Guild Wars 2

Preliminary starting place— please, read thread for updates/improvements as well as crowd sourced variants that you might like more

The Hydralisk Build (ranger zerging with crits / condi / healing)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfMAQNAnfVjEVx15VuVs2BkWhMh9wQckH59IWSFRMljUF1eA-jUyAIMBRSAIVBgOAlHLiGbJsIas6ZA1NmCeR1CBoYOA-w

70% crit chance with fury
1000 condition damage
800+ healing power
Traps / bleeds / stomps

Chopps.5047:

The Hydralisk Build (ranger zerging with crits / condi / healing)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfMAQNAnfVjEVx15VuVs2BkWhMh9wQckH59IWSFRMljUF1eA-jUyAIMBRSAIVBgOAlHLiGbJsIas6ZA1NmCeR1CBoYOA-w

70% crit chance with fury
1000 condition damage
800+ healing power
Traps / bleeds / stomps

Viable in PvE and WvW?

I am looking so hard for a build I can use in WvW – PvE seems easy, but I die in less than a second in WvW.

Thanks for posting!

Looks fairly different from my trap build I use for wvw zerg busting. The thing i’m interested to know about this is its survivability, at least from the build editor site it looks rather squishy IMO

Chopps.5047:

The Hydralisk Build (ranger zerging with crits / condi / healing)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfMAQNAnfVjEVx15VuVs2BkWhMh9wQckH59IWSFRMljUF1eA-jUyAIMBRSAIVBgOAlHLiGbJsIas6ZA1NmCeR1CBoYOA-w

70% crit chance with fury
1000 condition damage
800+ healing power
Traps / bleeds / stomps

man now i haven’t enough time to give a good look to the build… but i have only few obervations:

- why go for 741 healing power if you haven’t many ways to get regenerations (or healing skills which well scale with)? i suggest to go 10 points in nature and get the 75% heal and the +33% regen so you improve your healing skill and get more benefits from your healing power.

- (the following one is really subjective) why didn’t you get “rending attacks” in order to get mode chance to proc bleeding? devourers are really good at ranged and the chance to proc bleeding is 100% so basically with 30 points in beastmastery you get a very nice ammount of bleeding stacks from your pet.

- as weapon set: axe or sword? is really hard to decide… axe seems to be more ranged… but also more power oriented while sword is more conditions-evade oriented, I think.

- i was about to create a really similar build but that elite… really disappointed me… i feel like RaO is good only for power builds because really don’t add anything to a condition build. At this point i suggest to put on entangle… but we all know how many problems this skill has… really disappointing… maybe spirit of nature and improve heals?

anyway nice starting point… i think this can become a good alternative to spirit build.

Kjeldoran.3849:

Chopps.5047:

The Hydralisk Build (ranger zerging with crits / condi / healing)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfMAQNAnfVjEVx15VuVs2BkWhMh9wQckH59IWSFRMljUF1eA-jUyAIMBRSAIVBgOAlHLiGbJsIas6ZA1NmCeR1CBoYOA-w

70% crit chance with fury
1000 condition damage
800+ healing power
Traps / bleeds / stomps

man now i haven’t enough time to give a good look to the build… but i have only few obervations:

- why go for 741 healing power if you haven’t many ways to get regenerations (or healing skills which well scale with)? i suggest to go 10 points in nature and get the 75% heal and the +33% regen so you improve your healing skill and get more benefits from your healing power.

- (the following one is really subjective) why didn’t you get “rending attacks” in order to get mode chance to proc bleeding? devourers are really good at ranged and the chance to proc bleeding is 100% so basically with 30 points in beastmastery you get a very nice ammount of bleeding stacks from your pet.

- as weapon set: axe or sword? is really hard to decide… axe seems to be more ranged… but also more power oriented while sword is more conditions-evade oriented, I think.

- i was about to create a really similar build but that elite… really disappointed me… i feel like RaO is good only for power builds because really don’t add anything to a condition build. At this point i suggest to put on entangle… but we all know how many problems this skill has… really disappointing… maybe spirit of nature and improve heals?

anyway nice starting point… i think this can become a good alternative to spirit build.

Since Ascended Gear is out of the reach of most players, what would be an acceptable set of Armor?

atheria.2837:

Since Ascended Gear is out of the reach of most players, what would be an acceptable set of Armor?

