Guild Wars 2

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I don’t want to press my heal 3 times.

Drop.

Overcharge.

Blast.

No.

you had to press 3 buttons before patch already, but now it is the same button. I honestly don’t see the problem

It is a great list, but i think some things are a bit too overpowered so the numbers might be a bit adjusted, but I really like some of the ideas in this list!

Only change i don’t like is the streamlined kits change, also Gadgeteer trait doesn’t really change that much does it? idk the trait would still feel useless imo

coro.3176:

Swapping Rifle 3 and 2 skills – …why?

In general weapon skills are ordered on cooldown (skill 2 has lowest cooldown, then skill 3 etc etc). This might be different though when using a 1 handed weapon with an offhand.

Pie Flavor.1647:

Basically you can apply 9 stacks of burning after 5 seconds every 6.6 seconds

Is it just me or are you just hating on something without knowing how the build/traits/rotation works?

You can’t do bonfire every 6.6 seconds cause of internal CD on quickdraw (and shortbow on other weapon set). First bonfire has 6.6s CD, after 20s CD, after that you can quickdraw your bonfire again which results in roughly a avarage CD of 13.3s (a bit more as you are probably on shortbow when bonfire goes off CD).

I don’t think bonfire is a OP skill, throw torch also isn’t a OP skill. Saying that torch is a OP weapon is just complete kitten imo.

The thing that is OP in my opinion is Quickdraw. Even though i think it is an OP trait i think that condi ranger is in a decent spot right now, a good option for most bosses but not the best option.

Another thing that makes condi ranger OP is the sylvari elite skill Take Root. This boosts the condi ranger’s damage with like 2k – 3k, which is so lame and stupid. If you are gonna hate on sth, then hate on this..

can’t watch the video sadly enough.. (youtube says the following: This video contains content from [Merlin] Armada Music, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.)

Maybe you could look into it?

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

MrTJpwnz.4710:

All the CM bosses are fine, way better than the normal mode ones. I enjoy them way more then the normal ones as the CM’s make the fights a bit harder. The avarage pug is a bad player so that you can’t complete it with pugs doesn’t really surprise me, but that is not the problem of the content imo, but the problem is the players playing the content.

Also the Samarog fight isn’t that buggy anymore, only thing i saw that is buggy is that when samarog phases and he does the attack that removes all the spears, he litterally stands there for 20 seconds doing nothing being invunerable, after that the fight continious as normal.

All the rest of what i think you are reffering to as ‘buggy’ is either fixed by now or is just people failing to execute mechanics properly.

You either haven’t done the fight or your really lucky.

Did it 2 days ago, on one attempt after we killed the 2 spawns they just respawned and we had to kill them again.

killed it several times now (cause i do like the content ), didn’t encounter any bug.

All the CM bosses are fine, way better than the normal mode ones. I enjoy them way more then the normal ones as the CM’s make the fights a bit harder. The avarage pug is a bad player so that you can’t complete it with pugs doesn’t really surprise me, but that is not the problem of the content imo, but the problem is the players playing the content.

Also the Samarog fight isn’t that buggy anymore, only thing i saw that is buggy is that when samarog phases and he does the attack that removes all the spears, he litterally stands there for 20 seconds doing nothing being invunerable, after that the fight continious as normal.

All the rest of what i think you are reffering to as ‘buggy’ is either fixed by now or is just people failing to execute mechanics properly.

just tested it on female in the special forces training area:
1st time I had 12 hits,
2nd time i had 15 hits,
3rd time i had 12 hits,
4th time i had 16 hits,
5th time i had 14 hits.

stood at the exact same place each time.

I have seen one lfg requiring bdgm, imo if you want to see other ppl’s dps just get arc instead of bdgm. But it is their group, their requirements so if you don’t like it then don’t join

Most of the times the meta changes in the few weeks (1-3 weeks) after a balance patch most of the times, depending on the changes made. There is probably a balance patch coming out soon which might change the meta and make classes that are now less viable more viable and maybe the classes that are viable or ‘too’ viable a bit weaker.

