Guild Wars 2

Hey fellow pet trainers! I just created a ranger, and I wanted to play a spirit build in tpvp. I know I’m a bit behind the meta, but I do like the support it gives compared to a classic condi survival build. I have a few questions:

- Is the water spirit any good? I thought it was safer to use healing spring for the condi removal, the water field and the fact that it can’t be killed, but water spirit works in synergy with my build. Has anybody used it in a spirit build?

- What amulet do you play with? I like carrion at the moment, but I can see rabid work if I take the trait that gives bleeding on crit, or even celestial if I sacrifice a bit of survivability.

- I read somewhere that spirit rangers where good close point holder. You’re tanky and good in 1v1s, sure, but how do you make sure you have enough mobility to roam between close and mid?

Thank you in advance for your answers. I’m psyched to be part of the ranger community!

I forgot: since I’m new, I now play the metabattle standard SB – s/d spirit build with the Rune of the Forgeman.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Spirit_Ranger

Ello,
I haven’t played spirit ranger in ages but as far as heal goes, I’m pretty sure a heal that can die isn’t the one you want.
This build is still largely for team support or as you pointed out home bunker, so healing spring is you’re best bet imo.
Mobility is a problem with rangers, there’s really nothing you can do except use utility/runes, both require giving a lot up.
Amulet, its really w/e you’re most comfortable with, you can bunker home by being offensive(carrion) and forcing a retreat or more passive (settler’s) and hope for reinforcements.
Spirit ranger’s are pretty hard to play these days, so much celestial aoe spam and so many nerfs to the build.
It’s still nice to see that spirit of nature popped in a team fight though XD

Thank you for your answers dylan! I’m staying with healing spring and carrion amulet for now then. And yeah, spirit of nature is such a good skill when used right.

1) Water spirit is too risky. It is easy to interrupt and will die to cleave. Healing spring gives you great condi clear, the water field, and a very short cast time.

2) Settler

3) I use the combo with sword 2 to move a little faster. If you take 1 point in skirmishing you can use the swiftness on weapon swap. I also just deal with the slow move speed by making adjustments to where I am before a fast class will. Say I see 4 mid and 1 far and we kill one mid. I will then leave mid after ~10s to intercept the respawn if they go home. Otherwise I will double back onto mid or support far depending upon what the two fights look like.

I also don’t like the metabuild builds so you may find that my choices don’t reflect what is appropriate for your build. E.g. rabid + shortbow > settler + shortbow.

This is the general version of the build I run when I play: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjMq0savKusQ1aADhq9JEslArAw9PMEXdBbqA-TJhHwAAeCABuIAg2fwYZAA

Although sometimes I switch to this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV3YjEq0savKusQ1aADhq9JEslArAw9PMEXdBbqA-TJhHwAAeCABuIAg2fwYZAA

Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch is my preferred weapon setup, but neither of these builds can (imo) run that setup without basically killing the spirits over and over again because the current meta builds just crap out AoE all over the place that kills the spirits pretty effectively (which is why the spirit build isn’t really “meta” right now).

The reason I swapped heals in the second build is because I personally find the heal value of Healing Spring (personal healing) to be lacking when you don’t have the sword to leap through it. That being said, Spring is still a better team option, so really, it’s a preference thing.

Overall, I don’t run spirits all the often anymore (I still play the build a few times a GW2 session, but not primarily). It’s a good support build, but I prefer a more selfish build with a higher “dueling” capacity (you can handle side points very effectively with this sort of build). For example, this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjEqUzaLL+rQ1aADhqdLEslArAwd8+CXdBbqA-TJhHwAAeCABOJAg2fwYZAA

In all of my testing for my personal playstyle, I haven’t been able to find a single instance where Rabid outclasses Celestial. Celestial just gives so many stats, and the combination of vitality/toughness gives more survival than the extra ~212 stat points in either toughness (rabid) or vitality (carrion) will give you imo. Plus, you have more than enough dodges/protection to deal with direct damage anyhow, so the added vitality creates a nice sponge for condition damage for if (when) you run out of cooldowns and area relying solely on EB for a time.

Anyhow, I hope any of this information helps. The rest of the responses are solid so far as well, so if there is anything else, just ask and I’m sure somebody will be happy to answer.

i use celestial on my spirit ranger. storm spirit crits up to 3.9k so there’s no way i’m dropping that spirit. it can outburst a cele d/d ele if you time call lightning well. i hope this helps.

I’m posting just to let you know that there is a variation for the spirit build that works amazingly with an organized team:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjMq0yavKOrQ0aADBp9pPlYFw9vh9KZFRB-TJhHwAp2fAwVAIwDBwYZAA

You’re basically the Ress Bot of the team still having decent damage output and survivability.

If you want to try something different just for defending the close point, something more like a duelist build this other build is actually very strong against almost every class:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjEq0yaHLOsQ1aADhq9JEslArAwd8+CXdBrOA-TJhHwAAuCAILDE4hAAa/BA

If there are questions about how to use these builds or anything about traits, runes, role of the build etc… I would be glad to answer and help if I can.

From my limited testing, ten rounds per amulet (rampager, carrion and rabid), the spirits critical hit chance is independent to the rangers. This means your Celestial amulet does nothing for the frost spirits call lightening ability. To raise its critical chance you’d need to give it fury and spotter maybe
Regards roeore

Does the elite res people with more hp?

I have not considered that approach before. It could be a nice support option.

I’ve run it with Mercy Runes but I’ve found so major flaws (I mostly queue solo granted). Mercy Runes ARE great, but another class running them (they are also a variant on elementalist) with higher access to on demand condi-clears is just a better Mercy Rune option in teamfights than rangers with all the condi-corpse cleave in the current meta.

BUT, I would be curious to know if they work with the rez potential of the elite as well. That would tip the scales a bit more for me personally since that potential of utility is insane (spirit already rezzes at like ~50% health, so the flat increase from traits+runes assuming they would work together linearly would be 80% health).

I get the impression that they don’t unfortunately, in which case I’ll reiterate my opinion on Mercy Runes. Granted, small scale fights, and like the weekly 2v2 tournaments, I’d run Mercy Runes all day.

On a full spirits build though (no survival hybrid), I don’t really have a better option to suggest at this point though. I was running Earth Runes for a little while. I generally dislike the 6 effect, but you get 60% total protection duration increase which gives you 5 seconds protection on Stone Spirit proc.

I typically prefer more offensive builds though, which is why my previous post on here stands with those builds as that is what I run currently. The output on them is just insane, and with no VoIP since I’m normally solo, I find the potential of Nature Spirit to be cut by a lot since typically, it’s hard to use Nature Spirit reactively (where as on VoIP you could summon it approaching a fight that your teammate called out being about to go down in and get the rez, where as with solo, you can do the same thing and hope you aren’t wasting the rez potential).

I tried it and hated it. So little damage with no runes.