Guild Wars 2

Source of Fury
Borlis Pass
spvp lately, pve wvw sometimes. Never once attempted a dungeon. Please only invite if ok with someone who may have to quickly Alt-F4 and logs on sparingly at odd times sometimes for very brief periods at a time (I.e. I probably spend more time lurking gw2 forums than playing).

Of course I am just theorycrafting. I’ve no clue how much dps a condi Ranger does in pvp vs a power Ranger.

But for other professions I’d assume they would try to make condi equivalent to power in terms of viability. But for rangers they only seemed to handicap Ranger power abilities but not condi abilities.

It’s definitely fun to play power and I don’t doubt you get kills in pvp but is it optimal compared to other professions? Is the value of power in the Ranger equal to the value of power in the Warrior? If pets scaled to our stats then I’d say yes, but they don’t. That is a disadvantage for power Rangers but a major advantage for condi rangers. Their pets don’t get weaker with no power investment.

I guess I shouldn’t tell you how to play but I think condi Ranger maximizes a Ranger’s strengths and adds room for survivability whereas power Ranger almost always has to be glass just to try to compensate so you make average instead of sucky damage.

I guess what I’m saying is a power Ranger is still 2/3rds effective and 1/3rds pet. But a condi Ranger is fully effective and tougher, also with an extra 1/3rds from the pet. If you treat the pet as a DoT with perks, then you’re a medium armor DoT master.

True, power needs more skill but does skill equate to more effectiveness when using the same amount of skill with a condi toughness build? Sure I’m impressed when a person with 2/3rds of his appendages beats someone with all of his appendages but what if that second person was just as skillful?

Here’s my reasoning:
Yes, condi has its disadvantages with stack limits and clearing, but here are its advantages:
-With Ranger, your dps is limited because you have a pet. So all the might and power you would get to increase your damage is less effective from the get go. But as far as I’m aware, your condi damage isn’t reduced compared to other classes and rangers apply conditions fairly well.
So you have full strength condi damage PLUS your pet damage.
-You also have two other attributes to play with since you only need one attribute for condition damage, whereas power builds need power, precision, and fury. So your survivability is much much better.
-Condition damage ignores toughness.
-Sure they can clear your conditions but you can just as easily apply more and if someone else is applying conditions as well you may be helping them keep theirs on or vice versa.
-Most fights against good players don’t end immediately and are generally longer than pve fights so burst isn’t always better and condi has time to work. It is also much more devastating for them to evade one of your mauls than one of your crossfires.
-Long bow sucks.

Sigmoid.7082:

Just remember unless you get a full second or , for duration stacking skills, you can rapidly keep applying it so the fractions add up…condition duration is wasted.

I’m not sure this is true. The amount of bleed damage done with crossfire (3s bleed) is definitely increased with just 20% condi increase, at least when I tested it in HoM.

Nm I think it doesn’t

Does monk 6 affect you too?

Thanks, I swapped out fern hound and now have the wolf and the alpine wolf.
Yea, I was thinking of the soldier runes after i invested a load of cash for the dolyak runes. I may just run with both signet of the wild and dolyak runes for extra healing since it would be such a waste to replace them! I think I am getting roughly 150 hps total per tick with the dolyak and sigil of the wild.

That 1-2 seconds without swiftness really bothers me!! I know, that’s why you have the+boon duration runes!

The reason why picked dolyak was for the added toughness and vitality. In the whole scheme of things I think 175 extra healing amounts to about 20 extra health with regen.

Good point, I guess I didn’t want to have to worry about speed ever. But yea I should use something else!

