Guild Wars 2

A man, who was obsessed with turrets had the urge to fill the void in his wretched heart, after turrets were made worthless. The no-skill scrub just couldn’t learn to play a proper build. He wanted to have the game play by itself, while burying his opponents in AI driven attacks and thus his dark heart brought forth an unspeakable abomination: The turret ranger!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAsXRjEq0xaFLusQ1aALhqdDEAj6rT1d0+A3cJ7KB-TpBHwAFOCALLDA4QAM4EAE4BAse/BA

As I feel like turret engineer had a vital spot in the meta, that is being a counter to mindless celestial facerolling, I kind of wanted to create another ai driven tank build.
I stumbled upon the combination of a bird pet and rune of the pirate to create a pair of hard hitting birds, but I still haven’t fully optimized the build.

The build is a pure melee build with maxed nature magic and wilderness survival.
Don’t question the sigil of leeching, it’s just how I roll. I am a sucker for sigils of leeching and it’s there to stay. It was already hard enough to drop the first one for a sigil of doom, when I switched to axe offhand.

As for optimization, the offhand weapon kind of went from dagger to axe. Dagger was great for the extra evade and the extra poison, which allowed me to have a second sigil of leeching, but overall, it was rather lackluster. Pulling an escaping opponent back into the birds is just brutal and the reflect is not too shabby either.
Also, the build is kind of weak in team fights and the axe might help to mitigate that problem, bringing an extra interrupt and a reflect to the table.

The master traits in both WS and NM are still shaky. I have found the cooldown reduction on evades and blocks to be more relevant than regeneration procs, but an argument can be made for picking oakheart salve over martial mastery. In nature magic, there’s also the possibility to boost the greatsword. I kinda like evasive purity, because the build is already pretty taxed, when it comes to removing conditions and as any build with a lot of passive regeneration, we just don’t want a high poison uptime on us.

As for the 2 points in beastmastery, I just felt like the pet needed those extra stats. A point can be made for moving those points over to marksmanship and picking up keen edge.

Playtesting revealed, that the build plays nothing like a turret engineer(RIP) and has high mobility and a rather high skill cap, when compared to other ai driven builds. Utilizing that mobility is key, which makes it a rather bad turret replacement (yes, put your pitchforks down, the build doesn’t promote passive play at all…)

I will certainly continue playing the build, maybe test, how well the bird survives, when I swap the points from beastmastery to marksmanship, as I could really use more condi removal, even, if it’s on a passive proc.

Please don’t direct people’s attention to the cleric beastmaster build next. If that gets nerfed into the ground I don’t know what I will do. It’s one of the funnest and most challenging builds I’ve come across and I absolutely love it, and we all know that when it comes to AI many in the PVP community aren’t exactly civil.

That being said I see you like birds. I’m a drake man myself, but I ran a pretty fun bird centered build before and it worked well. To complete your bird theme you should run with the warhorn for Hunter’s Call. More birds swarming the enemy as two bird pets deal high damage. It’s great, and a surprising number of players responded to being defeated by it with amusement. “The birds! The biiiiirds!” Plus the birds really benefit from the high fury uptime due to their already high crit chance, and combined with the bird’s swiftness generation you’d have perma group swiftness in combat and quite a lot out of combat as well.

That being said warhorn probably isn’t optimal. I just like using it with bird pets for the thematic synergy.

I’d also suggest you play around with mainhand axe since you’re investing in Nature Magic. It’ll let you capitalize on Fortifying Bond so that your pet has a near constant stack of 15-20 might at all times which will dramatically ramp up the bird’s damage output.

Since you are using birds you may also want a bit more Beastmastery so they aren’t quite as fragile. More importantly you’d get Loud Whistle which will let you swap your pets more often to make use of those low cooldown F2 skills and keep your pets alive by switching them out. You’d also get more out of Mighty Swap.

If you move points out of beastmastery you should put them in Skirmishing for Pet’s Prowess which will increase the critical damage of the birds for a rather large boost to their burst potential.

If you’re really hurting on condi removal Healing Spring is a good alternative. If you decide to go with the warhorn it also serves as a blast finisher for extra heals. Healing Spring cures conditions on activation, has a strong burst heal, and will cure conditions on you periodically as you stand in it while providing you and your pet a lengthy dose of regen. Your pet will get double the regen since it procs Fortifying Bond, allowing you to easily maintain long lasting regen to keep your pets alive longer.

Just remember, our pets are not turrets. They CAN benefit from boons, so you should build around providing as much support to your pet as you can.