I think overall if you don’t want to wait a few weeks till the balance patch comes out chronomancer, ps warrior and druid are solid choices. Alot has to happen to see these classes getting out of the raid meta. Also condi ranger seems pretty good in the new wing so you can fill 2 different roles with druid/ranger (heal role or dps role).

Keep in mind that the avarage raid player has an IQ that isn’t that great and they copy paste compositions and DPS benchmarks comparisons etc. from top guild like qT and SC. This causes for example that at the current meta ele is pretty much always used as a dps class in wings 1-3. The average raid player doesn’t seem to understand that a bad ele gets easily outdps’ed by a guard for example. The meta is made good if everyone plays their class perfectly, if not you can pretty much take everything you want.

As for what people run for the new wing, I don’t pug alot but i think people won’t use ele alot for boss 1 and 4 of the new wing, but i guess that still has to settle down in the comming days/weeks.

I recently bought the Jade Pendant from Lake Doric. This is an amulet with Seraph stats but when I compare the stats with other amulets in the game i see that the Jade Pendant 14 stat points less than other ascendant amulets.

Stats Jade Pendant gives:
Precision: 128
Condi damage: 128
Concentration: 69
Healing Power: 69

Stats that another amulet gives for example an vipers amulet
Power: 133
Condi damage: 133
Expertise: 71
Precision: 71

I think that this is not as intented, hopefully this gets fixed

it is doable with zerker druid aswell, for the adds at the seconds boss at 66% and 33% you have to divide 5 players over 4 adds, so 1 had has 2 persons, would recommend bringing the chrono and druid to 1 add, and the rest have to kill it on their own.

Soft CC’s are conditions (like immobilize chill cripple weakness etc) that deal break bar damage over time. So if you have 100% condition duration your Soft CC’s have a twice the duration compared to 0% condition duration. So yes you would deal more CC damage to a break bar BUT the time it takes to deal the complete CC damage of the soft CC is also twice as long. The CC damage per seconds stays the same you just have a longer duration for it.

Hard CC’s aren’t affected by condition duration, because Stuns Dazes etc. aren’t conditions. These effects don’t deal CC damage over time but they are just 1 hit on the breakbar. Although Condition damage doesn’t increase Daze and Stun durations as a ranger you have a trait in Marksmanship that does increase the duration for stuns and dazes by 50%. This does affect the CC damage you do with skills like Concussion shot, CA #3 GS #5 etc.

So to answer your question; Yes 100% Condition duration does increase your CC damage (with 100%) with soft CC skills, but the time to deal that damage is twice aslong. Your Hard CC’s stay unchanged.

A guildie said that they were going to implement it when next wing releases, not sure if that is true but it sounds logical in some kind of way

I think Anet said that there will be another use for the portals but so far they didn’t implement that yet.

I assume you are playing with sword / sword + sword / shield. Sword offhand #4 is a 1 second daze (100 CC damage). sword 3 double cast is a immobilize which does in total 100 CC damage aswell. Then you have your shatter skill which does 100 CC damage per hit. Try to be close to the target as you are being shattered aswell. clones / phantasms will move to the their target and will daze there. So if they are targeting matthias it is not guarranteed that you will deal alot of CC damage.

This in total is like 300 – 700 CC damage (the breakbar at matthias requires 2500 CC damage in total if I remember correctly). At matthias i personally take the Moa signet for emergency moments for an extra 1000 CC damage.

As for the shield #5, I am not sure if it does deal CC damage at matthias, but if you have it available it is probably where all the people are pretty much stacked together. so it wouldn’t be a bad moment to do your rotation. Be sure that the CC will succeed though.

Timo.1065:

Why Arena don’t want to make easier mode, which don’t need meta builds.

Current raids don’t require meta builds in order to complete them. If you make them easier still it doesn’t require meta builds in order to complete them. Though people want to clear the bosses in the most efficient way so there is always a kind of meta, with the current raids, but also with the easier raids if Anet introduces them.

