Showing Posts For Ralk.7106:
Astral Force generation has been awkward from the beginning. Celestial Avatar shouldn’t be gated by any particular weapon like staff; this limits druids from going for condition damage. Furthermore, CA shouldn’t be gated by weird skills like warhorn 4 or troll’s unguent. That didn’t make any sense at all.
I also don’t like the idea of needing to heal in order to activate our better healing abilities. Perhaps that works in raids, but I can’t see it working in PvP well. What good is burst healing if it isn’t available when it’s needed – like at the beginning of a team fight?
If we’re stuck with AF as a mechanic to fuel CA, then get rid of the cool-down. Druids shouldn’t be stuck with the worst of both worlds. Perhaps AF could be generated by time in combat or some other metric that doesn’t limit druids to very specific builds (tanky power build with staff). Perhaps damage should build AF as fast as healing so that staff doesn’t feel mandatory. Staff should be an option for those who want some sustained healing with their druid.
If AF can be done away with, why not just have a cool-down and fixed duration in CA? Then CA isn’t gated by specific abilities or weapons. CA could be available at the beginning of fights but limited by something like a 20 or 30 second CD. Then druid would be a flexible add-on to the existing ranger skill set, to be combined into builds in a number of different ways.
As is, it doesn’t feel good.
1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Necro
Build full zerker. There’s just no reason to be face-tanking mobs in high level fractals. You have to avoid damage while dispatching the enemy quickly. Use longbow, sword, axe, and warhorn as necessary.
If you want some protection, get your defense from traits and utilities. You might try something like 30/0/30/10/0. Then you can pick up spotter, signets affect you (for 6 sec invuln), bark skin, and protection on hit.
The reason for all the talk about the longbow now being viable is because it’s stacking fury which is helping with the output of the damage.
No, the fury bug is not the reason we’re talking about longbow being more effective.
Prior to this patch, but since release, longbow has received the following buffs:
– faster arrow travel (good for hitting other players)
– 20% autoattack speed reduction (1.25s -> 1s, which amounts to 25% more damage)
– faster #2 rapid fire channel
– faster knockback with #4 (I think? correct me if I’m wrong here)
– stealth with #3
Now, mid range autoattack damage has been increased by 15%. So, mid range autoattack damage over time has gone up 44% since release. This, combined with all the other buffs, are why people are viewing the longbow in a more positive light. It’s still situational, but it’s come a long ways.
SB does more at < 1000 range, LB does more at > 1000 (rumours of a SB nerf not withstanding).
I’m not sure this is still true – it certainly was at release though. I think LB breaks even with shortbow between 500 and 1000 range now.
Regardless it’s our strongest weapon currently in spvp and wvw.
Longbow is certainly not our strongest weapon in sPvP. Ranger power builds are all but non-existent in tPvP. The three strongest tPvP ranger builds (spirits, shouts, and traps) are all condition based and use different combinations of shortbow, axe, sword, dagger, torch, and horn.
Longbow is nice for zerg surfing in WvW. It’s not the best option for small group combat or solo roaming. I don’t expect that to change with the next patch.
Other sources of swiftness for ranger…
Out-of-combat: warhorn 5, rampage as one, traited shouts
Tagging critters: storm spirit
If mobs are nearby: I think you can manipulate the birds first ability
Item dependent: centaur runes (I’m addicted to these)
And if you’re willing to settle for +25% speed rather than +33%, you have signet of the hunt, runes of traveler, or runes of speed (did these get fixed?).
There’s a lot of options. I always thought rangers had pretty good access to swiftness.
Ranger longbow has come along ways since release but is still frustrating because 3 traits (piercing, range increase, and CD reduction) are necessary to fully utilize the weapon. Consider merging the piercing and range increase traits to a single master trait in marksmanship. The extra trait points would encourage build diversity and could be used for defensive options such as traited signet of stone, which the longbow ranger sorely needs.
I like the WxP system as is, specifically for the reason stated by ANet – character progression.
Now, it’s possible I’m in the minority. I have no idea. I don’t think the OP actually knows either.
I don’t understand the question… what does it mean to trigger a hint?
