Guild Wars 2

SO I have been playing this game since release and i have been theory cratfting builds on my ranger since then. while i am not a famous streamer and i dont have alot of “street cred” id like to show my new build since i did not find it anywhere else, and it works amazingly.

To be fair this build takes alot of proactive and aggressive fighting, and may not be what alot of ragners like. its not high damage and its not high conditions it is a high survival pet build with alot of ways for allowing your pets to do what they are supposed to do in Spvp.

please copy and paste this link

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQJARVjAVV2JW+VoWCimCNZJWBF9eEr13eXhRVwqH;ToAgzCoouxcj4G7Nubk3MG5QC

UPDATE this build is also able to use Birds as Pets jsut make sure to swap out the appropriate trait in the best master line for birds instead of dogs
thanks Fjandi for your suggestion on the birds

i love this editor but the links it provides have to be copied and pasted for me and maybe the rest of you as well.

The Build: Justice Ranger

The Trait lines, weapon sets, pets and Runes synergize well to provide maximum control over your target, and allow your pet to do the damage the build lacks.

to begin

the most important part of this build comes from survival of the ranger

in the wilderness survival trait line:
Vigorous Renewal and the 15 point minor trait Companions Defense.
and in the Nature magic line:
Natures Bounty

these are key to the Rangers survival., you will note i use Troll Ungent as a heal which does not count as regeneration, however the trait applies to the 4 and 6 piece bonus for the rune set “Dwaynas”

and the second half of this build is Allowing your pet to do the damage it should.

In the Skirmishing trait line :
Agility Training

In the Beastmastery Trait line:

Commanding Voice
Intimidation Training
Natural Healing

Intimidation Training is a rarely used choice due to its specific nature and forcing the Ranger into a small group of pets. however in my opinion the canine pets are naturally gravitated to for Spvp due to there more resilient nature, multiple cc options and moderate to good damage they can out put.

with commanding voice my choice of fern dog and Wolf drops there F2 ability down to very very reasonable cooldowns and allowing me with the help of Intimidation Training to maintain a strong AOE cripple for a good portion of the fight. unfortunately the fern dogs regen does not proc the dwaynas set, but is super nice healing to add to the already insane healing you have.

my Weapon choices should be obvious from the intention of the build, but for new rangers or future rangers ill go a bit into them.

Shortbow: arguably the best weapon we have for Ranged i use it for the 2,3,4, and 5 abilities.

2: Poison Volley best used at melee range to get max effectiveness used for the heal debuff and minor posion damage

3: Quick Shot used at any range for an awesome endurance free dodge and gives you swiftness. it can be used in practically any direction very useful for avoidng attacks that you just cant quite dodge roll out of (giant elementalist aoes). it is an actual evade so it will work even if you are rooted. but it will not break the root.
4: Crippling Shot this synergizes with teh AOE cripples you will be dropping with canine F2 and makes yoru pets next attack deal bleeding
5: Concussion Shot this i save primarily for stopping rezzes and stomps but can be used in a pinch when trying to chase down that pesky kiter.

Great Sword: my favorite Weapon that actually works right for ranger(my favorite is Sword, but self rooting on Auto attack is dumb)

i also use every ability on this weapon ( i use them all on shortbow but auto attack on SB is not exactly useful to this build outside of extra damage and filler when everything is on CD)

anyways the abilities

1: Autoattack chain with a built in evade on the thrid part ( moderate damage, pure awesome)
2: Maul great animation great damage(since patch) it doesnt fit with the build but its sexy what can i say
3: Swoop great animation again!very important for chasing down runaways or escaping lost causes
4: Counter Attack, after the patch is now probably the most amazing ability it is a 3 part skill first you block for 3 seconds or until hit in melee range. this enables us to have a 3 second block against ranged attackers on a 16 second cd (traited) yay! the second part is if you block a melee attack from any direction you will knock them back and interupt there attack locking it out for 3-4 seconds. and the third part is a 600 range cripple this only happens if you do not block any melee attacks and activate the ability a second time within the 3 seconds.
5: Hilt Bash This is a great ability used in conjunction with Swoop. i primarily use this ability again to stop rezzes or stomps but can be used for the runaways.

Utilities:

Heal: Troll ungent the most reliable strongest heal we have in my opinion. it is not a burst heal so you have to use it proactively but to getits full efective ness you dont have to stand in a circle, and both you and your pet get all of the heal without traiting to give your pet your boons. with my build it heals for 1k per second for 10 seconds for both you and your pet with out a range restriction. so if you are standing on a node and a curious elementalist decides to poke his head up you can send your pet out and chase him. this heal basically heals its full amount and you can do it again 15 seconds later.

note:
the 6 piece bonus on dwaynas set this procs regen on heal use so on top of 1k per second you also receive another 30-40 hps on top of this. this will also proc vigor boon to allow more dodging which procs more protection!

