Guild Wars 2

Prysin.8542:

sword auto is not to be used in condi builds. Sword auto is best reserved for bursting with QZ in power builds (the damage is real) and PvE.
Sword is used in condi builds for its two evades, its splendid poison uptime, and its movement.
Sword auto attack chain is great for chasing, not for dealing damage in a condi build.

Axe 2 + Dagger 5 can upkeep bleeds almost as effective as shortbow, not entirely as effective, but close to. While shortbow does produce higher stacks, it cannot “stop” stacking. Because of low duration they fall off quickly. Axe and dagger has the benefit of applying a few stacks less, but for slightly longer duration, allowing for you to go on the defensive without losing too much DPS while doing so.

Sword autoattack is also used to keep the target crippled so your useless pet can actually hit it if you’re not using a spider.

Also Settler’s been a thing for a while, I remember guys like Konrad Quest in the early beginnings of the game were running ranger with shaman stats to good effect.

Problem is engineers are basically better condi bunkers. Might be slightly less survivable, but they kill stuff much faster and condi rangers have no aoe whatsoever to help in teamfights.

Fluffball.8307:

Dojo.1867:

Ok just played a game with settlers and goes really well. Also helps that there is a high amount of power rangers in ranked right now which kind of makes people jump you.

Even though condi ranger is built for side nodes, going mid at the start is often massively beneficial to your team because people will focus the ever loving kitten out of you. Just stay alive and your team should win the fight. I guess most people aren’t familiar with condi rangers or something, no idea why they’re so slow to realize you aren’t going to die. I was watching Five Gauge 2 v1 a condi ranger the other day and they could not hurt the guy. It was hysterical. (Was that you Shadow Pass? He had shadow in his name.)

I think that was Shadows Shooter (account name is Ryan, he posted previously in this thread I believe).

@Thread;

Anyhow, yeah, I’ve been liking Settler’s a lot on my condition build because with zerker builds starting to make a much more common appearance again, the only build it really has a bad matchup against is Shoutbow.

The problem I feel I have with it is that the build itself just does not have any sort of teamfight presence other than that you exist. Like, you have one shot at an incredible entangle, but otherwise, if the team you’re up against just gets smart in the teamfight and doesn’t prioritize you as a target, there isn’t too much you can do for your team other than hope your mostly single target condi pressure is enough.

That being said, that isn’t much different from running power in a way, except that you can pressure a single target with a damage output that is much more urgent to counter, but still, smart opponents will counter pressure you or run a comp that can ignore your damage long enough for your contribution to the teamfight to end up having minimal impact overall.

Also, just in general, it looks like teams are going to stick with the Ele/Engi/Warrior/Guardian/Thief 3 cele/2 zerker comp, with plus or minus a zerker or cele. Ideally, the builds we run should have a good matchup against, or provide good support against these 5 meta builds.

In general, I’d say that Power has a tougher time against Guard/Thief, where condi has a tougher time against Warrior, purely in terms of matchups against meta builds.

So, the tl;dr is that as usual, we struggle with teamfight roles.

Eurantien.4632:

You take oakheart salve for the near perma regen which helps a lot for sustain since its over 200 hp/s.

@Mistism, I respect your opinion but having dueled one of the if not THE best 1v1 d/d ele in sPvP in the game with this build I can tell you it works. I only offered some alternatives that might make the build stronger in certain ways. The current iteration is what I prefer but I could see certain swaps with what I suggested that could make it more potent given the situation.

That was really impressive, usually don’t see phanta getting rekt in 1v1s like that ^^

unfortunately, as things are, ranger is very well balanced. It is a case of others needing a slight nerf. Once the healing or cleansing on ele is shaved ever so slightly, and mesmer/guard/thief loses their ninja port spots on maps, ranger will be much closer to meta then now. Not because these nerfs are monumental in any way, but they would close the gap.

Also, anyone tried running settler regen bunker? i find it to be almost as good as rabid SB bleed stack.

Prysin.8542:

Also, anyone tried running settler regen bunker? i find it to be almost as good as rabid SB bleed stack.

For a long time when spirits were meta that’s what I ran. SB, stone and sun spirit, guard, settlers amulet. You are almost literally unkillable, bring some pretty decent team support, and do some decent damage. It’s good enough I’d even run it today if I found it fun, which I don’t. The only difference is I would make the spirits non-mobile and place them in positions where a D/D ele or nades wouldn’t kill them.

Quadox.7834:

That was really impressive, usually don’t see phanta getting rekt in 1v1s like that ^^

He has NO IDEA what rangers do. There is a thread up on the PvP forum where he teaches some streamer about GW2. When he gets to ranger he can’t even put the right traits on a LB build and he has little idea what the skills do. Pretty amusing.

@ the condi cover vs spam re-application argument, I also just realized that entangle itself works against condi covering as it will push all your bleeds to the front 5 times in 5 seconds as it applies the bleeding 1 by 1.

so to go all out condi cover I’ve had to not use entangle in my bleed bomb or it all gets wasted because entangle is a pretty big " i’m in trouble" animation that will trigger most people to cleanse it immediately. The bleed on being hit bonus on krait also brings the stacks to the front of the cleanse list.

so…yeah >< lol I dunno if I think hiding is better than spam reapplying, still trying to decide

Fluffball.8307:

He has NO IDEA what rangers do. There is a thread up on the PvP forum where he teaches some streamer about GW2. When he gets to ranger he can’t even put the right traits on a LB build and he has little idea what the skills do. Pretty amusing.

Didn’t he put up a thread on the states of professions in PvP Forum awhile back? In it he stated his view on the professions but when he came to Ranger, he said that he has no idea because he has zero interest in the Ranger.

Or was that someone else? I forget.

Sarision.6347:

Didn’t he put up a thread on the states of professions in PvP Forum awhile back? In it he stated his view on the professions but when he came to Ranger, he said that he has no idea because he has zero interest in the Ranger.

Or was that someone else? I forget.

Might be him, he clearly doesn’t care about ranger. I don’t blame him for that (I know very little about playing a mesmer properly) but it is certainly a bit of a weakness in his game. He was downright confused at how hard counterattack hit, which needless to say could get you in trouble.

Kite them out from Ring of Fire.
Do not let them stack might while they are hitting you.
Consider it’s same to fight against engis surrounded their turrets.

Condi busrt after they swapped out of water. Thats mostly 9 sec of garenteed ticks for your condi. For power, you will need to kite and avoid bursting when he has protection on (which is quite hard) and chain cc him if possible (best one is dog pet on passive and make them attack for a knock down then swap for the other and make him attack for the knock down again and do wolf fear). Thats mostly what i use.

AND NUMBER 1 THING TO AVOID: #3 fire + teleport.