Guild Wars 2

This is my current build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV3XjAV11xVCWs2BkWhMh9wQckH59I9WPR8kVsMHA-TYAg0CoIaS1kppRJA

It seems to work great in PvE, however in WvWvW I still have a few big problems:

1. Path of Scars does not pull nearly as often as I thought it would, target either has stability or it just misses

2. I have no stun break. I see no good way to get one without giving up signet of the hunt, and if I do that I am a lot slower. Was thinking of replacing it with the signet that removes conditions from you and is a stun break…

Also, my gear is sort of random at this point. I have all undead runes on, but what should I really be targeting? I have 39% crit damage, 48% crit chance, 1631 power, 976 condition damage, 1,264 toughness and 17,402 HP without food.

I have a mix of carrion and knight trinkets with a berserker amulet.

I am meaning to try a BM trapper when I get the gold too, although I was aiming for Dire armour, travellers runes with the same trait lines as you (0/30/10/0/30).

I think it would work better going straight for condition damage and forgetting direct damage. I think you’re trying to do too much, and if you want to do what you are doing (getting some of everything) you really need celestial.

Well, first off, congratulations on trying to make a Beast Master build for WvW. It’s one of the more difficult set-ups. Pets have a much harder time tracking the highly mobile human targets, and when you put 30 into BM, you have to give up something valuable elsewhere. I think your gear and overall numbers are pretty good. I wouldn’t change anything until you’ve locked a style in place.

The hot thread in this forum today runs a 20/20/0/0/30 and 30/10/0/0/30 is also suggested. I’ve run both in WvW, but ultimately found I was still susceptible to what all rangers are —- massive condition damage and back-stabbing thieves. That does not mean they are not viable and I am still trying to make it work, although with safer gear the OP in that category. You just have to give something up in return. You’ve given up your marksmanship traits, which frankly I just don’t have the guts to do. I find the second level of traits (@20) too hard to live without.

I think the one thing you do need to give up is your off-hand axe. Axe #4 and 5 just don’t work in WvW. Nobody stands still for #4 and I’m not sure what you can with Axe 5, other than draw a lot of attention to yourself when it ends. Main hand axe is great, especially on a condi and trap build. Consider off-hand torch, which also might allow you to dump flame trap for your stun breaker (or double up on fire when taking a camp). You can use Quickening zephyr as a stun breaker, but of course you have to have the patience not to pop it right off the bat. I have a condi/shortbow/trapping ranger with similar stats to you. The QZ, along with a sigil of earth on my shortbow, is essential for really piling on the pressure. With a 47% crit chance, I can peak @ 20 stacks of bleeding with standard pet help.

Try it with a different 2nd weapon set up and see how it goes. If you are still having trouble, you may need to make a decision about traps vs BM. I chose traps. The most common build is 20/30/20/0/0 – with mostly the same traits you have now. In a 4 or 5 person group (or larger) that would be my recommendation. However, I run solo quite a bit with this ranger. I made her to solo camps in quick order and chase on her own. I find myself running 20/30/10/0/10 most of the time. Those 10 points in BM really don’t make much of damage difference, but the vitality for the pet does. At 0 points, I feel like I can only use bears and drakes. Everything else can’t make it to my next heal. With the 10 points in BM, that problem mostly goes away and I can use any pet effectively (or at least as much as anyone can). The other thing to consider in a trapping set-up is using your pet as a trapper too, rather than a pure damage dealer. Malicious training (Marksmanship II) increases your pet condition duration by 50%. Not groundbreaking for poison, but that’s 15 seconds of AOE weakness from a black bear and more than 6 seconds chill from owls, ice drakes, and my favorite snow dog. That is often enough to turn a fight in your favor, and when combined with frost trap and axe 3 on an ill-prepared player, just cruel (and fun). You’ve already got a spider queued up, so your half-way there. The two of the three spiders can be very useful in a trapping build and do a better job staying out of danger. Good luck.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I agree that ditching offhand axe might be a good idea, as the pull is seriously unreliable on people. I’d have to salvage it to get my sigil out as it is the one that gives you condition damage upon things dying. The other axe has sigil of battle but that is proving to be seriously buggy (most of the time I get the tail wind buff and nothing from battle). Would sigil of geomancy be better?

I was playing around a bit with dual canines tonight, and traited for the cripple when you use their F2. I initially swapped the spider as the poison AOE takes a bit too long for real targets, and the dual knockdown works well sometimes. I do love my spider (mostly GW1 nostalgia), and it rarely ever dies, but it also rarely ever kills anything.

