Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

This is the first Guild Wars 2 Video besides streaming that I’ve made and would like some pointers/ advice/ or anything else.

You can find the build I use here:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnYVjEq0waLLesQ1aADhqdL8uDLrAw9O8CXdJrYJ-TZRFwAMOEAAeCARLDo4EAka/BA

I’ve been playing condi ranger for about 2 months now and its such a blast to play! Hope this encourages others to give this beast of a build a chance

I agree. I have fun with my condi ranger, too. I play a 20660 build. Although I can’t imagine taking Muddy Terrain over Sharpening Stone. SS + Splitblade to the face is a beating! (always try to get it off up close so all 5 attacks land on the same target). Also, even tho you have SotF, I’d recommend Empathic Bond over Bark Skin.

perko.8309:

I agree. I have fun with my condi ranger, too. I play a 20660 build. Although I can’t imagine taking Muddy Terrain over Sharpening Stone. SS + Splitblade to the face is a beating! (always try to get it off up close so all 5 attacks land on the same target). Also, even tho you have SotF, I’d recommend Empathic Bond over Bark Skin.

Muddy Terrain has saved my life countless times. Having lots of immobilize allows you kite or get away from people successfully unless blocked or otherwise. (More survivability)

With Sharpening stone, you already have tons of bleeds. Arrow 1 bleeds from the side and on crit thanks to “Sharpened Edges” trait and the 60% chance to bleed; “sigil of earth”. Fury is always usually up allowing you to crit almost all of the time. Combine that with Krait runes which is all about bleeding and you are just over dosing yourself.

Bark Skin over Empathic Bond I would say is user preference. In some of the clips I showed, bark Skin allowed me to survive at extremely low health. Where as Empathic Bond might have allowed me to survive against their conditions a bit longer.

There would be only a few changes i would make.
Traits:
I would change oak heart salve to anything else, probably offhand training or vigorous renewal. The extra evasion uptime either of those two would have you would be more useful. Also OHT allows dagger to have a huge poison uptime and allows better pressure since it homes in before you axe #2 and you can crippling talon from farther away.

Natures bounty to either natures protection or circile of life depending on if you are playing in a team or not. iirc natures protection procs before the damage is taken so could save your life there. Plus you only have 2 sources of regeneration so its nout that useful.
Also depending on the matchup you may want to swap barkskin/EB for poison master. The extra uptime and damage is useful for shutting down sustain classes.
Sigils:
On the axe i would change Earth to Geomancy since because of the bounces you cant be sure which target gets the bleed. Also better pressure since swap, #2 #5 is 11 stacks of bleed.
On the shortbow i would also probably change the leeching to the torment sigil. More condi damage and also more cover condis for your bleeds. Always a good thing.

Dragon.8762:

Hey everyone,

This is the first Guild Wars 2 Video besides streaming that I’ve made and would like some pointers/ advice/ or anything else:

• Don’t use splitblade if you can’t hit with at least 3 of the 5 axes. You can bait the enemy to evade by using Stalker’s Strike, then use Splitblade.
• Always use Winter’s Bite, it both chills and makes your pet apply 10 seconds of weakness, which can be a big help. Time it either as the first attack when swapping to axe to make the damage-trading into your favor, or just before swapping to shortbow to give some breathing room with easier kiting.
• Don’t use concussion shot unless you want to intentionally interrupt a healing or something of value.
• Poison Volley should ever only be used in 2 cases: At long range just before the enemy is using a healing skill or at almost point blank ranger where you can hit with at least 3-4 of the shots.
• If you swap to Axe while still being at range, open up with Crippling Talon and then close in while either basic attacking to build your pet’s might¹ or sending away a Winter’s Bite. Then use the Stalker’s Strike → Splitblade combo
• It is advantageous to use every condition applying skill on your weapons before using Entangle. Since you have Krait runes, you want to make sure that the Immobilise, Torment and Bleeding effects stay, so just spam your enemy full of other conditions.

¹ – The pet gets 10 seconds of Might whenever you get Might

Notes on the build:
Very defensive, but you can experiment with a few changes that do not necessarily reduce defense.

By changing Oakheart Salve to Offhand Training, you get access to more frequent Stalker’s Strike which now becomes a pretty decent gap closer. You would also get more frequent access to Crippling Talon with bleeding and cripple.

If you notice that you can stay above 5k health in most of the fights, you should remove 2 points from Wilderness Survival and dump them into Skirmishing to pick up Quick Draw (and the minor trait Furious Grip) which would lead to more procs from Sharpened Edges because of the fury on swap.

One last thing you absolutely must do:
Change Nature’s Bounty to Nature’s Protection because the only regeneration you have is Oakheart Salve. Troll Unguent has it’s own effect and it does not count as a Regeneration boon.

Good luck!

