Guild Wars 2

I started playing my Ranger fulltime now and was messing with builds a bit. So far I enjoy playing Condi Ranger (for WvW that is).
Coming from a Guardian playing with Valkyrie/PVT/Cele Gear I got used to having a high health pool with some armor instead of no health pool and high armor.

I was wondering why people suggest using Rabid Gear for Ranger instead of Carrion mixed with Dire Rabid Trinkets? Is it the on Crit Traits?

Rabid has precision which helps proc on crit effects. Condi ranger is strong enough that you don’t need to compromise your defense w/ carrion to get extra power. I recommend all Dire gear actually.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Template:Prefix_attributes
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

For condition damage as your primary, you can look at either of the above links and see that you have the following options:

Sinister: Condition Damage, Power, Precision

• This will be glassy, but you’ll have the most direct damage of any of the other options as well since you have both power and crit chance. The crits will help proc on-crit effects.

Carrion: Condition Damage, Power, Virtality

• Carrion will be less glassy than Sinister, but more glassy than the other builds as Vitality without more toughness isn’t going to make you take that much more to kill. It will do almost the same amount of direct damage, but a bit less since it doesn’t have precision. It will also not be proccing on-crit effects for you

Rabid: Condition Damage, Precision, Toughness

• Rabid is what you take to be tankier than Carrion & Sinister but less Tanky than Dire and Apostate. The only real reason to take Rabid is if you need the critical chance to proc on-crit effects from traits, sigils, etc. … though be warned that your crits can proc benefits for your opponents as well.

Dire: Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality
Apostate: Condition Damage, Toughness, Healing

• Dire competes with Apostate for “tankiest” of the options. Depending on your build, you’ll be better served by Dire or Apostate. That is, if you have good up-time on regen and/or any other sources of healing and can keep poison off you, then you’ll be better off with +healing instead of +vitality. Otherwise, Vitality will give you a larger health pool.

Personally, I prefer +Healing. Vitality is nice, but once that health is gone, it isn’t doing you any favors. I personally feel Healing scales better with Toughness than Vitality does, but, as I said, that’s only beneficial if you are going to have plenty of sources of healing.

To give an example:
If the +Toughness means that you’d take 20% less damage, than every 1,000 extra health from vitality will actually count as 1,200 extra health.

Similarly, if +Healing means that you’ll heal an extra 300 health per tick of regeneration, that toughness will translate that to effective 360 health per tick. Give me 4 seconds into a fight with that regeneration and I’ll have overcome the initial +1,200 health while that 1,200 health is gone as soon as it’s gone … only benefit being if your opponent somehow lets you top your health off mid-fight.

NOTE: conditions ignore your toughness, so they won’t be making Vitality nor Healing better against them.

I’ve personally never used Apostate as I already have a full set of Apothecary from back when Karka were “new”, but it has served me quite well. I won’t get into Apoth and other such sets any more though as then I’ll have to cover all sets that have condition damage as a secondary. I trust you to be able to look them up if you’re so inclined :-)

One of the things I love about my Ranger is that I can be tanky yet my pet can stay a vicious, man-eating monster due to their stats being independent of mine.

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Of special note is: Giver’s.
Instead of +condition damage, you get +condition duration. This can be quite nice, particularly if you opponents doesn’t have the condition cleanses to keep up as each additional tick of a condition is additional damage as well. On top of that, it benefits you in that cripple, chill, etc. last longer. Poison likes to stay on an opponent longer to keep those heals diminished ;-)

For optimizing it, do the math on your conditions your build can apply and try to find a +% condition duration that will give you full ticks. going from 9.0s to 9.9s duration won’t give you any extra damage, but gonig from 9.0s to 10.s will give you that extra damage.

I found Giver’s quite nice when I was running my “chill you for days” build. I posted it somewhere in here over a year ago :-p

In my opinion Chill is a condition that is underrated by most. Increasing the cooldowns of your opponent’s skills is awesome and hindering their movement speed is always welcome as well :-p
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Mainhand axe isn’t going to benefit much from power. Sword will, but you don’t typically sit there hacking away to get that benefit anyway.