Doesn’t Apothecary armor come in Exotic? For trinkets, you can try settler, those are quite cheap.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

atheria.2837:

Since Ascended Gear is out of the reach of most players, what would be an acceptable set of Armor?

Doesn’t Apothecary armor come in Exotic? For trinkets, you can try settler, those are quite cheap.

I will look again, but I didn’t find any when I did a search – not even for one that isn’t on the TP…

I’m curious, for the ascended pieces, why did you choose to go with Rampagers over the Rabid+Apothecary mix (on the builder can be found under the condition damage category)?’

I’m guessing it isn’t worth the sacrifice in power stat?

All good thoughts, I’ll try to answer some questions here. The idea with this build is to play on ranger strengths in a zerg: fast stomping with stability, traps for zerg busting, and “on crit” sigil/trait procs.

• As far as source of regen: normally I get it from the guild, if not, healing spring.

• Why rampager trinkets? Damage and crits—rabid is a reasonable option I suppose.

• My original build uses settler’s and vitality runes so that is the survivability difference. I literally threw that build link together grabbing the first runes and stuff I could find in the editor. I’m hoping you guys try it and tweak it to your liking

• I like commanding voice to get off an extra pet utility before a typical fight ends

• I take stability training rather than rending because with stability training, my bear is guaranteed to get off his attack—normally, pets are too easily interrupted in a zerg to make them effective. Most pets are too squishy period. That makes stability training with bears the obvious answer. Of course, drakes are good too but they don’t get stability training.

I would like to watch that build in action, because looking at the build it seems way too hybrid (power/condition) and in the end you may cause low raw damage and low cond damage, besides the low HP and medium Armor and Healing Power with almost nothing healing you besides the H.spring gives the impression of being very squishy.

Well, I don’t like making videos. I guess I could stream. Basically, I should change the build in the link to settlers and the actual runes I use.

You caught me! You guys are sharp. I was like “I’ll keep the settler’s/vitality runes version to myself”. Lol you guys are too smart for that. I’ll update a bit later.

Ok, so here it is in a tankier setup.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAnfVjEVx15VuVs2BkWhMh9wQckH59IWSFRMljUF1eA-jUyAIMBRSAIVBgOAl3LiGbJuIas6ZA1NmCeR1CBoYOA-w

The runes are really up to you, clearly, sanctuary is a bit tough to get since I believe those are dungeon runes (hotw if I’m not mistaken).

To be true, even that tankier setup seems very squishy, from that other build you just switch 90 healing power for toughness.
Since your healing comes mainly from your group, why invest in healing at all?
Just for the healing spring the 300 healing from BM should be enough.

Assuming group WvW to give you speed ?

Sure.
In zerg I rarely need to equip my WH (from inventory) for the swiftness with all the guardian staff #3, warrior banners, other rangers WH and so on being cast all around.

Wait…is it a guide on “how to zerg efficiently in wvw with a ranger”? For real?

The build I’m aiming for is the following: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-H;4wEky-x2kDV-0;9-8j;2TT9;217A36A2;3KJF44;1NX8aNX8aE0FjeIweL0;1d-46W13b3b1b0X0OF2m;6WCuNYCu;9;9;9;9;7VTk3kitten
da looks like yours, but the differences are:
The bad
*4% less crit chance
*40 less healing power
*almost no power
*lower condition duration

The good
*1500 more HP
*460 more armor
*3 more sources of healing (SotW, NM Rejuvenation, Omnomberry Pie)
*376 more condition damge

I’m just not sure if I want to change to that build because the new one depends on foods to actually work, while my current build doesn’t.

This isn’t a guide, more of a theorycrafting thread to figure out how to zerg efficiently with ranger. My starting place may not be optimal. A discussion on spirits might be relevant. I like the discussoon so far, keep it up. Belzebu has some good thoughts (above).

Note: after testing a lot, belzebu is correct about this build not being super tanky. So thats a weakness to shore up, which he had a good post on

Bel: Should we move away from untraited SOTW? Can we have stability training back? Maybe boon duration runes?

It’s tough because one issue I see is that when you spec ito survivability, you lose powerful ranger pressure like bleed on crit or traps. Maybe another option is…hmm. I’m thinking 30 in WS and NM with boon duration and RaO so traps can be delivered at feet but radius is too small.

It would be great to have trapper’s expertise and stability training BOTH moved to adept traits. It would teally simplify the aim of this build if we could do that. any ideas?

