Guild Wars 2

So, I never saw a discussion on this ~1 year ago and I don’t see one now (too much longbow, I guess, lol).

Barkskin: You and your pet take less damage (50%) when your health is below the threshold (25%).

Using http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ as a quick reference …
Talking only sPvP right now for less variables while I talk about it …

With 0 points in Nature Mastery and 0 Vitality from your Amulet and Runes, a Ranger in sPvP has 15,082 health. This means that when they are below 3,770.5 health, they take half damage … making, against direct damage, that count more as 7,541

With 30 points in Nature Mastery, 922 Vitality from Barbarian Amulet, and 175 Vitality from any set of Vitality Runes, a Ranger in sPvP has 29,052. This means that when they are below 7,263 health, they take half damage … making, against direct damage, that count more as 14,526.

… and these numbers aren’t even taking into account Toughness on your character … which would reduce direct damage even more …

Obviously, there are differing amounts of possible Vitality in between, but these are the minimum and maximum in sPvP at the moment for a Ranger.

Now, even more importantly, when taking 50% less damage, you still have 7,263 health. This is still a very decent amount. When you factor in that you are taking 50% less health, as shown above, it is quite decent.

However, more importantly is the fact that the Ranger has quite a large amount of access to healing through Regeneration, Troll Unguent / Water Spirit, Spirit of Nature, and/or Natural Healing.

When you are taking 50% less damage from enemies, that makes it far easier for your healing to keep up (or, even better, surpass) the damage you are taking in combat.

I mention this to hopefully get some discussion started. I know we’ve discussed Tanky Beasmaster builds in the past, but I’m hoping this will be somewhat different as the focus is primarily on leveraging Barkskin … though, quite likely, the best place to do that is as a tanky Beastmaster build.

What have you run before with plenty of toughness and/or vitality and barkskin?

What are your thoughts on more vitality versus more toughness (so that toughness + barkskin is making you take even less) ?

What are your thoughts on handling conditions since that is arguably the biggest threat to you when you have barkskin ?

Currently, I’m curious about playing around with MH Sword and MH Axe with 6 trait points in Wilderness Survival and 3 trait points in Nature so I can easily stack might on my pet.

Where the other 5 trait points will go and what off-hands to use are debateable. Same for Sigils, Runes, Amulets. That will be played around with.

Hi, not so long ago i posted this first line zerg power ranger build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR3XjMq0yaHLWsQ1aAChaVA0OG6gj1dSsDbdKz6DPBB-TVCBABccEAie/BOV/RiHAAAXAgsU+xoSQGOIAIqbgUAsJMC-w

Ok. I almost always used to say that empathic bond was better at mitigating damage because if you get hit with a pin down or something and that gets cleared and you are free to move before you get hit then you have mitigated a lot of damage. However, due to the RNG nature of Empathic Bond and having played with out it you can, in fact, beat condi builds with JUST Signet of Renewal. That isn’t even our only condi clear option as healing spring, sigils, runes, survival of the fittest can also be used (and many of these didn’t exist before). Because of this, I can no longer use empathic bond due to the RNG, I hate getting condi loaded only to use my active nanoseconds after empathic bond has cleared them. So no more RNG for me. That being said….

Will I ever use bark skin? Not unless someone makes some crazy OP build with it.

Should you consider it? Probably.

I use Bark Skin on my Melee build. It’s legit, but you really have to get used to keeping your health low with protection on.

I’m a fan of bark skin i use it in a few celestial spvp and roaming builds, and always use it for wvw guild raiding.

hears a couple builds that i use it in
0/0/6/4/4 spirits
0/2/6/6/0 SotF
0/2/6/0/6 duel bird

Bark Skin is seriously underrated IMHO. The problem is most people look at the damage reduction, when they should be looking at the damage transmitted. 1/damage_transmitted = how much longer you can live. So

• 33% reduction means 67% transmitted. 1/.67 = 1.5, so you can survive 1.5x as long.
• 50% reduction means 50% transmitted. 1/.5 = 2, so you can survive 2x as long.

So 33% (original Bark Skin) to 50% may not seem like a big change, but it basically doubled the effectiveness of the trait.

But the best part is when you add protection (which you get with dodge rolls if you have Bark skin. Protect gives another 33% damage reduction.

• 83% reduction means 17% transmitted. 1/.167 = 6, so you can survive 6x as long.

This is just huge. This means it takes twice as much damage to drop you from 25% to 0 hp, as it takes to drop you from 100% to 25%. There are mechanics of the trait which don’t make it quite so effective, and you’ll rarely have protect up the entire time you’re below 25%. But IMHO this is one of the best traits in the game.