I think that you’re getting more from your toughness on Rabid than from the vitality on Carrion, also, since you’re packing so much condition removal on those condi-Survival builds.

What about more of a hybrid? i did a theory craft that had 2700 armor, 20k hp, 1600 power, 36% crit chance (without Fury) and 1550 Condi. Anyone run a hybrid survival in WvW with Success?

Thanks for the post Serbrent. I’ve not used the wiki for armor sets before so that was some pretty good info. I’ve never taken the time really, sad I guess.

The Sinister set is interesting. When I’m roaming out in WvW to flip stuff or just be a pain in the rear I will run my full LB/Zerk set. Roaming and flipping stuff and playing smarter I’ll fall back to my Rabid and trapper rune build.

One thing I like using on my LB is the superior sigil of incapacitation which needs the crit to proc reliably. Based on what you noted below with sinister stats maybe I’m going about it wrong. Of course I’d have to find the right comfort level based on the glassy comment. I already feel on the edge playing in my zerker gear but maybe the traps would help with comfort…something to think about I guess.

Probably why I haven’t crafted any ascended stuff yet. Can’t seem to find a single armor set that mixes well with my ignorance

Sinister: Condition Damage, Power, Precision
•This will be glassy, but you’ll have the most direct damage of any of the other options as well since you have both power and crit chance. The crits will help proc on-crit effects.

It really depends on the build you have. Builds that have on crit sigils/traits will benefit from rabid, while regen builds benefit from apothecary. I’ve been liking the torment sigils on my build lately for the extra cover stack and ~100 damage/s, so I’ve been using rabid.

You’ll want rabid if you’re using shortbow with Sharpened Edges. Likewise, if you’re using Oakheart Salve and Nature’s Bounty for 100% regen durations go with apothecary.

Vitality isn’t as important, in my opinion. Between Empathetic Bond and Survival of the Fittest, you’ve got a ton of cleanses. It’s really a choice between precision and healing power.

Just a tip for Ascended Gear …

Most people will tell you that the primary reason to get Acended Gear is for fractals; so you can get more Agony Resist on them. So if you are crafting Ascended Gear, craft it with stats you would be happy using in a Fractal.

Additionally, Ascended Gear is Account Bound. So, if you are crafting Medium Ascended Gear, try to craft something you’d be happy using on your Thief, Ranger, or Engineer (assuming you have or plan to ever have these classes).

I suggest this because Ascended Gear is not cheap in time nor resources so I find it in your best interest to maximize what you get out of it.

Settler Ammy in PvP is where it’s at IMO for condi ranger just bring oakheart salve

Carrion vs rabid debates also include which class you will facing. As if you face a condi user you will be way more tanky using carrion for more health to tick down and vs a power class you will have much more effective health with rabid.

Short answer:

• If you’re using Sharpened Edges then Rabid/Celestial.
• If Keen Edge then Celestial/Dire/Settler

Thank you for your input, especially Serbent for the very precise one.

I think my main flaw was that I wanted to have an option to use LB with Axe/Dagger and Krait Runes. Therefore I needed Power and Condition Dmg but also some survivability. That said Carrion seemed to be just perfect.
Using Axe/Warhorn wouldn’t be too wise either since it limits the Condition part of the build…

I haven’t looked to deep into Sigil tho. I saw Geomacy being used for Axe which is on swap and Air for LB which is crit (not really working with Carrion).

In the end the mindset of a Ranger is totally different from Guardian as you work with regen instead of burst heal and therefore need Toughness/Healing Power instead of a health pool.

You could always try a 0/6/6/2/0 Trapper build with LB and Axe/Dagger taking Hide in Plain Sight (now that they’ve fixed it) and a Siamoth. Would be a pretty trollish build with all of the stealth, but could be fun. Not sure what gear I’d use for it though, Celestial perhaps?

If you’re using Axe and ever find a few seconds where you’re using Axe’s auto-attack, then you might want to look into having a minimum of 3 trait points into [Nature Magic] in order to get [Fortifying Bond].

