Guild Wars 2

So I’ve noticed that most rangers seem to be taking Signet of the Hunt into dungeons.

Now here’s the thing. I’m OK with seeing people not playing the meta. Using a greatsword instead of a sword? That’s fine. Wanna try a condition build? I won’t be mad at you. I’m not bringing this up to judge anyone based on their build. This thread is not meant to discuss speed running, it’s meant to debate the viability of SotH in dungeons.

The reason I’m focused on SotH isn’t only because it’s common, it’s because I feel it’s under-performing in this particular content.

I get it. It’s great for open world PvE, especially if you’re using a GS. You can’t keep swiftness up permanently so the signet helps you get around faster. Faster = more fun. It also helps you keep up with zergs and commanders. I use the signet all the time in sPvP as well. However, here’s why I never use it in a dungeon:

• Many groups have swiftness up pretty much permanently. If they don’t, there’s no reason for me to be faster than the rest of them.
  [HOWEVER] As Tragic Positive may be implying in a response to this thread. There may be cases in hardcore groups where you might want to swap to this signet before a running part.
  I would argue that you’d want to switch off of it as soon as the run was over. I prefer to use a warhorn to give everyone swiftness.

• The active damage boost from this signet only applies to one hit. In order to get a DPS boost from it, you have to time it with Maul.

• It doesn’t break stun.

Now I rarely see rangers actually activate their signets. So they have equipped a 25% speed boost and they aren’t thinking about increasing their damage effectiveness by activating it. I used to do the same thing. Though I have found the following skill(s) more fun and more effective.

Here’s a better skill that even new players are drawn to: Quickening Zephyr

QZ breaks stun. This will save you more times than the 25% speed boost from Signet of the Hunt. QZ also gives you quickness. Now here are the great things about quickness:

• If you have a party member downed in a dangerous area, quickness can rez them up before things get bad.

• Quickness, unlike Signet of the Hunt’s 150% boost, applies to multiple hits.

• The 6 second duration of quickness encompasses most of the active duration of Signet of the Wild increasing your DPS by 87.5% for 6 seconds. (That’s what happens when you multiply a 25% damage increase when it hits 50% more times.)

• If you’re using Rampage as One, your pet will get more hits in during quickness and stack more might for you.

• [HOWEVER] Another thing I inferred from Tragic Positive’s response is that there may be a case where QZ becomes completely useless in hardcore dungeon runs. If your group has a mesmer with a well timed Time Warp that encompasses a boss’s entire life span.
  At this point I would still steer away from the SotH maul combo because you’d likely get more DPS from using that quickness to get off a quick LB barrage+rapidfire before switching back to sword+offhand.

So you’re saying, “Wait a minute on that third one, Signet of the Wild and QZ are only 2 skills, wouldn’t adding Signet of the Hunt as my third skill increase my DPS?”

It would indeed increase your DPS. However, Frost Spirit increases the DPS of your entire party by 3.5% untraited. All five members of your party get this 3.5% boost. If you factor the damage boosted from FS into your personal damage (because that damage would not have been done if you weren’t there) the number is actually closer to a raise in effectiveness of 17.5% (more if the people in your party are high damage and less if they are low damage).

Frost Spirit is not always up, but you can time it to apply to all of the important boss fights.

TL;DR
I can’t really find a good reason to bring Signet of the Hunt into a dungeon, but it’s still very common.

If you’re activating the signet for a damage boost, that’s a good thing. It shows you’re putting effort into using your skill bar to increase your dungeon effectiveness, but:

There are better skills available.

NOTE: If you’re interested in improving your ranger build, scroll down a little bit to see how the cascade effect causes these small damage % boosts to really shine.

If you have a counterargument to anything above, please speak up. We’re here to talk about Signet of the Hunt in dungeons.

I have seen 3 rangers beside me to know what to do in dungeons.
… But do you really think I have time to personally check every single one of those?

