Guild Wars 2

Just want to get some opinions here.

I seem to get much better survivability in WvW from something around:

1400 toughness
350+ healing & Dwayna runes
18k HP

than I do from full knights/cavalier gear, with 2k+ armor.

I had expected to see way more damage reduction from the knights/cavalier, but it seems that the extra hp + regen works a lot better.

Anyone else seen similar results?

FYI this is mostly roaming with usually nothing more than a 5vs5.

well, a large health pool is advantageous in and of itself, 350+ healing isnt much though, however it is a start.

to my experience with WvW survivability, you want somewhere close to 2700 armor (total def+tough) for damage mitigation. However, what kinds of damage do you produce?

or how high is your crit chance?

Crit chance is 50% and crit damage is 80%+ with either build.

I’m just surprised by the toughness though. Why doesn’t it work as well?

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMQQJAVTjAV91JWCWs2Bili9Eo2DN1fMxUwfGVwjE-jUyAotARfCU2LqJwhMW3KiGreBTXuoalKgLpIa1yAYOGA-w

This is my build which revolves around regen and vigour, my +healing sweet spot is +5xx with Dwayna Runes. I used to run BM with regen trait but since the pet nurd changed things up a bit.

Ranger just plays so much better in PvP when you try to build around evasion and regeneration.

Cempa.5619:

Ranger just plays so much better in PvP when you try to build around evasion and regeneration.

That is what I have found too but I don’t get why. I think I just need an explanation as to why regen seems to be better than toughness. Because I would much rather run knights/cavalier and max crit damage.

Sube Dai.8496:

Cempa.5619:

Ranger just plays so much better in PvP when you try to build around evasion and regeneration.

That is what I have found too but I don’t get why. I think I just need an explanation as to why regen seems to be better than toughness. Because I would much rather run knights/cavalier and max crit damage.

I wonder that myself, frankly I regret swapping out my healing gear. Evasion/Regen definitely seem to be the way to go in most aspects of the game for rangers. If your healing for more than what your being hit for toughness becomes fairly moot.

Its always hard to explain to people why Healing Power is so powerful, because on paper is seems like such a trashy stat.

It really takes in game experience of having a Healing Power set vs a PVT set to see the real power in it.

oh, I appreciate healing power trust me. I play cleric/priest in just about every game I’ve ever played. In my book heals are king. I was just hoping toughness would workout better than it did.

So Xorus you reckon vitality is not required either? If you’ve got the necessary healing?

a large health pool with heavy healing = almost unstoppable

if you can get a build, with 500+ healing, 2700+ armor and 20k HP, you are pretty much set. Only downside is, you wont kill anyone anytime soon

Sube Dai.8496:

1400 toughness 350+ healing & Dwayna runes 18k HP

Seeing similar results with 250heal/24K hp in dungeons where everyone whines that 1 shotting makes HOT’s worthless. …I think I actually sat right in Lupi’s bubblebarf twice in a row without going down. I don’t understand why tho… just 1 of those will usually down my guardian who has 2x the healing. Weird math maybe??

Wish my 3x bloodline Lifesteal Necro was seeing similar gains
(but then the sPvP’ers would be QQ’ing even harder…..bah)

That’s the thing, especially in WvW. You don’t have the time to sit there 1vs1 or 1vsfew and let your super healing keep you alive and save the day. Too often(to virtually all the time) is the case when enemies will quickly swarm to you and kill you when you’re in one of these encounters and it doesn’t really matter how much healing/armor/HP you have.

Rangers do not have the escape mechanisms like the D/D Bunker Eles to get themselves out of harm’s way. The GS is our best bet, but typically that won’t help us against a few enemies on our tail(esp. with any type of speed). Plus, you need to ESC and try to lose target before you swoop. I’ve had server lag severely reduce the responsiveness of being able to lose the target soon enough to have any chance to get away.

Pets, well, there’s a joke. Pet’s F2 abilities as slow as molasses and unreliable, and are also heavily impacted by any lag on the server. Plus the Pet’s AI is made for PvE and is virtually useless in WvW against real human opponents. There are only few select cases where Pets help the Ranger. 80% of the remaining time they’re relatively useless.

The Ranger class is a clear example of where the rules of PvE do not and cannot apply effectively across to a PvP environment due to issues with the Pet(especially). They can’t fix this unless server lag/responsiveness is erased and they dramatically increase the Pet’s AI and responsiveness. Until that happens, they need to remove the Pet from the equation of trying to balance the Ranger in the WvW environment.

Prysin.8542:

a large health pool with heavy healing = almost unstoppable

if you can get a build, with 500+ healing, 2700+ armor and 20k HP, you are pretty much set. Only downside is, you wont kill anyone anytime soon

I’m at those stats with a power build and can bring down players just fine, bunkers take long and just zzzz but they die. My build is in this thread above…it’s not perfectly optimized as I don’t play that much. Once you get the hang of double bow you can take huge chunks of HP off your foe in seconds….