[Fortifying Bond] and Axe are best friends. Just counting 3 trait points in [Nature Magic], you only get 3.5s of [Might] per Axe auto-attack, but, with [Fortifying Bonds], your pet gets 11.5s of [Might] per Axe auto-attack.

Despite the tooltip saying 0.25s for the auto-attack, the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ricochet) currently states ~1.0s per attack, so you can get up to 11 stacks of [Might] on your pet from just auto-attacking. [Might] helps your pet’s power and condition damage, so it can be quite nice.

This is why you’ll often see a Beastmastery spec take the Axe. In fact, you’ll often see them use Axe, have [Fortifying Bond], [Companion’s Might], and [Superior Sigil of Battle] so that their pet has 3 sources of Might (2 from crits, 1 from hits).

This is why, despite the Axe’s auto-attack “hitting like a wet noodle” (as some put it), it can still be beneficial when you have nothing else you can do at the moment.

[Fortifying Bond] also shares other boons with your pet, so [Swiftness] so they can better deal with moving targets, [Regeneration] and [Protection] to be more durable, etc. etc.

If you are wanting both Condition Damage and Power on your gear, your choices are:

• Rampagers: Precision, Power, Condition Damage
• Sinister: Condition Damage, Power, Precision
• Carrion: Condition Damage, Power, Vitality
• Celestial: All Stats … more stats overall than any other prefix.

… or you can mix-and-match prefixes to get the right blend of stats you want.

Talking about the Axe AA, I never considered it to be weak and only for stacking might. I haven’t been playing Ranger much though. For normal PvE and map clearing its alright.

So basicly you use the Axe to apply Bleeds (Chill) and whatever your off-hand provides and then switch to a real weapon like Short Bow or Sword/Torch? With that having LB as second weapon isn’t quite doing the trick.

Trapper and Beastmaster is probably not what I am looking for as I don’t like Hide and Seek or just supporting a companion.

There are varying levels of “Trapper” and “Beastmaster”. You may find that you do like having some elements from those “types” of Ranger.

I would suggest not discounting the utility your pet provides. Play a Mesmer and see how you feel about a Ranger that lets their pet chase you to the ends of the Earth :-p

One condition build I run sometimes is a mix of condition and beast. The beast gives me even more sustain (via more healing) and makes my pet an even bigger monster. It has worked well for me.

Narkodx.1472:

Settler Ammy in PvP is where it’s at IMO for condi ranger just bring oakheart salve

I use to run a regen build with Oakheart Salve, but Offhand Training is too good not to take with dagger/torch. The 240 Bonfire and increased distance on Stalker’s Strike are great.

That and Nature’s Protection seems to mitigate as much damage as Oakheart Salve and Nature’s Bounty would heal, so it evens out.

Aye, Shanks, good points and Offhand Training is indeed awesome :-)

I think the choice between the two boils down to how much you get out of Offhand Training (what weapon sets are you using, do you often benefit from the range, etc.) as well as how often do you have regen on you without Oakheart Salve. More range and shorter cooldowns on 4 skills or potentially more regeneration.

Also, a special mention … Offhand Training will always be useful as it is based on your weapon set(s) with an offhand weapon. Oakheart Salve can go unused in some fights as there are builds that do not apply any bleeding/burning/poison.

Another question came to my mind just recently: Tonight I’ve got an Ascenden Weapon Box for Settlers from Teq. Is it any good for a Condi Ranger and what weapon should it be?

I would probably only ever use Settler’s for a Shout Heal build, but I think even then Apothecary is preferred.

First off, grats on the free Ascended :-)

Settler’s vs Apothecary is a bit of a toss-up.

On one hand, Toughness is a multiplier for your health and healing. More toughness makes whatever health and healing you have even better. Toughness also increases your max effective health so reduces the chance of going from X health to downed.

On the other hand, Toughness is ignored by conditions while Healing is always effective against direct damage and condition damage (though diminished by poison). More Healing also allows you to provide more support with any Healing you provide to others