Dragon.8762:

Arrow 1 bleeds from the side and on crit thanks to “Sharpened Edges” trait and the 60% chance to bleed

Keep in mind this is atop of the crit change you have, which means that if you have 40% crit chance, the change to proc the trait is 60% of 40%, i.e. 24% chance to bleed on hit.

solrik.6028:

Dragon.8762:

Hey everyone,

This is the first Guild Wars 2 Video besides streaming that I’ve made and would like some pointers/ advice/ or anything else:

• Don’t use splitblade if you can’t hit with at least 3 of the 5 axes. You can bait the enemy to evade by using Stalker’s Strike, then use Splitblade.
• Always use Winter’s Bite, it both chills and makes your pet apply 10 seconds of weakness, which can be a big help. Time it either as the first attack when swapping to axe to make the damage-trading into your favor, or just before swapping to shortbow to give some breathing room with easier kiting.
• Don’t use concussion shot unless you want to intentionally interrupt a healing or something of value.
• Poison Volley should ever only be used in 2 cases: At long range just before the enemy is using a healing skill or at almost point blank ranger where you can hit with at least 3-4 of the shots.
• If you swap to Axe while still being at range, open up with Crippling Talon and then close in while either basic attacking to build your pet’s might¹ or sending away a Winter’s Bite. Then use the Stalker’s Strike -> Splitblade combo
• It is advantageous to use every condition applying skill on your weapons before using Entangle. Since you have Krait runes, you want to make sure that the Immobilise, Torment and Bleeding effects stay, so just spam your enemy full of other conditions.

¹ – The pet gets 10 seconds of Might whenever you get Might

Notes on the build:
Very defensive, but you can experiment with a few changes that do not necessarily reduce defense.

By changing Oakheart Salve to Offhand Training, you get access to more frequent Stalker’s Strike which now becomes a pretty decent gap closer. You would also get more frequent access to Crippling Talon with bleeding and cripple.

If you notice that you can stay above 5k health in most of the fights, you should remove 2 points from Wilderness Survival and dump them into Skirmishing to pick up Quick Draw (and the minor trait Furious Grip) which would lead to more procs from Sharpened Edges because of the fury on swap.

One last thing you absolutely must do:
Change Nature’s Bounty to Nature’s Protection because the only regeneration you have is Oakheart Salve. Troll Unguent has it’s own effect and it does not count as a Regeneration boon.

Good luck!

All good points, thanks for the advice.

The extra health regen also affects the rejuvenation trait under Nature Magic as well as Oakheart Salve. Contributing to about 17 seconds worth of passive regen once both are triggered which is often.
Oakheart could be replaced with off-handtraining, but I think the extra regen contributes greatly to the survival aspect of the build. The 2 second decrease on the dagger skills could be worth it though.
I have been looking at evasive purity. Maybe changing that to Nature’s protection? Or Enlargement? Enlargement looks very good to me.
The extra two points I invested into Wilderness survival for Bark skin is worth it. As for more crit chance, the fury you get thanks to the survival of the fittest trait on top of the passive crit chance is good enough instead of putting points into skirmishing.

I really appreciate the advice! I’ll adjust play style to spam bleeds first and other conditions and skills when the the situations present themselves.

Sigmoid.7082:

There would be only a few changes i would make.
Traits:
I would change oak heart salve to anything else, probably offhand training or vigorous renewal. The extra evasion uptime either of those two would have you would be more useful. Also OHT allows dagger to have a huge poison uptime and allows better pressure since it homes in before you axe #2 and you can crippling talon from farther away.

Natures bounty to either natures protection or circile of life depending on if you are playing in a team or not. iirc natures protection procs before the damage is taken so could save your life there. Plus you only have 2 sources of regeneration so its nout that useful.
Also depending on the matchup you may want to swap barkskin/EB for poison master. The extra uptime and damage is useful for shutting down sustain classes.
Sigils:
On the axe i would change Earth to Geomancy since because of the bounces you cant be sure which target gets the bleed. Also better pressure since swap, #2 #5 is 11 stacks of bleed.
On the shortbow i would also probably change the leeching to the torment sigil. More condi damage and also more cover condis for your bleeds. Always a good thing.

Torment on short bow isn’t a bad idea, I’ll try that. As for Axe, I’m going to test both sigils out and see which is most effective based on number of bleeds, distance from single target, and how effective it is against multiple targets since AI plays a big role for most pvp builds.

If crit is reasonable then maybe give Superior Sigil of Incapacitation.

Dragon.8762:

solrik.6028:

Dragon.8762:

Hey everyone,

This is the first Guild Wars 2 Video besides streaming that I’ve made and would like some pointers/ advice/ or anything else:

• Don’t use splitblade if you can’t hit with at least 3 of the 5 axes. You can bait the enemy to evade by using Stalker’s Strike, then use Splitblade.
• Always use Winter’s Bite, it both chills and makes your pet apply 10 seconds of weakness, which can be a big help. Time it either as the first attack when swapping to axe to make the damage-trading into your favor, or just before swapping to shortbow to give some breathing room with easier kiting.
• Don’t use concussion shot unless you want to intentionally interrupt a healing or something of value.
• Poison Volley should ever only be used in 2 cases: At long range just before the enemy is using a healing skill or at almost point blank ranger where you can hit with at least 3-4 of the shots.
• If you swap to Axe while still being at range, open up with Crippling Talon and then close in while either basic attacking to build your pet’s might¹ or sending away a Winter’s Bite. Then use the Stalker’s Strike -> Splitblade combo
• It is advantageous to use every condition applying skill on your weapons before using Entangle. Since you have Krait runes, you want to make sure that the Immobilise, Torment and Bleeding effects stay, so just spam your enemy full of other conditions.