I’d like to put it this way without toughness healing power is complete garbage however together it is very powerful, either you emphasize on toughness with low healing or swap it round to having semi high toughness and alot of healing power aslong as you have a high regen uptime both versions work great and have strengths against diffrent things for obvious reasons me personally I prefer to run higher toughness and lower healing power (not saying you can’t have both I just like to keep high personal dmg too cause I don’t have a condition spec) because I find thieves to be my biggest problem so to negate some of their burst with pure armor helps more when you cannot avoid their attacks, against anyone with lesser burst damage higher healing would work better but regardless what gear I use I would never do pvp without a source for high regen uptime.

I’m currently testing a version with only about 100healing power (and perma regen) and “mongoloid high armor” (as I like to put it) at close to 3500 and it actually works pretty well some can still nuke through your armor like it was paper though but those cases are very far and few between and you still have all your dodges and evades for those people so it’s not like it would be much diffrent if you flipped the defensive stats, it’s probably not optimal to do it this way but you have to test stuff sometimes to see how it goes.

These are all good points. The problem is, and I see the subject is rarely touched upon when discussing regen builds …poison. If you don’t have a way to clear poison, then your healing is null and void.

So high regen + low vitality + poison = dead quickly.

Forzani.2584:

These are all good points. The problem is, and I see the subject is rarely touched upon when discussing regen builds …poison. If you don’t have a way to clear poison, then your healing is null and void.

So high regen + low vitality + poison = dead quickly.

True but I don’t know anyone that runs without any condition removal at all, most have several means for it and/or use lemongrass soup.

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

These are all good points. The problem is, and I see the subject is rarely touched upon when discussing regen builds …poison. If you don’t have a way to clear poison, then your healing is null and void.

So high regen + low vitality + poison = dead quickly.

True but I don’t know anyone that runs without any condition removal at all, most have several means for it and/or use lemongrass soup.

You would think so, but I check pretty much every build that is presented on the forums. Most of the current regen builds only have Empathatic Bond as any kind of condition removal. That won’t cut it.

Forzani.2584:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

These are all good points. The problem is, and I see the subject is rarely touched upon when discussing regen builds …poison. If you don’t have a way to clear poison, then your healing is null and void.

So high regen + low vitality + poison = dead quickly.

True but I don’t know anyone that runs without any condition removal at all, most have several means for it and/or use lemongrass soup.

You would think so, but I check pretty much every build that is presented on the forums. Most of the current regen builds only have Empathatic Bond as any kind of condition removal. That won’t cut it.

I’m not so sure I agree with that, I think empathic bond is enough to keep you free from conditions and also poison in most cases, I personally like to run it together with signet of renewal though because I find it very easily will get your pets killed otherwise if you have low health cats and realtively low healing power like I do, and many builds now also have easy access to evasive purity.

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

Forzani.2584:

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

I do duel all the time and while I won’t say conditions can’t be a problem they most certainly can but generally that is only if they get stacked I find, however I might just not see it your way simply because I have never been that dependant on strong regens almost all my builds have been with realtively low healing power I don’t think anyone has been over 800 and most at or below 500 when I did use only empathic bond though the only thing that really bothered me was soft pets getting overstacked with conditions sometimes like I said before.

well for wvw i have roughly 2100 toughness, 1200 healing and 20k hp along with 1675 condition damage.

in order to be viable in wvw as a ranger you need to be able to take a little beatin to let your conditions work their magic. learning evade rotations is huge also.

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

I do duel all the time and while I won’t say conditions can’t be a problem they most certainly can but generally that is only if they get stacked I find, however I might just not see it your way simply because I have never been that dependant on strong regens almost all my builds have been with realtively low healing power I don’t think anyone has been over 800 and most at or below 500 when I did use only empathic bond though the only thing that really bothered me was soft pets getting overstacked with conditions sometimes like I said before.

Yea that might be the difference. My healing was always over 1000. The condition damage was manageable with my heals. It’s just that when poisons were involved, and healing was halved, that things would fall apart.

Forzani.2584:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

I do duel all the time and while I won’t say conditions can’t be a problem they most certainly can but generally that is only if they get stacked I find, however I might just not see it your way simply because I have never been that dependant on strong regens almost all my builds have been with realtively low healing power I don’t think anyone has been over 800 and most at or below 500 when I did use only empathic bond though the only thing that really bothered me was soft pets getting overstacked with conditions sometimes like I said before.

Yea that might be the difference. My healing was always over 1000. The condition damage was manageable with my heals. It’s just that when poisons were involved, and healing was halved, that things would fall apart.

They’re not halved it’s 30% less (isn’t it?) but yeah anyway I always had much more trouble from burst classes than conditions, in general anyway.

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

I do duel all the time and while I won’t say conditions can’t be a problem they most certainly can but generally that is only if they get stacked I find, however I might just not see it your way simply because I have never been that dependant on strong regens almost all my builds have been with realtively low healing power I don’t think anyone has been over 800 and most at or below 500 when I did use only empathic bond though the only thing that really bothered me was soft pets getting overstacked with conditions sometimes like I said before.