I’m quite sure this likely isn’t an original build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV3fnMqQrg2LIGsAXLGQSoa/ABQD8aIcntXwHfxSPJB-TJRAABsVGY6LCAAPBga2fAA

But I have found a new love for SPvP. It is such a great support build; with nature’s voice your guard provides a very consistent source of healing and swiftness for everyone around you. Sic’em is so overpowered against thieves, they drop like butter! (it’s quite great with other professions as well) With settler’s gear and dolyak runes, not only are you tough but you can heal better and lay on constant bleed pressure. Shortbow is so awesome; where have you been all my life?? You are very hard to kill and can survive battles against two or more opponents long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Healing Spring is even more added support. More importantly, you keep team members alive, can survive longer to revive team members, and so you can overwhelm the enemy with numbers. You get shared anguish, hide in plain sight, and empathic bond, with healing spring to keep you alive. The only time you are weak is when you don’t pay attention and your pet(s) get killed, and then two of your utilities (shouts) become useless if you’re on a cooldown.

I find most of the time I’m on the shortbow with this build, but I could see axe/torch as a strong way to damage folks too, just less survivable. So those super expensive heal on swap sigils are not really necessary, you can throw something else in there.

Fern Hound is good for control and some extra regen to throw around. The cat is just plain strong with sic’em.

I don’t feel kitten in the damage department at all in this bunker build. Try it out!
I went from being a liability to a huge asset to the team, and frequently at or near the top of the scoreboard for the round as an added bonus.

The only unfortunate thing is I have to retire my always-up Fury build and have a build that’s inconsistent with my character’s name (Source of Fury).

Just wanted a positive pet thread!

They are fun and offer a huge customization choice in combination with your trait selections.
In addition to that they help you up when you are downed. They can either bring you back up or continue attacking enemies to help you rally. They harass downed enemies. They distract other enemies and if the timing is right you can swap out before they die and make all their efforts useless. They can add some very significant damage or conditions or buffs or even some control. Some even combo.
Pets are awesome!

Great ideas, thanks! I guess runes of rage are kind of redundant in my build. But do you think 3 stacks of might on myself and my pet with each weapon swap is stronger than the rune of air damage every few seconds?

Revised the build. Changed dagger to warhorn and changed agility training to companion’s might, so that all the crits you do (especially with warhorn #4) make your pet especially mighty.

I see, so not a huge deal and I can leave my sigils the way they are I think. Thanks

So swapping a weapon affects the on crit cool down? I’m a little confused. Thanks!

Hello, could someone explain exactly what will happen if I have sigil of air and sigil of blood on one weaponset and sigil of air and sigil of blood on another weaponset?

If air goes off on weaponset 1, does weaponset 2 air go into cooldown as well? I’m assuming it doesn’t affect blood?

I am just a little confused because these rules get changed from time to time!

Thanks!

I kind of stumbled on making this build (wanted to try something different from my usual trap ranger) not realizing the appropriateness of the build given my ranger is an Asuran Ranger named “Source of Fury” with pets “Quiet Fury” and “Slashing Fury.”

Fun, somewhat crippled (no great range solution), full melee build, focusing on Greatsword, and Sword/Dagger, and Fury. Traits picked to shorten recharge for sword and greatsword and produce 5% more damage and fury 50% of the time with greatsword strikes. Swapping weapons produces fury. SotF produces fury. Rune of Rage produces fury. Sigils are on-crit triggers. It’s not the best, but it’s fun getting crits. And the fury carries over to your high crit pets that do 30% more crit damage. Increased damage while you have a boon on, and fury tends to be up all the time.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8YjEqUyaLLGsw1agDhq5K8BMDgDw9Q8CV9FTViE-TJBFwA22fgwFBoaZAAPBAA

How about Hunter’s Mark: while the Ranger has a target marked with control+t, that target has the equivalent of 1 stack of vulnerability (but isn’t a condition that can be cleansed) and the target’s next stealth is reduced by 1 second.

Would be neat to have a skirmisher trait, “point blank” that simply reverses the longbow damage scaling to most damage close up and least damage far away. That way you could stack with the rest of them!

Knowing that anything you write that is close to an expletive is changed to “kitten,” I’m just curious: Do most of you actually write the word “kitten” or the actual expletive?

Nature’s voice should be beastmastery too.
F2 heal sucks and should be second tier.

Like Martial Mastery. Why is it in a line that gives 300 condition damage when swords and greatswords have no condition abilities? Why not put it in the skirmishing line?
Shouldn’t trap traits be in wilderness survival for the theme and for the condition damage?

