I have gained inspiration from Justin, Aussie Ranger, and that guy who ran trap ranger in WvW.
Basically the build is high risk because of Destroyer’s Amulet. 0 toughness.
Shortbow and LB for the weapons.
Shortbow for melee range kiting and condition bombing, LB for long range kiting and bursts.
Trapper runes, LB3, Celestial shadow for disengages and safe stomps.
Condition Management through Wilderness survival and Druidic Clarity
Condi bombing with traps, ancient seeds, SB flanking.
The key here is to kite and flank, only use the trap when you need to. Spamming is for baddies, good players will see through it easily.
With the recent SB buffs, SB 234 for somewhat hit hard. your LB will hit as much as a marauder would so there’s that.
Timing LB 4 with ancient seeds + Barrage and Smokescale Burst will insta kill thieves if they are not careful.
TEAMPLAY:
Druid is all of you guys know heals a lot even with 0 healing power so help your team when you can
Celestial Shadow is such a good anti stomp for your allies and good disengage mechanic for them as well.
VARIANTS:
If you need more condition pressure you can swap LR with another trap OR you can swap the trap trait for Sharpened edges (I have no idea why they are competing)
FROST TRAP
Very useful against eles esp if you have the trap trait, a full cycle of Frost Trap is 15 seconds worth of chill, plus Frost Trap damages now.
VIPER NEST
Very useful against warriors and people ressing their teammates. Low CD for stealth too.
SHARPENED EDGES
With high precision from the amulet, RF + Earth sigil will stack a lot of bleeds. Crossfire at the right occassions will stack 3 bleeds each arrow. You lose the trap duration though and the CD reduction for more frequent stealths.
MERCENARY AMULET
If you think you cannot survive with destroyer amulet, mercenary is still an okayish choice since you get perma fury in this build (swapping and SoTF)
MATCHUPS
NECROS
The usual technique just kite them to death and dodge the transfers, very easy matchup as long as the node is not small enough.
THIEVES
This is the most fun matchup I have, you have to time SB 3 for evades and KB their stealth combo, its either you burst him or he will burst you. One advantage you have is the conditions, he may disengage but the conditions will surely finish him off.
GUARDIANS
Another fairly easy matchup, dodge their traps. Entangle and your traps are unblockable so their blocks will do nothing to save them.
ELEMENTALISTS
Somewhat harder than thief if they play Fresh Air since they have projectile defense but most likely the same strategy. Bunker ones you will eat them alive. it’s futile for them to stay on point unless they wanna eat your traps. It will still take time tho.
RANGERS
This mostly revolves on how you know the class, even matchup, one advantage you have again when they go AF is the conditions and CC you have, conventional ranger builds won’t have em. Plus the superb direct damage you have.
WARRIORS
The new warrior is a pain to deal with, they deal so much damage and recover so much health when you CC them if they have rousing Resilience. they CC you a lot as well with taunt and the dazes. Both the power and condi spec is hard to deal with. If you can kite well enough you should be fine but still a very hard matchup.
MESMERS
Another hard matchup, but I main mesmer so I just dodge the shatters, but again moa will kill you. Careful of the Shield CC too. Mesmer in general take time to get to know how to fight, once you know how they work, it should be a fair fight.
TU and SoTW will almost keep you at full AF most of the time.
I did 700k the other match but apparently I forgot to take a screenie. Oh well.
Hope you guys like the build and give it a spin. If you are tired of the conventional menders Staff/X builds, you guys should give this a shot!
