Guild Wars 2

Part 1: http://youtu.be/G-CzRt3fbZ0
Part 2: http://youtu.be/l7uWpEfrhKE

You know the builds. Mostly Cleric gear in the vids. Includes demonstrations of:

1. water field leaping
2. evade chaining
3. GS play
4. disengagement/chase
5. attrition play
6. cleric and apothecary beastmaster play
7. traps
8. bird burst burst

Enjoy =)

Hey,
I’ve just watched Your vids ( both of them ).

Amazing skill.

But got a qestiong ( im going to make ranger ) is there any way or place for high crit dmg mixed with Bm traits build for SB/GS combo in WvW ?

thanks.

some sort of condition/crit hybrid is my next project, and SB/GS synergize really well together. you’ll need 30 in skirmishing but bear in mind you’ll be kinda squishy without any points in wilderness survival. so maybe something like 0/30/20/0/20 and knight’s gear.

well I was thinking about keeping Crit dmg at around 50-70% with 30-40% crit rating. With toughess ( total armor at around 2,5-2,7k ? ) with ~15k hp. Not sure will that work cause most vids – either show a total crit masters doing 1,5k dmg with SB#1 and getting 2 hit from most classes, or doing medicore direct dmg and having some better survival but overall effect doesn’t end well.

Good ranger vid ( turkish smth guy ) i’ve seen was running sb/gs with toughenss/healing/ vit gear ( 23k hp ) and some good condi dmg.

But still this comes down to healing power/toughess and condi dmg…

nice vid nerva..i would like some sPvP action too cause WvW is quite unbalanced since there are some low gear players.Its good to have so much evades but when it comes to conquest you either need to kill the foe or stay more on your place

thanks for watching. spvp is reduntant imo. i play a 0/10/30/10/20 bunker in tpvp, it’s a well known build. in 5v5, youre almost never facing more than two opponents at a time. so holding the point is significantly easier compared to what i do in wvw.

given the upcoming patch, i’ll be back in spvp for at least a little while and will make some footage might be interesting to some given the trap fotm.

Great vids Nerva. Was great to see someone using a sword like me and really interesting to see you using it with a greatsword as I almost always run with a shortbow, something for me to watch over and over. A brilliant example of someone not panicking when their health drops, keeping their blocks and evades going while they wait for the heal cooldown.

Mrowqa, I’m currently running a condition ranger with a 55% chance to crit with 30% crit damage. My damage is still from conditions but I can still keep 1400 power and it allows much higher chances to apply my bleeds, while I still get constant 400+ crits. The build still allows around 1900 toughness.

Edit – loved the comment about not deselecting target before leaping.

Nerva If You had a lil time, Would You mind posting short video with SB/LB/GS skills hits/crits on P/P/C build ?

Would be great to see such video cause I cannot find any on YT or any other vid tube out there

What runes are you using? I’ve been playing a “bunker” condition build myself and I’m using Superior runes of Dwayna for the increased regen duration and 5 seconds of regen on using a heal skill.

Watched the first video. Great work. I cannot help but wonder though, considering you’re such a big fan of HS with combo finisher: have you tried using double Drakes with the trait Compassion Training? Laying down the field and summoning the drake should almost instantly grant you 1390 health.

I’d recommend NOT using drakes at all for roaming and dueling. Drakes’ Chomp ability is currently bugged and actually heals the MOB/ENEMY PLAYER rather than the drake itself.

kidbs.8920:

What runes are you using? I’ve been playing a “bunker” condition build myself and I’m using Superior runes of Dwayna for the increased regen duration and 5 seconds of regen on using a heal skill.