Ok, so I’ve addressed some of the weaknesses. Let me know what you think, this is Hydralisk 1.1. Remember, the goal of Hydralisk is a crowd sourced ranger zerg build to counter the popular opinion that rangers have little zerging ability.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBHfdG2IRVbdeliFrdgY9gQ7fQ8DGyzYU+PljUF1eA-jkyAIsASCApKA59ioxWFLiGrWHQ1gpVXUtXBwJwoVLCgZOA-w

• Stability: tons of it (~45s or so, I don’t care to do the math honestly) to negate hammer trains on the front line

• Use SOTW first, then, when conditions accumulate either healing spring or RaO (Lyssa runes clear conditions on the elite)

• Poison trap negates the regen boon on the enemy

Q1: Drop furious grip for spirits unbound and sun spirit with nature’s vengeance?

Q2: I don’t have the right sigils slotted—I think on crit may be within reach though, there’s a decent amount of precision so perhaps a sigil of perception with things like sigil of earth?

Chopps.5047:

Preliminary starting place:

The Hydralisk Build (ranger zerging with crits / condi / healing)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfMAQNAnfVjEVx15VuVs2BkWhMh9wQckH59IWSFRMljUF1eA-jUyAIMBRSAIVBgOAlHLiGbJsIas6ZA1NmCeR1CBoYOA-w

70% crit chance with fury
1000 condition damage
800+ healing power
Traps / bleeds / stomps

If you want to be effective in zergs you are missing some key things here. Longbow is by far the ranger’s best weapon in WvW. Barrage is one of the best skills in the game and even if all you can do is go stealth, push people off cliffs, and barrage that’s all you really need to do in a zerg. These pets really? Wolf has always been an all star in every part of the game. If you want AoE damage at least go for the reef drake, but pets die so fast you don’t really want them in the middle of the fight. They are best for chasing down people and the Krytan Drake hound does this well. Personally, my pet choices are the Stalker and the Red moa since they actually help your team’s dps and don’t die because you’re not sending them in. Trying to play dps in WvW is a mistake with rangers because a percentage of our dps is in pets, which die immediately.

No need to get hyper critical, it’s a crowd sourced effort. Here’s my thoughts:

• that a large part of ranger damage is in the pet is a fallacy.

• longbow is still a bit too slow, also, projectiles aren’t so great under skill lag which is making me lean towards greatsword on the next version of this build

• the best guilds spam retal. so barrage is “meh”…you’re rooted and it takes forever. I believe longbow is not a good zerg weapon.

• Why a bear? Well, it would be GREAT if stability training was an adept skill because with that trait, the bears can get off their abilities in a zerg without interruption. “But bears suck chopps”. If you think that, check patch notes on the buff to weakness because I really like black bear right now.

• Why not a wolf? Because in zergs, people spam stability so fear won’t do anything. Also, it’s very hard to get the wolf to actually use it’s utility in a zerg without it just being perma stunned or dying. Believe me, I’ve tried it. The only way is signet of the wild + signet of stone if you’re going to try to use any pet besides bears or drakes.

Let’s work on the best ideas together. It seems traps are essential as is boon duration. I expect v1.2 of the build to do something like 30/30/x/x/x with the survivability and boon duration put into the gear and runes.

Hydralisk 2.0: a huge improvement

Thoughts?

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-H;4wEky-x2cEV-0;9k7Q;2TEO;237A3;057;2Q-Z5;2O_pbUudbO0kOVIJ5;3WV_WeXj2qZv489V1V5c0;9;9;6777777;9;9;1sL0;1VTk3T

The idea is to stack boon duration and utilize ranger’s strength: control and aoe in traps.

• Poison negates regen boon

• Chill slows their movement and skill recharge

• rampage as one for a long stability

• precision for “on crit” type sigils

• Strength: pet hot swap (see note below)

How else can we improve it? I think the suggestions so far have led to a fairly—surprisingly—decent build for a ranger in a zerg.

So if you want to go control, you have to go traps. What about support? That would imply spirits.

What else can you guys come up with?

• Note: I’ve been running it and getting a good amount of kills. I feel very tanky and can hold my own in hand to hand combat. The trick is to run DPS pets like bird or cats when roaming or catching up to a zerg. When zerging, switch to drakes or bears.

Question: Signet of renewal or spike trap?

