Guild Wars 2

Recently I acquired some rabid gear for karma (toughness, precision, condition damage), and have some carrion gear (vitality, power, condition damage). I was thinking about what build to run in wvw. I was trying with 15,25,30,0 with traps with mostly rabid gear recently, and also did some 20,25,20,0,5 with shortbow, sword torch with mostly carrion gear before that. My goal would be to make a build that focuses on toughness, precision and condition damage, so was thinking about making a bleeder build. The idea is to keep an up time of 10-15 builds, and keeping a balance between pet damage, and my own, while surviving the process. The idea is to constantly stack bleeding on the target, while staying alive. Was thinking about a pet buffing build, only to be let down by the 1 sec might given to pets on crits. Looked at the 875 thread, but I don’t think thats my cup of tea, seems too much trouble to get those might stacks up.

See the build I was thinking about here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMIQRBMRdG2IRVddclgFrlgYVAQNFUy8MFGyRPFpX9JM7yGD;T8AAzyoESJhS1liLqmMNJay2krJZTrKGVs9A (paste into your browser if link is borked)

I’m a bit torn on a few fronts. I decided to use devourers. As they have knockback, and evade as well as high toughness. I only recently found out, as I was reading the useful tips for new rangers that it works well with longbow as a sort of meatshield, and with 20 points in beastmastery, and fury, they would have 60%ish crit chance. Although I’m planing on using swords, axe, dagger, warhorn and torch in some setup. As you can see, thats more than you can use during combat. I was trying out greatsword with axe/dagger in Orr with spike trap, which did great I think. But sword and warhorn seem also useful.

So I’m looking to your suggestions on the following:
Weapons: the setup should have a nice acces to stack bleeds through the weapon skill and/or crits. Offhand dagger is good for surviving, and adds 3 stacks of bleed from distance while also crippling, and warhorn with sharpened edges and #4 that attacks 16 times might also stack some nice bleeds (prolly around 4) while I (and my pet) would also have access to fury and swiftness. I like gs though so looking for input here. Also will fire trap be enough to add some nice burning to bleeds and poison, or should I get a torch too.

Traits:
Malicious training or keen edges? Since devourers would deal bleeding on criticals with their standard attacks, which hits twice malicious training might be good to keep up bleed stacks longer, while keen edges would be better to apply more bleeds when you’re getting worn down.
Trapper’s expertise: Throwing traps, as well as the larger area seems nice, but other traits in skirmishing would also help the build i.e. pet’s prowess for more damage, primal reflexes for survival, or mabye honed axes.
Martial mastery/off-hand training: if I’m not gonna use greatsword, I might as well swap this for something else i.e. shared anguish, vigorous renewal, off hand training (probably this), or get wilderness knowledge and some survival skills like lighning reflexes, quickening zephyr, entangle.

Runes: I used runes of the Undead becuse they are pretty cheap and go well with the rabid gear, but could be persuaded to swap this for something else.

Sigils:
Main hand: Should I get a sigil of fire for more burning up time? Is there an iternal cooldown on sigil of earth? Is it possible to apply 3 stacks of bleed when flanking with a shortbow (sigil of earth, bleed from crit, bleed from shortbow)? Sigil of energy seem good for staying alive, but will share cooldown with sigils that proc on crit.
Off hand: Probably more condition duration. I like sigils that proc on weapon swap, but sadly they share cooldowns with sigils that proc on crit.

Given all these choises makes my head hurt, so hope the more experienced guys can add some input on what stats to aim for to make this work. I guess weapon/sigil/trait choices would be down to personal preference, but would like to see some input.

Oh oooh. I don’t know much about traps. But.. with those weapons the build that you have there looks ace. Use rabid armor of course. One suggestion: Use Sigils of might (10 seconds CD) on primary weapons, Sigil of Earth on the warhorn (more bleeds) and Sigil of Venom on the dagger (deny healing).

edit: The only problem is condition removal. I use Melandru in sPvP but Undead looks so enticing.. I don’t know. You should play with both and see what’s better.

Had some more fun in Orr with this. Turns out stacking 15 stacks of bleed at the beginning of the fight is easy (against mobs anyway), but keeping it up will be a challange. Although I’m not having the gear I’m planning with yet. Sigil of geomancy is great, was even thinking about using axe main in both sets, but that would leave me with little defensive options. Weapon swap grants 3 stacks for 9 secs, but the weapon skills only add 6.5 secs. Might need to change the runes.