Lightning reflexes: gives 11 seconds of vigor(more Dodging!!) and is a pure evade skill to get you out of a jam does decent damage too.

Signet of Renewal: both of my signets are made to be strictly passive at all times. this one however can be used in extreme emergencies (condition necros) the passive is usually enough to carry you through most 1v1s and 2v1s DO NOT STAND IN CALTROPS! it will remove bleeds but not that many that quickly since they are reapplying themselves extremely fast.

Signet of the Wild: again should always remain Passive(wish i could get a bonus for passive signets grumble dumb warriors grumble) this is MOAR healing!! an additional 138 HPS. which is almsot a full 200HPS all the time just from passive signet and dwaynas set. and for 10 seconds out of 25 its actually about 1200HPS while Troll ungent is up!!!!

The Elite is Entangle although this can be swapped for RAO suit to taste i guess i prefer the roots for escapes and are amazing damage potential for warriors/thieves on your team. Nature Spirit would ALSO rock if the spirits werent so squishy and go alot better with the build. ( mine heals for 480 hps when the secondary ability is activated)

so

with almost 50% up time of protection from aggressive dodging 25% up time of free evades 75% up time of 1200 hps and high toughness and moderate HP pool this build does alot for surviability and with AOE cripples, stuns, and single target cripples it allows your pet to do damage and all around cause havoc.

Again this build is hard to use. if you are a thief or warrior, guardian , or necro you will find this build to be extremely difficult to maintain its survivability. the damage out put against bunkers is dismal, but against glass cannons and “balanced” builds is is pretty decent and can not only control your opponent but hold them up long enough for help to arrive if not out right kill them.

Note: against glass Cannons, remember other classes can actually spec to be glass cannons while you can kill them easily they can still do alot of damage to you if your troll ungent is not ticking. and this build does not use protect me due to your reliance on your pet for damage. you could swap protect me for lightning reflexes but i dont think it would be a fair trade. 6 seconds of invulnerability every 60 seconds or 11 seconds of vigor(which equals more protection up time) and a free evade+stun break every 45 seconds.

I welcome critiques let me know what you think!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQJAVRjAVx11VWWs2BilCBFo2jMJpzzUcIHVyUiC;TgAqmMNJay2krJZTLIGVA

Here is my build. I’ll be honest with you I don’t like your build at all. I’ve found more aggressive build seems to work better.

Sol.4310:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQJAVRjAVx11VWWs2BilCBFo2jMJpzzUcIHVyUiC;TgAqmMNJay2krJZTLIGVA

Here is my build. I’ll be honest with you I don’t like your build at all. I’ve found more aggressive build seems to work better.

for sure man i have tried builds similar to that but in the current game with high burst classes i found myself getting really really angry when i would miss a dodge or a stun break and end up instantly downed, although the damage was good it still felt like i was uselss compared to the other bursty classes, which is why i made the Justice Ranger:) but thanks for the build input and it looks fun! ill try it out in the future for now im loving this build

I like the build OP. Very survivable and you don’t do much damage but I’ve been holding off people in 3v1 until I get backup and it’s very impressive. Good job

Freky.1903:

I like the build OP. Very survivable and you don’t do much damage but I’ve been holding off people in 3v1 until I get backup and it’s very impressive. Good job

thank you sir im glad im not the only one doing well with it, im off to bed now ill check back to see what any of the more"pro rangers" say.

I run glass cannon builds, and love them. I tend to run with longbow because I love the skins/skills even tho it sucks, and GS because skins/skills as well. Raven pets pretty much carry my damage sadly. Even as a glass cannon, but when pet lands his attacks and I can build 25 stacks of might up, Im brutal. Sadly its a big IF.

I am not one of those “pro rangers” you speak of, but I do have a similar build (PvE tho, not PvP) The gist of it is the same tho… regen ftw! Didn’t think of the the Signet of the Wild idea, gonna steal it.

Was wondering tho, do you know how often the regen would kick in?

And am confused, if troll unguent does not count as regen (I use healing spring myself – AoE vigor!) why use Dwayna? I was considering runes of the monk myself. Am still tweaking things around tho.

@Dante this is a big reason why i built this because i was sick of “IFS” i was sick of hoping my cats would do ther damage and i was sick of aoe destroying them. i was sick of people just casually strolling away from my pets even though when during testing with my friend just standing still my pet was the biggest contributor to damage. so i worked on the build to enhance pet uptime and pet actually hitting the target.

