Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys,

my Guild-Mate Balduran recently came up with a, to me, new type of Ranger-Build which I would like to share with you and get your feedback about!
I am not a native speaker, merely trying to translate what Balduran shared on our forums. So please excuse me any lapses, I promise I am trying hard

I. Introduction and Purpose

We are running a guild team of 20-25 Members for GvG fights and Zerg-busting on Kodash. For our certain style of play it is essential to restrict the enemies movement on the battlefield as much as possible in order to deal the maximum amount of damage. Of course the Hammer/Staff Guardian is predestined for such a role, with his Circle on Hammer #5 and the Wall on Staff #5. Yet we were looking for someone to provide an additional, more consistent way to control the movement of the enemy group that cannot be countered by stunbreakers and stability.
The answer was: CHILL
and hence he came up with the Ranger build I will try to line out to you below.

This comes from me now:
For me, chill is one of the most awesome CC conditions in the game. Not only does it slow your enemies movement by 66%, rather than the 50% Cripple can achieve. It also increases the recharge time of ALL the targets abilites by 66%, which is great!
In the current situations, if groups of 20+ players clash most people just dish out all that they have and will be stuck with very long cooldowns. Also Chill is a rather unique condition. As far as I know, apart from the rangers Frost Trap only the Staff Ele is able to set an Ice Combo Field, which can provide Ice Armor (10% Damage Reduction) to you (leap) or 5 Targets (Blast).

Be aware, that his is not meant to be a damage or burst build so don’t expect too much on these terms

2. The Build

here you can find the entire Build written out.

Utilities:
Healing Spring
Muddy Terrain
Frost Trap
Spike Trap
Entangle

Quick word about the trait choices:
The main CC is supposed to come from the traps, hence reducing their Cooldown, increasing their Radius and the duration of the effect applied by them appeared mandatory.
Apart from that we agreed that the traits could be spent more or less arbitrary. He here focused on survivabilty and mobility.
Here he focused on preserving the rangers ability to get out of the way quickly if things turned ugly. This builds focus is to put the enemy on ice and hence CC him as much as possible. Survivability is key.

Concerning the utilities, one might think about switching some traits around and add the Frost Spirit for it also has an AoE Chill field (Not a Combo-Field though) which can (through a trait) also be applied when the Spirit is being killed.
I personally am no big fan of Entangle since the roots tend to be torn apart by AoE damage pretty quickly and am running with Rampage as One instead. ~20 sec Stability is just too great in a GvG situation.
Another interesting choice might be the Grenth racial of the humans since it also has an AoE Chill!

3. Gear

In the setup posted above he used Axe/Axe – Sword/Horn, but really this build can propably be played with a lot of weapon sets.
It is important though to use Axe in at least one Weapon-Set for the #3 singe target chill and the #2 5-times-Combo finisher.
Also, if you look at the sigils, he is using Sigil of Chilling and Sigil of Hydromacy on either weapon set. Chilling will increase chill duration by 10% (with 6x Rune of Ice and the Rare Veggie Pizza Buffod adding up to 70% increased chill duration) and hydromacy will give AoE Chill for base 3 seconds to 5 targets around you on weapon swap. Hence, you will want to run 2 one handed weapons, rather than a two-handed one.
I personally run Greatsword with Sigil of Hydromacy and Axe/Warhorn with Chill/hydromacy and am still fine. Really I guess this will to some extend be up to the users choice.

On the armor you will run 6x Rune of ice. Giving you + 20% Chill duration, a 5% Chance to proc AoE Chill when being hit and +5% Damage against chilled foes.

I go into the stat choice in the theorycrafting section below.

4. Pets

To suplement our role as a CC-Master, 3 pets really shine:

• Polar Bear
• Ice Drake
• Pigs

Polar Bear and Ice Drake both are very sturdy and provide AoE Chill. There are other Pets that can chill but are rather likely to die in AoE, like the Snow Owl and Alpine Wolf. The White Moa might be an intresting alternative though, due to his AoE healing at still realtively high defensive stats. If this can outshine the 5000 Vitality (!) of the Bear or the Blast finisher of the Drake is yet questionable.
Pigs are an odd choice but provide knock-down while being sturdier than canines.

5. Playstyle

There are two parameteres which are to be served:
Crowd Control
Survive

You wont be pumping out hughe numbers with this build. Your task will be to restrict the enemies ability to move on the battle field and hence keep them from positioning for a counter attack as well as forcing them to use their Condition-removes to counter your heavy cc, which then wont be ready to get rid of the more frequently applied burning and bleed effects.
Traps are to be placed in the enemies movement direction. Afterwards you try to flank and pump out as much damage as you can, making use of the Skirmishing 25 Minor Trait, send in your pet and throw in more traps as they come off cooldown.
Yet, it is recommended to wait with your Utilities until the second attack of the enemy team. Most skills on their side will then be on cooldown and the chill will be even more devestating.
Also again keep in mind that most people don’t expect to be chilled for up to 15 seconds and will be struck on the wrong foot.
Generaly zerg-movement is ofc a given and try not to focus on certain targets but to spread your CC around as much as possible.

6. Theorycrafting

Having said this, it was the question whether Condition Damage (CD) or Direct Damage (DD) was the way to go for this build an chose the equipment accordingly.
Balduran put quite some research into this and created several simulations, using the above Gear set-up with Axe/Axe and a Carrion/Rabid Set-up with Axe/Axe and Axe/Torch.
Point of reference for the simulation was the Effective Health, which was at about 31.000 at 2850 Armor.

[img]http://img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/simulationwaldh0r5ba67od.png[/img]

According to the Simulation, the CD build appears supperior.
But it is important to keep in mind that:
Axe/Torch deal about 13k Damage over 20 seconds according to the Graph posted above.
But since we want to force the enemy to use its Condition Remove to get rid of our CC, most damaging conditions will be purged in the process. Most Condition Removes have a cooldown inbetween 20-30 seconds.
Hence for a condition build all conditions will be removed once every 20 seconds in a worst case scenario.
The main portion of the condition damage will be coming from the torch, with a relatively high cooldown. As a matter of fact, since torch CD and Condi Removes behave in a similar way, one might say that about 50% of the damage output will actually reach the target. This can be seen as the green curve jumps upward, this is where the high burnind damage kicks in.
According to the simulation the CD build will be inferior to the DD build by 32% and hence giving the DD build the edge.

Thats it from my side so far.
Again: All credit goes to my guild mate Ba(a)lduran, who put quite some work into putting those numbers together and came up with the idea of a Chill focused CC build.

I think chill is great and the Ranger just the right person to throw it at an enemy zerg.
Winter is Coming!

I will be looking forward to your criticism

(PS: Baalduran is also our dedicated streamer maybe you wanna check some time on http://de.twitch.tv/baalduran )

~~Saved for further use~~