If they Have a Spotter + Frost Spirit traited > I couldn’t care less about their 2nd and 3rd skill. They usually run SotW, but if they are Frost Spotter – I’m running a mesmer anyways. So they don’t really need the Quickening Zephir.

I’ve seen plenty of Meta Runs where you simply didn’t have the swiftness. And if you did – definitely not a permanent one. I don’t see a clear reason why to bring this topic up.

If the ranger is behind – he’s wasting others’ time. He can swap to QZ before the boss encounters.
But I still think that something semi-personal bothers you. I thought that we – the forum community – already know that 85% of Rangers are useless selfish bearkitten.

If the Ranger has a brain – he’ll definitely find uses for the SotH. If an intelligent ranger picked the signet – he did it on purpose.
If the Ranger’s an idiot – not only you won’t find him here, but he’ll ignore you regardless.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I have seen 3 rangers beside me to know what to do in dungeons.
… But do you really think I have time to personally check every single one of those?

If they Have a Spotter + Frost Spirit traited > I couldn’t care less about their 2nd and 3rd skill. They usually run SotW, but if they are Frost Spotter – I’m running a mesmer anyways. So they don’t really need the Quickening Zephir.

I’ve seen plenty of Meta Runs where you simply didn’t have the swiftness. And if you did – definitely not a permanent one. I don’t see a clear reason why to bring this topic up.

If the ranger is behind – he’s wasting others’ time. He can swap to QZ before the boss encounters.
But I still think that something semi-personal bothers you. I thought that we – the forum community – already know that 85% of Rangers are useless selfish bearkitten.

If the Ranger has a brain – he’ll definitely find uses for the SotH. If an intelligent ranger picked the signet – he did it on purpose.
If the Ranger’s an idiot – not only you won’t find him here, but he’ll ignore you regardless.

I’ll see if I need to edit the tone of the OP. I don’t mean to make it hostile.

The point of the thread is to discuss the usefulness of SotH in dungeons.

From what I’ve seen, these forums are not limited to people who know the ins and outs of the class. Obviously I’m not going to reach out to everyone, nor do I get onto people for using SotH in-game unless they ask for advice.

Again, I didn’t say SotH had absolutely no use as a skill. It just comes close to it as a permanent passive. I did mention that three skills, in most cases, will be more effective in dungeons, and I see nothing wrong with that.

I just think that most rangers (even those that may pop in and check these forums once or twice) are defaulted to the old mindset that rangers don’t have useful utilities for PvE. SotH is often thought of in two ways:

A. Because running speed saves lives
(I’m saying stun break saves lives)

B. Because might as well, there’s nothing else to put there
(I’m saying “here’s what you could put there instead”)

Well, yep, I do agree that SotH is not probably the no.1 DPS choice of ability…
… But then again, PvE today is about saving time.

And there are 3 ways to do that.

1. Offense (Zerk Gear / Might stacks / Fury)
2. Mobility (Swiftness, Leaps) – here belongs the Signet of the Hunt
3. Skipping (Invisibility, Mesmer Portal)

Any of those work just as fine. Even though the DPS is probably the most significant since the fight can vary from 5 second fight to 1 minute. I’ll mention that the Signet will make only a slight difference since QZ has a 60 sec. CD (no one traits it in PvE).

Mentioning stability… Is not the ranger supposed to have the Signet of the Wild you mentioned when entering a fight? Not to mention that Rampage as One is the no.1 PvE Elite Skill that grants over 20 seconds of that. Which means you are going to have 30 seconds of stability with activation of the signet.
Stun Breaker is not really what matters. The tunnel vision is.

It’s the same as saying that Mesmers do not care if they do not trait Reflects but Cleansing and Stability mantra (which also gives them a DPS boost through traits). It’s still helping to achieve the goal, but through different means. If I have perma swiftness – I never run SotH. I run it only if the team “doesn’t care” (as you mentioned) and does not bring the perma swiftness – which is most of the time.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I’m running a mesmer anyways. So they don’t really need the Quickening Zephir.

