Guild Wars 2

Hello my fellow rangers! Just as the title says, does anyone have a clue of how to counter a condition build? I notice that I tend to get owned by condition builds and can’t think of a way to counter it. Even though I am using “Survival of the Fittest”, I’m still getting killed by numerous stacks of condition. Any suggestions? Thanks

Empathetic Bond, Signet Of Renewal and Healing Spring are all good for managing conditions and I suggest taking all of them. If we’re speaking from a WvW perspective, condition builds are very abundant and people who know how to use their profession will probably have an advantage over you. What I suggest doing is using Healing Spring early in the fight. Often times it’s best to use your heal right around 80% health, sometimes even 85 – 90% if you’re against a condition heavy build. This should mean that by the time you need to use your heal again, it will just be coming off of it’s cooldown. Save using Signet Of Renewal for bursts, if someone stacks a whole ton of conditions on you in a very short period of time, they likely won’t be able to stack such a variety of them again for a little while, so save your signet for cleansing those nasty bursts, and use your heal for cleansing the basic conditions. Remember to also roll through your Healing Spring as it’s a long lasting water field and will keep cleansing you until it dissipates.

Also; no build or profession can do well against every other build/profession. There will be certain people that are extremely difficult if not impossible for you to defeat. It doesn’t mean you or your profession of choice are bad, it just means you know what to avoid. Personally, I refuse to fight perplexity thieves/mesmers on my trapper Ranger. I don’t know why, but I seem to take way more damage from confusion with traps than I do with power. It’s like traps reflect back at you twice as hard or something.. So as soon as I get some confusion stacks I’ll usually high tail it out of there.

I frequently run with Empathic Bond, Signet of Renewal, and a LB with sigils of Purity/Generosity. Slap on some -% duration food and it’s pretty easy to deal with a lot of the players you’ll come across.

While Healing Spring has additional condition removal, I find I prefer Troll Unguent in most situations because it allows me to kite well and kiting has helped me win several battles against condition spamming builds.

if youre not relying on your runes for run speed, consider lyssa.

if i go up against someone that i feel is probably a condition spammer, ill wait for their first good burst, then use lyssa+elite (5 condi clear) and save my SoR for the 2nd condi burst (if they live to throw one).

this helps the pet alot too. Typically SoR is going to force you to swap to keep the pet alive after it absorbs your problems. its important that pet swaps are on your terms when up against a condi spec, because you cant afford to have a dead pet and lose empathic bond. also on that note, keep in mind that aoe conditions + empathic bond are going to hurt your pet badly (he essentially gets hit double), so try not to fight on top of your pet if going against an engi or a necro if its running epidemic or marks.

I always felt BM specs were stronger against condi users for this too (shorter swap speed + massive pet regen means you dont lose empathic bond). but im not sure how viable a BM spec is atm.

I like to keep a couple of passive condi clears as well as some active one on me at all times. the passive one are to get rid of long lasting incidental type condis (poison, cripple, bleeds, weekness) and to stop bleed stacks getting to high and the actives are for the oh crap I’m Immob/Chilled and lots of others.

i don’t like EP as its 3 at a time and not staggered and it hurts you pet i don’t like hurting my pet

So i have a short bow with both purity and generosity on it and a gs with generosity on it, i generally use one of those at any given time. some times ill equip SoR as well

My active condi cleanse is out of Healing spring, SotF + MT&LR, Elite spirit, SoR.

I typically find that Empathic Bond, Signet of Renewal, and Healing Spring altogether on the same build is adequate.

Just make sure you manage your pet properly, especially if you use SoR to send it a condi spike you may have received.

Other than that, learn what “big” skills people can hit you with and evade/dodge them. Most condi classes rely on big hits of condis to keep the damage they need up on you, so if you can mitigate skills that will apply burning, Engineers Pry Bar, Shrapnel Grenades, Freeze Grenades, Poison Grenades, avoid standing in bombs, and Necro marks in general (you will see their staff animation and most necros will aim right under your feet so you can basically pre-dodge them), along with their Scepter 2 (big bleed stacks and cripple), Dagger 4 (condi transfer), and Dagger 5 (long Weakness and bleed).

Other than that, I mean, we get into more WvW specific specs. PU condi mesmers are all about lucky procs of cleansing and avoiding killing their clones if they are clone death builds while avoiding iDuelists attack if they are running Pistol (some do), or evacuating the area of they go invisible with The Prestige skill to avoid being burned.

Last tidbit, condi thieves. Typically Venoms, avoid their “Venom Burst” if it all possible, or if you are caught by it, cleanse immediately once they are out of Venoms. Then either kill them, or in the fairly likely event you can’t down them, escape before their venoms come back up, because most Venom thieves, factoring in skill, are an absolute nightmare to actually kill and will wear you down eventually.

In addition to 100% agreement with what jcbroe wrote, I’ll also add that — even if you aren’t specced for it — a longbow can be a condition counter. If you have time, quickly slap on a few traits like extended range. If you only have time to equip the bow, that can often make a world of difference against something like a condi necro. Necros are often just absolutely useless against a LB with a mobility swap.

Aside from agreeing with the above… I’ve also seen it work with survival of the fittest + longbow + controlling the range of the battle.