Guild Wars 2

Hey there, and welcome back to the game

Your assumptions are correct, Druid is not for your personal DPS, but adds great ability to keep teammates above 90% for scholar bonuses and then the added bonus damage of Grace of the land and Glyph of empowerment to Buff you and your allies.

As far as personal utility goes, the Druid line does add some very nice things (at the cost of personal DPS to some extent):

1. Druidic Clarity, stun break and full condition cleanse when you enter astral form
2. Celestial Shadow, Stealth and Superspeed when you exit astral form
3. Natural stride, 33% passive speed boost and reduction in duration of movement impairing conditions.
4. Ancient Seeds, basically an entangle (like the elite) when you hit a stunned target, at a low 10s ICD.

In general compared to a normal frost spotter you will do a bit less DPS than a Druid counter part, but the added utility, and party buffs, even in open world, where you have larger events with many people will pull Druid ahead of Core ranger, not by personal DPS but by how it affects your allies.

When using the specialization endpoint, the druid went missing. It used to be there, id: 5.

All other elite specializations are present, is this just an oversight?

Late to the party, but here it goes:

Shout rework by Dru

We heal as one!
Recharge: 20s
Cast: 1s
Description: Heal you and your pet for X hp, if your pet is dead, it is revived.
Traited: Grants 10s of swiftness and regeneration to allies in 240 radius.

Protect me!
Recharge: 60s
Cast: Instant
Description: Your pet is teleported to your location and taunts nearby enemies for 2s, this skill breaks stuns.
Traited: Grants 3s of resistance and 1 stack of aegis to allies in 240 radius.

Search and Rescue!
Recharge: 60s
Cast: Instant
Description: Your pet seeks the area for downed allies emitting a healing aura that heals allies in a 240 range, including downed allies. Ground targeted.
Traited: Grants 3s of stability and protection to allies in 240 radius.

Guard!
Recharge: 40s
Cast: Instant
Description: The pet gains camoflage and stays in the area until called for. if an enemy gets within 240 range of the pet it emmits an immobile aura snaring the enemy for 2s, the pet is revealed and attacks, ground targeted.
Traited: Grants 2s of stealth to allies in 240 radius.

Sic em!
Recharge: 30s
Cast: Instant
Description: Targeted enemy is reavealed, and the pet instantly teleports to the target knocking it down.
Traited: Grants 5 stacks of might to allies for 5s in 240 radius.

Resounding Timbre, Trait
Description: Lower the recharge on shouts by 20%, grants benefits to allies depending on the shout within a 240 radius of the ranger.

A variant i have been using for a while for home/mid fights:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJARTjMq0sanK+qQ0agDhqdJ0ujArAwdP0C7wJr4QsA-TpBHwAFOEAGuAAAeAABOCAILDse/BA

It adds storm spirit, and uses Snow owl with Pet’s Prowess and a Greatsword with Intelligence sigil to be able to do some more burst damage, it works quite well and adds a bit of skilled play to a rather passive play setup (getting the opening and timing the burst, while not hard atleast takes some skill^^)

The Greatsword itself is a nice trade for the sw/d combo in my opinion, since it does give you a block with another knockback, and a stun.

Snow Owl named “Doctor Hoo”
Black Moa named “Goth Chick”

i guess those 2 are the ones im most pleased with

As a ranger roamer since pre release and a big part of that as a Celestial Ranger, I should be able to give you some friendly advice.

First off congratulations on your choice to build a Celestial Ranger, despite what many people will tell you this works perfectly fine, and infact is even pretty kitten good, even tho it lacks the strongpoints that zerker sniper or condi bunker has, one can also view it as having parts of the best of 2 worlds.

There are a few things that is obvious when looking at the setup as is:

1. Lack of Poison. Not having poison as a ranger is a bad idea. You dont have anything really bursty, especially in celestial gear, so you would want poison to help mitigate all forms of healings out there. (Yes Maul is Bursty, but landing it without CC vs anything but NPC’s wont be easy, and sure Rapid fire does damage, but in celestial it wont be enough).

2. Very low crowd control, there is PBS and hilt bash, but its still very low on crowd control, there is no Immobilize, very little cripple etc.

3. Poor mobility (I am aware you are probably putting in Signet of the hunt while running, which gives it very decent mobility with traited GS, but when roaming i need a perma speed boost, but that might just be me

Those 3 things is the most obvious issues, and are fixable in many ways, I’ll give some examples.

1. Lack of poison, the easiest fix would be to add a Doom sigil, likely to the Longbow. This would give you some poison uptime, which will really help you, another option is to sub in a pet that gives poison but more on this under point 2.

2. Very low crowd control. This one needs some tinkering to be fixed, What i personally would do is sub in Entangle as elite, and change martial training to wilderness knowledge, that way you have a very strong soft CC on a decent enough cooldown.
I would also change the pets, Drake → Wolf, Drakehound → Jungle Spider, that way you get both CC and poison uptime, and the loss of drake hurts less since you dont have Rampage as one to use drake F" to build mights.