You’re having trouble choosing weapons for your conditions build and while condition based combat isn’t my forté, the greatsword is, eh, whatever. I can only inform you and give advice on your decisions, in the end it’s your build.

It doesn’t seem like you’re considering it and you’re right in that you shouldn’t. The Greatsword provides more blocking and evading than the sword, but the sword is far more mobile and the dagger gives you an extra little dodge as well as a cripple to help you get into a more comfortable ranged position. You could go sword/warhorn as well, but the seagull swarm makes it better suited for power focused builds and it’s hard to position yourself for party wide buffs in melee.

If you’re going conditions, unless you know a party member is also focusing on burning (which would mean one of you loses an insane amount of damage output), then the torch is just ridiculous for it. Axe/Torch is an old favourite of mine, but a great alternative is always Axe/Warhorn, yes, everything said for sword/warhorn applies, but you’re not expending survivability for it and positioning a party wide buff is nowhere near as difficult.

As for things you haven’t considered, Durzilla’s Longbow/condition build (shoot to maim) is a hilarious mess. A fully functioning, completely absurd… mess. While his build is focused on using the Longbow’s great controlling aspects, it could still spark some nice ideas. Remember that his build is for PvP though, which is a very different game. If control isn’t your thing, then a shortbow can be used with almost exactly the same build to great effect. There’s no reason you can’t use rabid gear instead of carrion either. My own suggestion is that if you’re using the axe, sharpening stone can be very appealing, I don’t use a condition build, but free damage for my next five attacks is delicious.

So… I suppose I should explain sharpening stone (which also applies to the marksmanship trait version). It makes your next five attacks bleed on-hit, regardless of how many enemies you actually hit. Ricochet will provide one bleed on-hit or three if it bounces, all in what counts as one attack. This effect isn’t remarkable with the shortbow and is a bit iffy with the longbow. However, since I use a Greatsword and Axe/Warhorn, I naturally hit multiple people with my attacks, so a free bleed on-hit feels great, even with my lack of condition damage. The sword should be almost as good as the greatsword with a sharpening stone as it still strikes multiple targets, just not with pounce. I’d recommend at least trying it.

I have been running a bleed ranger for a very long time. I think they are a lot more effective than people give them credit for. With SB/S/D fire trap, you can consistently stack bleed burn and poison. Running pets that compliment the build by adding alternate conditions helps, but the conditions they apply don’t have the bite the ranger conditions have(130 PPT bleeds stacking to 20 melt opponents pretty fast), I run raven for blind and wolf for the fear more than the KD, mostly because it simplifies positioning with SB. The nice thing about bleed rangers is the constant application of the conditions without relying on a trap being hit(theoretically you could switch dagger for torch, but dagger poison lasts a painfully long time).

Hmm, for a build being called as bleeder some things seem to have been missed: keen edge trait, cond duration, sharpening stone, sb and runes to increase your bleeding duration.

Two traps without gm trap trait is just meh, sharpened edge trait is weak and lot of defense for a pve build by sacrificing power. Rampager gear would be better imo; its childs play to kite mobs.

Your build could use some improvements.

Well its still work in process. I’m not a big fan of sharpening stone to be honest. I definetly agree on the condition duration however, the bleed you get on crit is not that long. I usually start with dagger #5, dodge forward if needed, swap to axe (sigil of geomancy), axe #2, spike trap, warhorn #4. It works pretty good at the start but keeping the bleeding up is a pain in the backside. Might be easier with sb, but wanted to try something else. Still working on the sigil part, as I’m always short on money. I like the devourers though. When both of us are down and I hit lick wounds, the only thing stopping me from getting up is either a champion in my face, or someone stomping me.

Your sigil choices are not that great, both Geomancy and Earth runes share a CD. (meaning that if you trigger earth runes you cannot trigger Geomancy until the CD is up, and if Geomancy procs on weapon swap, you cannot get an earth proc for 10 seconds) So basically you should rethink which one you would rather use. I would trade out either war horn for torch (increasing availability of burn and increasing your dps by more) or get rid of signet of the hunt for sharpening stone (it’s PvE, you can’t miss :/ ) as they overlap in function (you can always just throw one on for travelling)