I did swap out the spike trap for the signet of renewal, and left the flame trap and signet of hunt. This takes me down to one trap…but actually if I switch back to torch as suggested I can take spike trap and still have the fire from the torch. One trap was working surprisingly well, and having a way to clear conditions without spring / break stun is pretty useful.

In groups of 2-4 this build is working exceedingly well, with all the conditions and axe bouncing and such. Solo is a bit of a different story, I can handle other rangers alright and certain types of warriors and engis….but most other things destroy me. The usual thieves and mesmers are top among them. That might just be a learn to play issue to an extent as I have mostly stuck to PvE for 500 hours lol.

Hi gotejjeken

If you want to try a BM-Trapper build you could probably do something like this
Tyrian Survivalist

This is my build where I’m aiming for. With the dire armor i get additional survivability and condition damage. Without condition damage traps are nearly useless. though i’m only using one trap at a time and 2 other utility skills. You can change those with skills that seems more appropriate to you.

I’m not sure what a BM build is based on but i think i’m close to it. and trapper for sure this is a trapper build too.

To hold your pet alive you need to have a look for it and fast reaction when it’s low life. The pet swap gives you 2 sec of quickness. “vigorous training” can be exchanged for the spider and canine trait.

regards Troopa

If this is for WvWvW, you should try traveler runes and swap signet of the hunt for a stun break. Traveler runes will give you the same 25% increase speed you want plus boon and condition duration. You lose a bit of CD from the undead runes, you get +30 to all traits so it’s not too bad and 6% crit damge increase with travelers.

Sigil of Battle, or any on swap weapon sigil can be tricky if you use an “on crit” sigil on your other weapon. Since most of the on crit sigils have 5 or 10 second cool downs, you’ll almost never get the on swap one. If you use on swap sigils, you usually need to have it on both your primary and secondary weapons. Personally, I find sigil of battle and sigil of might difficult to use with rangers. We tend to swap weapons with a tactical purpose, rather than switching to deliberately stack might. I tried using a superior sig of might (on crit 30% might) along with runes of strength and a longbow. I thought with barrage and rapid fire I could pile up stacks of might in PvE like crazy. It never really worked out. Even if you fire 1 shot/sec with 100% crit chance, it’s only 3 stacks of might in 10 sec (the same as your sig of battle). 97 pwr and 97 condition dmg sound fine, but that only adds 5 dmg/sec to your beed/10 to poison and remeber short bow has .4 weapon strength, so you only realize 40% of any power increases. It never winds up being worth it.

I think the two sigils you want to look at are sigil of earth and sigil of blood. I like the sigil of earth on the short bow for the obvious reasons. At 900 condi dmg, you’re doing roughly 88 dmg/sec on 1 stack of bleeding. Multiply by 10-15 stacks and people just gush away. I like sigil of blood on the axe. At 50% crit rate (or thereabouts), you will hit three targets on each throw —- 6 targets in two throws — 3 of which will critical – 1 of which will trigger the sigil giving you 450+ health every 2-3 seconds. There are certainly other choices, but when I solo a camp, I only have to use a heal skill if I make a mistake. Against a single target, your proc rate will obviously drop, but in those situations you would probably axe 3, torch 4, axe 2 and then into short bow for the duration. I would stick your reclaimed sigil of corruption on a torch. It’s not that the weapon choice matters, but there may be times where you go axe/warhorn to run and you’ll get caught out. Having the sigil of blood may save you, where as getting +10 condition dmg only matters if you survive.

Rune of the traveler sounds great — and if it works, I will use them too. However, they are brand new and somewhat pricey. The issue is the #6 trait +25% movement speed. Fantastic. However, the Rune of Speed has the same #6 skill and it has never worked. It’s been broken since launch, as far as I know. Superior Rune of Speed is still broken, as of today September 11, 2013. I have the full set on my lvl 78 engi. No speed bonus. I would be concerned about buying a pricey set until we can confirm the speed boost works. If any one has them, please let us know. I don’t blame you for hanging on the Signet of Hunt. I can’t play without either, and I also only run 1 trap at a time, outside of special circumstances.

The forest spider is the less useful of the three for shortbow rangers. You can poison any time you want. It can be a compliment for long bow rangers. However, the other two are nice. Untraited – 10 sec of weakness for the cave spider and a 3 second immobilize for the jungle. And of course, with your BM points, a lot of pets will be effective for you. Glad to here you’re having fun.

