Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone. i’ve put together this condi druid build and a video explaining how it works in detail as well as how youre supposed to play it properly.

i’ve been trying to mess around with other condition druid builds for a while now and so far it just seems that the only way to make it work is to use the same two traitline as any other meta-like build: beastmastery and nature magic. this is due to the fact that combining these two traitlines just gives you much more astral force than any other set of traitlines because of the pet boon-share of regeneration etc..

So far ive had a lot of fun with this build during the last 30 games or so.. and im considering crafting a gearset so i can use something similar to roam with in WvW.

Link to the build itself will be in the video description.

Link to video:

Let me know what you guys think.

Why not post a link to the build here?

Justine.6351:

Why not post a link to the build here?

because i want you to get a more in depth understanding of how it works and why

I would ditch the spirit, you are basically investing a GM trait for 1 spirit only, and will die 50% of time.

Protective ward will increase your sustain more and then you can get SoS or whatever you wanna slot in.

Daze glyph is better now you have 2 stun breaks.

If you get the daze glyph then you can get Ancient Seeds, more condition output.

StickerHappy.8052:

I would ditch the spirit, you are basically investing a GM trait for 1 spirit only, and will die 50% of time.

Protective ward will increase your sustain more and then you can get SoS or whatever you wanna slot in.

Daze glyph is better now you have 2 stun breaks.

If you get the daze glyph then you can get Ancient Seeds, more condition output.

well the thing is the spirit actually gives a lot of condi power. i think i forgot to mention, but the spirit will ofc also affect your pet. so by yourself you already have an easy time applying the burn stacks from the spirit.

and about the daze glyph with ancient seeds.. like i said, the bleed dmg just isnt enough. its an extremely long duration and it just doesnt deal enough dmg to be effective. its only really good for the immobilize.

in a team fight its even better with the spirit cus it will affect your teammates…

and ive found that if you dont place the spirit in the middle of the capture point it will not actually die, but just self destruct when it reaches its max duration.

I would recommend sun spirit too for condi builds, but i would definitely take Protective Ward over the spirit trait. If the spirit gets attacked, it will still die fast, doesn’t really matter if it takes 1 or 2 autoattacks. And 1s vigor isn’t doing much either. Wanderer’s isn’t a very tanky amulet and you are not using SoS, which makes the build quite vulnerable to burst. PW can help a lot vs power.
And I’m not sure, if wanderer is the best amulet choice, because the precision is pretty much wasted and the additional condi duration is often useless because of cleanses.

Edit: Mh, maybe “on crit”-sigils like earth and torment would be worth taking over the duration sigils.

bigo.9037:

Hey everyone. i’ve put together this condi druid build and a video explaining how it works in detail as well as how youre supposed to play it properly.

i’ve been trying to mess around with other condition druid builds for a while now and so far it just seems that the only way to make it work is to use the same two traitline as any other meta-like build: beastmastery and nature magic. this is due to the fact that combining these two traitlines just gives you much more astral force than any other set of traitlines because of the pet boon-share of regeneration etc..

So far ive had a lot of fun with this build during the last 30 games or so.. and im considering crafting a gearset so i can use something similar to roam with in WvW.

Link to the build itself will be in the video description.

Link to video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RipduLc3DU

Let me know what you guys think.

You don’t need Nature Magic to share regen with your pets from Resounding Timbre and shouts. I think that you’re focusing way to much on a way to quickly generate Astral Force while you’r not a support build. The precision is completly wasted, and Honed Axes is useless. Wilderness Survival is a better line to pick rather than Nature Magic, and survival skills would provide the cleans you need , so you could take so much more usefull runes… Also i would use Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch for combo. First thing to learn with a condition ranger is to cover your burn stacks with others conditions with a good rotation instead of spamming everything on CD and missing half your condition applications.

play condition druid in pvp its like to cripple yourself.

go crits and use the condi weapons. In any case they are more like hybrid, and the only exception torch, its not very useful against moving targets.