Having a meta build doesn’t say anything about the person as a player, someone running not a meta build can achieve higher DPS (or better support) just because it is a better player with a better rotation. Pugs are kind of dumb and stupid and think someone with meta build runs it in a perfect way and there is nothing better. The problem is not with the difficulty of the raids, but it is within the people playing the content that are incompetent.

if you are starting a ranger you should probably go for magi druid. http://qtfy.enjin.com/ranger#Gear3
think that is pretty much what gear traits and skills you should have. Personally i think that exotic magi should be fine too (you can buy it with karma from Orr temple vendors i believe).

you can keep the decoration items in your bank till end of the week so you know what you have killed and what not. Think that there should be somehow an option to see what you still need to kill but for now you have to do it with tricks like this. Only boss that you might do double is trio as there isn’t a decoration item of.

Mokk.2397:

Spirits are some what weak without traiting for them with Nature Vengence.Also the lack of mobility makes them wasted considering how far a group can move out of the 1000 range in the 20 second cool down let alone 60 second duration.

I totally disagree. Assuming we are talking about sun spirit (as that is where the thread is about), sun spirit is a nice DPS increase for your subgroup, especially when you have condi players in there. The traited version of sun spirit gives roughly 50% vigor uptime, which can be a nice thing but in my eyes not mandatory before you can play with sun spirit.

Of course this can be different for other spirits like stone and water spirit, those do require nature magic in my opinion, in oder to maintain perma protection or a high regen uptime for fast astral force regeneration.

Next to that, with the current encounters a druid should be able to maintain atleast 90% of the spirit buffs (with exception to escort (due to alot of movement, shoud be more like 60% there) and Vale Guardian (due to the split phase)). 1000 range is a pretty big range, when if you place the spirit in a good spot you shouldn’t have to destroy it. If you know that you will have to move then be sure to destroy your spirit in time. when the spirit dies it keeps giving the buffs for roughly 15 seconds, so you will end up on only a 10 seconds down time of the buff (5 seconds cooldown left + cast time + time till first pulse).

As for the thread, I personally would say that the condi ranger takes them, so the druid can have an extra glyph for better grace of the land uptime, which i think is more benefitial then one of the utility’s that the condi ranger has to give up.

Erocy.3869:

MrTJpwnz.4710:

how did you test this? does the pulsing area in the training area trigger the rune or something?

No it doesn’t. You either have to calculate the thorns stacks dps, or what i did is:
I just removed 150 condi dmg from the nightmare/trapper variant and the result i got was about the same dps as thorns runes with 0 stacks. As a conclusion thorns stacks with 3 stacks should do the same dps as normal nightmare/trapper.

Did you also check how much the difference is with max thorns stacks? that is the most interesting part ^^

how did you test this? does the pulsing area in the training area trigger the rune or something?

Erocy.3869:

Thorns runes are better for Condi Ranger in raids. At 3 thorns stacks their dps is about the same. At 4/5 stacks thorns does higher dps.

any video/ charts or something to proof you are right? Also what was the exact build you were using?

AnariiUK.7409:

It’s difficult to say since I have no pre-patch golem footage to compare it to. It definitely feels slower at KC though. Not sure if the overall damage went up, down or stayed the same.

Same feeling here, always thought it had to do with the quickness uptime after the patch. But it is pretty annoying now to push it if you are used to how it was before :P Still doable though even without help with pulls or pushes, just a bit harder.

kwgrooms.6140:

MrTJpwnz.4710:

kwgrooms.6140:

Moa is what allows you to have enough uptime to maintain protection all the way through the spirit 20-second cool down.

I would suggest you stand somewhere use your spirit and instantly kill it (or wait till it dies), just see what happens. (Hint: look at your buffs / boons)

Also how good is your fury uptime? As far as I see you can’t give 100% on your own but is it enough with the fury that chrono gives with the signet? And what is the reason for taking healing spring over other healing skills (Glyph or water spirit)?

Not sure if you are serious or what you are getting at with killing the spirits. Let me know if I’m missing something.

Fury is absolutely 100% through Call of the Wild. There are times I will have over 2 minutes of Fury.

Someone else on another site made the comment about Healing Spring and I have since converted the theory (including above) to incorporate Glyph of Rejuvenation in almost all of the fights.