I love how the OP specifically asks for tanky condition regen builds and all you guys give him power builds…
OP, here’s what you’re looking for:
Use settler’s/apothecary gear with undead runes
Use food and nourishment that boosts condition damage and condition duration
Traits 0/0/30/30/10
Grab traits associated with shouts, regen, and protection, get condition removal from wilderness survival
Use condition weapons, I prefer sword/torch and shortbow, but you could mix in axe and dagger to your liking
Use geomancy sigils (helps a lot)
For pets, use wolf + 1 other dog, cat, or bird
For skills, take troll’s unguent, signet of the wild, guard, lightning reflexes, and rampage as one
This build is very strong in 1v1 situations and takes camps even easier than most. Spam guard for continuous regen and swiftness. Use troll’s unguent proactively before you take too much damage. Swap constantly to proc geomancy sigils. Outlast your opponents as they melt from conditions. You will occasionally stalemate versus other bunker builds, but you’ll outlast anyone else. Break away with lightning reflexes and sword #2 if you need to escape.
If I was roaming in a 5 man group, I would run spirits instead. If I was zerg surfing, I would run full zerker longbow with 1500 range for mad deeps.
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It’s not strictly a bug, but I definitely consider it an oversight. As far as I know, the behavior of SotW dates back to earlier times when you could not interact with objects (or stomp in PvP) when transformed. SotW active is considered a transformation.
I have been hoping this will be changed for quite some time. It seems bogus that our only non-elite source of stability cannot be used to stomp players in WvW or tPvP.
Stuff that I feel is good vs. thieves:
Even more toughness, perhaps a condition damage build with settler’s/apothecary gear
Bark skin is very underestimated, but you do lose out on condition removal then
Protection on hit from 1st major trait in nature’s line
Wolf fear
However, even with all that, I still think you have to completely outplay the thief to get a kill because they just have so many escape options.
I prefer ranger shouts to warrior and guardian shouts.
You gotta be kidding me. Guardian shouts (traited) with soldier runes are ridiculously strong. In addition to the boons they grant, each shouts strips 2 conditions from your group and adds one extra boon from conversion. Stand your ground is the only skill in the game granting group stability (unless I’m missing something?). “Save yourselves” didn’t receive the duration reduction in PvE/WvW, so it’s really on par with most elites.
Compare those to ranger shouts… “Protect me” is mediocre since it kills your pet. “Guard” has no real use other than spamming for swiftness/regen.
If you’re just starting out with spirit ranger, I would begin with a more defensive build. Something like this…
Gear:
Shaman’s amulet/gem
Undead runes
Geomancy sigils
Weapons (choose any of the following, they are all potentially strong in different situations):
shortbow (safest for teamfights), axe, torch, dagger, sword, warhorn
Skills:
For utilities, use sun spirit, earth spirit, and either frost spirit or storm spirit (again, your choice)
Natures’ renewal for elite.
Troll’s ungent or healing spring for your heal.
Traits:
x/x/30/30/x
Get the 3 spirit traits from the nature line. Get CC transferred to pet and conditions transferred to pet from wilderness survival. The rest can vary.
Pets:
1st pet is wolf, 2nd pet could be a drake, jaguar, bird, or another dog.
That’s a pretty good starting point. An offensive build could use rabid amulet/gem with bleed on crit sigil and trait and piercing arrows. There’s a lot of subtle variations that are better or worse depending on your team and your specific role.
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The only thing to worry about is the Tidal wave
The whole point of the post is to suggest staying at 1500 range specifically because you avoid the tidal wave (and the fear, too). I arrived at the same conclusion when I tried Teq on my ranger.
It is ridiculously easy to constantly DPS at 1500 range. I’m pretty sure 100 rangers could cheese-kill Teq this way without the need for any real significant coordination.
No, just no. GS is a defensive power weapon. Listen to what these guys are telling you.
Spirits are not just all about conditions. Only one out of 4 non-elite spirits grants you one condition every 10 seconds. There is no reason to build full out condition damage just for a 3 second burn every 10 seconds from sun spirit.