@Irie Healing spring is a great heal although in a Spvp environment for me and my pet to get the FULL effect of healing spring we have to stand within the circle of healing spring and that means my pet is either not doing damage or the enemy is attacking me in the circle. and it is very easy to get pushed out of it or people jsut run out of range and the pet leaves the circle and losing stacks of regen. in PVE i would probably use healing spring for combo fields and it is far easier to stand in healing spring due to monsters not having the smarts to run out of the heal area. even with troll ungent the regen from dwaynas procs more vigor while i have a more reliable and actually stronger heal, with the freedom to move anywhere i need to and my pet gets all of the heal as well being able to do damage where ever the enemy goes.

ah cool o: makes sense, thank you for explaining.

First of all i don’t play as a ranger often sadly but when i do i usually run something similar. I find tank builds to be the best tbh.
I know healing spring is pretty static but if you stay in skill range it grants 15 secs of vigor (vig renewal), combined with protection on dodge is quite good. Also i find the birds better than other pets, they just hit the target easier…i don’t use often the 30% pet speed buff tho (i usually use the 30% crit dmg). As weapons i usually use sword/horn (speed buff) and shortbow. Tbh is think the longbow is not that bad, mainly for hunter’s shot (probably combined with the horn swiftness buff Agility Training would not be a must have anymore).
As i said i’m not a ranger expert tho, i’ll try your build out for sure.

I can’t get the link to work for me but just from reading the description this sounds almost exactly like my build except I use healing spring and usually longbow instead of sb for the extra knockback. Do you play a charr ranger by chance because I ran into someone playing a very similar build in spvp broswers when I was testing out more GS builds after the patch.

I run 30/0/20/0/20 and have for a long time. I use shortbow primarily and swap to axe/warhorn for a buff every so often. It works well for me using pigs and pets. They tank and knock down and do damage. Great for solo PvE, which is what I enjoy most. Works well in groups with a different pet.

In what little WvW I do, I use longbow and short bow with the same build and whatever pet strikes me at the time. I usually ignore the pet when doing WvW.

op can you post a new link to your build please? Looks like it is not working.

But from reading your post, this sounds like a very fun and solid build, a lot of emphasis on tankiness and survivability (I assume) which I like a lot. I am planning on running putting the full 30 points into beast mastery, and the rest into nature maybe.

@fjandi i agree that 15 seconds of vigor would be really nice but alot of this build focuses on aggressive dodging and constanly moving to maintain protection up time standing still to get the FULL effect of healing spring is almost contrary to the build, again in a pve environment i definitely would go with healing spring since its a alot more turret friendly. also the birds are ok however the AOE cripples gained from traits with the dogs are infinitely better for allowing your pet to stay on target. on top of the heavy CC that your GS and SB have. im willing to try them out though and see what happens.

@Demon yes that was probably me you saw in the Hot Joins my guild is still training up and i have changed the focus of my guild to be a learning environment for new players and new players to pvp so i do hot joins quite a bit (thank god for 5v5 in hot join). as far as the long bow goes i pretty much hate the long bow, for its attack speed and range requirements. although i have faced a few long bow rangers and that knockback is annoying as hell. oh and try copying and pasting the link posted in a new tab it will work that way.

@sonicsix im glad you found a build that works for you! i primarily run Spvp so pigs in my opinion are sub par for that environment, although they have the survivability the f2 is clunky at best and they have approximately the same damage out put of the dogs with less cc. also i have always felt that Axe is more of a condition damage build weapon and when i do use axe i pair it with torch for more conditions. I would love to see a link to your build, however, it sounds interesting for when i do pve.

Psychrome.9281:

@Dante this is a big reason why i built this because i was sick of “IFS” i was sick of hoping my cats would do ther damage and i was sick of aoe destroying them. i was sick of people just casually strolling away from my pets even though when during testing with my friend just standing still my pet was the biggest contributor to damage. so i worked on the build to enhance pet uptime and pet actually hitting the target.

@Irie Healing spring is a great heal although in a Spvp environment for me and my pet to get the FULL effect of healing spring we have to stand within the circle of healing spring and that means my pet is either not doing damage or the enemy is attacking me in the circle. and it is very easy to get pushed out of it or people jsut run out of range and the pet leaves the circle and losing stacks of regen. in PVE i would probably use healing spring for combo fields and it is far easier to stand in healing spring due to monsters not having the smarts to run out of the heal area. even with troll ungent the regen from dwaynas procs more vigor while i have a more reliable and actually stronger heal, with the freedom to move anywhere i need to and my pet gets all of the heal as well being able to do damage where ever the enemy goes.