Solandri.9640:

Bark Skin is seriously underrated IMHO. The problem is most people look at the damage reduction, when they should be looking at the damage transmitted. 1/damage_transmitted = how much longer you can live. So

• 33% reduction means 67% transmitted. 1/.67 = 1.5, so you can survive 1.5x as long.
• 50% reduction means 50% transmitted. 1/.5 = 2, so you can survive 2x as long.

So 33% (original Bark Skin) to 50% may not seem like a big change, but it basically doubled the effectiveness of the trait.

But the best part is when you add protection (which you get with dodge rolls if you have Bark skin. Protect gives another 33% damage reduction.

• 83% reduction means 17% transmitted. 1/.167 = 6, so you can survive 6x as long.

This is just huge. This means it takes twice as much damage to drop you from 25% to 0 hp, as it takes to drop you from 100% to 25%. There are mechanics of the trait which don’t make it quite so effective, and you’ll rarely have protect up the entire time you’re below 25%. But IMHO this is one of the best traits in the game.

I’m not sure but i don’t think it adds up, it’s probably multiplicative.. but i don’t have the math i’m just making assumptions..

Anyway I don’t like it so much because first of all it starts to proc when you are BELOW the treshold. Which means that if you have 5,1k/20k HP and you take let’s say a 3k dmg burst that won’t get mitigated by bark skin and you’ll end up being 2,1k hp

And when you are THAT low it doesn’t take much to get you down… especially because i’m talking group fights.. in 1v1 i’d rather have more condi cleanse or damage than reduction

The problem i see with it is that for it to be useful you have to be severely wounded, and in wvw that brings much more aggro so that if you don’t have a more complete escape plan 50% damage isn’t going to matter much. I’d rather rely on evade/dodge/block/stealth/ immunity. Spvp is a bit more forgiving I suppose but ymmv.

Oh and yea the assumption is it is multiplicative so it would be a 66.5% reduction with protection which is still very good.

I’d focus less on maximizing the potential of Bark Skin and more on finding the sweet spot between damage output and damage mitigation. If you barely take any damage, then chances are, you barely deal any damage.

Also, it’s important to factor in that the more damage you deal, the faster something dies, and the less damage you will take, as opposed to doing no damage and killing something slowly, which over time could potentially make you take more damage.

There is no universal sweet spot either, it fluctuates from person to person, and certain people (like me) would argue that if you NEED Bark Skin, then you aren’t doing enough damage or positioning correctly or mitigating damage through other means effectively, or doing enough damage, which is of course an opinion formed directly for what works for me.

That being said, rangers have decent protection uptime and lots of evasion with the right weapon(s) already, which are much easier to incorporate into builds than designing an entire build around making a single trait that encompasses a single aspect of gameplay as effective as it can possible be.

The easiest generic answer is just go full PVT and pick up barkskin. Still afraid of dying? Pick up Survival of the fittest and run survival skills too. Still not enough? Run Melandru Runes. This is just about as tanky as you can possibly get. though be warned, your damage will suffer.

jcbroe: I think you misunderstood my OP … probably my fault. I was just highlighting how much it adds with the least and most vitality possible in sPvP to show much it will always do as well as how much it can potentially do.

I 100% agree that dead enemies do less damage and that you can actually mitigate incoming damage if you exert enough pressure on your opponent to make them go on the defensive.

I also agree that it’s much better to dodge/block/evade/etc. attacks than to have them hit you. However, I’m under no illusions that I can avoid taking damage from opponents … especially in XvMe situations. Additionally, being able to take a hit or so allows you more time for cooldowns on evades/blocks as well as endurance for dodge rolls. Lastly, it synergizes well with having regeneration and other sources of healing.

30 in Wilderness Survival has been fairly common for Rangers and I’m not a big fan of Empathic Bond so I look more to Poison Master or Bark Skin if I’m going to take a GM WS trait.

Poison Mastery is very straightforward, so not worth talking about much in my opinion aside from additional poison up-time, additional applications, and 50% more DoT from it … all very straightforward … at least to me :-p

Oh I was just posting thoughts in general, I’m not trying to dissuade anybody at all lol. Just ramblings of a bored college student

I think that Bark Skin could be a potential alternative in PvP in a condi based celestial build depending on what you’re up against. Probably with spirits too, more for the protection uptime from stone to maximize the protection output as well.

