mainly because of the reasons you said. Then I wasn’t so sure and switched, so glad my original thought had logic xD.

Celestial def will try that out as well! Makes sense in this build! How did you feel the settlers amulet did in this build set up btw?

Ill give these changes a try. Also I do have a gameplay video Ill be releasing tomorrow of me in a match.

Cheers again!

DUDE!

Some EXCELLENT suggestions thank you so much!

I was using the signet indeed b4 going for the flame trap, mainly because of the reasons you said. Then I wasn’t so sure and switched, so glad my original thought had logic xD.

Celestial def will try that out as well! Makes sense in this build! How did you feel the settlers amulet did in this build set up btw?

Ill give these changes a try. Also I do have a gameplay video Ill be releasing tomorrow of me in a match.

Cheers again!

No problem! Happy to help.

With settler’s, there isn’t really any issue with the build at all, it’s more of an issue of how the build competes against the meta, or because I don’t have a direct damage comparison, how I feel it competes.

Playing against some of the more common meta builds like Soldier’s Amulet Warriors and Celestial Eles (and engis, etc), Settler’s feels like you have to work a lot harder to do damage since the pure condition investment can be almost completely negated by the condi cleanses and immunity available to certain classes.

The gain in vitality of the celestial also gives the feeling of celestial being close to as tanky as settler’s, combined of course with the healing power you’re also gaining and taking advantage of since healing spring has a 1:1 scaling with healing power and gives regen which also benefits.

I’ve actually personally been using the new Invigorating Bond trait coupled with a raven and owl in a very similar setup to your build, except I’m running a chill build, and either I’m crazy, or the healing you get from Invigorating Bond helps make build that much more sustainable.

Can’t wait for the new video though!

Its not new new, its based on the build as it really has to be :P but Ill get it out today

Im not the best ranger player in the world but it gives good examples

Cheers again!

Ok so I love burning builds on ranger since they are so strong that you cannot go wrong by adapting some sort of burning in your condi build (yes that is true Poison Master builds).

Now I get that you want to keep regen up for as long as you can, I believe that you are losing more than gaining by not taking up Off hand training rather than Oakheart salve. If you really want to keep burning up for as long as possible this is the way I would go. Now being that you are a beast mastery hybrid, I understand that you would lack more condition clearing options than a SoF hybrid would, which is why you would opt for Oakheart salve.

The thing is that it would only heal you for less than 2k, while condition damage against you will certainly stack higher than that in a period of less than 15 seconds, which leaves you with the choice of applying that murderous burn on your enemies often and more reliably, rather than getting a little heal every 15 seconds… see my point? Besides bonfire traited with a wider area around you is truthfully more effective against targets that are on the move.

Which brings me to my other point: Jungle spider’s immobilize + bonfire or fire trap = sweet burning, coupled with your short bow’s concussion shot = more BBQ action. I get it you need good timing for that, but it’s quite possible to get it done right. So what if they get out of that trap? Throw torch with long range and quicker recharge is ready for you on command (use it wisely!).

I wager the best way to test your build in 1 vs 1 will be against another ranger who is strong enough to fight you (or better). We truly are each other’s nightmares, bring your stuff to pvp one day and let’s see if any flaws shine from it.

Hey all!

Heres my gameplay video here for this build:

Im not sure how well i did but here ya go