I find for romaing Runes of the Grove work much better, the protection is great for rangers and fights tend to be spread out when you’re roaming so the snare (which is basically a Entangle like attack on a long cooldown) procs in every fight with a 50% chance to trigger on hit, when they break out of it, hit them with your real entangle.

runes of Dwayna on the Cleric bunker because his damage is bad anyway, runes of Undead on the condition bunker. im still thinking about it, but i may go Dwayna on the condition bunker…just dont feel ready to give up 250 condition damage.

my gear right now is a mess for the condition bunker. i use VHC exo armor (shaman) and green THC accessories (apothecary). i’m working toward apoth armor and shaman accessories so i can maximize the stats.

i dont play the cleric bunker because i cant contribute much to my guild. roaming with it is fun, but getting kills on good players without two ravens is an arduous process. if you take more than 2-3mins to kill someone, you most often get zerged.

im seriously considering switching the snow owl for the jaguar. cats have much, much better sustained dps and i feel like i need that sometimes. half the time, my birds are fluttering about doing nothing, and their low attack speed makes things worse. their only real purpose is the burst, and a bit of vigor.

From my experience cats hit even less than birds versus moving targets.

But could you answer my question regarding drakes? Obviously their burst is less than the bird’s, but it does apply weakness in addition to granting you almost 1400 health when tail swiping within your healing spring. I’m just wondering whether that’s worth it. The vigor, swiftness, and burst from the birds are very, very nice after all.

Cat’s advantage is more health and I find they are able to apply vulnerability more, I don’t honestly find them hitting more though personally, birds flap around a lot but they seem to hit when they do.

if you observe Xsorus’ last vid (volume eight), you can see how unreliable drakes are. they seem to have the worst F2 that does not track targets when they move. the on-demand blast finisher on the HS might be nice, but ultimately youre giving up too much dps and vigor. maybe he can explain the advantages better.

cats do excellent dps on a crippled/immobilized target, which i demonstrated a few times in the vids. muddy terrain, spike trap, immobilize. many times i wished i had my jag pouncing on the immobilized target. they have a much higher attack speed and crit very often. a stealthed jag does good burst dps. ultimately though, double raven is absolute best for attrition play.

If I can’t watch it on my ipad while taking a crap, I’m not watching it!!!

Lol ok I will see if I can make it available on mobiles..not sure where the setting is

What I had to fight in this duel:
- 2.5 seconds of culling on each decloak
- unresponsive tab targeting that doesn’t prioritize anything
- my pet
- other birds
- rams
- cannons
- some thief

I rolled there. XD

Godlike, btw. I love how in even the fights you lost, you made your opponents commute and work their kittens off for that stomp. Probably not the easy lone Ranger kill they were expecting.

Great stuff! I never really strayed away from anything that wasnt precision, toughness, condi damage. But this looks appealing, especially that healing.

I’ve been having success with Superior Rune of Nightmare Nerva

its got the extra condition duration that makes most of my attacks have that extra second they need.

I’m liking it better then Rune of undead

Also nerva is right about Drakes, they’re awful..The only one worthwhile is the swamp drake….but even he is outclassed by Birds/Cats/Dogs

Nightmare + veggie pizza?

Im thinking of going dwayna + lemongrass poultry on the apothecary set just for lulz and zerg trap bombing.

Btw I didnt know about food buffs while gathering footage on the cleric build >.<

nerva.7940:

Nightmare + veggie pizza?

Im thinking of going dwayna + lemongrass poultry on the apothecary set just for lulz and zerg trap bombing.

Btw I didnt know about food buffs while gathering footage on the cleric build >.<

hehe its alright, i didn’t know about maintenance crystal when i first did my PI movie.

But yea, Nightmare+Veggie is 50% duration, nice even number on conditions.

The only problem I find with condition duration is when they clear the conditions, which stopped me running both the food and runes, and will sometimes run the food but condition damage runes instead, I like undead a lot.

I THINK the runes are better than the tooltip states though, and it’s closer to 60% with the runes and food. Which is pretty nasty, got hit pretty bad by a necro running something like that.

yup, will be switching to nightmare. thanks Xsorus. i updated the youtube vids with the actual builds. the only unique one is the trap bomber build as seen at the end of the second vid.

question. do you use auto-target?

no sir, really important to turn that off. sometimes i forget to deselect before Monarch’s Leap, which gets me killed.

nerva.7940:

no sir, really important to turn that off. sometimes i forget to deselect before Monarch’s Leap, which gets me killed.