Bit offtopic but as engi i sometimes grow to hate mesmers in dungeons. Little annoys me more then watch my setup for massive fire field blasting go to pot, because someone went time warp before my fire bomb exploded and i got lifetime supply of chaos armor instead of might stacks…

just saying;)

DarkWasp.7291:

Frost Spirit increases the DPS of your entire party by 3.5% untraited. That’s roughly a 17.5% boost.

kitten it that’s not how it works! If it increases party dps by 3.5% it increases party dps by 3.5%, period! If something increases your personal dps only by say 10% and you stand for roughly 1/5 of the damage that’s equivalent of 2% party dps increase.

No Spirit: 1k+1k+1k+1k+1k=5k dps
Spirit: 1.035*1k+1.035*1k+1.035*1k+1.035*1k+1.035*1k=1.035*(1k+1k+1k+1k+1k)=5175 dps
5175/5000=1.035

There, now that I got that out of my system. Yes I agree with you OP, SotH is awesome for lazy OWPvE but completely wasted in dungeons.

In my opinion, you’re expecting meta mentality in a pug. I run SoTH in pug dungeon runs, and i never activate it. do i lose out on dps? maybe. does it really matter to me? not really. the difference between a dungeon run taking an hour and a dungeon run taking 45 minutes is fairly insignificant to me, especially running with pugs where you’re likely to run into other classes also running “unviable” builds.

in my books, a pug is meeting and having fun with people. if i wanted meta speedruns, i’d join a guild or those uptight “Xk ap zerker 80’s exp” groups.

edit: granted, if the other person is running a bad build (e.g. bearbowing) then sure, point it out or complain about it. but the difference between a single utility slot isn’t a big deal to me (i mean geez i run soldiers gear in dungeons and i’ve never seen anyone complain about it.) I guess this is just a matter of personal preference though. I’m not very picky, i’ll run with low levels and teach them the dungeon. I spent 3 hours on aetherpath with some first timers, and it was very fun and i do not regret it in the least

EDIT: accidentally said significant instead of insignificant. woops.

does it matter? lets be honest. But in the current dungeon content. Does it even come close to mattering? At all?

At most its 10-20 seconds off your time. Usually you spendmore time moving from fight to fight than you do actually fighting.

Who bloody cares if hes going for 8-9k maul crits instead of taking 6k mauls and letting everyone else hit a tiny bit harder. Its not really slowing you down that much.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

In my opinion, you’re expecting meta mentality in a pug. I run SoTH in pug dungeon runs, and i never activate it. do i lose out on dps? maybe. does it really matter to me? not really. the difference between a dungeon run taking an hour and a dungeon run taking 45 minutes is fairly insignificant to me, especially running with pugs where you’re likely to run into other classes also running “unviable” builds.

Are you talking 1 path or 3 paths? Because even in pugs, you should be seeing a 20 minute max on most paths outside of Arah even in non-meta groups.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

in my books, a pug is meeting and having fun with people. if i wanted meta speedruns, i’d join a guild or those uptight “Xk ap zerker 80’s exp” groups.

I don’t like those guilds/groups much either. I’m half and half. I really just want to have fun, but I want to get the dungeon done in a timely manner as well. On the speed side, fun ends where people start whining about every small mistake. On the slow side, fun ends where the group is wiping at every encounter, or someone AFKs for a long time.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

but the difference between a single utility slot isn’t a big deal to me (i mean geez i run soldiers gear in dungeons and i’ve never seen anyone complain about it.)

The point of my thread here is to get people thinking about ways they can improve their build. It all cascades, as you’ll see below.

Shadelang.3012:

does it matter? lets be honest. But in the current dungeon content. Does it even come close to mattering? At all?

At most its 10-20 seconds off your time. Usually you spendmore time moving from fight to fight than you do actually fighting.

Who bloody cares if hes going for 8-9k maul crits instead of taking 6k mauls and letting everyone else hit a tiny bit harder. Its not really slowing you down that much.