Hey man, you linked to Troll Unguent both in your skill build and your explanation above, but you talk about Healing Spring in this post.

ok so i have tried out the birds and luckily for me when i swapped out the trait specific for the dogs…apparently the birds give you AOE vigor…so it actually fits really nicely in with the idea of the build and the damage is pretty good as well so i like the dogs but the birds are also good…jsut make sure you adjust the trait in beastmastery to compensate if you are attempting to use my build

i will update the original post to add in the idea of the birds

matenji.3809:

Psychrome.9281:

@Dante this is a big reason why i built this because i was sick of “IFS” i was sick of hoping my cats would do ther damage and i was sick of aoe destroying them. i was sick of people just casually strolling away from my pets even though when during testing with my friend just standing still my pet was the biggest contributor to damage. so i worked on the build to enhance pet uptime and pet actually hitting the target.

@Irie Healing spring is a great heal although in a Spvp environment for me and my pet to get the FULL effect of healing spring we have to stand within the circle of healing spring and that means my pet is either not doing damage or the enemy is attacking me in the circle. and it is very easy to get pushed out of it or people jsut run out of range and the pet leaves the circle and losing stacks of regen. in PVE i would probably use healing spring for combo fields and it is far easier to stand in healing spring due to monsters not having the smarts to run out of the heal area. even with troll ungent the regen from dwaynas procs more vigor while i have a more reliable and actually stronger heal, with the freedom to move anywhere i need to and my pet gets all of the heal as well being able to do damage where ever the enemy goes.

Hey man, you linked to Troll Unguent both in your skill build and your explanation above, but you talk about Healing Spring in this post.

yes this was in response to questions above i still use troll ungent and i still feel it is the best heal for the build for Spvp

copy and paste the link and it will work

It’s a good build I’ve been using similar variants with healing spring or ungeunt.

I take masters bond instead of improving my preferred pet species.

In terms of runes I’ll also vary those to a 4 and 2. 20% regen increase (for 30 second healing spring regens) and a 4 piece 10 second retaliation proc.

Last night I decided to do a max damage build and went with a 30/25/5/0/10 with thieves runes and a soldiers amulet plus precision jewel. running at 30% crit and 35% normal damage when flanking behind with masters bond to build up the pet. Not as survivable but it was putting out some good damage especiall on a rune sale elite burst.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQJARVjAVB2JWGWsWCi1j90nB1FwZcIG9KgDmlqB;ToAA1CqosyYlwKrVOrkWNK5UC

Was actually pretty fun as long as you worked with the group to get the pet to 25 MB before breaking out for solo work.

Too bad regen affected runes and traits do not affect the healing regen skill. Not the spring.

unless they recently changed it.

Still not useful in WvWvW.
If you’re able to 1v2 and 1v3 people until help arrives, then you’re not facing anyone of any sort of threat and could kill them with a trap build. (Since those players are horrible and most likely rangers and engineers[so many engineers who are clueless on how to play their build]

@King Jon i believe you havent tried the build yet. and i also believe that this strictly for Spvp or even PVE there are numerous WVW builds that are out there if you are looking for one to help you out.

i have also been able to take on at least 2 skilled opponents until help arrives. warrior and an elementalist i believe they were i dont record anything so you will have to take my word for it, or even try the build out for a few matches.

i said early on that this build is not for everyone, and maybe it isnt for you. but until you try it i dont think you can appreciate the build for what it is. and of course i would ask for you to keep your comments respectful. either way i do appreciate your input regardless of its form.

i also dont like trap builds it is boring and way to squishy and has almost no survivability for my taste. again if i wanted to build for damage or conditions i would have done so.

again if you like the idea of the build try it out, if you dont thats ok too:)

I tried your build out tonight and i like it (with birds as pets tho). This is what i usually use btw:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBMhVakoKxuvyyi1SQ0PoJWhD9eEL23e/BUVwlE;TkAqdM7IsxujbH5ODROiMhA

The build is kind of static ofc compared to yours.

hey bud it looks like you posted the wrong build iused it and it went directly to my build you probably posted the wrong deal:) i look forward to seeing the real one

i was hoping that more of the community would respond here id really like to get a large general opinion on this build

Well I told you that I have a very similar build and just went either 1st or 2nd on my team every round of free tourny and ended up winning the tournament so it can’t be too terrible lol. But then again the longbow paired with the wolf gets me a lot of points as the knockback along with the fear from the wolf and counterattack on GS allows me to neutralize and take points by myself pretty easily.

Psychrome.9281:

hey bud it looks like you posted the wrong build iused it and it went directly to my build you probably posted the wrong deal:) i look forward to seeing the real one

Mmm that’s strange the link works fine for me. New link:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBMhVakoKxuvyyi1SQ0PoJWhD9eEL23e/BUVwlE;TkAqdM7IsxujbH5ODROiMhA

this will also proc vigor boon to allow more dodging which procs more protection! —- are you sure about this ? coz the regeneration is not considered as “healing skill” although it will give you HP for sure.