I have that happen to me all the time.

Bloody hate that..

If you really want to improve your condition duration:
4 Superior Runes of the Mad King gives you +15% bleed duration and +10% condition duration
2 Superior Runes of Lyssa gives you +10% Condition Duration

That’s +35% Bleed Condition Duration +20% Non-Bleed Condition Duration

Xsorus.2507:

nerva.7940:

no sir, really important to turn that off. sometimes i forget to deselect before Monarch’s Leap, which gets me killed.

I have that happen to me all the time.

Bloody hate that..

Heh, the worse one is when you do deselect but manage to target a wolf mob and end up with 4 wolves and your original target chasing you.

I love when I’m using the mouse to move the camera (always) and right-click selects a diff target or deselects my target … wish that was fixed … I’d love the option to turn that off.

Mrowqa.3861:

Hey,
I’ve just watched Your vids ( both of them ).

Amazing skill.

But got a qestiong ( im going to make ranger ) is there any way or place for high crit dmg mixed with Bm traits build for SB/GS combo in WvW ?

For critbuilds, use the longbow. It does a whole lot better then the shortbow with such builds. The reason a SB is “better” in DPS, is because of the condition damage it applies, with a Critbuild, you will effectively put away the condition damage, thus “nerfing” the shortbows DPS.

nerva.7940:

thanks.

some sort of condition/crit hybrid is my next project, and SB/GS synergize really well together. you’ll need 30 in skirmishing but bear in mind you’ll be kinda squishy without any points in wilderness survival. so maybe something like 0/30/20/0/20 and knight’s gear.

Funny I played this setup recently quite a lot. Love the extended disable time for shortbow and GS 5 (wish GS 5 had slightly higer range + faster animation time though because hitting moving tarets has a high fail rate and cd is huge).

I still think 30 BM gives too much damage to sacrifice though so currently I run 0/30/10/0/30. Only 10 into wilderness survival hurts a lot but you still can run the signet of removal (for roaming signet of the hunt speedbuff is just to important though even if it feels like a wasted slot during the fight).

Still annoying that succesful pet hits are kind of random but SB/GS cc helps and guess this will always be rangers burden. Increase F2 animation speed/leap ranges pls!!!

just asking, if your doing hybrid condi/crit

how much crit and condi should you aim for?

here are my approximate stats currently (with food) for my SB/GS roaming hybrid. you should aim for at least 50% crit, but i chose to keep more of my defensive stats (still using apothecary weapons instead of berserker/knight):

1500 power
700 condi damage
500 healing
45% crit
1750 toughness

im really liking the balanced build. i killed 2 glass cannon rangers in about 30 seconds (they werent terrible but used LB sadly) as i had so much more sustain and similar dps due to my conditions.

you can either go condition heavy, or more toward power/crit (which is what Sol does)…in my vids i played a pure condition trap bomber (apoth/shaman gear) and did not like it much because it took too long to kill people…in which case u might as well go for a dueling build without GS and SB. SB is a very kittenty weapon without crit, trust me, i tested it pure condi for a while.

i decided to go halfway and keep some of my shaman/apoth gear for additional defense. i still get 2 leaps through HS, giving me an additional 3400 healing.

toughness and condition dmg from wilderness is way more important than +healing from BM, IMO. pets will still hit hard with no BM traits, as long as u have the skirmishing trait.

this build is much more useful for zerg warfare because you can easily throw traps on stragglers and burst them down quick. downside is you dont have nearly as much sustain as your typical condi buinker.

I agree with shortbow as a full condition ranger, you need to flank too much and get anything from it and it’s just more work than it needs to be, you have alittle more power than me but less condition, I’ve been adding more power and lowering my condition damage somewhat lately.