lets hope we get the ranger’s weapons revisited and buffed so we can have more options.

anduriell.6280:

play condition druid in pvp its like to cripple yourself.

go crits and use the condi weapons. In any case they are more like hybrid, and the only exception torch, its not very useful against moving targets.

lets hope we get the ranger’s weapons revisited and buffed so we can have more options.

well torch is ok since its an spvp build

borya.2964:

bigo.9037:

Hey everyone. i’ve put together this condi druid build and a video explaining how it works in detail as well as how youre supposed to play it properly.

i’ve been trying to mess around with other condition druid builds for a while now and so far it just seems that the only way to make it work is to use the same two traitline as any other meta-like build: beastmastery and nature magic. this is due to the fact that combining these two traitlines just gives you much more astral force than any other set of traitlines because of the pet boon-share of regeneration etc..

So far ive had a lot of fun with this build during the last 30 games or so.. and im considering crafting a gearset so i can use something similar to roam with in WvW.

Link to the build itself will be in the video description.

Link to video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RipduLc3DU

Let me know what you guys think.

You don’t need Nature Magic to share regen with your pets from Resounding Timbre and shouts. I think that you’re focusing way to much on a way to quickly generate Astral Force while you’r not a support build. The precision is completly wasted, and Honed Axes is useless. Wilderness Survival is a better line to pick rather than Nature Magic, and survival skills would provide the cleans you need , so you could take so much more usefull runes… Also i would use Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch for combo. First thing to learn with a condition ranger is to cover your burn stacks with others conditions with a good rotation instead of spamming everything on CD and missing half your condition applications.

i already tried fiddeling around with wilderness survival but theres nothing to compare with celestial avatar. in todays meta its simply a must. you cant live without it. while using traitlines other than nature magic ive died many times due to the fact im unable to cleanse conditions, break stun and heal my self at the right time.

also, the grandmaster traits are extremely problematic in wilderness because you lose something either way. if you go with the one that makes your pet take conditions from you, you lose the cooldown reduction of survival skills. of course, it is more condi removal than the cooldown reduction trait, but its very inconsistent. it takes 3 condis after 10 sec.. and then 10 sec later repeat. you have 0 control over when this happens, and that means if you rely too much on this to cleanse off condis midfight youre going to die very soon after the first time you use celestial avatar to cleanse the condis.
im not sure but it also feels like the pet has to be within a certain range to be able to remove your conditions? either way, 3 condis / 10 sec is not enough when you have 0 control . dont forget that with CA, you can cleanse 13 condis every 10 sec. just to put that into perspective.

and the survival skill CD reduction trait… well… theres only 2 usefull survival skills. well… 1 actually. troll urgent doesnt heal fast enough. youre not a necro. youre not running clerics armor. you will not survive healing for only 800 / sec. cleanses 2 condis.. sure. lighting reflexes is probably the only good survival skill. evading backwards is very usefull as a ranger. and it removes up to like.. 3 conditions. and has a decently low cooldown.. but ONLY if you take that trait.

basically, if you take CD reduction trait, youre forced to run 2 survival skills. 3 is too much, the elite is useless in comparison to SotP.

if you take the 3 condi cleanse / 10 sec, you cant use survival skills….. what the kitten is the point then?

with nature magic you get better benefits, more condi cleanse, ( and stunbreaks ) more heals etc. etc. etc…… theres just no reason to run wilderness. ive already tried. but it doesnt work.

edit: yes, i have tried swapping out the runes while using the wilderness traitline. but it doesnt matter. i even tried the rune of the dolyak to compensate for less astral regeneration. but it still isnt worth it.. youre still missing out on some very important things.