Yes, thieves and necros… a ranger’s best friends. They know we have horrible condition removal and will target you. I cringe every time I see a two thief/necro team running around my borderland. I like freezing the perma stealth thieves — frost trap/axe 3/chill from pet, and not necessarily all in a row. It’s really all I can do to throw off their skill recharge and keep them visible. Within this forum, I;m sure there are a lot of suggestions.

With necros, watch out for the initial Death Shroud attack (the swarm). It’s hard to pick up because the 1st skill (#2) is a teleport and chill – and now it’s too late. Really high condi necros can do 15-17K in the intial burst. There’s nothing you can do, but keep as far back as possible. Necros have crappy weapons range, so keep moving and fire short bow #3 every time it comes up to keep your swiftness.

If you’re by yourself and run into a mesmer, just leave. 80-90% of mesmers in WvW are cloners. They may not be able to kill you, but you can’t kill them either. 20 minutes wasted. The primary job of a mesmer is to be a distraction. Most are very good at doing that.

crossoverAtt.9680:

Rune of the traveler sounds great — and if it works, I will use them too. However, they are brand new and somewhat pricey. The issue is the #6 trait +25% movement speed. Fantastic. However, the Rune of Speed has the same #6 skill and it has never worked. It’s been broken since launch, as far as I know. There are still broken, as of today September 11, 2013. I have the full set on my lvl 78 engi. No speed bonus. I would be concerned about buying a pricey set until we can confirm the speed boost works. If any one has them, please let us know.

It works for me. I’ve tried with my ranger in WvW but like I said, you drop a bit of damage (not much) but gain an extra utility slot if you don’t want to use Signet of the Hunt. I’ve also dueled another ranger who ran this on his Asuran ranger, and i don’t know if he was running both runes and signet, but he was a bit faster than me unless asurans just look faster because they are so tiny. Not even sure if speed buff on runes stacks with signet, but like i said, he was definitely faster than me (we raced afterwards lol)

Rune of the Traveller work. +25% as advertised.

They dont stack with Signet of the Hunt, nor with any other speed boost. Like with all over speed boosts, the highest boost you have override all others but nothing will stack.

Cant speak highly enough of them. Bought 1 set for my rabid armour that I use for trapping, and I bought a set I use with my celestial set as well. I also plan to use them on my dire set when I get it, because I value movement speed highly but having 3 utility slots after 11 months of only every having 2 is so great I cant even describe

Traveler looks nice, 30g is a bit much for me to drop at the moment on runes though…maybe after I get my ascended things crafted. Though that speed boost would allow me to swap in signet of stone or something (or another trap). Has anyone done the math on what dropping 183+ condition damage would do? I might run some numbers later and see, possibly the crit. damage would make up for it?

Sigil of blood looks good too, the only other Sigil I could think of using was the one that straight ups condition damage (bursting I think).

I do also want to try giving birds a shot, possibly go Raven + Wolf for the blind / fear combo as well as knockdown and the birds double hit. I like the frost wolf a lot, but the channel for that seems a bit slow to use on someone who knows it is coming (that is, by time it howls the target is gone).

I will also keep practicing the solo roams; I have managed to take down a pretty high ranking mesmer once….but that was underwater and the battle did last like 15 minutes. It wasn’t by much either, the only thing saving me was the little pet ‘feature’ underwater =D. Rest of the time I just get clone bombed and die lol.

Thanks Noobie and Cufufalating. I’ve been eyeing them since they announced the change and deliberately bought the very cheap Runes of Speed after the update, just to see if the issue was fixed. Strange they didn’t address the Speed Runes at the same time. But I suppose it’s even more bizarre that a year after launch, we still have so many broken sigils and runes.

Gotejjeken: You can do exact calculations from the wiki, but quick math is each 100 points of condition dmg = 5/sec bleed —- 10/sec poison —-- 25/sec burning.

Also, I don’t think you want sigil of bursting (6% condition damage). If you have 1000 condi dmg, you get 60 more (=3/sec bleed — 6 poison). That’s not a great improvement, although non-interfering choices are limited.. I am not sure why it sells for so much. Perhaps availability, or maybe for a necro going all out. An alternate choice for an offhand weapon might be sigil of malice (6 condi duration). However, given your current build with zero in marksmanship (and thus 0% in condi duration), I don’t think you would get the full benefit. You need to get those conditions up to the next full second, the damage doesn’t hit the extra time.

True, I do not have any condition duration really. Figured it gets stripped too fast for me to really invest in it.

If I swap my sigil of battle out that’s a good 3 gold towards something else, and the traveler runes look pretty good still. I think I’d have near 2400 toughness with them and signet of stone.