Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m fairly new to the game. And I need some advice on how to play my character better. I’m specced for A/T SB condition damage. And the issue I keep running into is that, in order to drop my big AOE damage abilities, I have to get into meele range and then get out. 70% of the time, that works fine. But if I draw aggro from one or two mobs, I get absolutely rekt in a matter of seconds. And I find it really embarrassing (in groups) to die over and over, and make people waste their time rezzing me again and agian. How can I better avoid this?

My second question is… what kind of rotations do people use to maximize their DPS on this build? The page on metabattle lists a rotation of like 20 items. Do people really use such elaborate rotations?? What I normally do is:

1) F2 with lynx (to let him take aggro)
2) Sharpening stone
3) Throw torch
4) Splitblade
5) Spam ricochet

Run into meele range

6) Bonfire
7) Flame Trap
8) Viper’s nest
9) Entangle
10) Roll back out of meele range and start over when timers refresh

I never even use my short bow, because I’m not sure how to work it in. And I know that’s costing me dps, since my spec rewards me for swapping weapons with bleeding damage.

What is the trick to really playing this class/spec well?? The damage I can do (even with my terrible rotation) is awesome. And I really enjoy the build. But, man I really suck… And I’d like to play better. Thanks.

Where are you playing in order to “get absolutely rekt in a matter of seconds”? I’ve yet to find content in this game that is so punishing as you describe it.

Ok, so apologies in advance if none of this helps, it’s difficult to gauge the level to advise at sometimes.

Swapping to shortbow after your bonfire could help the disengage from melee with the 3 skill, and the 5 skill to keep the mob in your aoes for longer while you disengage. (2skill for spreading more poison to the group, or before you disengage with 3 if there’s only one enemy).

If you have beast mastery equipped the pet taunt grandmaster trait can be great for keeping mobs in your aoes (and not focused on you) too. You could couple it with for example murellow for more aoe poison and a tanky pet.

There are a good few things to help if you overaggro often for whatever reason. Signet of stone can help you last another 6 seconds even in the direst of circumstances which means an extra 6 ticks of all your high damage condis. Protection and weakness are available through various means to lower the physical damage you take, a blast finisher in your poison field (from marksmanship for example, or if you swap your shortbow for sword/warhorn, or from druid celestial form), the nature magic grandmaster trait, protect me shout, one of the beastmastery traits also makes your pet apply weakness. Dazes also work especially well against mobs (essentially functioning as stuns) so storm spirit’s active skill, the dazing glyph, one of the skills in celestial avatar form if you’re taking druid, shortbow5 can all help keep the mobs in your aoes and not attacking you longer while your condis tick.

That’s just some things you could try off the top of my head, let me know if it wasn’t the right level of advice to give.

I will say that the best thing for your is experience, after you know the common tells and abilities of dangerous enemies you can play glass cannon without dying as much. Do make sure your are utilizing the quickdraw trait alot, that is a big source of dps.

In the meantime, i would suggest bringing some utility weapons instead of shortbow to give you some survivabilty. Sword/dagger is ok damage on a condi spec, and if you can use those active dodges alot you will get alot of survivability. Greatsword is the most defensive, and will help you dodge the most damage, but it will lower your dps alot. Staff is a middle ground, with the rapid recharging of CAF being a good bonus. These weapons also come with some good mobility, which is something that our pure condi builds are quite lacking.

The key to survival is learning to avoid the dangerous attacks of mobs by dodging at the right time (or using other defensive abilities like blocks, evades, blinds, cc). Most dangerous skills have obvious animations, which should give you time to react. Adding some gear pieces with defensive stats and using defensive utility skills, such as Signet of Stone, Stone Spirit or stun breaks and condi remove can help during the learning process, but goal should be to survive without those “training wheels”.
With a/t you should stay in melee range as much as possible, since Throw Torch is the only ranged high dmg ability of this weapon set. If you have difficulties at staying in melee range, i would advise the use of shortbow. It deals more dmg at range and it provides an additional evade skill, which can help with survivability. When going into melee range use sb2 (it can be used from higher range too, but is a lot stronger at close range – same goes for axe2), swap to a/t and use bonfire first, so you get the reduced cooldown from Quick Draw. Then just use the other abilites including a second bonfire and swap to sb again, sb2, sb4, autoattacks … (and get some distance if neccesary). I would also replace one of the traps with sun spirit, unless you are constantly on the move or there is already a ranger who has it. It doesn’t require melee range to be useful and other players can benefit from it too.