I’m of the mindset of Eurantien when it comes to Empathic Bond, as I get used to playing without it, playing when using it feels so RNG and wasteful if a burn a cooldown on another cleanse and it potentially wastes the cleanses due to the RNG.

So I have been thinking about trying out Bark Skin just to see if I see a noticeable difference. My perception could change entirely. I’d run a 2/0/6/6/0 Celestial spirit build with Sun/Stone spirit and SoR with Healing Spring and Elite Spirit to start and tinker with things as needed.

I just didn’t want the whole thread to revolve around the single opinion of the trait being undervalued and wanted to add in the context of basically “when trying to maximize its value, make sure you don’t sacrifice too much” from elsewhere. I figured it would be an important sentiment (and reminder to myself as I go to town with theorycrafting and testing when I’m on a GW2 binge).

As far as Poison Master goes, I’m going to see if I can get something going with Runes of Orr. I just wish we were “Poison Masters” in a different way (like, if you hit an opponent that is poisoned, x occurs. Or, poisoning an opponent also causes x to occur type things).

jcbroe.4329:

So I have been thinking about trying out Bark Skin just to see if I see a noticeable difference.

Because tanky builds are so popular in WvW (and PvP), it makes a weirdly large difference. If a tanky PVT character hits you for 700 damage normally, bark skin takes that down to 350. Natural healing, SotW, and mango pie heal for something like 200 per second. That could mean you’re almost unkillable before your heal skill comes off cooldown. You might even gain health while some attack you, like a zerg staff guardian noob.

On the other hand, if you only have a few thousand health left and someone lands an eviscerate on you, well good luck.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

So I have been thinking about trying out Bark Skin just to see if I see a noticeable difference.

Because tanky builds are so popular in WvW (and PvP), it makes a weirdly large difference. If a tanky PVT character hits you for 700 damage normally, bark skin takes that down to 350. Natural healing, SotW, and mango pie heal for something like 200 per second. That could mean you’re almost unkillable before your heal skill comes off cooldown. You might even gain health while some attack you, like a zerg staff guardian noob.

On the other hand, if you only have a few thousand health left and someone lands an eviscerate on you, well good luck.

I run full damage in WvW hahaha. I have for awhile now. Zerker/Cavalier mix with 6/5/3/0/0. I run tanky stuff so much in PvP that I’m burned out on it. I prefer it there though where I feel like dueling capacity is much higher and fights between equally skilled opponents are more likely (because you fight more people in general so there is a higher occurrence rate).

In WvW though, I play anti-periphery for my guild on both my Ranger and Mesmer, and I’m just not going to regear when outside of an organized group, and I’m PuGzerging with another commanders guild/zerg, or if I’m solo, I either insta kill solo players or get killed by a group.

I haven’t had a legit 1v1 WvW fight in so long that I genuinely just stopped building for roaming and doing it. I can solo a not upgraded camp on my damage build anyhow lol.

I also don’t get satisfaction out of playing anything that isn’t a higher number burst build anymore. I’m not sure why that is lol.

Ha, I’m almost the opposite story. I still run in 100% berserker in WvW, I just got bored with LB. Been running a wide multitude of tankier melee builds with berserker gear. I tried switching back to GC LB after the patch and it just didn’t feel as satisfying. Poor necros never stood a chance.

At any rate, bark skin does make a shocking amount of difference for when things go really wrong, no matter how many you’re fighting.

Also one of my favorite hobbies I try hard not to seek out is running from a zerg while at 20% health. Good luck catching a s/d + gs ranger with bark skin, muddy terrain and lighnting reflexes. You can lead them across the entire map.

I run it in a 2/0/6/6/0 zerk lb build (pvp) and the survivability is amazing. I’d call it glassbow but its really more of a barkbow

The perfect trade off between damage and survivability.

Fluffball.8307:

Ha, I’m almost the opposite story. I still run in 100% berserker in WvW, I just got bored with LB. Been running a wide multitude of tankier melee builds with berserker gear. I tried switching back to GC LB after the patch and it just didn’t feel as satisfying. Poor necros never stood a chance.

At any rate, bark skin does make a shocking amount of difference for when things go really wrong, no matter how many you’re fighting.

Also one of my favorite hobbies I try hard not to seek out is running from a zerg while at 20% health. Good luck catching a s/d + gs ranger with bark skin, muddy terrain and lighnting reflexes. You can lead them across the entire map.

God, yes … I love doing this … very nice with the pet nipping at people’s heels too. Most just ignore it as it chases and slowly downs a squishy here and a squishy there.

Bonus points for looting bags while running from a zerg :-p