Here’s why it matters. Like I said in the OP, I want to see that people try. I like to see people care about the game they are playing and the specific content they have chosen to enter. This thread is NOT me griping that people are slowing down my dungeon runs. On the contrary. I have about 9000x more issues with people who don’t type on/look at party chat than I do with people who have suboptimal builds.

SotH is where that connects. It’s only the root of a large tree.

There’s two ways to look at enjoying dungeons:

1. Who cares what anyone thinks! I like doing dungeons and I want to do it my way!
2. I like doing dungeons, I plan to do more in the future, what can I do to improve at dungeoning?

If anyone reads this thread and thinks, “I may try these other skills if they actually make me better.” That’s all I ask for. This is the ranger forum after all, we talk about ranger stuff. What’s good, what’s better. Why are we here? Are we players of another class who just showed up to whine about how OP ranger is, or are we here to read ranger stuff?

The next post will explain how it all cascades.

So here’s why choosing the path of self improvement is better than it sounds.

EVERYTHING cascades. Your damage goes up, your enjoyment goes up, your ability to help new players goes up, your credibility goes up and you’ll be more ready for any new challenging content added to the game.

At the heart of the cascade is the very reason zerker became the meta. So here’s how it works:

In GW2 we deal in multiplication. Say you do 2 attacks that do 100 damage. That’s 200 damage. Say you do exactly double damage when you crit and you crit every hit -> 400 damage. Apply a 50% increase in attack speed and you land 3 hits instead -> 600 damage. Apply a 25% damage boost to that and you get 750 damage because you hit 3x 250s instead of 3x 200s.

Now if you’re not into math, you’re first impulse when conceptualizing a build might be that we just applied +175% damage boosts. +100% for crits, +50% for faster attack and + 25% from whatever. But that would give us a total of 350 damage. 350 is way lower than 750 which is why you have to do 100% (2.00) x 50% (1.50) x 25% (1.25) = 375% (3.75).

So by just adding these buffs +100% then +50% then +25%, you get a 375% boost in damage.

So you’re saying, “Wait a minute though, you can’t get a permanent +50% and +25%”

Yes and No. So in the Ranger’s case of QZ, the 50% increased attack speed lasts for 6 seconds on a 60 second cool-down. That reduces the DPS gain during meaningful fights to 5% UNLESS, the fight doesn’t last 60 seconds. If you’re in a good group, and you melt a boss in 12 seconds, your effectiveness went up by 25% not 5%. How did you get this massive 25%? Because you were in a good group, you buffed them and they buffed you. Your party’s effectiveness cascaded into your personal DPS.

You think I’m still exaggerating? First of all, berserkers get a critical damage multiplier above 100%. You multiply another 10% for flanking. Multiply another 7% for a Rune of the Ranger (or 10% for Rune of the Scholar). So long as most of your +% damage scenarios are fulfilled, you can easily pull damage from a 35% frost spirit that is increased by more than 12% than it would have been applied to a Soldier gear non-crit. In a way, your 35% Frost Spirit is often giving more than the 3.5% it advertises.

I find this stuff fun. It’s great to have so much potential for improvement. I think so many others would too, if they would just give it a try. It all starts with looking at your skills and traits and wondering how you can make it better.

That’s the mentality that sees Signet of the Hunt for what it is. A self-only speed boost that should be replaced with a warhorn where speed is required, or a boost in damage than can be replaced with a greater boost in damage.

It ALL cascades. How much attention you put into learning to dodge, learning mechanics, how much you put into DPS, what gear you choose, how much time you don’t spend arguing in party chat, how much you invite people to care and give it their all .etc

Just because we do it faster and better doesn’t mean we’re having less fun.

DarkWasp.7291:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

In my opinion, you’re expecting meta mentality in a pug. I run SoTH in pug dungeon runs, and i never activate it. do i lose out on dps? maybe. does it really matter to me? not really. the difference between a dungeon run taking an hour and a dungeon run taking 45 minutes is fairly insignificant to me, especially running with pugs where you’re likely to run into other classes also running “unviable” builds.