If you max melee you can still land most abilities without fear of retaliation.

Max melee is the range where your melee range abilities hit the mob but where most mob autoattacks cannot reach you. Practice it and it will make your melee life a lot easier.

If you’re the only person in melee range, or the one closest to a mob, be prepared to be targeted for most mobs asd mobs display a preference for attacking melee range targets or targets who hit those mobs first.

I mostly try to stand behind the mob when in melee vs the more dangerous ones. Even if I’m the only one in melee range, I always move and try to position myself behind the mob. Many times that’s quite enough for avoiding a lot of damage (most hard hitting mobs have attacks with a ‘wind up’ time, so in general this will work almost everywhere).
In short – move, move, move!

Oh, and stunbreakers are always good to have, and rangers have a lot of them – just pick one or two that you think works for you. Many, if not all skills in GW2 today have more than one purpose/effect (which is a good thing!), and with that said, my two favourite stunbreakers are Quickening Zephyr (superspeed is supernice) and Glyph of Equality.

Fallesafe.5932:

Hi,

I’m fairly new to the game. And I need some advice on how to play my character better. I’m specced for A/T SB condition damage. And the issue I keep running into is that, in order to drop my big AOE damage abilities, I have to get into meele range and then get out. 70% of the time, that works fine. But if I draw aggro from one or two mobs, I get absolutely rekt in a matter of seconds. And I find it really embarrassing (in groups) to die over and over, and make people waste their time rezzing me again and agian. How can I better avoid this?

My second question is… what kind of rotations do people use to maximize their DPS on this build? The page on metabattle lists a rotation of like 20 items. Do people really use such elaborate rotations?? What I normally do is:

1) F2 with lynx (to let him take aggro)
2) Sharpening stone
3) Throw torch
4) Splitblade
5) Spam ricochet

Run into meele range

6) Bonfire
7) Flame Trap
8) Viper’s nest
9) Entangle
10) Roll back out of meele range and start over when timers refresh

I never even use my short bow, because I’m not sure how to work it in. And I know that’s costing me dps, since my spec rewards me for swapping weapons with bleeding damage.

What is the trick to really playing this class/spec well?? The damage I can do (even with my terrible rotation) is awesome. And I really enjoy the build. But, man I really suck… And I’d like to play better. Thanks.

First of all, try druid spec if you can. Glyphs of empowerment/alignment are not only a good dps boost, they also blind enemies with seed from verdant etching trait. Pets with hard CC are helpfull aswell, electric wyvern mostly. If you don’t have HoT content, consider pets with high toughness and let them land a few hits befor engaging combat yourself. You can try and replace druid with nature’s magic and use stone spirit for a bunch of protection on hard fights. Yeah, and move all the time, a lot of mobs have hard time with hitting moving targets,
So, about your rotation. I guess your build has skirmishing spec (if it does not, consider taking it). Quickdraw from it are bread and butter for all the rangers. The thing is, you are losing a lot of DPS by starting a fights with a torch. Start with shortbow, use its 2 skill, then switch to torch and use bonfire. Weapon swap will trigger quickdraw and you will be able to use bonfire second time in like 6 seconds. So the whole rotation is like
1) shortbow 2 (poison volley), weapon swap
2) bonfire
3) splitblade
4) throw torch
5) bonfire
6) autoatack and splitblade on cooldown untill throw torch is available
7) throw torch, weapon swap
8) poison volley
9) crippling shot (SB 4)
10) SB 2 on cooldown
11) use crippling shot when its ready, swap weapons.

So, basicly, what do you want: after weapon swap you use your strongest ability of that weapon (bonfire or poison volley). And you use throw torch and crippling shot as a timer to swap weapons. The moment these skills are off the cooldown you ude them and swap.
If you don’t like this kind of rotation, go for axe/torch+axe/torch build. Swap weapons on cooldown and use bonfire all the time.

Wow, awesome info!! Thanks to everyone for the tips.