Ehecatl.9172:

Please don’t direct people’s attention to the cleric beastmaster build next. If that gets nerfed into the ground I don’t know what I will do. It’s one of the funnest and most challenging builds I’ve come across and I absolutely love it, and we all know that when it comes to AI many in the PVP community aren’t exactly civil.

cleric BM isn’t viable in any way, shape or form in any aspect of pvp. it used to be when double ravens were critting people for 7k. so don’t worry, it’s not getting nerfed.

however, with the upcoming changes, 0/0/6/6/6 condi bunker will be very strong having all the tools it has now, plus 25 stacks of might on a bird supplementing your massive condi damage.

mistsim.2748:

cleric BM isn’t viable in any way, shape or form in any aspect of pvp. it used to be when double ravens were critting people for 7k. so don’t worry, it’s not getting nerfed.

however, with the upcoming changes, 0/0/6/6/6 condi bunker will be very strong having all the tools it has now, plus 25 stacks of might on a bird supplementing your massive condi damage.

It might not be viable at the highest tiers of PVP but I do quite well with it. In fact it’s my favorite ranger build, and I find it to be quite a bit more effective than the powerbow build most rangers cling to these days. Granted this is because the cleric BM build has the tankiness to fight on point so I don’t have to worry about my allies not having any sustain or not knowing how to peel properly.

Besides, the community has made it pretty clear they don’t just want AI focused builds to be less effective than other builds, they want them DESTROYED to the point the AI will die instantly upon being looked at. My fears are quite justified.

Hey, Naphack…

Did you think of using Healing Spring? Since you mentioned that you intend to imitate turret engie, you should be of use for your team as well …

Also, the healing spring provides you with 3 leap finishers. Or 4 if you utilize the sword cooldown on Monarch’s Leap. That’s a lot of healing, and bonus condi removal.

In teamfights the heal blasts are quite powerful (if your team knows about it)

Tragic Positive.9356:

Hey, Naphack…

Did you think of using Healing Spring? Since you mentioned that you intend to imitate turret engie, you should be of use for your team as well …

Also, the healing spring provides you with 3 leap finishers. Or 4 if you utilize the sword cooldown on Monarch’s Leap. That’s a lot of healing, and bonus condi removal.

In teamfights the heal blasts are quite powerful (if your team knows about it)

^Take Healing Spring
Also valkyrie amulet+warrior runes for even more mobility and armor
I play almost the same exact build with zerk stuff, most fun I have in pvp:D

Why would I give up my second turret for warrior runes? The second bird is a wrecking ball. It’s not uncommon, when I get jumped by three players, that I(well, the birds) still get one opponent into down state before they finally manage to stomp me.

Speaking about the second turret, I never really tested war horn. Call of the wild might push the tropical bird’s damage through the roof with that fury.

About Healing Spring: I thought about it. It certainly makes the build more like a turreteer, sticking to a point and staying there.

Edit: Healing Spring tested and found to be superior. Gives regeneration to tropical turret and removes conditions.

Warhorn definitely helps you get more out of your birds. It’s why I ran it for so long. The only problem is you do suffer for lacking an active defense from it.

If you aren’t completely married to the dual bird theme you should try Snow Leopard. Similar damage and comes with chill for more soft control on your opponent. It also has a leap finisher, which will let you play with your Healing Spring even more.

Jaguars are also good as they can attack while in stealth, meaning the enemy will take a few hits before they even see where the damage is coming from. Again similar damage to birds.

River and Marsh drakes are also excellent as they are tankier. They also have decent damage, can cleave, have a melee weakness application that doubles as a blast finisher, and their F2 is probably the closest you’ll get to a turret overcharge effect. It’s a large damage spike that can hit multiple targets.

Play around with different pets and figure out which pets you feel most comfortable with. Birds have the highest DPS but they don’t have as much utility as some other pets. Particularly the canines like wolf and drakehound that function as hard crowd control. Probably as close to the thumper and net turrets as you can get. Spiders are also good for control, but their damage is extremely lacking even in a BM build.

I will scratch the warhorn tests.
Axe just rocks. Path of Scars wrecks team fights and can pull escaping foes right back into the range of your turrets.

You really should try mainhand axe. Those might stacks are part of what makes this sort of BM build dangerous.

Also, they are not turrets. They are animals. They move and receive boons.