Why are the bleeding traits in marksmanship and skirmishing?

Why are signet traits in marksmanship?

It’s all mixed up and doesn’t really make any sense!

By the way I think the pet regen adds 10 seconds to the current regen and the regen remains the highest of healing powers of those that contributed. I could be wrong!

Thanks for the input (both of you), I will make those changes. I experimented with going full beastmastery and the regen ticks barely increased despite +300 healing power.

Thanks, would you suggest any trait and skill changes?

So I decided to take my 17 gold and finally upgrade my junky gear into full exotic. I wanted to be a support/bunker role in wvw. I got full settler armor and weapons (axe horn and sword axe) superior runes of the flock, 2 sigils of water and 2 sigils of benevolence.

6 in wilderness survival for shared anguish, hide in plain sight, and emphatic bond. 6 in nature for nature’s bounty, nature’s protection, and nature’s voice.

2 in beastmastery for shout mastery.

Using healing spring, sic em, guard, and signet of the wild.

Using the sylvan hound and the insect spitting Drake.

I can manage to make my regen and swiftness last for minutes but the regen seems a little anemic. It makes me wonder if I should’ve gone into the beastmastery tree instead. And I didn’t really focus on any condition abilities so I wonder if settler was a bad idea.

Any suggestions? Is there a better build for the equipment I purchased? Because I am dirt poor now and can’t make changes except maybe substituting in some cheap runes.

Thanks!

Sometimes my pet pops right next to me, I think it happens when i click “guard here” and then f3 regardless of where he is. And if he’s not with me i just swap twice and then he’s there.

Now in terms of vertical movement it would indeed be cool if you could send your bird up a Fort wall to harass people!

Just swap pets and your pet will appear before you. Swap again immediately to get your original pet assuming you’re not in combat.

Just curious… I was looking at concentration training and the is a little note on the bottom that says “does not work in pvp.” Is that true? If so, what’s the point in getting this trait?

Still it looks beautiful and it inspires me to evade a lot more than I have been!

They have a new trait that grants regen, aegis, and protection for every second while stealthed. Will probably need to be balanced in the future.

Actually this is basically the only way I’ve played the Ranger! I did experiment with a shout regen build and managed to almost beat a champion solo… but it makes you so limited!

How about when you unlock a trait level in a certain trait line for one character, that same trait level and trait line unlocks account-wide since it’ll be the exact same thing for each character?

You could swap between 3 weapon sets instead of 2?

If it’s a memory issue they could save the pet names in a local file, and verify that it hasn’t been tampered with when you load it on startup. I’d also like it if you could save “pet sets” for easy swapping out of combat.

I forgot, leap finisher sword 2+2

I’ve been having fun with an uncommon (i think) build and thought i would share it with you. It gives you so much crap you can do it’s fun and different.

Weapons: sword/axe, axe/war horn
Pets: Marsh Drake, Swamp Drake
Skills: healing spring, Viper nest, flame trap (or spike trap), frost trap, entangle

4 points in skirmishing:
Tail Wind, furious grip
Agility training, trapper’s expertise

4 points in wilderness survival
Natural vigor, companion’s defense
Shared anguish, off hand training

6 points in beastmastery
Instinctual bond, loud whistle, nature’s wrath
Might swap, rending attacks, zephyr’s speed

This build will have you clicking the keyboard nonstop, swapping weapons, swapping pets, using f2, dropping traps and springs, and comboing over and over. You have projectile finishers axe 2 and axe 4, blast finishers warhorn 5 and Drake tail swipe, and whirl finisher axe 5.

In pvp axe 3 for slowing down the enemy horn 4 for the fun bird attack horn 5 to keep up. Sword/axe for closeup fighting and trap/spring comboing. Entangle when overwhelmed or trying to stop an escape.

Incredibly fun in pve.