Update: LR gives18.5 seconds of vigor with this build

For a tanky version try the condition/toughness/vitality ascended trinkets.

I know its cheating but with applied fortitude and world buffs I can be hitting 23k HP, 3000 armour, 650 healing and still 1700+ condition damage.

What suffers if your critical chance, so on crit sigils are not really possible with this build, but you sure as heck wont be going down easily.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-H;4wEFy-x2cEV-0;9V6Q;2TT9;237A36A2;3KNH4;2QitaQitap-kPkKJ6;2VMVRWWXa2g3m_010JF2m;9;9;9;9;9;5sL0;1V6s5q

But I like “on crit” with traps which is why I went Magi with trinkets. I like sigil of ice. There’s good “on crit” sigils. Even sigil of nullification is better than people think. Boons are expensive and gettig one ripped every 10s is kind of annoying. Traps go with “on crit” abilities like butter on bread.

You are trying to do too many things at once , imo . If you want to do it all, go with full celestial as the sum value of the stats is at least 15% higher then any other setup .
If you want to use conditions in any shape of form , you need at least 800-900 condition damage unbuffed /the apothecary BM condition damage values, but BM apo can burst conditions on a good rotation/ .

Also going that deep into Nature is silly unless you go for either a spirit build or a full support/tank build , something like Faux made with shouts .

But as far as i understood you want to go into a blobb and dump AOE debuffs on them while staying alive . I may suggest an alternative .

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBMhF6koi8KzCSxCWLEErHEa/DqpYSW6VIWuC+PljUF1eA-j0xAorASgCEVAM7VEN2SYR0YV2YqXioaA-w

when your frost trap activates, blow the horn for AOE frost armor

Great thoughts, choko. Nice variant. I guess I just like boon duration for a long swiftness and a long stability. I like vitality in zergs too. That was my logic.

In fact, maybe signet of beastmaster is better? Because then you get two stability casts. I like shared anguish for when I don’t have stability up and I like vipers nest for regen negation so, I don’t know, any way to move protect me out of that version? I’m going in 20 directions at once here.

just to address a few things regarding the “Hydralisk” build:

- when RaO is down, you have no stability available meaning you cant do any zerg diving without getting perma stunned or knocked around

- throwing traps from 600 (and not having survivability) is suicide against a committed, organized zerg; maybe works against pugs who are kinda just standing around twiddling their thumbs

- the build has no hard CC. no axe 4, no LB 4, no wolf fear. remember, soft CC does not disrupt!!! so if youre all soft CC, youre not disrupting anyone.

- you’re not utilizing the main ranger strength: multiple aoe immobilizes. dog f2, MT, entangle (in addition to wolf fear) can actually trap a significant number of targets for your team to nuke

- in short, you have next to zero survivability. there are no utilities dedicated to surviving burst. there are no stun breakers. you only have 1500 toughness. there is no sustain. have you ever gotten bursted on with only 1500 toughness and no invuln? one good thief could drop u very quickly.

- you cant give healing spring to your frontliners (where it’s needed) if RaO is on cooldown (most of the time)

- healing power is low, so even your regen is not really useful as it probably ticks for about 220

- poison trap ticks last a very short time; it’s not an actual poison field. condis are cleansed very quickly. have you considered using the murellow? it’s an actual poison field, much more useful than the drake who misses his f2 most of the time.

- where is your damage coming from? uve invested a lot in condi damage, but youre not actually doing any.

id love to give suggestions as to how to improve a trap bomber build, but i dont actually see trap bombers as viable in any way. mostly due to lack of survivability and damage. your contribution with this kind of build is rather minimal. the main thing id suggest is dropping the poison trap for MT with which u can keep range and immobilize a few more people.

i’m really liking celestial gear as i play around with builds more and more. rangers and ele’s are probably the only two classes that can benefit from crit chance, crit damage and condition dmg. plus it gives some healing power, toughness and vitality. yes, it doesn’t have as much raw power as zerker or as much defense as knights but you can tailor your traits to fit your playstyle instead of tailoring your gear. i’d probably go full celestial gear with divinity runes and then your trinkets can go with your build.