I was serious, your spirits will keep giving the buffs (and boons if traited for roughly 15 seconds when they die, this will make the down time of your spirit roughly 10 seconds (or roughly 5 seconds with alacrity).

As for the healing I personally think that there are 3 decent heal options for druid, the glyph, healing spring and water spirit (only if traited though). As you are a healing druid and always have a staff and a high regen uptime through your traited warhorn 5, i think that the trap is a bit overkill for regen. Also the glyph gives a stack of grace of the land which is always nice.

The healing spring is in my opinion only worth it in fights where there are a decent amount of condi’s (like sloth or matt), and you don’t have access to regen and not playing with a staff (condi druid for example). Water spirit is good for fights where you also don’t play with staff and in fights with less condi pressure (or if it is taken care off already ofc). Sad that the water spirit requires the nature magic trait line causing it to be used less frequently. Sad cause I pretty much like the skill / effects.

kwgrooms.6140:

Moa is what allows you to have enough uptime to maintain protection all the way through the spirit 20-second cool down.

I would suggest you stand somewhere use your spirit and instantly kill it (or wait till it dies), just see what happens. (Hint: look at your buffs / boons)

Also how good is your fury uptime? As far as I see you can’t give 100% on your own but is it enough with the fury that chrono gives with the signet? And what is the reason for taking healing spring over other healing skills (Glyph or water spirit)?

An option that allows you to adjust the amount of DPS logs you get from the golem. It is now 5 (every 20%) but would be nice if you could higher that.

Vukorep.3081:

Okay. One more question. How often are the buffs applied on allies?
Like if i place a spirit of sun (the one that applies burning) and i have 50people running trough the spirit will they all get "Enchanted"by the spirit and gett a chance to apply burning?

As in how often does the spirit pulse its buff on peopke around?

No your spirit is pulsing its buff every 3 seconds to 5 players. The buff stays like 6 seconds so theoretically the maximum amount of people you can buff is 10 players. Though the spirit will prioritize people in your party/subgroup, then the closest player. So if you are in a party/subgroup the total amount of players will be lower.

Bast Bow.2958:

Yeah I was just thinking you’re not dealing dmg for 3 secs because you’re rooted, but I guess that doesn’t make much of a difference then compared to the 2 to 5 bleeding plants vs the glyph of unity in normal form

you can interrupt the 3 seconds cast, basicly the skill first plants the seeds and then you are 3 sec invunerable, so once you are channeling the skill you can interrupt that part, the plants will still spawn.

Also as it is about the core ranger build the glyph is not available, so it is either Entangle or Take root, and Take root is even with its insane CD a few times better then Entangle.

Prophet.1584:

THanks for compiling all the data and builds.

It’s not hard to believe pure ranger condi out dps’s druid but I never would have thought it would be that big of a difference.

it is even a bigger difference if you are a sylvari ranger with the Take Root elite skill :P (with Take Root you can get over 40k)

AnariiUK.7409:

I’d still take a tiger though, due to revenants being less common.

Why would you take tiger? I mean the druid in your subgroup can take the tiger, when druid is playing without Nature Magic perma fury was doable if you took marksmanship for the warhorn #5 on pet swap, and the chrono gives some fury now aswell (10 sec per SoI on 100% boon dur). Do you think the subgroup still is on low fury? If you have a condi druid it might be a problem but for power / magi it shouldn’t really be a problem i think.

Jerus.4350:

AnariiUK.7409:

Did a couple of tests earlier now that crossfire is fixed.

It seems to peak at about 40k DPS (with some shenanigans) against the small golem, my rotations could be improved slightly. Video here.

Interestingly, that means ranger is actually the highest DPS in the game against small targets.

Curious why Bristleback? Thought Lynx/Tiger were the top damage choices. Is his position inside the enemy making a difference?

I think cause of the trait that gives bleeding when your pet crits, as bristleback does alot of hits it is probably better then the lynx. Wondering if that 39k dps is with or without infusions though

Mr Greggles.5908:

It’s because the builds are poorly optimised. It is necessary to incorporate assassin’s gear if you wish to min/max the dps on the build, however, you won’t reach 100% Critical Hit Chance without Superior Sigil of Accuracy and perhaps Truffle Steak food anyways.