I agree on healing as well, 500 seems to be enough, 1000 is great but I proactively use TU which doesn’t gain much from healing anyway and your damage suffers a lot for such high healing.

I swap and change builds though, I can sit around 47-50% crit in a full BM build right now if I wanted.

thx for the idea btw =) how are you finding power working out vs. conditions? i use two traps and they do significant damage on multiple targets. power would only benefit single target dps with SB. i have shaman armor, so giving that up kills my healing, vitality and condition damage, all of which i need badly. healing = sustain, vitality = surviving burst. unfortunately, there isnt PVH gear in the game.

nerva.7940:

here are my approximate stats currently (with food) for my SB/GS roaming hybrid. you should aim for at least 50% crit, but i chose to keep more of my defensive stats (still using apothecary weapons instead of berserker/knight):

1500 power
700 condi damage
500 healing
45% crit
1750 toughness

im really liking the balanced build. i killed 2 glass cannon rangers in about 30 seconds (they werent terrible but used LB sadly) as i had so much more sustain and similar dps due to my conditions.

you can either go condition heavy, or more toward power/crit (which is what Sol does)…in my vids i played a pure condition trap bomber (apoth/shaman gear) and did not like it much because it took too long to kill people…in which case u might as well go for a dueling build without GS and SB. SB is a very kittenty weapon without crit, trust me, i tested it pure condi for a while.

i decided to go halfway and keep some of my shaman/apoth gear for additional defense. i still get 2 leaps through HS, giving me an additional 3400 healing.

toughness and condition dmg from wilderness is way more important than +healing from BM, IMO. pets will still hit hard with no BM traits, as long as u have the skirmishing trait.

this build is much more useful for zerg warfare because you can easily throw traps on stragglers and burst them down quick. downside is you dont have nearly as much sustain as your typical condi buinker.

Interested in finding out much more about this. Not that the bunker was bad. Not at all. Glad to see a ranger pwn a thief once in a great while.

Its why i don’t use shortbow on my Ranger, It does absolute horrid damage with Apothecary gear.

nerva.7940:

thx for the idea btw =) how are you finding power working out vs. conditions? i use two traps and they do significant damage on multiple targets. power would only benefit single target dps with SB. i have shaman armor, so giving that up kills my healing, vitality and condition damage, all of which i need badly. healing = sustain, vitality = surviving burst. unfortunately, there isnt PVH gear in the game.

Most of my evidence is anecdotal right now but 1600 power seems about right for me, I’d love more but I just end up losing from elsewhere, like you said you lose from areas you need badly. Any chance I get I’m slightly lowering my condition damage and upping my power but I don’t like giving up all my condition damage for power yet and I think once I go over that 1600 mark I’ll loose too much condition damage and unlike Warriors who stack power and treat conditions as an extra, I think condition damage is still important to us.

Right now though I can get consistent 400+ crits over and over and still keep bleeds ticking for 80+ damage and because of those crits, Sigil of Earth and Sharpened Edges I have those bleeds running consistently. So, no huge hits but consistent fast hitting high damage.

One thing I have found useful after the nerf to Omnomberry Pies, I’ve made up a little with my lack of healing power in this build by testing out Mango Pies. Signet of the Wild with low healing is a 80ish point tick every second, Mango Pies do another 80ish point tick a second and I’m finding it pretty useful as you double the effectiveness of SoW. When I want to run without SoW I can still keep a background heal ticking, running Mango Pies alone.

I find Mango Pies much more useful than taking a healing power food.

Prysin.8542:

Mrowqa.3861:

Hey,
I’ve just watched Your vids ( both of them ).

Amazing skill.

But got a qestiong ( im going to make ranger ) is there any way or place for high crit dmg mixed with Bm traits build for SB/GS combo in WvW ?

For critbuilds, use the longbow. It does a whole lot better then the shortbow with such builds. The reason a SB is “better” in DPS, is because of the condition damage it applies, with a Critbuild, you will effectively put away the condition damage, thus “nerfing” the shortbows DPS.