Are you talking 1 path or 3 paths? Because even in pugs, you should be seeing a 20 minute max on most paths outside of Arah even in non-meta groups.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

in my books, a pug is meeting and having fun with people. if i wanted meta speedruns, i’d join a guild or those uptight “Xk ap zerker 80’s exp” groups.

I don’t like those guilds/groups much either. I’m half and half. I really just want to have fun, but I want to get the dungeon done in a timely manner as well. On the speed side, fun ends where people start whining about every small mistake. On the slow side, fun ends where the group is wiping at every encounter, or someone AFKs for a long time.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

but the difference between a single utility slot isn’t a big deal to me (i mean geez i run soldiers gear in dungeons and i’ve never seen anyone complain about it.)

The point of my thread here is to get people thinking about ways they can improve their build. It all cascades, as you’ll see below.

-snip-

I’m too lazy to seperate it into seperate quotes

45 minutes/1 hour was just an arbitrary number. but even if it did take that long without it, i wouldn’t really care. i’m in no rush

I don’t like those groups either, but i’m also not trying to use their mentality in a normal pug. and personally (in my opinion) fun ends when people get angry, not when we wipe. as i said earlier (i think) i spent like, 3 hours on an aetherpath, wiped multiple times, and it has been my most memorable dungeon run

I think you’re using a slippery slope fallacy. wasting a single slot on a “useless” signet isn’t going to make you some bad player inherently. that’s like saying that GTA causes violence cause one kid at your school beat someone else up over it.

“1. Who cares what anyone thinks! I like doing dungeons and I want to do it my way!
2. I like doing dungeons, I plan to do more in the future, what can I do to improve at dungeoning?”

what about “i just like having a good time with other players”?

I do get what you’re saying, I believe. I think your way of saying it is wrong, though. Your post seems to infer that people who use this signet in dungeons are bad players (and some may get the idea that they should kick SoTH users, from this post), when i think what you should be trying to say is that using something other than SoTH is a good idea if you want to maximize DPS. again, a speedrunners mentality in a pug run.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

I don’t like those groups either, but i’m also not trying to use their mentality in a normal pug. and personally (in my opinion) fun ends when people get angry, not when we wipe. as i said earlier (i think) i spent like, 3 hours on an aetherpath, wiped multiple times, and it has been my most memorable dungeon run

---

I think you’re using a slippery slope fallacy. wasting a single slot on a “useless” signet isn’t going to make you some bad player inherently. that’s like saying that GTA causes violence cause one kid at your school beat someone else up over it.

“1. Who cares what anyone thinks! I like doing dungeons and I want to do it my way!
2. I like doing dungeons, I plan to do more in the future, what can I do to improve at dungeoning?”

what about “i just like having a good time with other players”?

I do get what you’re saying, I believe. I think your way of saying it is wrong, though. Your post seems to infer that people who use this signet in dungeons are bad players (and some may get the idea that they should kick SoTH users, from this post), when i think what you should be trying to say is that using something other than SoTH is a good idea if you want to maximize DPS. again, a speedrunners mentality in a pug run.

I edited the OP. Let me know if that effect is still there.

Even still, I did not feel like the original post implied that people should be kicked from dungeons nor did it imply that these players were “bad.” What I did say, (and have since edited out) is that they appear to not care.

This has nothing to do with my dungeon runs. In fact a player like you who is willing to cooperate with their party is always refreshing when it comes to PuGs. However, this discussion is from a ranger standpoint.

The goal is to get people to care. To give people something to think about. You don’t have to be a speed runner to consider upgrading your build.

I don’t want to say: “Get rid of SotH or leave.”
I want to say: “So how does SotH fit into your build?”

The folks that delved into the traits and pulled the 70% Frost Spirit build out, they saved our butts in early GW2 history. Rangers were getting kicked from dungeons, we were hated. All it took were people who cared enough to keep trying until the class was viable, and more than just ‘viable’ at that.

