Guild Wars 2

I’m obsessed with the archer class, and PvP only. been playing build after build, and I do think that this is the best all around PvP build the archer class has to offer. I seem to down the most people with this build, can fast travel with “call of the wild”, Change your pets name to your name and sick him on opponent as your opener to cause immediate confusion, then open your attack with “Hunter’s Call” Constantly have all 3 of your spirit pets summoned to cause further mass confusion, as well as offers you and your team support. Going down the skill and trait tree like this offers excellent survivability, good damage, and good maneuverability. Give it a try and tell me what you think.

You need to copy paste the following link, won’t link to this page for some reason. >>>

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBlODbEoqpuqyri1OQsKIo2DNZ+z7egqSdKA;TsAg0Cno4ywlgLLXOukctKYUwuAA

Troll Unguent.

Not sure if this post is trolling or if serious. Falling for trap if it is…

Alright, I’ll bite. First, why name your pet to your character’s name? Second, your spirits will not last long to any rogue AoE, even with double health. You will be without utility for up to 60 seconds when they are downed. You also picked one of the worst Spirits to use for this condition-based build: Storm Spirit. If anything, if Spirits were viable, you should consider the Sun Spirit.

Post a video with this build to demonstrate how you fair in sPvP and, if you’re feeling brave, WvW. Thanks.

I don’t have any videos, don’t want to go all out to prove a point when you can just see for yourself. As for using a Sun Spirit over using Storm Spirit I think is a bad idea because Sun Spirit does not offer any sort of control and the damage output of Sun Spirit is a joke. if you stick with the three Spirits suggested, you can control more of the field and buff your team better. As far as naming your pet the same name as your char, seems self explanatory to me, but I can better explain. If you lead your aggressive strategy off with a pet opener, and that pet has the same name as you, your opponent will most likly target your pet rather then target you, as soon as your pets dead, switch to your second pet, and have your second pets name your char name as well. I have had many battles like this without being targeted directly, or targeted half way in battle while your opponents helf is already halved or more. As far as Rogue AoE, and another archers AoE you make a good point, however, if you select “Vigourous Spirit” trait they can survive, and if they do not, a Rogue is not your most feared opponent anyways because you have huge survivability… I have little problem with them. Glass cannon Rogues don’t stand a chance, you can out maneuver them any rogue build.

The most problem I have had is with other archers. Mesmers, usualy do not know what to do because of your spirits ability to control. you also put Guardians in a tuff spot with controllability. ..

Troll Unguent in my experience is by far the best heal for hotjoin tournaments and SPvP. The reasons for this are as follows.

1) You can activate it instantly on engagement (making it’s slighlty longer CD irrelevant. Flows better with early active dodge to manage endurance recharge as well)
2) It heals for more than either other heal and lets you stay completely mobile.
3) I run in 2800-3000 armor builds same attack and 21K health. (The above build is lower on defense but has the toughness benefit if you can keep the spirits alive)
4.) People give up and switch targets if they aren’t noticably damaging you quickly early. And it’s heal per second creates that impression.
5) Because you are using your heal on engagement early then potentially again late it isn’t an obvious disrupt scenario.

I’ve messed aorund with all the heals extensively. get much better results with unguent in durability builds.

Troll Unguent isn’t bad, but it lacks the condition removal of Healing Spring. Kind of a toss up.

Running a spirit build without Nature’s Vengeance? That’s probably the one ability that makes spirits even a little bit useful.

Finally, naming your pet after yourself has been around a long time because many MMOs have a /target feature and when someone types /target PlayerName and your pet is chasing them, it would target your pet instead of you. Seems kind of pointless in GW2, however. Not sure anyone is going to be fooled into thinking your bear or devourer is actually a player.

Yeah I deal with conditions differently.

I can see how naming your pet in large scrums would help. Simply because I always do a name glance on target and switch off obvious pets in non called target scenarios. 1v1 don’t see how it would be helpful. In that instance any name would likely work.

Arrys:

Is why I chose Troll Unguent because with our survivability we can time it right and benefit from every ounce of that heal . there is no way for me to test the same name for pets, but does make a diffrence when your opponent knows your char name. One problem is that spirits vanish in water and your CD does not reset, so with a moving spirit build your forced to stay out of the water. they should fix this though, sooner or later.

This is a good build, I use a similar one except with nature spirit elite and shared anguish and camoflage. I also find berserker amulet too squishy so I go for a condition/toughness or healing/support amulet instead. Still, played right this build is solid. BTW the storm spirit is actually one of the best-always moving at 33% faster speed is a huge buff.

I wish you could take both the extra health trait and the one for increasing the spirit active effect size, that would make a big difference.

Yasha:

I am also a bit conflicted on choosing “shared anguish” and “camoflage”, but vigor buff from “vigorous renewal” trait is just another good buff to add to the many that you already have and beneficial when using a heal over time heal, helps you get away from danger while healing and to me thats critical for me, I always push the envelope and try and go right to the brink when healing because if I’m able to to stay below 25% health while fighting I get that 30% damage reduction caused from the “Bark Skin” Trait. Which goes into my other reason for choosing “Bark Skin” in that trait line…

With “Bark Skin” and “Troll Unguent” working together while fighting and you manage to stay below 25% health, its like having double health overall, or near it, maybe the equivalent of 60% or more health in a fight. So instead of running away to heal, pop off “Troll Unguent” heal, and try your best to dodge, outmaneuver oe whatever you need to do too keep fighting. Its the best way to take advantage of those two traits working together like that.

