Guild Wars 2

You can check the qt website for updated meta builds and some game play.

http://qtfy.enjin.com/ranger

Alternatively you can check

http://metabattle.com/

As for gearing, I’d recommend sticking to berserker gear while you level up. Condi gear is not so accessible at early game. Aim for the S/A Lb spotter build (in metabattle) at first and once you go into the HoT areas you can start working on the condi gear.

Nothing is good about revenant (definitely not biased opinion coming from a ranger main)…

Now talking about support in this game. Guild wars is a bit different than most MMOs as healing is not the primary defensive support. You can get around without much healing and still be very effective in the game. This is also true for druid. The main function of a druid is to provide offensive support through buffs and defensive support through boons like vigor and protection. You can do this while still providing decent damage output. Even when using a healing power set, your main function is to provide buffs while the healing output should come as a byproduct of that. This mindset is what made me like druid specialisation in the end.

If you still don’t like druid, you are not forced to take it. Base condi ranger is one of the highest dps specs in the game right now. This makes ranger the most versatile class right now, at least as far as pve is concerned.

Before going into topic, I used to play elementalist a lot in the dung speedrun days, but I haven’t played the class that much since HoT as it became more of a dps class rather than having the utility it had in pre-HoT meta, and I’m usually filling a utility role as it’s easier to carry PUG groups. That being said, elementalist is still my 2nd go-to class of choice.

The thing is that recently, when trying to pre-stack might, I often found myself cancelling Dragon’s Tooth when using the fire fields on the off-hand weapon (tried all). Before this never happened to me and the fire field skill would just queue instead of cancelling the skill. As far as I know, this was the same for all weapon skills where they’d just queue instead of cancelling the skill. Is it just me that somehow lost the proper timing for not playing the class or is it actually an in-game change??? Did someone else had this problem?

Hi,

Personally, I would reccomend a Berzerker set for a very simple reason: you can easily mix the berzerker and magi sets without that much detrimental to CAF generation. The power and magi builds use very similar traits making it easy to mix the sets and tune how much healing power you need. It’s also very easy to use either LB+S/x or Staff+S/x or pure sw in a hybrid build without that much detriment to any of them.

The condi build however relies more on sharpened edges and on the WS traitline (also possible with NM but a larger sacrifice than a power build), and the fact that it has slower CAF generation means it is not so optimal to play a hybrid condi/healer build. I would reccomend a condi druid to focus on dmg more and offensive support rather than sacrifice stats for not such a big profit. That also means it fits a different role and a different style if that’s what you are after.

guess what… both teams stuck… :/

Khailyn.6248:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQJATTjUqQBL2vCWsAXLGyDKeDK4fvT4h/t3AoAW7KcyE-TBDBwAAuCANeAAJVGQU9HjKNqpLYqSMo7Pkw0gGlgSOEAPMzRIARLAA-e

This is the build i was running for PvE until recently and when dueling with guildies. Very high spike damage.

You are running into a lot of mistakes with the build that result in you loosing efficiency.

For the armor, as it was mentioned before you should consider fury gives 20% crit chance, spotter is 7% and banner of discipline gives another 7% and Hunter’s Tactics another 10%. If with any of these you will go over 100% Crit chance, you are just wasting stats.

Signet of the Hunt is useful when you combine it with big hitting attacks, such as Maul. If you use it on rapid fire or barrage, it’ll just trigger on the first hit. Plus, you have easy access to swiftness (everytime you change weapons, elite) so the movement speed is not so important.
Signet of renewel is a bit unreliable for pvp as you can’t control it and a condi burst will likely kill you or your pet (if you trigger it). In PvE, there are not so many conditions flying around and taking healing spring for a group wide condi cleanse might be better (not talking about raids as usually you just take druid). Signet of the Wild is actually one of the best skills we have and can set up a huge burst if you trigger it.