The people who argued that we should be swapping our pets set us early rangers on the right track. We learned that we didn’t need tanky bears to keep our pets alive, and that opened up higher DPS options.

I’m not meaning to call anyone a bad ranger, but I am calling these pioneers good rangers.

Don’t we want to be good rangers?

DarkWasp.7291:

Don’t we want to be good rangers?

We do.
…
But most of the rangers here in forums are already good enough.
We – the forum community – are the ones to speculate, try new things out, improve, search for “new meta” … That’s what we do – right.

And I don’t mean this in a bad way but…
… The “meta” build that the community came up with (the highest DPS build – which is your goal)has been here ever since LB was patched which is like half a year ago.
… And you wouldn’t believe, but it did not include signet of the hunt.

Practically – not many of us run the build, since it differs on the situation – but I think we already are aware of this issue. What I think is that the forum community usually tries to search for some other ways to save time rather than the way that has been repeated so many times over and over again.
If a single and simple utility slot makes you uncomfortable playing the game (falling behind and stuff) – I guess the 45 seconds from a full 40 minute run is hardly noticeable… Not to mention that falling behind = loosing DPS = lost time.

Honestly, I leave it on my bar because it just faster and easier. I hate stealth for the simple fact that its really not needed. It teaches players to rely on it and not develop the skills to run properly and in most pug groups someone always dies making the run way long because now the thief or mes has to go back and help them through. On some run you don’t even need to dodge the run boost is enough to keep you out of harms way if your in front of the pack.

Waiting on cd or even stack swiftness is more of a time waster. I often play with under 80 groups because I enjoy if move them just smashing everything with ease. Crushing speed records when your 20 levels above the recommend level to me really isn’t a challenge.

If running the most optimal spec isn’t your thing then more power to you. I for one don’t find it fun and I rely believe that some of the dungeon meta really hinders play skill growth. I don’t believe any dungeon run requires a certain class. Yousave what 30 seconds or a minute off of your run if you have the perfect class combo.

I less concern with you having x x skill on your bar and x x sigil and x consumable. I have you have the skill or at lease currently developing the skill needed.

Honestly if someone got in my face about not bring frost spirit for example and they didn’t have the right consumble or sigil I would just pimp slap the hell out of them.

On the other hand if they had it all then I would hesitate to comply. My point is make sure you have your house in order before you start complain about other people trash.

To many people just focus on what other people are doing or not doing.

Storm, you’re still running under the assumption that I’m trying to optimize dungeon speed.

That’s not the goal. Faster runs are the major side effect of dungeon groups improving, but the focus is on playing the ranger as a class.

The goal is to try out alternative skills, to increase our skill at playing the class. It’s to break away from stagnation.

One thing I learned from my dungeon runs is that, yes, hell does indeed break loose during the running parts. One common cause is one or two players getting ahead of group and the result is the enemys’ delayed CC hitting the caboose. The difference between average PuGs and cooperative groups is whether they’ll find a way to clear the mobs during a disaster or just stand around for 20 minutes and wait for repeated failed attempts.

In order to avoid that, I try to give people stability if I’m on a guardian, and swiftness from my warhorn if I’m on my ranger. I try to stay with the group, not get ahead. On some parts I use barrage to slow down enemies. If I do get CCed, I have QZ to break my stun and prevent me from dying. If I know a lot of CC is coming up, I have SotW to give me 8 seconds of stability and 50% bonus running speed. Healing Spring helps get rid of cripple, fear or immobilize on myself and allies.

I’m still not buying the idea that SotH will help beyond that. Technically I could equip it in place of Frost Spirit temporarily during a run, but that would require a very long run.

Is it me or the PvE hardcore player are even worst than sPvP elitist? I run a ranger build that i know i can finish almost every boss alone… Thats what you get when you running with pug. That attitude kinda ruined PvE for me…

Signet of the Hunt is a poorly designed skill, it goes completely against the general death of a thousand cuts/arrows that was basically built into the profession.