I can see mainhand axe being relevant on a kittenty map like Niflhel, where there’s almost no difference between moderate mobility and high mobility due to the map simply being too compact.
In fact, I did just that. After being completely useless and a wasted slot on niflhel twice, I just dropped the greatsword for axe/dagger, when Niflhel came around and it was glorious.
The sample size is still too small, but it makes sense to drop the greatsword, when you are on Niflhel.

I still kinda like the mobility of the double melee setup, though. Gonna keep an eye on the greatsword. If the high mobility ends up not paying off, I will ditch it.

Was thinking about this the other day. Try out a Hyena as one of your pets, its F2 is another summon and you can actually get two extra hyena summons for total of 3 of them for 4 seconds if you trait for the CD on F2. Lots of KDs/cripple then and you still have the birds.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Was thinking about this the other day. Try out a Hyena as one of your pets, its F2 is another summon and you can actually get two extra hyena summons for total of 3 of them for 4 seconds if you trait for the CD on F2. Lots of KDs/cripple then and you still have the birds.

Hyenas provide very little damage, though.
The only thing they provide is the CC, and unfortunately, the spawned hyena disappears once you swap pets.

Hyena has half the power of a normal canine, but that is why you get two of them. The CC was kinda the point.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Hyena has half the power of a normal canine, but that is why you get two of them. The CC was kinda the point.

Hyena deals 50% of the normal pet…
… And the spawned one even 25% of normal one.

But the CC, oh god, the CC!

The summoned Hyena has the same stats as the normal I thought, I tested them in the mists once, it may have changed though. The summoned one always uses the crippling leap 1st too. The CC is pretty great, assuming you can do damage on your own, not the strong suit of this build, but hey, it would play fun

And here I was thinking you were going Sylvari with seed turrets.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

The summoned Hyena has the same stats as the normal I thought, I tested them in the mists once, it may have changed though. The summoned one always uses the crippling leap 1st too. The CC is pretty great, assuming you can do damage on your own, not the strong suit of this build, but hey, it would play fun

Intimidation Training also works with the Hyena’s F2 so you can cripple the opponent while summoning the second hyena.

Though I don’t believe the second hyena benefits from points in Beastmastery, which is a shame.

Ehecatl.9172:

Please don’t direct people’s attention to the cleric beastmaster build next. If that gets nerfed into the ground I don’t know what I will do. It’s one of the funnest and most challenging builds I’ve come across and I absolutely love it, and we all know that when it comes to AI many in the PVP community aren’t exactly civil.

That being said I see you like birds. I’m a drake man myself, but I ran a pretty fun bird centered build before and it worked well. To complete your bird theme you should run with the warhorn for Hunter’s Call. More birds swarming the enemy as two bird pets deal high damage. It’s great, and a surprising number of players responded to being defeated by it with amusement. “The birds! The biiiiirds!” Plus the birds really benefit from the high fury uptime due to their already high crit chance, and combined with the bird’s swiftness generation you’d have perma group swiftness in combat and quite a lot out of combat as well.

That being said warhorn probably isn’t optimal. I just like using it with bird pets for the thematic synergy.

I’d also suggest you play around with mainhand axe since you’re investing in Nature Magic. It’ll let you capitalize on Fortifying Bond so that your pet has a near constant stack of 15-20 might at all times which will dramatically ramp up the bird’s damage output.

Since you are using birds you may also want a bit more Beastmastery so they aren’t quite as fragile. More importantly you’d get Loud Whistle which will let you swap your pets more often to make use of those low cooldown F2 skills and keep your pets alive by switching them out. You’d also get more out of Mighty Swap.

If you move points out of beastmastery you should put them in Skirmishing for Pet’s Prowess which will increase the critical damage of the birds for a rather large boost to their burst potential.

If you’re really hurting on condi removal Healing Spring is a good alternative. If you decide to go with the warhorn it also serves as a blast finisher for extra heals. Healing Spring cures conditions on activation, has a strong burst heal, and will cure conditions on you periodically as you stand in it while providing you and your pet a lengthy dose of regen. Your pet will get double the regen since it procs Fortifying Bond, allowing you to easily maintain long lasting regen to keep your pets alive longer.

Just remember, our pets are not turrets. They CAN benefit from boons, so you should build around providing as much support to your pet as you can.

It already got nerfed to oblivion way back a few years ago Now no matter how hard you trait pets, they still hit like wet noodle compare to the past. There’s seriously NO ROOM for more nerf on pets because they already became a mere utility tools for a very long time. You can stack as many mights as you want and they still post no threat. Your main damage source comes from yourself doing condition damage.

Really missed the old days of birds hitting 10k per F2 skill usage.