NOT building for celestial avatar is like not even using the druid traitline in the first place. CA is what makes druids viable in the first place. you NEED it and you WILL die without it.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

I would recommend sun spirit too for condi builds, but i would definitely take Protective Ward over the spirit trait. If the spirit gets attacked, it will still die fast, doesn’t really matter if it takes 1 or 2 autoattacks. And 1s vigor isn’t doing much either. Wanderer’s isn’t a very tanky amulet and you are not using SoS, which makes the build quite vulnerable to burst. PW can help a lot vs power.
And I’m not sure, if wanderer is the best amulet choice, because the precision is pretty much wasted and the additional condi duration is often useless because of cleanses.

Edit: Mh, maybe “on crit”-sigils like earth and torment would be worth taking over the duration sigils.

this is a very good point and i havent actually tested how well the spirit survives and how much dmg it takes to kill.

the idea of crit sigils is also a really good idea that shouldve been obvious to me when i started but oh well.

more feedback like this pls

bigo.9037:

i already tried fiddeling around with wilderness survival but theres nothing to compare with celestial avatar. in todays meta its simply a must. you cant live without it. while using traitlines other than nature magic ive died many times due to the fact im unable to cleanse conditions, break stun and heal my self at the right time.

also, the grandmaster traits are extremely problematic in wilderness because you lose something either way. if you go with the one that makes your pet take conditions from you, you lose the cooldown reduction of survival skills. of course, it is more condi removal than the cooldown reduction trait, but its very inconsistent. it takes 3 condis after 10 sec.. and then 10 sec later repeat. you have 0 control over when this happens, and that means if you rely too much on this to cleanse off condis midfight youre going to die very soon after the first time you use celestial avatar to cleanse the condis.
im not sure but it also feels like the pet has to be within a certain range to be able to remove your conditions? either way, 3 condis / 10 sec is not enough when you have 0 control . dont forget that with CA, you can cleanse 13 condis every 10 sec. just to put that into perspective.

and the survival skill CD reduction trait… well… theres only 2 usefull survival skills. well… 1 actually. troll urgent doesnt heal fast enough. youre not a necro. youre not running clerics armor. you will not survive healing for only 800 / sec. cleanses 2 condis.. sure. lighting reflexes is probably the only good survival skill. evading backwards is very usefull as a ranger. and it removes up to like.. 3 conditions. and has a decently low cooldown.. but ONLY if you take that trait.

basically, if you take CD reduction trait, youre forced to run 2 survival skills. 3 is too much, the elite is useless in comparison to SotP.

if you take the 3 condi cleanse / 10 sec, you cant use survival skills….. what the kitten is the point then?

with nature magic you get better benefits, more condi cleanse, ( and stunbreaks ) more heals etc. etc. etc…… theres just no reason to run wilderness. ive already tried. but it doesnt work.

edit: yes, i have tried swapping out the runes while using the wilderness traitline. but it doesnt matter. i even tried the rune of the dolyak to compensate for less astral regeneration. but it still isnt worth it.. youre still missing out on some very important things.

NOT building for celestial avatar is like not even using the druid traitline in the first place. CA is what makes druids viable in the first place. you NEED it and you WILL die without it.

You’re confusing Nature Magic and Druid lines.

borya.2964:

bigo.9037:

i already tried fiddeling around with wilderness survival but theres nothing to compare with celestial avatar. in todays meta its simply a must. you cant live without it. while using traitlines other than nature magic ive died many times due to the fact im unable to cleanse conditions, break stun and heal my self at the right time.

also, the grandmaster traits are extremely problematic in wilderness because you lose something either way. if you go with the one that makes your pet take conditions from you, you lose the cooldown reduction of survival skills. of course, it is more condi removal than the cooldown reduction trait, but its very inconsistent. it takes 3 condis after 10 sec.. and then 10 sec later repeat. you have 0 control over when this happens, and that means if you rely too much on this to cleanse off condis midfight youre going to die very soon after the first time you use celestial avatar to cleanse the condis.
im not sure but it also feels like the pet has to be within a certain range to be able to remove your conditions? either way, 3 condis / 10 sec is not enough when you have 0 control . dont forget that with CA, you can cleanse 13 condis every 10 sec. just to put that into perspective.