CRrabbit.1284:

this will also proc vigor boon to allow more dodging which procs more protection! —- are you sure about this ? coz the regeneration is not considered as “healing skill” although it will give you HP for sure.

It procs it when you activate the Ungeunt for 5 seconds.

Healing spring procs it when you cast it and on every regeneration refresh and it is an aoe so it also procs vigor on your allies if they get a regen refresh.

So yeah ungeunt gets you a 5 sec vigor buff just remember to have burned at least 1 dodge before triggering it to get your protection up and to have a endurance pool that benefits from the vigor.

Have you tried taking out the skirmishing points and grabbing Bark Skin? If you’re using dogs it’s mostly for the CC which rarely misses, and if you’re using birds their attack uptime is high even without Agility Training. Bark Skin might give you even more tankiness in exchange for dog attack uptime.

I love so much this build! Its simple great!
Works fine as hell to me, thank you Psy!

@william Maia hey not a prob im glad you enjoy it !!

im actually thinking of grabbing the crit chance instead of speed increase since i am sold on the birds now… the up time of the birds is good with all the healing they get and i believe the swiftness they give themselves doesnt actually stack with the 30% speed increase i think it just over writes it (someone correct me if i am wrong). I will test some tomorrow and see if my pet stays on target well enough without the speed increase.

and i have swapped the dog trait for the bird trait which is giving me alot more uptime on vigor during swaps.

i tested the pact ability as was suggested and i just dont keep the same pet for very long, although it is great! if you can get all stacks on the pet… i swap way to often.

i am always swapping on cool down for vigor buff and for quickness so the bond is pretty useless for me although with another build it may actually end up being worth it !!

and Arrys is correct about making sure you dodge before healing so you can take advantage of the vigor. what i like to do is dodge heal lightning reflexes and dodge again.

its a nice long stretch of vigor and by the time all that is done you can probably dodge again right afterwards. which is ALOT of protection and damage avoidance. mean while your pet should be tearing the crap out of it.

Psychrome.9281:

@william Maia hey not a prob im glad you enjoy it !!

im actually thinking of grabbing the crit chance instead of speed increase since i am sold on the birds now… the up time of the birds is good with all the healing they get and i believe the swiftness they give themselves doesnt actually stack with the 30% speed increase i think it just over writes it (someone correct me if i am wrong). I will test some tomorrow and see if my pet stays on target well enough without the speed increase.

and i have swapped the dog trait for the bird trait which is giving me alot more uptime on vigor during swaps.

i tested the pact ability as was suggested and i just dont keep the same pet for very long, although it is great! if you can get all stacks on the pet… i swap way to often.

i am always swapping on cool down for vigor buff and for quickness so the bond is pretty useless for me although with another build it may actually end up being worth it !!

and Arrys is correct about making sure you dodge before healing so you can take advantage of the vigor. what i like to do is dodge heal lightning reflexes and dodge again.

its a nice long stretch of vigor and by the time all that is done you can probably dodge again right afterwards. which is ALOT of protection and damage avoidance. mean while your pet should be tearing the crap out of it.

the big bird advantage is 300 range on their autoattack….Don’t really need speed having that. But I believe you are also correct on the speed not stacking.

As a side note i thought interesting that my build seems to solve alot of the problems allowing the pet to do its damage properly like it should has anyone else noticed this?

it seems the rest of the community is still having issues with pets doing damage and dying alot …

I’ve tried something very similar to this, its pretty tanky. Have you tried using 2 water/ 2 monk/ 2 grove runes? That gives you the healing bonus and +35% uptime on protection as well as +20% on other boons.

My impression of the build was that it wasn’t as strong as a condition/trap build or a power/tanky build, the pets just aren’t as reliable as my bow….

@Yasha
i looked into your suggestion while first making this build and the issue is that the protection is only 2 seconds long initially. so with the 10% boon duration from traits and the set bonuses it comes to a total of 45% extra boon duration which doesnt even extend it a full second. the extra healing from dwaynas and extra healing power over all give more healing/regen uptime.

half a second of protection vs 10 seconds of regen i dont know it would be a toss up i guess but for me the more healing power and free regen are alot better.

Psychrome.9281:

As a side note i thought interesting that my build seems to solve alot of the problems allowing the pet to do its damage properly like it should has anyone else noticed this?

it seems the rest of the community is still having issues with pets doing damage and dying alot …

I think some of the pet complaints are wvw. One of the advantages of Tpvp is the objectives are finite smaller areas (other than GY which I hate with a passion) and in a smaller combat zone there are multiple techniques one can use to maximize pet uptime on target partly because the target is forced into a fight on that area.