Really fun as a support build. Kind of weak if you’re targeted though! Best if you’re with a friend but still can be very deadly against some players. But you get to play with so many concepts, like traps, comboing, pet comboing, pet and weapon swapping, range, and melee.

Now that WOULD be interesting.. When you use the conjure weapon utility skull am icon for that weapon could show up in the boon section, and when you use weapon quick swap that weapon could appear, then either you swap back or it automatically swaps back after charges are used.

I think you ran across a group of botters, by the way.. (the group of rangers with juvenile brown bears)

p.s. I seriously doubt it’s a data storage issue: say you have 50 different pets across 1,000,000 rangers, each with 16 character names. That’s 16 bytes * 1,000,000 * 50 = 800,000,000 bytes, or 781,250 kb, or 763 MB of data.

I want to commend Anet— a good sign that professions are pretty well balanced: almost every profession forum has complaints about being weak/sucky/nerfed. There were 1-2 professions that didn’t seem to be complaining but for the most part everyone is complaining. That is a very good sign that professions are well balanced. I’m not being sarcastic either.

Good job

As a main Mesmer, I honestly don’t see why people bother using ranged weaponry as their main source of damage in the first place. You just end up killing yourselves on our feedback bubbles. That’s the absolute most fun I have as a mesmer.. letting you kill yourselves.

That’s why with my ranger alt I try to avoid shortbow and longbow. I’m using axe/horn (which I know is ranged— I may use 1hs later) and greatsword, and I’m having a blast.. and that’s probably why I was unaffected by the nerf. =P

My raven is still almost one-shot-killing everything— and I think that’s a bug, and that’s why I feel guilty about it— but it’s fun anyway.

I’ve got a 50ish mesmer and a 21 ranger. I started after the SB nerf and was amazed at how quickly I melt pve enemies with any weapon— and all the weapons are extremely fun. My raven basically almost-one-shot-kills anything with F2. It’s really fun playing with all the different pets. When I saw the SB skills I was amazed at how quickly I was firing at things.. and that was before I read that the SB was nerfed (but after the nerf). haha. I basically do not struggle at all against most enemies, whereas with my mesmer I remember struggling a lot and dying a lot in my earlier levels (later on at higher levels, the mesmer was easy to play though).

Haven’t tried PvP yet, but playing a ranger is extremely refreshing. It’s just so fun, and going around trying to find juveniles adds a whole new dimension to gameplay.

Keep in mind that if you are higher level than your personal story quest, it will delevel you and if your items are not equal to your real level then you will be really kittened. This is evidence by the fact that I kept dying over and over with quests under my level and quests that were 3-4 levels above me were relatively easy.

When I was struggling tons I learned a few tricks that helped me. For instance, when an event in the story made ten monsters come to attack you, you can respawn after death, come back, and pull them one at a time from a distance. Actually, in all instances that I’ve noted, you can run away before an expected spawn of monsters and just stay at the edge pulling one at a time.

You can also take advantage of invisibility. There was one quest that was so impossible because there was an army of enemies on a bridge and mortars were firing nonstop over and over in huge AOE range killing me almost instantly. So after dying five times, I armed all of my invisibilities including torch and just ran through the bridge to the end. I pulled the boss and killed him alone and the quest was successful.

Later on after playing 50 or so levels I’ve realized that kiting makes you much more survivable. Keep running around and poking him with your scepter or ranged weapon of choice, dodging when your enemy’s about to attack. Keep using ether feast as often as possible (if hurt of course), use invis for respite. Of course, kiting needs you to be free from other monsters around you so again you have to pull and be at the edge of the crowd so you don’t run into any surprises. And use phantasms to kill your foe while you’re running around like a kitten.

GW2 encourages the death of small woodland creatures. I feel bad that I am now addicted to killing small woodland creatures everytime I pass them because of the variety kill bonus!

I believe shatter doesn’t count as dying. But adding too many illusions so that they die does count as dying.

Is that intentional? That trait doesn’t mention anything like that.

Really! That’s interesting.. I’ve never heard of that. Is that true with players too? They don’t always land confusion if they shoot through an ethereal field?