and the survival skill CD reduction trait… well… theres only 2 usefull survival skills. well… 1 actually. troll urgent doesnt heal fast enough. youre not a necro. youre not running clerics armor. you will not survive healing for only 800 / sec. cleanses 2 condis.. sure. lighting reflexes is probably the only good survival skill. evading backwards is very usefull as a ranger. and it removes up to like.. 3 conditions. and has a decently low cooldown.. but ONLY if you take that trait.

basically, if you take CD reduction trait, youre forced to run 2 survival skills. 3 is too much, the elite is useless in comparison to SotP.

if you take the 3 condi cleanse / 10 sec, you cant use survival skills….. what the kitten is the point then?

with nature magic you get better benefits, more condi cleanse, ( and stunbreaks ) more heals etc. etc. etc…… theres just no reason to run wilderness. ive already tried. but it doesnt work.

edit: yes, i have tried swapping out the runes while using the wilderness traitline. but it doesnt matter. i even tried the rune of the dolyak to compensate for less astral regeneration. but it still isnt worth it.. youre still missing out on some very important things.

NOT building for celestial avatar is like not even using the druid traitline in the first place. CA is what makes druids viable in the first place. you NEED it and you WILL die without it.

You’re confusing Nature Magic and Druid lines.

jesus christ the amount of clarification you need to understand my point.

nature magic = more boons on pet = easily stack / maintain 10-25 stacks of might AND more CA regeneration.

wilderness = nothing. a few cleanses, inferior healing and stunbreakers.

CA = stunbreak every 10 sec. 13 condi cleanses / 10 sec.

and also i read your other comment again. honed axe is not useless. the heck are you talking about? 13 seconds of weakness in AOE is not useless. the other options arent worth it for this condi build.

I’m pretty sure the weakness isn’t aoe, because it is applied by the pet and not by the skill directly. Haven’t tested it though. Aoe chill is still nice, however i think, aoe taunt or more might/quickness has more value in most situations.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

I’m pretty sure the weakness isn’t aoe, because it is applied by the pet and not by the skill directly. Haven’t tested it though. Aoe chill is still nice, however i think, aoe taunt or more might/quickness has more value in most situations.

good point there about the weakness. i over looked that.

however, as a condi build.. youre going to want to apply aoe chill and bleed to multiple enemies. also, the might could be alright but its only 3 stacks.. so yea.

youre gonna deal more dmg with axe with honed axe cus you can spam axe 2 for good bleeding dmg. and the taunt… is can sort of be a mess. you have to put your bristleback in a certain spot.. most of the time ppl will be out of the taunt range for bristleback anyway since its not following the targets because it has a long range.

and with smokescale youre wasting your smokefield for the taunt so… eh..

bigo.9037:

jesus christ the amount of clarification you need to understand my point.

nature magic = more boons on pet = easily stack / maintain 10-25 stacks of might AND more CA regeneration.

wilderness = nothing. a few cleanses, inferior healing and stunbreakers.

CA = stunbreak every 10 sec. 13 condi cleanses / 10 sec.

and also i read your other comment again. honed axe is not useless. the heck are you talking about? 13 seconds of weakness in AOE is not useless. the other options arent worth it for this condi build.

I just said that you should take Wilderness Survival over Nature Magic and you answered me that i couldn’t compare WS and Celestial Avatar. Then you wrote a whole text comparing WS to Druid, but I never said that you should leave the Druid line.

Here again : “wilderness = nothing. a few cleanses, inferior healing and stunbreakers.”, you’re comparing WS and Druid lines. It’s pointless and there is nothing to understand here from what i said in the first place.

You just took the 3 meta traits lines and tried to insert a condi build in it. That’s why you take most of you trait buy default (mostly in NM). You can’t make a good build this way.