¹ – The pet gets 10 seconds of Might whenever you get Might

Notes on the build:
Very defensive, but you can experiment with a few changes that do not necessarily reduce defense.

By changing Oakheart Salve to Offhand Training, you get access to more frequent Stalker’s Strike which now becomes a pretty decent gap closer. You would also get more frequent access to Crippling Talon with bleeding and cripple.

If you notice that you can stay above 5k health in most of the fights, you should remove 2 points from Wilderness Survival and dump them into Skirmishing to pick up Quick Draw (and the minor trait Furious Grip) which would lead to more procs from Sharpened Edges because of the fury on swap.

One last thing you absolutely must do:
Change Nature’s Bounty to Nature’s Protection because the only regeneration you have is Oakheart Salve. Troll Unguent has it’s own effect and it does not count as a Regeneration boon.

Good luck!

All good points, thanks for the advice.

The extra health regen also affects the rejuvenation trait under Nature Magic as well as Oakheart Salve. Contributing to about 17 seconds worth of passive regen once both are triggered which is often.
Oakheart could be replaced with off-handtraining, but I think the extra regen contributes greatly to the survival aspect of the build. The 2 second decrease on the dagger skills could be worth it though.
I have been looking at evasive purity. Maybe changing that to Nature’s protection? Or Enlargement? Enlargement looks very good to me.
The extra two points I invested into Wilderness survival for Bark skin is worth it. As for more crit chance, the fury you get thanks to the survival of the fittest trait on top of the passive crit chance is good enough instead of putting points into skirmishing.

I really appreciate the advice! I’ll adjust play style to spam bleeds first and other conditions and skills when the the situations present themselves.

You have no healing power for the regeneration so the 8 seconds of regen would be negated by 1 auto and to do that would be a 2 trait investment.
Taking natures protection instead of natures bounty and offhand training instead of oak heart…the 6s of protection and extra evasion do more for your survivability than 10s of regent. They will mitigate far more damage for yourself.
Seriously try it and you will be surprised how much longer you will live

Crapgame.6519:

If crit is reasonable then maybe give Superior Sigil of Incapacitation.

Its an interesting sigil that I would say would work best on a guard trying to keep enemies close. Rangers already have many ways to cripple and immobilize.

So after reading all of your posts I changed a few traits and sigils. How does this build look like now?

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnYVjEq0waLLesQ1aADhqdL8uDLrAw9O8CXdJrYJ-TZRFwAMOEAAeCARLDo4EAka/BA

I haven’t tested it yet.

Sorry, posted the wrong link:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnYVjEq0waLLesQ1aADhqdLEsDLrAwd8eDXdJrYJ-TpRFABAcEAS4BAEVZAFOBAps/QyHCAA

Evasive purity > enlargement
Besides that I feel compared to the old build you had it should be more successful. Also experiment with travler runes see how they play out for you

As far as variants, you can change your runes to all undead runes for a bit more condition damage and a lot more toughness. Change the bark skin trait to Poison master for that 50% more poison damage perk.

You could also switch out signet of stone for Sharpening Stone (More bleed damage and condi removal)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnYVjEqUzaLLesQ1aADhqdLEsVNrAwd8eDXdJrYJ-TpRFwAAOCA42fIxDAIaZAEHCAFnAAA

I don’t know if switching the rabid amulet to settler would off-set the fact you are now missing signet of stone and bark skin after changing to this variant. Thoughts?

Why evasive purity over enlargement? Blindness is usually cured after just 1 hit unless your standing in blind spam which you shouldn’t be in anyways, and the poison is easily cured thanks to survival of the fittest. In the video when I was about to stomp that ranger in the last clip, enlargement could have actually stopped me from getting interrupted and knocked back from the Mesmer.

Dragon.8762:

Why evasive purity over enlargement? Blindness is usually cured after just 1 hit unless your standing in blind spam which you shouldn’t be in anyways, and the poison is easily cured thanks to survival of the fittest. In the video when I was about to stomp that ranger in the last clip, enlargement could have actually stopped me from getting interrupted and knocked back from the Mesmer.

Simple. makes poison to disrupt your healing useless on you thus making you sustain better. Also removing blind lets you land some important skills after the roll for evasion such as winters bite or crippling talon, even shortbow interup.

Also it makes better use as for if you get condi bombed you can roll to remove 2 condis then survival skill for two more potentially removing more dangerous conditions like burning, high stacks of bleed/vulnerabilty and movement impairing conditions.

edit: Also…Doom Sigil.