With the gear in the second build (S/A LB power) you will reach exactly 100% crit chance if you have spotter banner of discipline and fury AND you are flanking the boss while on sword. If you are on longbow you will undercap by 1 precision. No need for accuracy sigil of food with precision on it.

When testing this build I compared it to full zerker and the difference was pretty good noticable.

you should contact support i guess.

The weekly raid rewards are fine and I think they should stay like it is now. Though daily rewards would be nice. This could be done with somekind of Daily raid achievements, where for example you have to kill VG, or do Slippery Slubling achievement or similar. Every day they reset and other set daily achievements are available. It keeps the raiding fresh, and somewhat different difficulties can be implemented with the daily achievements (low man kills or kill boss X within 4 min or something like that). Also different reward scales can be implemented that is related to the daily’s achievement difficulty.

But what something that needs to be implemented in the raids at this moment (it should already have been in the game tbh) is a option to reset your raid instances once you cleared them. The game is keeping people from doing raids multiple times a week which is a bad thing for the raid community. I know you can enter them with pugs but if you want to do it again with your static raid group you will need to find someone that can open the instance etc etc.

similar problem here, I finished a match just before the patch launched, when I wanted to leave the match it reloaded me in the match (and the rest of the players aswell). Now when I want to queue it says I am still in a match, which causes that I can’t queue at all..

Joxer.6024:

We did just that last night and I ran condi, going off what most folks said here. Red Guard died first and team stayed healed yet at the end when we killed VG of course a pug had to have a go….“Why run vipers, why run 2 druids, etc.?”
Why do people feel the need to be so toxic, and it was mostly a guild run anyways with 2 pugs. This guy refused TS, “didn’t need”, which was fine but then dies on first GC.
Ah well, was still fun and that’s the point!

Not alot of people are aware of the huge buffs a druid gives to the group, guess you’ll have to accept that at some point :P Glad you had fun playing it though

If you are talking about DPS meters during boss fights, nope there isn’t a official one from Anet and I doubt that there ever will be one.

Though Anet added a DPS training area in the raid lobby (portal near the bank) where you can test your dps. Here you can give yourself all the appropriate buffs and boons you want and have different enemy settings (Large/small hitbox, moving or static, condi’s etc.).

Every 20% of the golem’s health your personal DPS is given in your chat, including the time of the fight. With this you can test your rotations and test certain scenario’s and see what suits you best.

Using 3rd party programs to check your DPS is often not accurate and might be against the ToS of gw2. It might give a decent indication though

Agree with you. But pugs only want 1 druid in raid, everytime. Only time you’ll get to run 2 druids is in an organized or semi-organized one.

I don’t pug that often recently but everytime I do pugs run in a 4-4-2 setup. I am on EU server so that might be a difference. But ye in a 7-2-1 setup playing a condi druid is a bit harder (but still doable on gorse and sabetha!)

Lynnie.7213:

CondiDruid in raids are very niche. To get to run that you probably have to know the people you raid with? Pugs will more likely ask you for reaper.

Not necessarily, the best team composition for raids at this moment is a 4-4-2 composition. The first two subgroups have a PS warrior a druid and 2 DPS/utility classes. The 3rd subgroup is the chrono with a revenant.

So to best composition already requires 2 druids. Why 2 druids? Well druid boost the DPS of your subgroup hugely with buffs like Spotter, Frost Spirit, Glyph of Empowerment, Grace of the Land. Even if 2 druids result in overhealing it is worth taking with you.

In wing 1 the healing that is required is not that huge so it is perfectly fine to bring a more healing orientated druid and a condi druid instead of 2 healing orientated druids. This will still give your team all the buffs, does good dps considering it is a druid and healing.

So aslong as you don’t have 2 druids taking a condi druid is better overall dps then adding a condi reaper.

If you play with a 7-2-1 or similar where you are the only druid i wouldn’t recommend using condi druid though it is easily doable on a condi druid aswell and still being able to heal the team up. Though it requires skill of the druid, but also skill of you group which is not always the case.