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The reason I believe these notes are legit is because they include several small fixes to problems most people weren’t even aware of. For example, outside the ranger community, who even realized that lightning reflexes had absurd range underwater? I imagine not many rangers even knew that the armor fish dealt a surprising amount of damage compared to a supposed “dps” pet like the shark. Some of these changes are very obscure yet reasonable.
it was a 7% damage nerf per shot.
No, it was not a 7% damage nerf per shot. No one anywhere even suggested that the damage decreased. The entire change and controversy was about rate of fire.
Below is an old quote from Anet:
“JonPeters said:
Took a couple of days to get debugging in on this. It is in fact a 40ms difference which equates to about 7% less damage when spamming 1. We made this change because it was creating some animation bugs to leave it where it was. It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay. If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.”
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“Went back and looked, yet it was in the notes, though from what I recall it was greater then they stated in the notes and it just broke the ability all together with QZ.”
This is a misconception that was further spread by those who failed to test for themselves. Here’s what happened:
The rate of shortbow autoattack fire was decreased (7% if I recall?). This was originally documented as an animation fix and later acknowledged as a nerf.
Several forum posters felt that SB auto during QZ was firing especially slowly and theorized that the combination of SB auto and QZ was broken. They did not back this up with data but nonetheless continued to spread the rumor.
Responsible forum posters disproved those rumors with actual data that verified that the rate of fire under QZ decreased correctly by 7%. They proved there was no additional undocumented nerf.
The masses of this forum failed to look for facts and continued to believe that SB auto + QZ was somehow now broken. For any that still believe this rumor, go test it yourselves before posting speculation.
Just trying to clear things up…
Durzlla does well with a condition (carrion) LB build using sun spirit. There’s sevral ways you can go.
Please don’t try to spread that again…
The initial thread detailing the performance (and by that I mean lack thereof) of that build was plenty long enough.
Longbow is for zerging. It’s such a poor choice for a dueling weapon given how well the shortbow fulfills that roll.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but all of these classes have nerfs that were applied in s/tPvP that did NOT get propagated to WvW.
Guardian heal on dodge roll.
Ele’s healing and mobility (someone can fill in the details)
Thief reveal timer
It’s too bad that these classes aren’t receiving the needed balance changes in WvW.
Pet leash range was already mentioned in a SoTG with Anet developers. I think they acknowledged that it was a little high? In Battle of Khylo (clock tower map), it’s ridiculous that I can send my pet all the way to clock tower from the side points. So I expect that a reduction in leash range is already on its way.
However, 1200 would be stupidly short – especially given that longbow range can get up to 1500. I would expect you’ll see something like 2000 for range.
Regarding pet healing:
Yes, they heal very quickly when the ranger is out of combat. Attacking the pet does not keep the ranger in combat. But, if the pet attacks you, the ranger is in combat. So it’s not like a pet will be killing you with out-of-combat healing. That never happens. And if a pet is running away from you, you shouldn’t be wasting your time hitting it anyways.
IMO, spirits (non-elites) are getting close to “just OK” in dungeons. I tried it out because I was excited about frost spirit now giving a 7% damage boost to the group. And 10% damage reduction from stone spirit is decent, too. While they do hold up better to damage, their actives are still ridiculously slow and not even all that useful. I was also bothered by the cast time. I can’t do damage during the time that I’m re-casting the spirits. I also don’t like that their benefits only extend for the standard 500 (or is it 600?) range. There was no way I could buff my whole group and position correctly to maximize longbow damage at the same time. Ultimately, I felt like I was still contributing more to the group with a 30/30/10/0/0 build just to maximize damage.
Spirits are still complete garbage in tPvP. Their benefits are no where near good enough for how fast they’ll get eaten by massive AoE. The same arguments about slow activation and cast time apply to an even greater extent in tPvP. And since tPvP often consists of battles with less than 4v4, your spirits will rarely benefit even the majority of your group (the buff range exacerbates this further). I feel that for spirits to be sufficiently beneficial in tPvP, they would have to be downright awesome in a PvE dungeon setting.
The overall best 1v1 build for ranger is probably a fairly standard tPvP trap build.