In WS the minors are very good, more endurance, protection on dodge (and you dodge a lot..), you could take Oakheart Salve (that is basically better than Rejuvenation minor). Then Ambidextery is your trait since u use Torch an Dagger, less CD + 150 condi damage (even if you don’t really care care about stats, precision wasted, 250 ferocity wasted etc.), your main damage come from torch. Bark Skin is good against a first burst. And Wilderness Knowledge is great with survivals, you could have the cleans you need here to take another runes, and there are a lots of good runes for condi builds.

By the way, TO is a very strong heal, mostly traited. Obviously you can’t use a HOT the same way you use a burst heal, but i am not going to try an explanation here. But the good thing is that you can still choose HAO if you want, because you can have both survivals and shouts traited while keeping BM, you could even keep trooper runes and remove condi with both your shouts and survivals… And Entangle would be good to immobilize your opponents in your Bonefire (for now they just have to leave the red circle). Wilderness Survival, Beast Mastery and Druid (to be clear lol) would be really better for the kind of build you’re looking for in my oppinion. Your build is not optimized, like, not at all.

You even took sigil of doom in your dagger, in a weapons set where you already have 6 stacks of poison if you’re smart (Stalker’s Strike alone means perma poisoned with your dagger). I don’t think that Jesus would help me to understand you choices xD.

borya.2964:

bigo.9037:

jesus christ the amount of clarification you need to understand my point.

nature magic = more boons on pet = easily stack / maintain 10-25 stacks of might AND more CA regeneration.

wilderness = nothing. a few cleanses, inferior healing and stunbreakers.

CA = stunbreak every 10 sec. 13 condi cleanses / 10 sec.

and also i read your other comment again. honed axe is not useless. the heck are you talking about? 13 seconds of weakness in AOE is not useless. the other options arent worth it for this condi build.

I just said that you should take Wilderness Survival over Nature Magic and you answered me that i couldn’t compare WS and Celestial Avatar. Then you wrote a whole text comparing WS to Druid, but I never said that you should leave the Druid line.

Here again : “wilderness = nothing. a few cleanses, inferior healing and stunbreakers.”, you’re comparing WS and Druid lines. It’s pointless and there is nothing to understand here from what i said in the first place.

You just took the 3 meta traits lines and tried to insert a condi build in it. That’s why you take most of you trait buy default (mostly in NM). You can’t make a good build this way.

In WS the minors are very good, more endurance, protection on dodge (and you dodge a lot..), you could take Oakheart Salve (that is basically better than Rejuvenation minor). Then Ambidextery is your trait since u use Torch an Dagger, less CD + 150 condi damage (even if you don’t really care care about stats, precision wasted, 250 ferocity wasted etc.), your main damage come from torch. Bark Skin is good against a first burst. And Wilderness Knowledge is great with survivals, you could have the cleans you need here to take another runes, and there are a lots of good runes for condi builds.

By the way, TO is a very strong heal, mostly traited. Obviously you can’t use a HOT the same way you use a burst heal, but i am not going to try an explanation here. But the good thing is that you can still choose HAO if you want, because you can have both survivals and shouts traited while keeping BM, you could even keep trooper runes and remove condi with both your shouts and survivals… And Entangle would be good to immobilize your opponents in your Bonefire (for now they just have to leave the red circle). Wilderness Survival, Beast Mastery and Druid (to be clear lol) would be really better for the kind of build you’re looking for in my oppinion. Your build is not optimized, like, not at all.

You even took sigil of doom in your dagger, in a weapons set where you already have 6 stacks of poison if you’re smart (Stalker’s Strike alone means perma poisoned with your dagger). I don’t think that Jesus would help me to understand you choices xD.

sigils might not be optimal, sure… but about wilderness survival?
look. what i meant was that nature magic provides much more astral force so that celestial avatar will be ready to use more often. nature magic does this by the boonshare with pet.. boon copying etc. etc.. your pet basically has permanent regeneration on it.. which means as long as your pet doesnt have 100 % hp, the regen will tick, giving you astral force.

