This is based on Puandro’s BM build, and IMO in practice it works pretty well.
0/10/0/30/30 GS/Sword/Horn
The primary advantage is that you don’t need Dwayna runes or signet of the hunt, because you achieve perma swiftness/regen via shouts. So instead I run Hoelbrak runes, Poultry and Leek Soup (sometimes lemongrass), and for utilities guard/signet of the wild + open spot.
Anyone else try something similar? Haven’t seen too much discussion about Nature’s Voice, other than people suggesting dropping the BM traitline.
Question: The Fortifying bonds trait that reads: “Any boon you get is shared with your pet”. Does this work in reverse? As in, do you get what your pet gets?
Edit: Oh that said, i really can’t see why you wouldn’t grab the Zephyr Speed, 3 sec every 15 sec is just too good to give it up, if you want to climb that BM tree that is…
Question: The Fortifying bonds trait that reads: “Any boon you get is shared with your pet”. Does this work in reverse? As in, do you get what your pet gets?
I wish. Sadly, no it does not. I’ve tested this repeatedly, in and out of combat, and it made no difference. However, you can gain the buff if close to the pet when it adds said buff. But, if the pet is out of range, you get nothing.
However, the pet will get any buff you gain no matter the distance. In this way, Fortifying Bonds is very powerful especially if you gear toward healing for example. That continuous regeneration is also given to the pet should you tank with, say, a devourer or drake.
Ok then, the core of the build is really 3 things: shout recharge reduction, regeneration increase and shouts granting both swiftness and regen which in turns comes from spamming guard right?
That’s very clever idd. I guess i’ll try 0/0/0/30/10 as somewhat a core with the given traits and work around something to my liking for the other 30 pts.
I’ve been playing around with a similar concept, but with more emphasize on boons and boon duration through runes.
I’m curious though, what approach to the ascended gear you guys have? At the moment, when it comes to ascended trinkets, there are 2 variations of power / precision / toughness combination, 1 is typical knight gear with toughness as the leading stat, while the other has precision as the leading one.
With 5 trinkets it’s essentially a difference between 514 toughness / 382 precision in the 1st case and 382 toughness / 514 precision in the 2nd case. Is it worth it to drop 132 point of toughness for additional precision, which is equivalent, if I’m not mistaken, to a bit more than 6% crit chance increase?
I tried it as a 0/0/30/30/10 version and I really liked it. Me and my drakes were rather tanky.
In WvW I solo’ed a camp with it, which is a pretty decent test of a build.
But the the sad part was that I tried using it in WvW group fights, and it quickly became clear what the weakness of this build was in bigger fights.
A shout build obviously relies on your pet, and even with all the healing and protection my drakes still died in any bigger fight.
That’s not the fault of the build of course, it’s a design fault.
After a few goes I switched to a full cc trap build to support my group in WvW.
For roaming this shout build works perfect though.
Wiggely, wobbely and other wombaty wabbity creatures…
Honestly, I hate the fact that you need to run around spamming a slow cast, semi-useless shout to keep regen/swiftness up from the trait.
Again, the lack of logical synergy is astounding with this class. Yes I know there are plenty of ppl out there that like Nature’s voice-builds, but to be perfectly honest, the new GM trait could have been handled A LOT better.
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
I can’t fathom a ranger’s shout build being fantastic for anything other than map completion where you have to run so much from place to place. Guard is a waste in WVW when a cc trapper is so much more effective. I’d go with a bunker BM before I went with a shout build. Sure, with a shout build you might stay alive longer, but if you’re doing crap damage, then it doesn’t matter cause you’re not going to bring anyone down.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Honestly, I hate the fact that you need to run around spamming a slow cast, semi-useless shout to keep regen/swiftness up from the trait.
The weakest part of the build indeed, and practically dead weight. I use “Guard” to position my pet, not to keep up boons in combat. One second hurts.
Agreed. After trying about 4 different DD builds centered around this skill I lost interest quickly. Having to spam this really hurts especially when using weapons with long channeled skills (IE LB). However, I did feel like a hero escorting yaks giving them perma swiftness and regen!
I may go back and experiment some more with shouts but for now I have moved on to other builds and combos.
Sarhaz [CDS]
I was a ranger before shortbow had 1200m range AND after it didn’t…
All that it honestly needs is for “Guard” to behave like a shout and cast instantly. Then it would become a very, very viable build.
Great point. I would love to try builds again with shout if that were the case.
Hmm, maybe i can combine it with the quickness builds I have been trying lately. I don’t know if quickness will make that much of a difference but I will run some tests on it anyways. I prefer to use my quickness for important parts of rotations if possible.
Sarhaz [CDS]
I was a ranger before shortbow had 1200m range AND after it didn’t…
I’ve mentioned this before, but if you don’t really mind taking points out of BM (i.e. you’re only using it for shout mastery and the attributes), you can still get 100% swiftness/regen uptime especially if you have a 10%/15% buff duration rune.
Although you do miss out on some stealth duration for your pet, the 10 points could possibly be better spent elsewhere. That, and you can spam guard every 15 seconds instead of every 12, increasing your DPS.
I can’t fathom a ranger’s shout build being fantastic for anything other than map completion where you have to run so much from place to place. Guard is a waste in WVW when a cc trapper is so much more effective. I’d go with a bunker BM before I went with a shout build. Sure, with a shout build you might stay alive longer, but if you’re doing crap damage, then it doesn’t matter cause you’re not going to bring anyone down.
It’s perfectly possible to make a more offensive shout build that does great damage and still has very good survivability, I tried one and it was really good only reason I didn’t stick with it is cause the kitten casting of guard drove me nuts.