Going to traits, Predator’s Instinct is situational and you don’t have any other traits synergizing with it. Any other choice is far better.
Lead the Wind is good for pvp if you’re ranging, however it doesn’t fully corresponds to a 10% increase in dps, and, especially for PvE, you get far better results with Predator’s Onslaught.
Light on your Feet competes with Steady focus. It forces you to dodge while Seady focus requires full endurance. You gain much more from Quickdraw, allowing you to use 2 longbows and proccing QD on Barrage, allowing for perma cripple, and thus access to both Predator’s Onslaught and Steady Focus. In PvP it allows you to set up consecutive Rapid Fire’s for an unexpected and deadly burst.
Going to Wilderness Survival, it’s usually taken for pvp or for condi builds. Expertise training is a big dps increase to your pet and amazing for other strategies as well. It goes well with Sharpened Edges, increasing duration of bleeding from your pet. Also, it increases duration of fear, taunt or immobilize. Making it very important to set up bursts in pvp.
Refined Toxins and Poison Master are decent together, but consider you have no Condition damage. If you are planning to have the pet apply conditions, then you should switch frequently and take Clarion’s Bond on MM.

First of all sorry for long post, but I hope it will help.

So… good thing about having 2 longbows is that you can trigger Quickdraw. Bad thing is that they share cooldowns and as mentioned before they don’t have a good sustained dps. You definitely don’t want to take it for dung, but it might be viable for WvW. In this case I’d recomend taking Shared Anguish, and Wilderness knowledge, with a two survival skills.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNAT8Xn0rCtqg1sCGsCEtil9ADOueX3rLNhAwoj5CEwGBnwkwTD-TxRBwAPuIA3U/55+DmVCeV5HKdDAeCAkCQPRWA-e

In terms of group play and meta, it depends on the content. For longer fights, condi is better, but for dungs you want to go with berzerker as you have a quite high burst and bosses just melt.

The build Maximum Potato posted is good for pug groups with no might, but if you have a PS War, you want to run something more focused on buffing the group instead of focusing on your dps. (Also Axe off-hand is higher dps than warhorn as Axe 4 hits twice and even whirling defense is a small dps increase.)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNAT8Xn0rCtqg1sCGsCEtil9Aj5CEwGBwx176edpJEAGdnwk0DD-TxRBwAXV+9c/hHXEAzKBvp+DKdDAeCAkCQPRWA-e

If you have a revenant in the party, swap out the tiger for a linx/jaguar for higher dps. I found I rarely swap out the pet, as it causes it to loose buffs (please note that without beastmastery, you don’t gain anything from swaping pets). So most times I have a electric wyvern (for breakbars) or a smokescale (for smoke fields) on swap instead of two felines, but you can also keep the linx/jaguar as a second pet if your pet is dying. In this case you might want to take Clarion bond to help upkeep fury on the group.

Just a few more tricks, you might want to keep a staff and a warhorn in the inventory for blasting might and stealth. Warhorn is especially useful for blasting as it also give swiftness for skips or fury for combats. You can use it before combat and swap weapons to your combat set before engaging.

About condi ranger/druid, I will not mention as it doesn’t seem to fit your style. But if you’re interested you can always check youtube videos for raid content with condi druids.

If you want some advice on builds for ranger/druid, the best would be to go to the ranger forum… Here you have too many ppl who don’t understand the class.

On ranger/druid, the optimal set depends on the duration of the fight, with power builds getting ahead for short fights (~20s) and condi builds shinning in longer fights. This means that for dungeons and low lvl fractals, it is better to go with power. And in high lvl fractals or raids, it is better to use a condition build. A note needs to be added that most pug raid groups expect you to run a healer build.

For power build, the best is a frost spotter build (check metabattle) with LB+S/A. This enables you to have a high burst while still buffing allies. About LB just ignore the hate, as this is the highest burst weapon you have (with rapid fire and barrage). LB 4 is a cc and you can use it for the breakbar. Other skills are a dps loss (If a warrior starts complaining about LB, you can use LB 4 to push a mob out of the warriors 100 Blade and then use Axe 4 to pull it towards you once the warrior reaches it.) After that, you want to swap out of LB for a more sustained dps weapon until your cooldowns are back up.