Wildernessurvival does not have this. so you regenerate astral force slower.

i know youre supposed to use troll urgent at a different time and stuff than whao, but if youre already low, the healing ticks are just not good enough to keep you alive.. unless you have more toughness / vitality than you generally should have. even CA wont save you here. as you only have a 3k heal thats instant. and with wilderness you have less astral force regen, so thats not going to be available as easily..

you dont need to be bunker to trait and build for CA. all builds have to do this. its the only way you can stay alive when all other classes also have their elite specs.

I find using the druid line without the staff lackluster. Without the staff auto you are essentially not using the minor traits in druid, and the lingering light also does not trigger as often.
You do not deal much damage, and most of it relies on enemies standing in bonfire but you do not have beastly warden or ancient seed in order to root enemies in it. In short you made a worst version of the condi mesmer.

Honestly ether change the sword/dagger to a staff or drop the druid line entirely for ether wilderness survival or skirmishing. Ws will give you almost the exact same thing as druid as far as survivability is concerned, you trade 1 stun break for another (druidic clarity for shared anguish), condi removal for other (druidic clarity for empatehtic bond), and a sustain trait for another (lingering light for oakheart salve). You only loose stealth but gain some powerful minors.
The loss of cele avatar is big, but you can compensate by not taking trash traits that are required to make it work, so you can take withering strike for some weakness that will further allow you to resist power dmg, and you can swap signet of the wild for stone, which will somewaht make up for the lost healing.

Or go with skirmishing and get some vigor and actual damage traits such as more powerful bleed and quick draw (quick draw alone can make up for loosing cele avatar healing because it allows you to evade with weapons more often as well as make disengaging easier, or allow you to push for more dmg if surviving via kiting is not needed)

Whatever you decide to do, ditch the axe trait and take beastly warden. Your major dmg skill is bonfire and you have 0 ways to root enemies in it, this trait should fix that.

Drop the spirit trait, the extra range and health doesn’t matter that much when you’re fighting over a node and you have no chase ability. Also you continue to benefit from the spirit even after it’s dead, it lasts until the body disappears.

Drop the Ax GM trait. Ferocity is useless to you, and AOE chill doesn’t make a significant difference. Meanwhile extra CC from taunt or the boons from petswapping will help more. At least you can use the quickness to channel your heal skills faster.

What role do you want this build to play? You don’t have the mobility to be a roamer. The spirit makes me think you want to be a teamfighter, but you’re not quite survivable enough for it. It looks like you want to focus on 1v1s?

foste.3098:

I find using the druid line without the staff lackluster. Without the staff auto you are essentially not using the minor traits in druid, and the lingering light also does not trigger as often.
You do not deal much damage, and most of it relies on enemies standing in bonfire but you do not have beastly warden or ancient seed in order to root enemies in it. In short you made a worst version of the condi mesmer.

Honestly ether change the sword/dagger to a staff or drop the druid line entirely for ether wilderness survival or skirmishing. Ws will give you almost the exact same thing as druid as far as survivability is concerned, you trade 1 stun break for another (druidic clarity for shared anguish), condi removal for other (druidic clarity for empatehtic bond), and a sustain trait for another (lingering light for oakheart salve). You only loose stealth but gain some powerful minors.
The loss of cele avatar is big, but you can compensate by not taking trash traits that are required to make it work, so you can take withering strike for some weakness that will further allow you to resist power dmg, and you can swap signet of the wild for stone, which will somewaht make up for the lost healing.

Or go with skirmishing and get some vigor and actual damage traits such as more powerful bleed and quick draw (quick draw alone can make up for loosing cele avatar healing because it allows you to evade with weapons more often as well as make disengaging easier, or allow you to push for more dmg if surviving via kiting is not needed)

Whatever you decide to do, ditch the axe trait and take beastly warden. Your major dmg skill is bonfire and you have 0 ways to root enemies in it, this trait should fix that.

i can see what youre getting at with the pet taunt trait. but the other stuff… idk. i have already tried ( not with this exact condi set up in mind though ) fiddeling around with other ways to compensate for celestial avatar without the druid traitline and stuff. but there just isnt anything that can..