Not true. SB is still better regardless of the condition damage because of it’s projectile speed. Unless you can reliably stay at max range 100% of time and guarantee that none of your arrows miss, shortbow will out dps LB.

Out of interest nerva, how much health do you have with your gear? Side note, just managed to get my power up to just short of 1800 with a little trait management.

Guys I’m toying a bit with the Buildcrat and coming around a nice balanced condition/trapper setup.
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6|5.1b.h16|1.1b.h2|1b.71d.1b.71d.1b.71d.1b.71d.1b.71d.1b.71e|4y.d1f.1k.63.1k.63.1b.63.1b.63.1b.62|0.k18.u38b.5.f4|1k.7|e

What you guys think?
Healing power: 500
Condition Damage: 1.1k
Power: 1090
Tou: 1800
Crit: 50%

I’m thinking in something to run in WvW in small zerg based on traps.

Nice videos. You are a very good player that supports the theory that player skill > spec/class

I really like the way you use different setups…weapons and skills. Keeps the variety and fun factor up.

I have been using SB/GS. Recently switched to Sword + ?. I don’t think I have the skills to pull of a double melee setup.

I have never used Raven or Owl. Usually i use Wolf + Jag. Maybe I should try it out.

capuchinseven.8395:

Out of interest nerva, how much health do you have with your gear? Side note, just managed to get my power up to just short of 1800 with a little trait management.

I have 19k hp with shaman armor, runes of the pack and exo knight accessories. Anything less and I just dont think id be able to joust with good thieves. I could go full knight’s but 15k hp doesnt cut it for the ranger. 30 in skirm and 30 in wilderness is a must for me

Great videos, is it a coincidence I’m working on a Hybrid Beastmaster video with GS/SB right now? I like your style.

That`s very nice video, but 1 remark: Damage is crap? so, in this build you are usless for your team in militrain at any mass PvP battle and usless at siege as range DD. Yes, you can dueling, but you`ll not be able even to cupture a supplay point, it takes too much time. Well, it does mean in this build rangers are absolutely usless for team. And if so, what the reason to be at WvW? Jast to make queue?

Auberon.4653:

That`s very nice video, but 1 remark: Damage is crap? so, in this build you are usless for your team in militrain at any mass PvP battle and usless at siege as range DD. Yes, you can dueling, but you`ll not be able even to cupture a supplay point, it takes too much time. Well, it does mean in this build rangers are absolutely usless for team. And if so, what the reason to be at WvW? Jast to make queue?

It is an attrition dueling build yes, but healing spring with high HP like this does provide plenty of benefit to a group. Also, this build would be great for creating distractions/buying time and possibly scouting. I prefer more of a damage focused roaming build myself, at least to take camps, but there is more to WvW than facerolling with a zerg. The beauty of GW2 is that you can build a character for many different purposes.

There are many uses for a ranger in WvW, the issue is that it can be done better elsewhere and we’re weaker in team WvW than we are in sPVP for example.

Valroth.7138:

It is an attrition dueling build yes, but healing spring with high HP like this does provide plenty of benefit to a group. Also, this build would be great for creating distractions/buying time and possibly scouting. I prefer more of a damage focused roaming build myself, at least to take camps, but there is more to WvW than facerolling with a zerg. The beauty of GW2 is that you can build a character for many different purposes.

Healing spring doesn`t heal others, it provides regen only. Scouting for ranger? Interesting, but ranger can`t run away if he would find out enemy zerg, so it`s kind of suicide. Thief does scouting more much better. How much dmg you say you can provide in this build? I sawin video about 300-400 per hit max, it`s really crap. Just for example warriors or thief or ele can do up to 7-9k per 1 hit. How much time it takes to cup camps solo with this damage? 15-20 min.? Also, there is no zerg “facerolling”, if you want to do good teamplay.