The other trait in that trait line that is offten overlooked is “off hand training”. It gives 20% cooldown on off hand weapons, also adding 20% to the range. If you use “Warhorn” as your off heand weapon then you can really take advantage of it with “Hunter’s call” Hunters call will now have 1,200 range, and that skill is priceless with this build, does mass damage for an opener. " it also resets the cooldown of “Call of the Wild” The benifits of this one is huge, sets it on a 28 second cooldown, when the buff itself last 20 seconds. makes your conditions, power, and over all attack higher, wile making you extreemly fast and agile nearly all of the time.

Another trait I found important thats in the “Nature Magic” trait line is “Strength of Spirit” The reason being is because I’m focusing (not just on survivability) on doing as much damage as I possible can. What better way to do that then to add a trait that converts 5% of vitality to power when your already maxed out on vitality, I mean its the best time to ever use this trait. its like the equivalent of adding a few more points into the “Marksmanship” trait line for raw power, that raw power equals higher attact damage. add that fact to nearly always having “Call of the wild” Up and your talking some serious damage output because of the 35 pluse power and 35 pluse condition damage "Call of the wild gives you…

I have played it, thought about it, tweaked it over and over again, I’m strating to think its near perfect completion for me this build rocks.

Sorry for all the typos, I’m not using spell check and am in a hurry.

Troll Unguent vs Healing Spring is a bit of a toss up, IMHO.

Troll Unguent makes you very tanky for a good duration of time, but lacks condition removal. Healing Spring heals instantly for less, removes conditions, and can heal allies, but is immobile. I personally prefer Healing Spring, but I run with a Thief friend who can pop Cluster Bomb in it for huge AoE healing.

The only thing I don’t agree with is Spirits. Without the correct traits, they’re worthless, and even with traits they aren’t too great. For a pure Archery build, I’d rather take a traited Signet of Stone for clutch survivability and Quickening Zephyr for Spiking. The 3rd utility is really situational. I take Signet of the Hunt in W3 for getting around a bit faster (it’s a bit more noticeable on the large map), Signet of Renewal for Condition cleansing, Lightning Reflexes, or Sharpening Stone.

You make some good points there, I’ll give this exact build a whirl- I’ve noticed that even slight changes in build can make a big difference. One thing I wonder about though is if bark skin is needed when you have spirit of earth. What’s your take on that?

DoomBunny.2903:

The 3rd utility is really situational. I take Signet of the Hunt in W3 for getting around a bit faster (it’s a bit more noticeable on the large map), Signet of Renewal for Condition cleansing, Lightning Reflexes, or Sharpening Stone.

Running around without a stun break is suicide in PvP. Sadly we have half the stun breaks of other classes and one of them is garbage. Lightning Reflexes is really our only choice.

@NlDixon (pretend there’s a quote here)

I feel the same way, and I run LR more often than the other listed options. The only time I really skimp on the stun breaker is W3 and Dungeons, as I rarely (if ever) end up face to face with someone else in W3, and stunbreakers aren’t necessary for most of the dungeon bosses.

Tried this build. Didn’t like it. Every opponent KO’d the spirits first then whopped on me. Any gust of wind knocked them over: whether from a glancing AoE or a sneeze. Guess the word is getting out: Spirits suck!

But I didn’t give up there: I also tried this build in a dungeon and solo PvE. Soloing was okay, but any rogue (not THIEF, but rampant) AoE either killed them or knocked their health to 50% or less. Doable, challenging, but far more work than it was worth.

Dungeoning (AC, HoW and TA) was an absolute nightmare, especially TA (no pun intended). I’ll leave it at that.

I did not attempt this in WvW for obvious reasons (if its not obvious: too much AoE).

I don’t know how you consider this a viable build. It looks great on paper – I’ve even become a fan of Troll Unguent – but this build was too easily countered or destroyed.

(The pet naming didn’t work out too well either)

Pool, something to note is you can swap your XI XII talents out of combat and after a brief period the pets become mobile immobile and you can have another talent active.

As all traits are swappable out of combat I believe this is intended not an exploit but who knows I’ve only used it in testing. This means by actively managing your traits you can hide stow in a buff radius your pets fight win turn them mobile to follow you as you move etc….

On places like the overlook at keep where stacking them up top if you have to go down in is needed this might be handy to know.

Essentially if you have 30 points in the tree you can be mobile in transit and hide them in buff radius safer from harm at the node. Outside likely aoe zone, elevated from combat field etc… And take a melee combat trait like removing poison/blind while dodging. If you move far away then switch them to mobile they’ll arive in about 5 seconds(seems to be on the schedule they apply/reset their icon/boon)

Now in terms of effectiveness on average using a shortbow I get 18 seconds of protection for a 60 second spirit. That’s proccing it as often as possible on the golems with a 1 second attack SB. Or 33% protection less than a third of the time.

Now swiftness with a 10 second duration(What it tells me on the boon not fromtraits or armor) I’ll keep up 40-50 seconds if attacking constantly with a shortbow. One of the reasons I agree that spirit is valuable.

Arrys: I did not know that, thanks man. Going to go mess around with that now. One of the reasons I like spirits are because it gives me 4 total pets, 4 extra targets to be toggled through. But I can see the advantages of what your telling me, cool stuff. I wonder if there is any other traits that can be used like that? Can’t think of any at the top of my head though.

sPvP: Its condition build.
WvW: Its longbow build.

No more.