I was confused for his build either. He is using Apoth gears but build is not typical Apoth build. It use traps but no survival skills and no regenation. Then why go for Apoth?

mistsim.2748:

just to address a few things regarding the “Hydralisk” build:

- when RaO is down, you have no stability available meaning you cant do any zerg diving without getting perma stunned or knocked around

- throwing traps from 600 (and not having survivability) is suicide against a committed, organized zerg; maybe works against pugs who are kinda just standing around twiddling their thumbs

- the build has no hard CC. no axe 4, no LB 4, no wolf fear.

- you’re not utilizing the main ranger strength: multiple aoe immobilizes. dog f2, MT, entangle (in addition to wolf fear) can actually trap a significant number of targets for your team to nuke

- in short, you have next to zero survivability. there are no utilities dedicated to surviving burst. there are no stun breakers. you only have 1500 toughness. there is no sustain. have you ever gotten bursted on with only 1500 toughness and no invuln? one good thief could drop u very quickly.

- you cant give healing spring to your frontliners (where it’s needed) if RaO is on cooldown (most of the time)

- healing power is low, so even your regen is not really useful as it probably ticks for about 220

- poison trap ticks last a very short time; it’s not an actual poison field. condis are cleansed very quickly. have you considered using the murellow? it’s an actual poison field, much more useful than the drake who misses his f2 most of the time.

- where is your damage coming from?

Well later versions have different stat sets. I consider hydralisk 2.0 to be the current version (its on this thread) uses soldiers armor. As far as “when stability goes does you’re in trouble” that is correct so what you do is two things:

1) go for boon duration
2) when stability is gone, become a midliner with axe.

In the build where I had marks instead of skirm along with lyssa runes, I mean, stability is almost always up basically. You cast one SOTW and one RaO and you get roughly kitten stability with max boon duration. So by the time your stability is running out, SOtw is off CD again. Its basically then a minute of stability and a minute of no stability. I have to believe 50% uptime is really good.

Hey Chopps,

played around with your build on EB this morning. There still is the same problem I cannot resolve:
I am Swooping into the thick of battle with RaO up in my full Soldier Gear and start dropping my traps, which in a smaller fight i actually get through ankitten ot stuck looking at unmoving pictures due to my badly performing macbook.
What happens most of the time: I die within seconds.
My diagnosis: this build forces you to drop 3 traps with a 3/4 second cast time right into the face of your enemy without you being able to do anything else in the mean time, apart from moving ofc.
In my experience the only class that can safely jump right into a Zerg and stay alive is the defensive shout-heal warrior as our Guild leakitten lays him (as can be seen here: http://www.twitch.tv/rajneshtamil/c/2822037 )
But:

• He’s heavy armoured.
• he has 30k HP
• he has 3 heals available every few seconds
• he has an entire guild team at his back seeing that he survives.

all of which I just cannot provide if I try to do what Chopps is suggesting here.

So I am giving this problem back to you: how do you survive this and do the traps really make a diference?

There might be better variants gorath but I know I’m onto something. What I do is get stability up early, can’t emphasize that enough. Also, if you have no source of stealth, you can’t divebomb their zerg. I work with a thief for that. If you’re alone, stay slightly behind your own melee train and stay out of their fields as much as you can. The idea is to get the vulnerable parts of their zerg in your traps.

For example, in the soldier’s armor variant, there’s little condi removal so you have a few options: lyssa runes, signet of renewal, or boon duration. Why boon duration? Because it makes your stability stay up longer. Or you can try empathic bond and lose the boon duration. It’s very important to still block with greatsword, be mobile, and stay safe.

Hydralisk is a community thing based on the premise that certain traps are good without condition damage when traited for traps. Maybe I’ll have to film my playstyle so you guys can see how I’m doing it? At the end of the day, if you don’t buy the premise, it’s hard to convince you to run this build.

• I got yelled at yesterday for beating signet rangers in SoR’s backline then typing /laugh (I feel zerker signet ranger is free bags) and I was making fun of people who used to be on my team but now aren’t. They couldn’t handle a little midwestern trash talk which resulted in the entirety of SoR attacking our spawn tower. It was epic.. If I can be that annoying—with 25 stacks accuracy most of the night—we have to be doing something right. They cleaned our clocks a few times man but the battles we won? How? Our melee train is highly skilled and I got a ton of support from them, keep that in mind garoth. I hope that helps, sorry you didn’t find immediate success. Thoughts?

Just a few quick comments from me on a few points.

I absolutely can’t imagine WvW or PvP without the Wolf. It’s extremely valuable in ensuring you get revives or stomps off. It dying or being dead is not an issue if you swap to it just prior to execution. Paired with PB Shot and LB stealth, I find this combo just to strong to go without.

