Guild Wars 2

So, i’ve constructed a build as of late that i’ve been debating long and kitten whether or not i wanted to actually share it with the forums, and after sharing it with several friends who have tried it themselves and have all really enjoyed it, and a few of my friends (of mixed professions) have actually thought it was a really good build as well i decided sharing it would be a good idea.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAT8YjEVV2NWCWo2Bi1D9Eo+0UoJO9UEL2XwqH-T0Ag0CnIcS5kzJjTSnsONwYhx+jDGPMA

Role: Roamer, Damage, and Control.

Advantages: Lots of damage at range, lots of healing and unmitigatable damage through the runes and sigils, lots of CC, deceptive tankyness

Disadvantages: Poor condi cleansing, very weak vs immobilize heavy builds, hard to play properly.

I’m going to say it right now, the builds entire survival comes from the life steal, knowing when to dodge, and knowing how to kite, if you don’t dodge and kite properly you’re going to do horribly with this build, most fights i tend to be kiting the enemy around the point just out of range of their melee, every time i’ve gotten into a shoot off at range it’s just no contest and i take them down with little issue.

I’m really tired right now so i’m not really going to flesh this post out until later.

That being said though, the build was inspired off of the Hunter role in the game Smite, which are squishy but deal a large amount of damage from range while they control the enemy to keep themselves safe from harm.

Durzlla.6295:

Snip

Q: Does having Energy Sigil on dagger turn off Blood sigil on sword for 9sec (since on crit and on swap sig’s share a cd) or 2sec?

Q: Whats with the points in BM (vigor, obviously)? Would you be better served by either Skirmishing (better stats, shorter cd on stealth, knockback, burst + your choice of adept trait, easy access to fury considering you dont run RaO) or finishing out Survival?

Q: The lower the health and armor of the player, the more unreliable the 6p rune bonus is. Do you find it reliable at your level?

Other: Beastmaster’s bond is a long cd for not a lot of power, especially considering the traits it competes with. The Rune set fits the theme, but the 4p bonus is what makes it awesome. It feels like somewhat of a waste to have the 4p attached to a long 30sec heal though (as opposed to a thief using a 15sec withraw, etc).

1) I have not noticed the two conflicting, but normally when I swap to sword/dagger the dodge is significantly more valuable than the heal so I may just not be noticing it, , I’ll be watching a little more closely though and may decide to drop the energy one in favor of something else just to see which is more useful.

2) the main reason I go into BM is the vigor, however I also like having a shorter CD on fear and the fernhounds heal, not to mention I tend to utilize my pets to the fullest (quote from my sPvP fanatic friends not myself) so I figured I may as well go for it. I did originally try 20 in skirmishing and I did do more damage, however my survivability was not even remotely close to what it was with 20 in BM, and the damage wasn’t good enough for me to wanna drop the survivability (and utility) BM brings.

3) I have never once not had the mist proc while it’s not on CD, and it has saved my life literally every time, it can also secure a stomp which can easily turn the tides of a team fight or a 1vX (I ended up winning out a 1v3 long enough for help to arrive multiple times because of it). I think it also “resets” your pets because it is a transformation, I’ll need to test that though.

4) I took beastmasters bond to punish people trying to focus my pet, because A LOT of people have been doing that thinking I have EB (like every other ranger out there), so it’s a nice boost to have and that fury really helps me out and significantly boosts my survivability and damage (blood sigs deal ~425 unmitigatable damage IE ignores prot and armor, and heals for the same), that and none of the other traits seemed as useful, I already have 100% cripple uptime, I don’t need bleeds, I don’t really use signets, my endurance bar is almost never full, so I just figured it was the best choice.

5) oh trust me, I’ve been wanting to swap it to HaO pretty badly, but the only problem is that I’d my only condi clear, which I did try , and it didn’t work for me, which sucks because the rune piece gives you 975 additional healing and damage.

Personally, and this really is just my preference, not an argument to change your build, but I’d probably either drop 10 in BM to pick up Empathic Bond, or drop Piercing Arrows in Marksmanship to pick up Empathic Bond.

I’d probably do the first one, as currently, not that the vigor isn’t welcome, but I find that having to swap my pet for vigor can be an inconvenience, and at times when I would want vigor, it ends up taking some pressure off an opponent that I sorely miss.

That being said, I personally can probably live without Piercing Arrows more than I can live without dodges or Empathic bond.

If you think you can live without Empathic Bond though, another variant would be to drop 10 from BM to pick up 10 in Skirmishing and go with Primal Reflexes. Primal Reflexes just has a better chance of giving me vigor (personally) when I need it, because if I’m getting hit and crit, I’m probably out of dodges, and their aren’t that many builds in the current metagame that run without any Precision.

Again, that’s all preference though, and the original template is fine (although yes, the sigils do clash and energy can be dropped for a Sigil of Precision or Bloodlust). Also, a gearing variant that’s always out there for people that don’t like the 6th Rune bonus is to go 5 Vampirism Runes and 1 Divinity Rune. The extra stats and crit damage are always welcome.

Overall a good build, and I appreciate seeing that it shows off the fact that aside from the stats Skirmishing gives, the Skirmishing tree offers no real amazing trait benefits to power builds that just increasing your pets abilities doesn’t achieve.

It’s your build Durz, but how do you think a 20/10/30/0/10 build would hold up?
Traits:
VI, X
IV
III/IV/VI, III/IV/VI, XI
0
V

@jcbroe personally I wouldn’t want EB, my pet is such a key factor to how I play ranger (I’m constantly watching what they’re doing and play off of it instead of trying to force it into doing what I want), so snaring and weakening my pet is just beyond horrible in my mind. However the skirmishing isn’t bad, I was actually debating on whether or not to drop 10 from marks for that trait to be honest.

