I think it might work. Your condition removal is a little low, so you will have a hard time against opponents who are built to both deal and mitigate conditions, and know what they are doing. Maybe add some more condition removal.
Jade Quarry – Esparie
Illustrious Exhausted Primordial Legendary Druid, and Mesmer for fun
PvE | PvP (1500)| WvW | Fractals | Dungeons
This is pretty much what i use, so i think it is pretty good. Personally i dont run expertise training because i just dont find that my pets do enough condition damage to justify it.
I also will toggle on druidic clarity and/or emphatic bond whenever i need the condi removal.
And with 3 utilities being offensive DPS traps – I’d 100% go for Sword + Dagger instead of Axe+Torch. You already have enough DPS for immobile targets (that will drop by 1 cleanse) – so you can’t go wrong with defensive weapons. You actually have no other choice but to dance around while your traps keep pulsing.
If you are extremely skilled to dodge all the CC and keep kiting – you will be fine in WvW even with 3 traps. I always swapped one out of Lightning Reflexes. It’s just way too good not to be taken. Escape, Stun Breaker, cleanses immobilize, what’s not to love (except it breaks stealth maybe)?
No stunbreaks or any access to stability? You’re a brave soul.
There’s a lot of kiting and re-stealthing built in this build.
If he plays into perfection and is really good with awareness – he may be able to dodge the CC and stuff and lure enemies into his traps. It’s that kind of game-style. Not really the most efficient one but hey – it’s WvW – it has nothing in common with balance, so playing what people enjoy is the priority.
No stunbreaks or any access to stability? You’re a brave soul.
There’s a lot of kiting and re-stealthing built in this build.
If he plays into perfection and is really good with awareness – he may be able to dodge the CC and stuff and lure enemies into his traps. It’s that kind of game-style. Not really the most efficient one but hey – it’s WvW – it has nothing in common with balance, so playing what people enjoy is the priority.
Oh I meant that honestly. I’ve tried builds like that before and I’ve always ended up needing to cave and drop at least one trap for a stunbreak. Haven’t tried a trap druid yet, but I’d imagine the stun break on CAF would be something I’d take.
I usually run something similar for wvw skirmishing/roaming/camp clearing. with a bit of practice you should have no problem soloing maxed camps (just do the old dungeon LoS stacking the npcs in a corner trick). You can also put out decent support in small skirmishes with CA. It is possible to use this build in a zerg battle but not really recommended, in this case you are either supporting your allies or looking for pickoffs and disrupting the enemy backline.
A few suggestions – most of this comes down to personal preference:
change the rabid gear to dire (or trailblazers if you can afford to craft it) – without sharpened edges you really have no reason to have precision and dire allows you to make up for the lack of defensive utilities. Note that if you do this you will have to swap the sigil of earth for something else not crit based.
Use an apothecary staff since you usually are swapping to it for to heal yourself (or allies). You can also grab some apothecary trinkets to swap for the dire/rabid ones if you want more healing support and sustain.
If you are running into problems with stuns or condi burst then taking druidic clarity can help. Another option is to take wilderness survival and TU or empathic bond.
Wolf is still a viable option for a pet if you really need that extra interrupt.
swapping axe for sword is definitely viable for extra evades and mobility.
Some other sigil options:
Hydromancy or geomancy on staff if running primal echoes for the PBAoE immobilize proc.
Transference on staff – if you are running with allies the 10% outgoing healing gives you a nice support boost
Bursting or malice on A/T, the extra damage is really nice
Sigil of frailty – this usually overlooked sigil is kinda nice on a trapper ranger since you have no vuln application normally, so it both amplifies your damage and acts as an annoying persistent cover condition for your other damaging conditions (also it is on hit not on crit).
Sigil of smouldering – a cheaper alternative to malice since alot of your damage comes from stacking burns.
Sigil choice is really down to playstyle and personal preference. I prefer to sit in A/T most of the time and only switch to staff when i need the utility (hence why I don’t weapon swap sigils).
Oh I meant that honestly. I’ve tried builds like that before and I’ve always ended up needing to cave and drop at least one trap for a stunbreak. Haven’t tried a trap druid yet, but I’d imagine the stun break on CAF would be something I’d take.
Ah, well, to be frank, I skipped the traits, didn’t really check them.
Yup, I’d change some traits. Most of them have already been suggested. Yup, Druidic Clarity is a must-have for any PvP environment.
you also have ancient seeds and no CC to trigger it
What? I thought ancient seeds make you immobilize a foe, when you aa them when they are cced (they are dazed, you attack them with anything and they get immobilized). It doesn’t work that way?
No stunbreaks or any access to stability? You’re a brave soul.
I beat Eviscerate warriors with non-Tempest fresh air builds, only Mist Form and Lightning Flash for kiting abilities that druid has amazing access to. Kinda unfair how many kiting abilities druid has. I trust in my dodging skills, tho you have remembered that I rely on my energy sigil to provide me the energy you need.
you also have ancient seeds and no CC to trigger it
What? I thought ancient seeds make you immobilize a foe, when you aa them when they are cced (they are dazed, you attack them with anything and they get immobilized). It doesn’t work that way?
