Guild Wars 2

Hola.

I’ve had the game for a month or so, just got my ranger up to lvl 50. Love the class so far, I use a SB with sword/torch and occasionally using warhorn if I’m on the move a bit more. I traited 20 into power and toughness for the condition damage/duration and crafted all of my gear for condition dmg. I run the movement signet, flame trap, and QZ. I run through solo PVE like nothing, rarely dying.

My question is there a formula for exactly how much condition dmg + equipment actually improves your conditions? For example how much extra burning dmg per tick would you do for let’s say 10 plus condition dmg?

Another question is how viable is the off hand dagger? I can see how its handy 1v1, but unless its a duel or something I’d rather have campfire or the extra swiftness. I enjoy the playstyle, just wondering if it’s viable endgame.

Why does no one use the Murebellow(sp?) in PVE? He’s got crazy HP and a AOE poision. I know my cond dmg doesn’t effect his output, but doesn’t it apply if I combo through his poision field?

Also I wouldn’t mind other opinions on my playstyle and what might scale to end game better. I’m already planning on trying out more BM once I get more trait points.

Usually I solo groups by flinging my torch at one, face tanking for a dodge or so and putting on poision, apply campfire, then switch to SB and kite while laying traps and QZ auto attack things to death.

I’ve basically went all out condition dmg from day one, I’ve heard about the BM build which isn’t exactly my style as I want to be the main focus with the pet just extra dps/utility. What other weapon sets/traits would you suggest?

I don’t know exactly what the formula is for condition damage, but I believe it scales pretty badly compared to direct damage stats like precision, crit damage, and power.

Offhand dagger doesn’t bring much to the table for PvE since cripple often isn’t needed and poison is a low damage condition that’s already available on the shortbow and 1h sword. However, it is a great PvP weapon because of the extra evade along with how good cripple and poison is in that setting.

The murellow is a decent pet, but it’s butt ugly. Also, while the combo field is nice, poison is (as mentioned above) a rather weak condition for PvE. You can also get a poison field from a whiptail devourer. Because of this, the other bears are more popular. Personally, if I want a poison field since I generally use it as an alternative way to tag mobs in PvE events and the ability to throw it quickly at range means that I’m more likely to hit mobs with it before they move or die.

As for your playstyle, I think it’s fine, but a lot of people (myself included) have changed to a more direct damage playstyle in PvE because of the potential problems that can occur when you have multiple condition build players in a group. Examples are how a bleed only stacks to 25 and doesn’t benefit from additional bleeds after that point. Also, conditions like burning and poison can often be kept up 100% of the time by others, so you don’t contribute much if someone else with equal or greater condition damage is keeping this condition up sufficiently by themselves. However, in the right group, a condition build is fine and deals almost as much damage as a person stacking precision and crit damage.

Oh, also, if you do go for a direct damage build, don’t be afraid to keep your shortbow since it outdamages a longbow even if you don’t stack any condition damage.

Finally, if you decide to give a BM a build, I’d recommend looking at a might stacking build since you seem to like the 1h sword. The 1h sword gives your pet might by itself and with Fortifying Bond (15 in NM), you can also get a lot of might stacked up from other sources. The result is that you have a relatively tanky build that brings some strong damage and very big burst if you use something like a Raven. Here’s an example build, but you could easily modify a few things if you like:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBMhx+1JRFBWGZhVQsWII6H4ErwhePmV6bv/wouYpkkA;ToAKqMUJoySljKJVrMGZsFZKC
(copy and paste the link for it to work)

Hope that helps!

You’re right…the murellow is so kitten ugly.

I didn’t really think about being grouped up with other condition builds. I’ve been in one group before on my ranger(usually solo/play with IRL friend) that’s an excellent point.

That’s pretty much exactly what I thought about the dagger, I might try spvp sometime just to play with it again.

I’ll have to try that direct dmg playstyle, I wasn’t sure Rangers could put down enough dmg to make it worth the effort.

I usually go with jag/lynx for pet, but so far jags sealth in PVE seems kind of useless compared to other pets F2 abilities.

The big advantage of stealth on a jaguar is actually the damage that it does while stealthed moreso than the actual stealth itself. Once stealthed, they can continue dealing damage to the target without being brought out of stealthed and get guaranteed crits. Quickness works particularly well with them since you can get an additional attack from them while stealthed. That being said, they still have the same drawback that other cat pets do, which is that they have very weak defensive stats. Birds have equal precision, but also have increased vitality, so they also work well for dealing big dps.

to get the exact formula just head over to the mists use armor set with no runes

use burning – note tick damage
add one rune with condition damage the rinse and repeat
the work out the diffence by taking the first number from the second

then you will know x amount condition damage = x amount of damage

altho im sure u probly alread knew that

/wiki bleeding
/wiki burning
/wiki poison

The formula for each is in the respective wiki page.
Bleeding increases 1 point per every 20 condition damage.
Burning increase 1 point per every 4 condition damage.
Poison increases 1 point per every 10 condition damage.

As for pets, try timing how long it takes each pet to solo a golem in the Mists. Then you’ll understand why most people use cats and birds (or dogs for knockdown).

The description for projectile combos is wrong. Only 20% of your projectiles (arrows for rangers, maybe axes too) will combo off the field. So shooting arrows through a field with a shortbow it is not as fantastic as you might think. For poison in particular, if you fire SB’s poison volley at melee range, all 5 arrows will hit the target giving a total of 10 sec of poison. The cooldown on the skill is 9 sec, so you can keep poison applied 100% of the time.

Since your other questions have been answered, I’ll focus on..

Murellows are awesome! They have one of the really good F2 skills and are really tanky. Best part is that people dont know that they are actually bears and mistake them for canines :P

Here’s one of my favorite shots of my beloved Murellow, Beautiful Inside:

Thanks for the input everyone, its appreciated.

Jubskie, I love that ugly kitten too. It’s like a big loveable skinned rat/dog looking guy.

I named mine Mittens.