The main job for a druid is healing & buffing your group, and that no matter what kind of build you play (full healer, LB/S A zerker or condi) you will always be there for your heals and group buffs like Spotter, Grace of the Land, Glyph of Empowerment and Frost Spirit and Druid is also very good on giving a high fury uptime to your subgroup with the tiger pet.

At this moment Condi druid is the highest dps build for a druid. This doesn’t mean that the druid is not healing anymore or buffing the group, that is still the main role of the druid. You just sacrifice some healing power and the staff weapon to achieve more DPS. This is usefull in situations where your group is more experienced with the content and allows your group to clear the content faster. At this moment Condi druid is most viable in wing 1, and is in my opinion outplayed by the zerker or healer variant (depending on the boss) on wing 2 and 3. Due to having no staff and 0 healing power makes this build harder to play of course, and the overall healing is less. This is why most pug-groups ask for a zealot or magi healer, basicly a druid with alot of healing power and a staff to keep everyone alive.

What you have been told is true, going in CA is a dps loss for yourself, but your job is to heal people and buff people, as that increases the group DPS alot more then your own dps when not going in CA.

So the answer to your question is: Condi druid is viable to bring in wing 1, but most pug groups prefer a full healer druid.

Overall not really your question but I really love to play druid, the playstyle in raids feels completely different and unique compared to the other classes of course cause of its job. It might be hard to get used to it but is really alot of fun (even when not playing condi druid )!

Whenever I use a glyph on druid the skill will be on its cooldown. But after roughly 1 or 2 seconds (it varies per glyph) the cooldown restarts. I have tested this with different trait settings and I am sure of that the traits are not causing this problem. This problem is also encountered when in Celestial avatar form. This bug is best visible on the healing glyph where the cooldown restarts after roughly 2 seconds.

Mainly 3 and 4 are big heals (of which 3 also is a daze and 4 is a mobile water field). Number 5 is a pretty good offensive (but also defensive thanks to the slow condition) skill, you won’t be able to move while using this skill though.

I see some people here that say that you have to ignore skill 2, but I don’t agree on that. Most of the times I use 3 or 4 first (so they get the benefit from Quickdraw trait) after that 2 then 3 or 4 (depending on which 1 I used before) then 2 then again 3 or 4 (the same as the first one I used).

The condi cleanse the blind can be pretty good. Also a little trick is when you want to leave CA, use skill 2 just before you leave it. The delayed healing the seed does will help you charge up your astral force quicker!

Haleydawn.3764:

Oh oh. I did this and paniced. I learned the recipes on my Weaponsmith by accident.
Go to speak to Cymbel on a different character and she’ll give the recipe again.

Thanks alot, it worked!

ow that would be sick will test it soon

Nope.. sadly enough not.. I guess I have to train to lvl 400 huntsman on my ranger aswell

I am working on the Chuka & Champawat legendary and I got to the point where I need to do the baby book note subcollection. When you get the book you’ll also get the recipe’s needed for this subcollection. Now I was so stupid to use double click it on my ranger, which isn’t a lvl 400 huntsman.. Is there a way to get the recipe’s again so I can use it on my other character with lvl 400 huntsman?

If I would go as a frontline engineer I would take somthing like this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhqrY9VwdLQ+FLVGF9bH33d41VMdl4yEAlHA-TlRQwAZV/BkSvOKDAqDYlSQA7PQKAmUGB-w

Alchemy traitline, adaptive armor, hammer and Toolkit should give you enough survivability. You can choose the last traitline for yourself. Tools, inventions, explosives, firearms, they all have their pro’s and cons. It’s also a matter of what you like, if you can survive like this etc. Elixir B can also be changed out for something else, like elixir U, bombkit, bulwark gyro, maybe even blast gyro if they fix it, throw mine etc. This should give a good base ‘template’ to build on further.

2 vids of me playing on scrapper with juggernaut during the beta.

blast gyro could still work aswell if you use it on targets that are in melee range so the gyro doesn’t have to move a big distance. The AoE superspeed is reasonable i guess…