More selfish builds are also possible but you are giving up very significative dps buffs for you entire party, making them not as good.

I don’t really get why you are trying to compare numbers on a class whose primary function is ofensive support. If you want to know the true value of the ranger/druid in terms of dps, it would be better to test the dps on a full squad (no ranger boons except those applied during the rotation as they are not 100% uptime for the whole squad) and subtract the dps in the absence of the ranger/druid.

Same principle goes for other classes.

As far as solo PvE content goes, you’re better off forgetting druid and focusing on the core ranger specs. Druid is a support line so, just by selecting you are sacrificing a lot of damage without much return.

For group PvE, I have been running a zerker offensive support build and it’s been fun. It’s based around buffs from glyph of empowerment, Grace of the Land, spotter and FS. It sacrifices personal dps to offer more group support, some heal and condi cleanse.

As for healing, currently it still doesn’t have a place in the game. You’re more effective by focusing on offensive support that trying to heal your allies which either way would have their health pools already high. Situation might change with raids but will have to wait until they come out to see the final result.

I’m glad this is still being discussed but I’m still surprised to see many ppl who do not main ranger still here. We can all agree that WHaO got a bit OP. The duration of quickness, protection, and other boons was a bit too high.

However, thinking PvEwise, Ranger already had access to a long duration of quickness and the increment allowed us to sustain our dps for longer. I’d say this would put us in the same level as a warrior in terms of group utility (probably with higher dps in exchange of lower group buffs). The main difference is when pugging that we could actually self buff instead of depending on unreliable sources of boons.

In terms of PvP, you are vulnerable to boon strip, cc’s, soft cc’s, condies, burst, and probably something else I forgot. Yes, you could build up might and burst down a player very quickly, but for any fight that would last for more than 5s you’d be in disadvantage. You have to give up condi cleanse, signet of stone and stun breaks so you have that kind of burst. Whenever you swap pets (and remember that your pet is very vulnerable to aoe’s), your pet doesn’t retain boons, which means it becomes more difficult to stack them. Even in order to retain long durations of Quickeness, you had to give up some of your damage, which ended up badly as you depended on your opening burst.

Going to WvW, if you’re zerging then WHaO didn’t bring anything. The extra protection is nice, but let’s face it, you are still very much dependent on what other players are doing to help you survive. For roaming, that’s a different story. Yes, you could stack up quickness for a few minutes before you actually entered a fight and you would be able to change skills so you’d not be giving up anything in the actual combat. If you swapped pets, yes, your pet would loose quickness, but let’s face it, you’d sill have 3min quickness and protection left to burst down an enemy player. This is OP and should be dealt with.

Finally, going to the fix, the idea of capping the duration of the boons is good, it allows to keep boon stacking as a play-style while limiting the extralong durations of quickeness and protection. On the other hand, the extent to which it was done is ridiculous. I can barely see the increment on quickeness and protection, as I spend 1s (0.66s with quickness) casting a skill that is vulnerable to being interrupted and only gives me 2 extra seconds of quickness or protection. In terms of other boons, I have easy access to regeneration, fury and swiftness so a 4s increment to these boons is irrelevant. Might cap has already been extensively discussed, and I agree that the duration is actually in a good place but the cap at 3 might makes this skill lose any offensive utility it might have. At the moment, the only reason to take this skill is as a heal and it in many situations Toll Unguent is preferable. Only when you need a very high burst heal is that you’d take WHaO.
Doubling the duration of all boons except for might and removing the might cap seems a good way to go in order to fix the skill and give rangers a decent play-style based on synchronizing with your pets (both of them) in order to stack boons on you and your pet. This should give WHaO both offensive and defensive capabilities, which can fit differently according to the build we’re running.

When I’m trying to do the achievements for Hidden Arcana, nothing happens after I talk to Ogden. It allows me to talk to him, but nothing happens after I do so…