3. Poor mobility, this is just a personal opinion, I would never pick Divinity runes over travelers, having this passive 25% speed boost, even tho it doesnt affect your pet is jsut better imo. and if you go wit a spider, then the lack of speed on pet is not gonna matter to much.

As for sigils, in celestial gear, and using GS it NEEDS an intelligence sigil, without a crit Maul is no fun and we went over the Doom sigil somewhere, I’d place it on the LB cause ranged poison is good. That leaves 2 sigils, personally I’d place a battle on the GS and an energy on the LB.

So this would give you a template looking like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJARTjEqUxaDL+rQ1aA/AZZjAtv1rmzqBPZUV4B-T1CHABgp+DAPAA12fwLdB/oErLTcGcBAcS5hlKBH4QAEwRAIAwBADP8whUA6pMC-w

Is it better? It of course depends on the situation, but it is definately weaker in the fury department, and as such it might do less damage, but you do have some more sources of conditions to take advantage of this stat on the celestial gear.

So a few pointers, use them, abuse them, ignore them, its all up to you

/Hugs Dru

ISP: Telia
Region: Sweden EU
Server: Gunnar’s Hold

Issue was gone after the last Living Story update, and i experienced no lag what so ever in any case, but its now back, with constant dc’s.

I tried resetting router, using vpn, any tips & tricks posted, but all of them are a bandaid fix at best. I do not experience any issues with other services than gw2, so i am fairly confident that it isnt an issue on my side.

ISP: Telia
Region: Sweden EU
Server: Gunnar’s Hold

Happens randomly, as far as I can see in any map i tried.

Sprôut
Gunnar’s Hold
WvW, and some sPvP/tPvP

Very well formulated suggestions that in comparison to what other professions brings to the table seems logical, and not OP.

I agree with each and everyone of those changes.

The traditional ranger bunker setup uses either Apothecary/Settlers or Clerics (depending on your preferences for power or condition damage). and normally a trait setup of 0-0-30-10-30 with some more or less popular variations.

Your post didn’t say, so i took the liberty of posting a build I mainly use in WvW roaming situations, but I run it with Celestial armor and weapons, and various trinkets depending on specialization, but changed it to use all soldiers gear, since your main goal besides moving fast was to survive.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRnAVUZZVQ+VwaZAZVAQaPyEJBTcP8vOJEPZTXoB-jECBofDRjEZIaZPFRjtMsIasKbYqXER1WzC1W0KaSB4jyI-w

The only checkbox on your list it doesnt tick is that I opted for using Greatsword (instead of Axe + torch/Warhorn) as secondary weaponset, mainly due to Swoop for higher mobility and hiltbash for an extra interrupt.

You can basically use whatever pets you like with it, but spiders and devourers are not a bad choice at all.

I choose to go with Cave spider and Carrion Devourer mainly due to the fact they both offer a poison field, that you can combo with swoop to give weakness. Cave Spiders F2 also gives weakness which helps alot vs. direct damage.

For general purpose healing skill, Troll unguent is pretty good. Healing Spring has its uses aswell, if you are running in a party where there are some blast finishers availible I’d take healing spring, but if not, then Troll will probably help you stay alive better.

Utilities, are pretty much open to your preference, I normally run Lightning reflexes, a great disengage tool. Sick em, well this one is kinda iffy, I am trying to get used to it, since the coming update might make it viable (Reveal debuff), and it gives me a trigger for Nature’s voice. Sure 10s of swiftness and Regen (you do have 45% boon duration, so its more) might not be super awesome, but it can be a useful tool to have at your disposal. Signet of Renewal is a given, you want condition removal, you need signet of renewal.

As far as traits go, it’s a 10-0-30-30-0 setup, Malicious Training to lengthen conditions from your pets, the spiders immobilize gets to be pretty evil with it.

30 points in Wilderness survival, thats pretty much a given, it gives you toughness, something you want and it gives you access to some traits that drastically enhances your ability to survive, shared anguish all rangers secretly hates their pet, so why not have them suffer from stuns applied to you? coupled with Hide in plain sight it gets another use tho, the stun will transfer to your pet, and you will be invisible, it’s not amazing, but it makes your enemy drop target and offers you a chance to turn the fight to your favor. One thing about shared anguish + Hide in plain sight that is very useful is for stomping enemies, more often than not a downed enemy will try to interrupt you while you are stomping, and to some extent this trait combo will help you get past that, for instance it works on the guardian push.

30 points in Nature magic, gives you an extra 3000 HP, and some spike mitigation and condition clearing (Blind and Poison from Evasive purity) + Nature’s Voice (which I already talked about).

So what you are left with is a setup that will do what you asked for you won’t be an easy target, you will be able to zoom across the map, and you still have high power to actually kill stuff.

Hope my random ramblings atleast gives you something to think about, and adapt to your playstyle.

Hugs,
Dru

Blind the ranger when you see the oh so obvious animation, and the entangle will miss.