Carrion amulet and jewelry
Shortbow and something else
(lots of options, I use sword/horn for mobility and dodging)
Troll ungent, fire trap, poison trap, spike trap, entangle
Swap poison trap for lightning reflex if you need a stun break
Something like 10 30 30 0 0 for traits
Run drakehound and wolf for knockdown
Nightmare runes (undead is ok too)
The problem with tankier builds is that they just stalemate versus another bunker build. This trap build can kill an opposing bunker and still gives you enough vitality to survive burst.
D; Spirit of nature
Since last patch (February 26th) it has been unable to insta-res downed/dead allies. That was the only good thing about it. it is only broken in WvW, not in PVE.
False. I’ve been insta-res’ing my downed allies all month in dungeons. Perhaps you’re overestimating the range of that ability.
Reason ranger’s seem better in SPvP over WvW go check past patch notes on class changes in SPvP, if they used half the changes they done to SPvP in WvW ranger might move back up little.
To my knowledge, there is not a single ranger balance change that wasn’t applied to both sPvP and WvW.
Even beyond the ranger, there’s only a few skills that are split.
Guardian shout “Save yourselves”
Guardian trait heal on evade roll
Superior Lyssa rune 6th ability (I think?)
There’s also 1 or 2 Elementalist splits
Also, FYI, rangers became popular in sPvP after pets started closing the distance before initiating melee attacks. This made pets more difficult to kite. But this was a minor effect. Trap rangers became effective at de-bunkering a guardian. The guardian nerfs may have spurred the popularity of trap rangers.
Plenty of rangers go full berserker and enjoy it.
Longbow is a power weapon. Axe/torch is a condition set. I don’t understand why you would want to combine the two.
Just wanted add my support to some of the existing ideas here. I want the following very reasonable enhancements to ranger pets.
1. Pets should inherit agony resistance.
This should be top priority because it has zero effect outside of FoTM. There’s even already a display for AR in the pet stats window – it just always reads zero.
2. Pet F2 abilities need faster animations.
I want to use F2 abilities to actually react to my enemy, but they’re just so slow. Take, for example, the brown bear’s condition removal. Often, the condition I want to remove may be gone by the time the F2 animation goes off.
3. Pets need a dodge.
So many of the dungeon encounters require players to dodge out of high damage AoE attacks. Just like a player, pets need some sort of escape to stay alive.
And another random pet gripe I’m sure many of you have experienced:
Pet F2 abilities that grant friendly buffs often activate as if they are attacks. For example, consider the red moa F2 – this ability grants fury to allies. If I have an enemy target when I use red moa F2, my red moa will run to 600 range of that enemy to activate the F2 animation. Then, regardless of whether or not my moa was on passive, my moa will go to attack the targeted enemy. I understand this is often desired with offensive F2 abilities, but my red moa and fern hound should not be moving in to attack an enemy when I want fury or regeneration.
U gotta work on your tactics.
Didn’t you read the post? He apparently won the fight. But the whole thing is rather confusing since he seems to be suggesting that the ranger played well. But this ranger apparently killed himself due to retaliation damage. I don’t understand the point…
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As some have mentioned Entangle does NOT deal 20k points of straight damage, it is dealt through bleeding damage and as bleeding IS a condition, it IS effected by building condition damage. As the tooltip can be bugged, (as with virtually any skill of any mmo) it is true that your condition damage does not always convert correctly. HOWEVER this is not always true.
Way to state the obvious…
Of course the tool tip is not always incorrect. I’m telling you that it is incorrect for entangle. It is incorrect for this specific instance we’re talking about. And I’m giving you a method to verify it for yourself. Since you obviously have not done so, let’s see if I can make this more simple for you…
The Entangle tool tip shows 20k bleed damage as IF your condition damage stat is increasing the bleed damage of entangle.
This is NOT actually happening because the tool tip is incorrect.
Verify this for yourself by observing the damage on the bleed ticks of entangle (43 if I recall).
Note that the bleed damage is NOT increased (to 100+ per tick).
Sigh. Please don’t spread misinformation.
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Entangle does NOT do 20,000 damage. The tool tip is incorrect. The tool tip calculates damage as if you’re condition damage was enhancing the bleeding from entangle. However, this does not actually occur. To verify, just use entangle and observe that your bleeds from entangle do not tick for 100+ damage like your bleeds from spike trap or crossfire.