For zerg fights in WvW, I find traps do work well, but you need to use them in conjunction with something else – again, LB Stealth is great for this, and I find throwing the ranged traps, stealthing, then hitting Entangle, evading out into your line, then Barraging works very well. Working the contact line between your group and theirs is most effective in my experience.

I do have a boon duration build, but I do not run that with traps and not for this tactical purpose. I run a build with minimum 1500 in all stats, minimum 20k HP and tons of evades, and that seems to work well enough in a group setting without the boon duration or stability. I find while obviously it is important, with how much Ranger has to commit to get it, for zerg fights it’s too much. I’ll have to repost my exact final gear/consumable numbers but outside of 1v1s I have no issues staying alive.

Another thing about using traps and LB in WvW, they are great for wall work – you can throw them up on top of the walls, Barrage, even Entangle and kills from down below, including out of LoS. Stealth has enhanced certain tactics so much, I think it’s probably my favorite ranger change thus far.

Hey Chopps,
you are right, with stealth thats a different matter entirely ofc. then you will only have to worry about getting out.

I tried again this afternoon for a few hours, using inspirations of the Sentinel Build mistsim posted on the forums and on which he based most of the critique he put forward (If you read through his guide here: https://tinyurl.com/sentinel-mistsim you will find that almost everything he posted in this thread is just what he claims his build actually does).
I still went with GS- Axe/WH and used the same gear you proposed in your Hydralist 2.0 build, except for changing the Magi trinkets for Soldier for more Toughness.
Btw: if the precision +Viatily combination is your only reason to use Magi jewlery: I would go with knights insteat since your toughness is pretty low.

But I changed from Taps to Signets, changing traits into 30/0/30/10/0. Going for the signet traits and bark skin.
I picked up mistsims idea here to stick with only 2 sources of annoyance: Muddy Terrain and Entagle in favour of SoS and SoW.
I know this kind of drops your concept of the ‘utility’ traps, but:
It worked!
Without stealth I was able to jump into the Vizunah zerg as followed:
Activated SotW, Swoop in, drop MT + Entangle, swap pet to Krytan Hound + use F2, drop Healing Spring while popping SoS, use GS #4 to block while starting to run, and used Swoop again to make distance once it was of CD, did this quite a few times under the eyes of my amazed guildies asking me on TS wether I was feeling suicidal today
What this meant for me: staying in a zerg for a bit is fine if your have the right tools for it. And in my opining you need an Invulnerability to pull this off.
Conditions are another big issue which the HS does not fully solve. Runes of Melandru might help together with the Lemon Grass soup (-65 % Condi Duration) but that won’t fully protect me against immobilises.
Btw, runes: Why use runes of lyssa when RaO has to be used before combat as your only stability source?

I tried to build the synergy of your two concepts and found that it worked quite well, if you only want to apply CC. What it does not is damage…

I will pick up your idea of surfing with he melee’s and see how that works for me!

EDIT: That’s the build I ve been running:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBhODbkoKxuwyxC1OQseQI/Mo2DOZpz7K4/T2QVUB-j0xAYMB5EYR0YLjFRjVvgpeJiqN5ER1ecMZAYGDA-w

Not sure why image didn’t show, but these are build’s final stats.

You are doing a CC bomb, I would suggest Sword/Axe as the off set since it give you better chance to escape after the CC burst. Use axe as main hand= totally useless for what you were doing.
If you can get 1 more thief/engi + 3x zerk staff eles and cooperate very well together, maybe you can really do something.

Gorath.5076:

Hey Chopps,
you are right, with stealth thats a different matter entirely ofc. then you will only have to worry about getting out.

I tried again this afternoon for a few hours, using inspirations of the Sentinel Build mistsim posted on the forums and on which he based most of the critique he put forward (If you read through his guide here: https://tinyurl.com/sentinel-mistsim you will find that almost everything he posted in this thread is just what he claims his build actually does).
I still went with GS- Axe/WH and used the same gear you proposed in your Hydralist 2.0 build, except for changing the Magi trinkets for Soldier for more Toughness.
Btw: if the precision +Viatily combination is your only reason to use Magi jewlery: I would go with knights insteat since your toughness is pretty low.