However, in team fights having Piercing Arrows is invaluable, and even though the build isn’t designed for team fights I’d absolutely say a well placed Knock back shot to interrupt a heal has ensured victory in a few and body blocking would ruin that.

In short, it would most likely work, your vigor wouldn’t be as on demand and would be less valuable in group fights, but it should fulfill the same role, it’d have a few altered strengths and weaknesses but not by a lot, would go down more to preference.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, I’ve never felt that I’ve needed piercing personally, at least not more than other traits. Of course, I don’t think I’ve ever gone up against any team smart enough to outplay me by intercepting interrupts intended for their teammates haha, but I’m sure there are people out there who can tactically wrap their head around that coordination.

Not to mention the AoE pressure you can achieve in teamfights with good positioning. So maybe I’ll give that another try.

I totally understand the point about EB though. I personally don’t take it because I want to kill my pet, I take it because it’s really either that or die to the insane amounts of condi spam that none of our other skills can really help with, or can only help with once, when classes can reapply every single condi you remove, at most in a 10s interval.

Still though, my preferences aside, good build, really!

I also was only considering Vigorous Training in the context of using it for myself, and not for its AoE effect haha. Admittedly, I build very selfishly.

you heal is bassed on your crits and yet 0 in skrimishing…maybe put some more crit in your build

@jcbroe it’s normally not someone willingly taking the shot lol, most of the time it’s someone (like me) who will run behind their allies or a pet or something to force it to take the interrupt for them so they can get off a skill. And I’m a bit biased, I just despise EB as a trait, the condi removal is good, but the cost is way too high imo, normally I’ll dodge the big condi hits, and dance in and out of my spring to get some cleansed off. We really do need better condi clear though, condi necros give me the most issues.

@saalle the stats from skirmishing would be nice, but other than that there’s nothing I need or even want from that line, I’d be giving up so much utility and survivability by going in there for only a minor amount of damage and healing. The crit chance I have is ~35% and if I’m fighting on point a barrage will be ontop of them and the fight will normally be over shortly after barrage ends (especially if I’m kiting them through it) so I’m not too worried about the damage.

I think traiting skirmishing for the precision and bleeds on crit could be interesting. I might try these runes/sigils on a 10/30/30.

Sube Dai.8496:

I think traiting skirmishing for the precision and bleeds on crit could be interesting. I might try these runes/sigils on a 10/30/30.

Let me know how that works!! I’d recommend trying that with both rabid and Rampagers gear too btw!

Offtopic;

I wonder how these sigils of blood would work on my rabid necro if I combine them with all of the healing on hit/crit traits in blood magic. Hmmmm. I wasn’t planning on logging in until next balance patch, but this thread may have just inspired me….

Is the Vampire rune set’s 6th bonus still bugged? I tested it in PvE and it still didn’t trigger for me.

Beardmonger.4692:

Is the Vampire rune set’s 6th bonus still bugged? I tested it in PvE and it still didn’t trigger for me.

It’s not bugged it triggers now (and is actually mist not LAWLZ say goodbye to your skills!!).

Ah man Durz, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong then. I’ve tried testing the effect about 20 times now in both PvE and in the mists, and couldn’t get it to trigger even once. Even did the old re-equip swap in case it still wasn’t applying.

Beardmonger.4692:

Ah man Durz, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong then. I’ve tried testing the effect about 20 times now in both PvE and in the mists, and couldn’t get it to trigger even once. Even did the old re-equip swap in case it still wasn’t applying.

Keep in mind if you’re in zerker gear the 10% health is a tiny threshold, the best way to get it to trigger is fighting how you normally would IE using fernhound and spring for regen etc, that’ll normally allow you to hit 10% slowly so it’ll trigger rather than just skipping from like 11% to dead or so.

So i’ve been playing with this build, and some variants for a bit. I just have to ask, how much of the deceptive survivability actually comes from the rune set? Because I have a hard time telling which triggers the health steal whether its the runes or the sigils, and if the runes arent build making/breaking, there are other options I would like to try.

Durz, no offense but your cons describe almost every build our class has. At this point, I feel you might as well call those cons “Business as usual.”

I’ve been running something like this for awhile in wvw. Mostly just roaming around and catching people off guard. With the new moment of clarity I now run lb-gs/sb and 30/30/10 signet build. I have also been messing around with some other trait mixes. The ones thing I keep coming back to is whether or not the vampiric rune set is actually working. I googled it, and from what I can find it’s very buggy. Anyone have any idea if its WAI?

Edit – Mist always seems to work, but can’t tell if I’m getting the life steal.

Maddie Bear.3509:

I’ve been running something like this for awhile in wvw. Mostly just roaming around and catching people off guard. With the new moment of clarity I now run lb-gs/sb and 30/30/10 signet build. I have also been messing around with some other trait mixes. The ones thing I keep coming back to is whether or not the vampiric rune set is actually working. I googled it, and from what I can find it’s very buggy. Anyone have any idea if its WAI?

Edit – Mist always seems to work, but can’t tell if I’m getting the life steal.

You only get the healing portion of the life steal if you are hurt, it will always do the damage portion if it’s proced, and the vampiric runes USED TO be extremely buggy to the point they were essentially equivalent to having no runes at all. However now they’re fixed and everything seems to be working fine on them.

PS: the buff to eagle eye has made this build a lot better since it effectively boosted it’s crit chance by 20% making the sigils that much stronger.

Thanks for the response. Going to enjoy my LB while its still what it is…