Yea that might be the difference. My healing was always over 1000. The condition damage was manageable with my heals. It’s just that when poisons were involved, and healing was halved, that things would fall apart.

They’re not halved it’s 30% less (isn’t it?) but yeah anyway I always had much more trouble from burst classes than conditions, in general anyway.

Yes, 30%.

@Poison argument, in general, I don’t think that they meant for bunker builds to be unstoppable. Most classes don’t really have widespread access to poison to begin with, meaning that really only thieves, necros, and engis can apply it consistently. Of those choices, necros and engis result in attrition wars which could go either way, because the poison in their builds is really on strong on condition builds. So that really only leaves thieves who can setup with poison to burst through the constant regen and healing. That means that they also have to survive, and use their skills appropriately and at the right time so that they don’t waste a burst attempt as poison is cleansed.

Poison really helps to make bunker builds more killable, which is a fair tradeoff considering how well certain classes can bunker and how skilled a player has to be or how coordinated a team has to be to take full advantage of poison on a bunker.

That being said, Evasive Purity on a 0/0/30/20/20 or 0/0/30/30/10 or some other variation can deal with poison just fine at the cost of a bit of damage output.

jcbroe.4329:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

I do duel all the time and while I won’t say conditions can’t be a problem they most certainly can but generally that is only if they get stacked I find, however I might just not see it your way simply because I have never been that dependant on strong regens almost all my builds have been with realtively low healing power I don’t think anyone has been over 800 and most at or below 500 when I did use only empathic bond though the only thing that really bothered me was soft pets getting overstacked with conditions sometimes like I said before.

Yea that might be the difference. My healing was always over 1000. The condition damage was manageable with my heals. It’s just that when poisons were involved, and healing was halved, that things would fall apart.

They’re not halved it’s 30% less (isn’t it?) but yeah anyway I always had much more trouble from burst classes than conditions, in general anyway.

Yes, 30%.

@Poison argument, in general, I don’t think that they meant for bunker builds to be unstoppable. Most classes don’t really have widespread access to poison to begin with, meaning that really only thieves, necros, and engis can apply it consistently. Of those choices, necros and engis result in attrition wars which could go either way, because the poison in their builds is really on strong on condition builds. So that really only leaves thieves who can setup with poison to burst through the constant regen and healing. That means that they also have to survive, and use their skills appropriately and at the right time so that they don’t waste a burst attempt as poison is cleansed.

Poison really helps to make bunker builds more killable, which is a fair tradeoff considering how well certain classes can bunker and how skilled a player has to be or how coordinated a team has to be to take full advantage of poison on a bunker.

That being said, Evasive Purity on a 0/0/30/20/20 or 0/0/30/30/10 or some other variation can deal with poison just fine at the cost of a bit of damage output.

I would like to put rangers on that list too actually we might not be as good as them (I don’t really know what tools they have to apply poison) but we certainly got plenty of it ourselves sword+dagger is very good shortbow too and maybe a trap I used to run that before (aside from the trap) it’s solid and also gives great defence with tons of evade.

Manekk.6981:

jcbroe.4329:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

I do duel all the time and while I won’t say conditions can’t be a problem they most certainly can but generally that is only if they get stacked I find, however I might just not see it your way simply because I have never been that dependant on strong regens almost all my builds have been with realtively low healing power I don’t think anyone has been over 800 and most at or below 500 when I did use only empathic bond though the only thing that really bothered me was soft pets getting overstacked with conditions sometimes like I said before.

Yea that might be the difference. My healing was always over 1000. The condition damage was manageable with my heals. It’s just that when poisons were involved, and healing was halved, that things would fall apart.

They’re not halved it’s 30% less (isn’t it?) but yeah anyway I always had much more trouble from burst classes than conditions, in general anyway.

Yes, 30%.

@Poison argument, in general, I don’t think that they meant for bunker builds to be unstoppable. Most classes don’t really have widespread access to poison to begin with, meaning that really only thieves, necros, and engis can apply it consistently. Of those choices, necros and engis result in attrition wars which could go either way, because the poison in their builds is really on strong on condition builds. So that really only leaves thieves who can setup with poison to burst through the constant regen and healing. That means that they also have to survive, and use their skills appropriately and at the right time so that they don’t waste a burst attempt as poison is cleansed.

Poison really helps to make bunker builds more killable, which is a fair tradeoff considering how well certain classes can bunker and how skilled a player has to be or how coordinated a team has to be to take full advantage of poison on a bunker.

That being said, Evasive Purity on a 0/0/30/20/20 or 0/0/30/30/10 or some other variation can deal with poison just fine at the cost of a bit of damage output.

I would like to put rangers on that list too actually we might not be as good as them (I don’t really know what tools they have to apply poison) but we certainly got plenty of it ourselves sword+dagger is very good shortbow too and maybe a trap I used to run that before (aside from the trap) it’s solid and also gives great defence with tons of evade.

Well I didn’t mention ranger because I was specifically thinking versus bunker ranger in my head, but I realize now I generalized against all bunkers, so good catch haha.