But I changed from Taps to Signets, changing traits into 30/0/30/10/0. Going for the signet traits and bark skin.
I picked up mistsims idea here to stick with only 2 sources of annoyance: Muddy Terrain and Entagle in favour of SoS and SoW.
I know this kind of drops your concept of the ‘utility’ traps, but:
It worked!
Without stealth I was able to jump into the Vizunah zerg as followed:
Activated SotW, Swoop in, drop MT + Entangle, swap pet to Krytan Hound + use F2, drop Healing Spring while popping SoS, use GS #4 to block while starting to run, and used Swoop again to make distance once it was of CD, did this quite a few times under the eyes of my amazed guildies asking me on TS wether I was feeling suicidal today
What this meant for me: staying in a zerg for a bit is fine if your have the right tools for it. And in my opining you need an Invulnerability to pull this off.
Conditions are another big issue which the HS does not fully solve. Runes of Melandru might help together with the Lemon Grass soup (-65 % Condi Duration) but that won’t fully protect me against immobilises.
Btw, runes: Why use runes of lyssa when RaO has to be used before combat as your only stability source?

I tried to build the synergy of your two concepts and found that it worked quite well, if you only want to apply CC. What it does not is damage…

I will pick up your idea of surfing with he melee’s and see how that works for me!

EDIT: That’s the build I ve been running:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBhODbkoKxuwyxC1OQseQI/Mo2DOZpz7K4/T2QVUB-j0xAYMB5EYR0YLjFRjVvgpeJiqN5ER1ecMZAYGDA-w

I didn’t test, but if I were you, I will use GS+sword/axe. Then doing little bit more:
Activated SotW, Swoop in, drop MT + Entangle, swap pet to Krytan Hound + use F2, drop Healing Spring while popping SoS, switch to sword (with sigil of hydromancy=more control) and axe#5 (coz most likely you will be immobilized at this moment), when it ends, it’s just time of your SoS and SoW ends, so time to sword2 (you want to get out of zerg 1st) then use GS #4 to block then your Swoop should be no CD again.

It’s all about right timing, need some practice, but if you do have some DPS friends cooperate together, it should give some good results.

Gorath.5076:

Activated SotW, Swoop in, drop MT + Entangle, swap pet to Krytan Hound + use F2, drop Healing Spring while popping SoS, use GS #4 to block while starting to run, and used Swoop again to make distance once it was of CD,

Also for trait, I suggest Malicious training instead of beastmaster might since you are not the damage dealer, you want to maximize your CC but not increase DPS. 3x mights make no difference, but +50% immobilization duration could be deadly.

Gorath.5076:

EDIT: That’s the build I ve been running:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBhODbkoKxuwyxC1OQseQI/Mo2DOZpz7K4/T2QVUB-j0xAYMB5EYR0YLjFRjVvgpeJiqN5ER1ecMZAYGDA-w

I recommend Malicious Training as well, Trust me when I say Spiders with this trait are oober pricks.

I was duoing with a Hammer Warrior Yesterday who asked me after the first person ate the Immobilize “Wtf, how long does that thing last?”

Their Damage is awful, but think of them as mobile Net Turrets

CRrabbit.1284:

Also for trait, I suggest Malicious training instead of beastmaster might since you are not the damage dealer, you want to maximize your CC but not increase DPS. 3x mights make no difference, but +50% immobilization duration could be deadly.

Gorath.5076:

EDIT: That’s the build I ve been running:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBhODbkoKxuwyxC1OQseQI/Mo2DOZpz7K4/T2QVUB-j0xAYMB5EYR0YLjFRjVvgpeJiqN5ER1ecMZAYGDA-w

and Xsorus the same,
I was already thinking about replacing that trait since you don’t do much damage anyway. So I will definitely try that.
Why I overlook spiders in general is, that they are very single target focused? In large scale WvW that can only be good for singling out targets, I guess?
in small group Roaming on the borderlands I will definitely give it a try though!

Something more general: Are you guys happy with the ‘all CC’ role of the ranger? Coming back from mesmer I kind of miss the nice combination of amazing support and still being able to kill in 1v1 situations. Outside a regen bunker or glass cannon build I have found that very difficult with rangers.

hey chopps/guys,

what do you think about the dire set ^^ i think it would would be very appropriate for this build.

also +1 on malicious training. u can run it with 2 wolves or dog/wolf for some serious aoe goodness.

/runsofftotheorycraft