I still think all melee pets need a minimum 250 melee range because it is somewhat frustrating investing either traits or a utility slot to ensuring their damage uptime which is an absolute necessity currently for most pets.

i could see that … i just have never been all that interested in wvw so i guess it never occurred to me

Just wanted to point out to the OP about healing spring… While you are using GS for a secondary, you can get 2 swoops inside of 1 healing spring. That adds like 2 to 3k heals. Also removes a conditions which is always welcome.

@Damage
i am aware of that friend but as i pointed out a few posts ago healing spring is only good IF you stay in it the entire time and while i may be able to do that in Spvp my pet surely will not. so i use troll ungent so both me and my pet can get the full heal over the ten seconds whether i am near my pet or not.

so i am missing self heals by not having the combo field i makeup for it in pet survivability which as we all know the pet is a large portion of our damage. keeping the pet alive so they can do the damage is what is important. at least for this build anyhow.

again thanks for your input:) although healing spring is a great heal, i personally find it not as effective as troll ungent. with so many knockbacks that fly around in Spvp i found i never get to stand in the entire healing spring for the full effect.

with my current build:
healing spring aborbing the whole effect with both me and my pet we get somewhere around 13k HP heal(tool tip reads 5k burst heal with 6 k regen which does not include extra stacks from extended regen time)

troll ungent gives 10k heal over 10 seconds with out a requirement to stand still or within a circle the entire time allowing the freedom to dodge wherever i need to dodge. and this is for both me and my pet as well.

considering that my pet is usually fighting a distance away i would have to use F3 and put him on passive during the duration for us both to get the full effect with healing spring. this limits my movement and stops pet damage completely. if i dont use this method, my pet will only get the burst heal that i get and will not get the extra stacks of regen ( unless tratied for boon sharing, which would change the build entirely.)

in reality it comes to healing spring i get 11k hp heal (considering i can stand in the full healing spring with minor dodges out of it) and my pet will probably only get the initial burst heal of 5k around a total of 16k hp in total.

with troll ungent both me and my pet each get the full 10k over ten seconds which si a total of 20k hp
troll ungent is in my opinion the stronger heal for a mobile dodge heavy build especially with pet survivability being crucial to the build

one of the advantages of this game is you aren’t married to ungeunt or healing spring. You can switch. Running up to a group fight your warrior and thief are in switch to spring drop it and let them combo off it. Nothing prevents this in this game.

However a pure healing spring focused build for many of the weakness reasons psychrome identified probably differs from psychromes build slightly.

You want 15 points in nature magic so you proc your regen to your pet if the pet isn’t in the spring(if it is regen stacks for large durations on it). The 5 in skirmishing still works to proc swiftness to your pet on swap(damage uptime). And you probably switch away from full dwayna as you only need the +20% regen duration. 4 sanctuary for a 10 second retaliation proc which also goes to the pet and vitality is my preference. At which point my knight gem on the amulet likely becomes a precision gem but may not. The extra 10 seconds of regen that stacks on duration really isn’t a priority.

Healing spring has advantages against heavy condition opponents or a group fight particularly if your teammates have blast finishers.

Ungeunt in my experience is better 1v1. Total healing difference relatively small it’s more front loaded but lacks condition removal multiple vigor procs.

I’ve been using something similar to this recently for general farming in Orr. I haven’t quite settled my build for that yet. I’ll have to try this out in sPvP at some point and it was nice to read some opinions about what works, doesn’t work, and why.

Forgive me if you’ve already answered this. What weapon/armor sets are you using? I saw you use Dwayna’s runes, but for the armor’s main stats… which three do you focus on?

Clerics: power/toughness/healing?

Knights: power/precision/toughness?

or something else entirely?

Thanks for all of the info so far!!! I found this post after getting one shot repeatedly in a dungeon last night – I guess I was a little too glass cannon. I cant’ wait to try again with these adjustments!

Meh.

You have 1 cleanse on a defensive? setup.
You went 30 into beastmastery which is a waste.
You went 10 into nature magic which is a waste.
You have healing power*.
You are using cleric’s amulet and runes of dwayna which means your weapons do mediocre->bad dmg.
You are using sigil of rage on this build. And the nullification is equally puzzling.
To wrap it all up you grabbed greatsword…

*healing power doesn’t scale healing very well. It will probably take you 1+ minutes in combat to make up that 798 healing power into 8k life (what would be 798 vitality).