A trap build is nothing new, and yours is far from the best out there.
Just be aware that when you ask this question, many people will pull “magic” numbers out of their #$%. You can actually look at how the stats are distributed on various pieces of gear and determine optimums for certain scenarios. There is no simple answer here because crit damage becomes more valuable the more precision you have. Having precision and crit damage without sufficient power would be useless.
However, with that said, going through those calculations is often not necessary. Most people decide whether they want to be tanky or contribute massive damage. Most tanky players won’t bother to build any precision or crit damage. Most DPS players will just maximize both.
You’ve laid out a lot of strange requirements for your build…
You are apparently dead set on using axe/torch and sword/dagger. Sword/dagger is a very versatile combination since it can be used for condition damage, crit damage, or tanking. But axe/torch is really only useful for a condition damage build, so that’s what you should be building. I don’t understand why you “don’t want to rely on condition damage” when you’ve chosen a weapon set that does exactly that. Also, since you want to run sword/dagger in dungeons, you better be somewhat tanky in order to survive.
I would run one of two armor sets:
carrion (cond dmg, power, vit)
apothecary (healing, cond dmg, toughness)
Apothecary gear lends itself very well to 0 0 30 10 30 build. Take the regen traits and healing spring for 100% uptime on regeneration. Make sure to use the signet of the wild for added passive regen. Grab the pet regen for the BM 30 trait. Run lightning reflexes for addition dodging.
You could also consider a signet build like 30 0 30 x x. Get defensive utilities from wilderness survival. Take the marks 30 trait so signets affect you. Slot protect me and signet of stone for 12 seconds of near invincibility. There’s a lot of small variations on a signet build. You can still run regen traits for constant regeneration. You can still slot signet of the wild if you have significant healing power. This is probably the better build if you’re running FoTM because agony will destroy your pet no matter what you do.
Axe 2 is already nerfed – the skill is broken, it doesn’t do hit damage, only bleed damage. It’s borderline useless.
Axe 2 is not broken. When activated, each of the 5 axes does 1/5 of the total damage (the physical damage, not the bleed damage) listed on the tool tip. I assume this is working as intended because similar skills such as our shortbow 2 (poison volley) work exactly the same way.
Traps have not been changed. Condition duration is stacking the same as always. I just went to the mists and tested my trap damage. In full carrion/nightmare, my three traps are just enough to kill the heavy golem – the same as they’ve always done.
Nice to know zerker lb works ok for zergs though. I"m assuming LB shots pierce or can be specced to? WvW zerg play with minimal AE dmg = almost useless.
Yes. You can go 30/30/10/0/0. You’ll get both piercing arrows and longer range from marksmanship. It’s worth noting that longbow 5 (barrage) is amazing AoE damage for assaulting keeps and damaging downed players. But it does have a long CD and deals damage over time.
For WvW zerg, I run full glass-cannon longbow with sword/horn. Do decent damage from 1500 range. Horn gives you swiftness. Sword 2 skill can get you out of trouble.
If you want to buff your group, use red moa for 15 sec fury on f2. That coupled with warhorn 5 can give your group near permanent fury.
Ranger’s support skills are spirits, which unfortunately are terrible right now (the effects are weak and the spirits die easily). So I think you’re better off just going for damage. In a smaller skirmish, say 5v5, you could consider a full condition build with traps. But that lacks range for zerging.
I can solo supply camps no problem in full berserker gear. And I do it much faster than if I was in cleric’s gear, so it’s probably ultimately safer. Your pets will tank for you, so you don’t need to be tanky yourself (when fighting simple AI).
Wow, I totally botched the math on my initial post. I’m deleting most of what was here due to the inaccuracy.
Sigil of Air or Sigil of Fire is the winner for a berserker build with high crit damage.
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I hope it’s intended. The amount of weapon swapping necessary for optimal play was a bit ridiculous. Most weapons that boosted mobility were just swapped in to move around the map and never actually used in combat. Now there’s actually a trade-off necessary for mobility if the weapon must remain equipped.