It does (thought it doesn’t need to specifically be an auto attack), he just didn’t notice your 2 CC skills that allow you to utilise it.
I beat Eviscerate warriors with non-Tempest fresh air builds, only Mist Form and Lightning Flash for kiting abilities that druid has amazing access to. Kinda unfair how many kiting abilities druid has. I trust in my dodging skills, tho you have remembered that I rely on my energy sigil to provide me the energy you need.
Having 1 stunbreak + 1 pseudo stunbreak (and probably invuln from focus?) is a huge difference to having zero stunbreaks and/or instant defensive abilities. And it is impossibe to avoid every cc, there are too many instant skills and passive or random procs in the game right now. Also keep in mind, that trap ranger has almost zero ranged pressure. So while it is pretty good at running away, actually killing somebody is not always that easy, sometimes even impossible (as long we are talking about decent opponents with decent builds – axe warriors definitely won’t be your major issue).
Tragic Positive and salogel made some very good points.
Conditions are a far more passive and “cheese” way to play. I played marauder staff/gs (sometimes lb) for the first season of pvp and made it to Legendary as solo/duo Q with a mix of druid and thief (really not tooting my horn, but more stating I’ve played against a handful esl players). After getting to legendary I decided to give the cele “condi” focused druid build a go, and what do you know I could sit on point and people would literally kill themselves without me having to put any effort in. All of your damage is entirely through passive means including pets and aoe condis, the definition of unskillful play imo.
Regardless of the spec currently, pets, most notably BB and SS, do the majority of your damage whether you’re playing condi, power, or support. This is 100% anets fault for not fixing core pets, and not taking the time to adjust HoT pets while moving damage from pets to weapon sets and the core ranger trait lines.
On a more pertinent note, playing a trapper build will limit you to protecting camps and choke points as traps are easily avoidable otherwise. You also lack a reliable/on demand stun through weapons or utilities so enemies will be free to cleanse and heal whenever.
Ranger has no passive condi application outside of the weakness from PW and few condis from pets, which deal usually way less dmg than their direct dmg. Condi builds are in general not more passive than powerbuilds. If you can kill player as a condi ranger/druid (cele wasn’t pure condi) without even knowing, what you are doing, your opponents must be pretty bad.
Ranger has no passive condi application outside of the weakness from PW and few condis from pets, which deal usually way less dmg than their direct dmg. Condi builds are in general not more passive than powerbuilds. If you can kill player as a condi ranger/druid (cele wasn’t pure condi) without even knowing, what you are doing, your opponents must be pretty bad.
-Standing in traps
-Standing in torch 5
-Ancient seeds
-Crit Bleed procs
-Pet swap poison
All passive…. so don’t quite know what you’re on about?
And most importantly, if you can condi bomb and your target is out of cleanses and heals, you could literally walk away and they will die, how is that not passive play? You the player are not directly involved in killing the opposing player. Great I understand it isn’t entirely passive because you do have to decide when to blow all your skills, but once that happens you have 0 control over the damage you do, especially with a build as the op has due to traps and no cc.
All this requires the active use of skills. If enemys stay in your condi fields and get damaged it is not differnt from standing in dh traps, eles meteor shower or necro wells – which deal direct dmg. Passive = it happens without you doing anything.
If you burst somebody without defensive skills aviable, he will die. The only difference between condi and power burst is, that you don’t have to wait for the stomp in the second case.
This is why conquest is ruining PvP in GW2, people refuse to see how awful a bunch of random passive aoes with condis attached to them remove any form of skillful play.
I’ll put it this way…
You place your traps on a point and walk away. A player walks onto the traps with no one there. Did you force the player to walk into the traps? Can the player see the traps? Do you have to be present for the traps and condis to do any damage?
No.
The same goes for any ground targeted aoe, especially in team fights and when capping/decapping a node. Aoe CC, traps, and condis do nothing but hurt pvp and diminish the skill needed to play the game as with any aoe you do not have to actively select a target.
You also have no control over crits and condis caused by them. You cannot control 3/4 of your pets abilities and therefor they randomly apply conditions without any direct control.
Furthermore this points out how poorly rounded the OP’s build is because it focuses on players who have not yet learned how to walk out of orange circles and PvE, and if you can’t yet I have no words…
You are using WS trait line. Grab some Survival skills (lighting reflexes) + Wildernes knowledge and Shared anguish and there you have an stun breaker + evade + some random counter CC.
You don’t need that extra Condi and the reduction is not really that noticeable.
Druidic Clarity instead Primal Echoes. The CC from Primal is really short range and all your weapons are ranged.
Set change Rabid for Dire. Your crit is very low however.
Torment and earth aren’t that good.
Go with water in Axe/torch so you can keep building up the AF.
Weapons Apothecary, you need more healing.
Traps poison and spike. Fire does a nice damage but the other two and more useful in PvP.
This build is for kitten, you can not sustain direct combat and use traps(healing spring) to disengage.
Try to CC your foes and keep them in the traps.
I would advise you to use sword instead Axe but both weapons are nasty bugged.
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