Nifty ideas, just doesn’t really perform to wonderfully, at least form a min/max point of view. I would go 30 into wilderness survival for empathetic bond (best cleanse in game), grab possibly a raven pet (canines are better at supporting your dmg than being dps engines), drop greatsword for sword/dagger or something of the likes, grab better runes, get soldier’s amulet or if you’re fealing balsy go for berserker, and call it a day.
Roughly something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQNAsYVjAVV2JWSWoWCgli90r9gTJxkf4wvgDmUJA;TwAA1CtomxMjYG7MuZkzsAZ8xhkJIA
Ultimately it comes down to what you enjoy though so best of luck

@ Unspecified Great! hope it works out for you as well as it does for me

@Mrs. Larson the link to the build including runes amulets and sigils is linked in the first post, however i currently use Clerics.

@Gareth this one cleanse is usually all i need unless going against a super conditon build liek a necro even condition rangers this does really well against.

the purpose of this build is to keep my pet alive and on target, with this build i basically tank for my pet, i control my target and the pet does the damage.

30 points in beastmastery is never a waste when you are focussing on a pet build. i also have swapped to the raven and snow owl for my two pets and have updated the OP.

the sigils on the weapons are easily the most customizable part of this build, you can use whatever you want, sigils of energy would probably best from a min/max point of view. i use sigil of rage because extra quickness is awesome and it does proc every 45 seconds even with next to no crit chance. the sigil of nullification i like but it doesnt work as good as i thought it would so i am now using the one that chills the target for extra protection.

greatsword is probably our best weapon as far as defense and control in my opinion the block now is amazing, swoop has always been good the interrupt daze is good for many different things, including stoppping stomps and rezzes catching kiters and interupting long cast time spells form eles or the guardian elite. and maul with its damage boost is pretty good damage. the evade on the “auto attack” is pretty good especially when petswapping or random sigil of rage procs lots of evades without effort.

as far as healing power, im not sure on the math, but in reality (not on paper) i heal for 1k per second jsut from troll ungent so to answer your 8k of hp that literally takes 8 seconds to regain.healing power scales horribly with regen butwith burst healing and troll ungent it scales beautifully. although i have been toying around with other amulets as i am always tweaking and re adjusting things as i go. it will work ok with a knights amulet although the lack of toughness makes you paper thin so you really need the extra hp. i even tried berserkers and it works alright too but there you dont have much more hp and the insiginifcant damage from our own weapons is not much at all and will not make up for the lack of toughness at all. the soldiers amulet works pretty good, i think its a matter of preference here .

i went with dwaynas runes because of the procs it gives which is even more self healing.

i think what some people dont understand with this build is that my pet does the damage, not me, i control the target so that my pet (with its horrible AI) can catch up to and stay on target. i personally would love to go with GS and Sword/dagger but without ranged attack that is too much of a disadvantage and of course since pets cant climb up cliffs or jump off of them i need a weapon that can at least force the target to my level. by using SB it either deters a target from jumping down and staying in my LOS or it makes them cheer at the small DPS and jumps down to my level allowing my pet to do its job.

oh and in regards to empathic bond while it may be the best cleanse in the game it is so counterproductive to the build that it wouldn’t fit at all, why would i want to get rid of my one actual source of damage.

again i think you should try the build if only for a few matches you will see that while it may not be your personal playstyle (alot of rangers prefer there damage comes from there own weapons) it is a perfectly viable build with the tools we are given .

this build is not the end all be all of ranger builds and i think alot of rangers will not like it especially the ones up in arms about a petless ranger. however this build does its job well and survives long enough for the pet to do the damage it needs to or until help arrives.

other classes do everything better than us but this at least gives a way to do something other than conditions and traps.

garethh.3518:

*healing power doesn’t scale healing very well. It will probably take you 2-3 minutes in combat to make up that 798 healing power into 8k life (what would be 798 vitality).

technically if you just count the heal from the SOTW and NH that equals = 133 and 138(from memory) per second or 271 HPS.

Add in regen for 12 seconds from the dwayna armor at 288 HPS every 30 seconds .

Plus around 115 HPS over the duration of a TU.

Dwayna Rune regen = 12X288= 3456
Utility + trait heal = 12X271= 3252
and
Added healing to TU =12 X 115= 1380

8008 extra healing in the first 25 seconds.

Basically in fights longer than 25 seconds this build starts to pull ahead on total HP at the expense of damage from the ranger.

Arrys.7145:

technically if you just count the heal from the SOTW and NH that equals = 133 and 138(from memory) per second or 271 HPS.

Add in regen for 12 seconds from the dwayna armor at 288 HPS every 30 seconds .

Plus around 115 HPS over the duration of a TU.

Dwayna Rune regen = 12X288= 3456
Utility + trait heal = 12X271= 3252
and
Added healing to TU =12 X 115= 1380

8008 extra healing in the first 25 seconds.

Basically in fights longer than 25 seconds this build starts to pull ahead on total HP at the expense of damage from the ranger.

