Guild Wars 2

Specifically, breakbars.

I don’t play Ranger much at all in group content so I’ve not bothered too much about dealing with these efficiently, clearly the HOT events require some attention here.

I used LB (of course!) and Axe/Horn, so LB4 and Axe3 are my two obvious CC contributors weapon-wise.

For a pet I’m using the Kryta Drakehound for two reasons: first, his F2 skill does Immobilize and is on a 16 sec. CD which makes it sort of spammable, kinda, and he has the Crippling Leap on 16 secs as well.

I’m not good at theorycrafting, frankly numbers bore me, but this is the combination I’m using based on what I think I understand about CCs and Breakbars.

Since I don’t see any other Rangers using this pet and few seem to switch from LB I’m assuming either I’m doing it wrong, or they are.

Anyone have suggestions about what I could change with respect to this aspect of HOT events?

I spec Marks/BM/Nature Magic for the soloing and CBA switching around specs given the UI provides no ‘store and reload’ method. Under BM I spec Beastly Warden so my pet’s F2 also does Taunt which is also a BB CC skill I think.

First of all, not all CCs affect the breakbar the same. The “harder” the CC, the more it breaks it. So the chill on your axe does practically nothing, but a daze will do full “damage” to the breakbar. With that said, the immob on your drakehound is substantially worse than the fear on a wolf or daze on a moa in a 1-shot scenario, and that’s usually how bosses work. You get 1 chance to break it, and then a big time where you aren’t able to break it. The non-CC pet you probably want pure damage, so look at bristleback or a lynx.

Onto ranger: Axe/Warhorn is one of the worst possible switch weapons for a power ranger because axe is primarily a condi weapon and doesn’t really add anything your build anyway. That’s fine if you don’t care. I recommend trying greatsword (easy to use) or sword/axe (needs quite a bit of practice to use in the jungle). If you hate them, well you tried.

Rangers that don’t switch from LB are either lazy or bad. A lot of people play ranger because it’s incredibly easy to solo in the jungle by just hiding behind your pet and going AFK.

Your traits sound reasonable. Most people take skirmishing for quick draw, which is a colossal damage increase for any build. If you want that, drop NM. Spotter is also in that line, and is one of the best group damage modifiers in the game.

Oh hey, I can actually give my input here. I too went for CC/power went entering HoT.

It sounds like you’re on the right track though. Biggest problem is HoT breakbars seem a good deal tougher than their core counterparts. So you might not be able to destroy them in one rotation.

My first question would be what’s your second pet? The dogs in general are a good choice for reasons you mention, though their applied condition is sometimes a little weak on breakbars. I’d suggest looking at taking Pink Moa/Black Moa for their dazing screech. It’s an actual CC so it’ll do a chunk of damage to the bar all at once.
I personally use Black Moa/Wolf. There’s usually enough downtime on breakbar recharge that the long recharge of Howl isn’t an issue, and Fear does the most DPS on breakbars when compared to the other soft CC conditions.

You can also double up on your utilities. Spike Trap does HUGE damage to breakbars, and Muddy Terrain drops Immob and Cripple.

If that’s STILL not quite enough, you might want to try LB/GS and take Moment of Clarity and Two-Handed Training. GS 5 is lovely.

If you’ve got a Fire/Elec Wyvern, you can use them as your second pet and hope for Wing Buffet since it hits 4x and deals knockback. Tail Lash is also additional cripple, too.

Thanks for the comments.

Sadly I was amiss in not making it clear that my context is meta events rather than soloing, I only solo to explore and get map completion. My original thread title mentioned events but I had to shorten it for the 45-limit and forgot to add it into the text.

That said, all your points are of course applicable and they’re very useful thoughts.

I use Axe for the multi-target damage .. and in meta events I like to ‘tag’ as many mobs as possible in the zerg to get per-mob kill XP .. and also skill 3, I like the Warhorn skill 5 for the Swiftness and also some regen.

Given that GW2 in general and HoT in particular is very unfriendly to melee-distance fighting the axe keeps me away .. yes, I’m a bit of a coward .. which is why I’ve not done much with either type of sword.

My second pet is usually the boring brown bear for those times when I need something to tank a loose mob. I have both wyverns, both obtained in the last few days, so I’ll look into those.

Wyverns have broken (via bad design) animations that make them unable to hit a moving target nearly at all.

If you want a tanky pet, take a drake or smokscale instead of bear. However a canine is plenty tanky, as is the DPS-focused bristleback.