You mathed wrong.
You aren’t counting the bonus healing from heal power. You are counting the total extra healing.
Yes, a spec can heal 8k extra health every 25~s.
No, 800 heal power will not give you 8k more healing every 25s.

Signet of the wild had its bonus healing from healing power terribly nerfed a while ago (I think its at roughly 7% of healing power bonus a sec) which is 56~ extra health a second. and healing skills tend to give roughly the healing power in bonus health. That means troll ungent gives about 800 more health every 25s. Having 800 healing power makes regen tick for 100 more health, if you get 6~ seconds of regen from the heal skill every 25s, thats 700 more health. If you get the 13~ seconds of regen from the random proc every 45~s, the total is roughly 7k bonus health every 50 seconds.

Or 8k in roughly a minute.
So if encounters tend to last more than a minute, then healing power beats out vitality.

The interesting thing I actually saw was that healing power buffs your pets health regen from the signet roughly 4 times more than the players, which is kind of cool.

Psychrome.9281:

the purpose of this build is to keep my pet alive and on target, with this build i basically tank for my pet, i control my target and the pet does the damage.

And my point is that from a min/max point of view the way your spec does it could be updated to work together much better.

Anyways the details, if you care for allot of reading.
30 points in beastmastery, its your call, I have tested the pet health regen (150~ every 3s) and it just wasn’t close to worthwhile, especially for a tier 3 trait, and every other trait in the tree short of the 5 point just isn’t good (imo).

You can easily focus on a pet without putting a ton of points in beastmastery, its really easy actually. Having your pet do 5-10~% more dmg because of the extra stat buffs the tree gives is cool, having your pet land 30% more hits is even better
Sigils of hydromancy do wonders for that and self survivability to boot.
Dagger offhand with its 6s cripple does wonders for helping your pet land its stuff and nothing buys time like on weapon evades (serpent’s strike, stalker’s strike)

More on point though, you are utterly reliant on the pet then. Having a pet that does decent->good dmg is nice, but if you make yourself little->none of a threat in the mean time, you are utterly reliant on a pet and if it dies and puts the swap on that minute CD, then dies again… you are utterly useless.
The 150~ health every 3 seconds from a third tier trait won’t save a pet.

I wouldn’t actually go for 2 birds if I were you, they are nice dmg but so killable and give nothing but nice dmg. Having at least 1 canine gives allot to spec, at least if you have some dmg in and of yourself.
The build I proposed gives you a good source of dmg threw 2.2k power, QZ and QZ on petswap, both of which effect the pet, buffing his dmg too. It keeps the enemy needing to focus on you yet threw crippling/chilling and then kiting/evading keeps the pet beating on them.
:)

I personally don’t like greatsword but that’s just because I tend to look at weapons a bit differently just than a combination of a few individually nifty abilities. Again, my opinion though. And yeah using berserker with greatsword is bad, you have to run one handed sword and a ranged weapon for the other set, kiting and evading is your survivability then… greatsword just doesn’t deliver.

The idea for dwayna is nifty, I like it, I’m just saying from a numeric point of view it isn’t quite there, but the gap isn’t that large so personal preference is all up to you.

Psychrome.9281:

i think what some people dont understand with this build is that my pet does the damage, not me

oh and in regards to empathic bond while it may be the best cleanse in the game it is so counterproductive to the build that it wouldn’t fit at all, why would i want to get rid of my one actual source of damage.

Oh I do understand, that just doesn’t change a hard critique of its effectiveness.

I’ve ran empathetic bond and protect me in next to every build I do and rarely ever have a pet croak on me, if you are taking enough condition dmg that it puts a large dent in a pets lifebar… a pet you can swap away and watch the condi’s go poof, you should be happy to let him take it
I run 2 canines the vast majority of the time, but yeah i don’t really hunt out all that many fights larger than 2v2~s either.

I use dwayna sigils on my mesmer for similar results
They also have regen procs(protection for them)

I pretty much only wvw/pvp with mesmer, any “minmaxer saying its not too wonderful is simply wrong”, its a fantastic sigil for pvp and I can see it work on ranger too, im using undead runes for my build though.

khadorian.6417:

I pretty much only wvw/pvp with mesmer, any “minmaxer saying its not too wonderful is simply wrong”, its a fantastic sigil for pvp and I can see it work on ranger too, im using undead runes for my build though.

*best for that spec
Sure though, saying fuzzy words that everything is great so people feel more secure about their decisions and preferences is cool. If that’s all he wanted I made it clear I wasn’t really aiming for it so he didn’t really have to respond.
I was just aiming for an honest, more objective effectiveness of it for anyone actually here for that sort of thing :/