Guild Wars 2

It’s a good question. I’d like to know where the Stalwart PvP set went as well.

I would like to know about this as well. Are Stalwart and the other sets/pieces available in the region reward tracks now or something?

Reminds me a lot of my build I posted in the WVW condition warrior thread. It’s overall very good but like others said you’ll find difficulty with clearing conditions. I’d recommend swapping the shield with a warhorn but it’s something of a tradeoff depending on your playstyle.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQNBjYDbk0JGuFy3hJOggeohfxWcUAFLRShYwGA-jEzAIMAMGMeDi4ATfAICQZxioxWdjW5NI9iwqqJiq12YCBoYOA-w

THEmeltor is right. For sword and conditions, I fully recommend a balanced build. Check this one out:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQNBjYDbk0JGuFy3hJOggeohfxWcUAFLRShYwGA-jEzAIMAMGMeDi4ATfAICQZxioxWdjW5NI9iwqqJiq12YCBoYOA-w

You achieve intense pressure from conditions but with the added effect of maintaining a fairly heavy load of direct damage. You’re critting almost all the time with a minimum floor of 47% (67% with fury, more on that later) on the longbow and you have a good amount of crit damage at 34%. plus with 1k healing power you can make the most out of your passive healing along with whatever regeneration you get from dogged march or converting poison with the warhorn. You get two forms of endure pain for a total of 10 seconds every minute to help you catch a breather while regenerating, and you can maintain steady damage and safety using the longbow while controlling an opponent with the sword. The added fury from immobilization means that between both weapon sets and leg specialist you’ll always have close to 70% crit chance. This with the boon and condition duration gives you a surprisingly large amount of possibilities to extend your survivability while delivering good damage and control across all aspects of gameplay. 8s AoE Weakness, 6s AoE blind, potential protection from warhorn, cripples and immobilization everywhere, etc.

As an option you can slot out the precision signet for a banner of tactics to bring along a dedicated burst heal with regeneration on its 2 and to improve your utility even further for survival and group support. However, keep in mind the precision signet functions to increase your overall damage (along with deep strike) and to provide a failsafe source of adrenaline for your passive healing when you choose to use burst skills.

For an elite, SoR is probably the go-to standard but if you’re human you should look into Reaper of Grenth. Combine that with the sword and you get an extra source of condition damage while your opponent is going nowhere.

Overall I think this is the best possible build for a hybrid warrior.

And before anyone criticizes me for using celestial, you have to understand that if you need anything more than three stats, going celestial is almost always the better choice due to the overall balance it gives you while pushing crit damage % almost as high as dedicated gear. You simply get way more out of its spread and I think the stats on this build shows you how powerful this can be for a warrior who wants to do hybrid damage while having a form of sustain with very high armor.

Anyways, I like full condition specs a lot (and I have an apothecary ranger) but the problem with them is that they often push you into overrelying on condition-loaded shots for sustaining any real damage. This isn’t a problem for the ranger naturally due to the quick cooldowns and large variety of rapidfire conditions but for a warrior you don’t get much freedom outside of the autoattack on the sword. The longbow is at best situational and feels too limited when only given condition damage considering what it can actually do when pushed to realize its full potential.

It’s worth pointing out that the trait Zephyr’s Speed now lists 3 seconds of quickness which would be a slight improvement for what it does. I haven’t test it myself yet but if it works that way then that would make it viable for spiking at least.

If you’re escaping, you can just pop Balanced Stance and use your horn and sword leap to ensure a swift and comfortable ride. This is also really useful for getting inside keeps when they’re being taken and you need that extra push to survive when getting immobilized or chilled. As a matter of fact, Balanced Stance is wonderful with boon runes. If you’re crazy like me you can even toy with Sure-Footed to get it to almost 16 seconds. It’s hardly necessary but when you have a single utility that grants you stability almost 40% of the time you’re doing pretty good. Sure-Footed also helps Endure Pain and Frenzy (if only by a second or so, but still). Regardless, with 12.75s stability and convenient condition clearing I’d say you’re pretty set for defense.

I recommend a Sigil of Energy on the warhorn in your build. I imagine you’ll be swapping to sword and warhorn mostly for defensive purposes so it’s just another way of enhancing what it provides you. Also think about getting a Sigil of Generosity for your sword. That’s a really good one and with the crits you’ll be making all the time it complements the warhorn to keep conditions off you while applying them to your enemies!

With boon runes you can also stack a lot of might if you stick with For Great Justice. It’s a bit redundant with SoR but it can guarantee a lot of extra damage all the time. Just something to think about.

Since you have two cripples available with your build (rifle 2, sword 3) you might be interested in swapping out Empowered for Leg Specialist. It gives you back the immobilization that you’ll miss from losing longbow 5 for a rough 6%-10% trade-off in damage. With a cripple on each weapon set you’ll always have a means of stopping somebody which is gravy. This can help with keeping people at a distance with the rifle and will just severely frustrate opponents when combined with Rifle Butt. It also benefits Kill Shot for obvious reasons, heh. By the way, you will likely want to use Frenzy with rifle because many good players will time their rolls to dodge the Kill Shot. With Frenzy it gives you an opportunity to speed up the delivery which can and often will mess with people’s expectations. Something to keep in mind.

Here’s my build in case you are interested:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNBiODbkzJGuFS2hJSAgU8FXmCFpU0mbJFixGA-jEDBYMCyEHw0HAEBQJQFRjtsNsVXBp8KaabYqTLqW5CwbYR1SBExYA-w

I have a peculiar build… I roam with a close friend who has a Guardian and it’s like peanut butter and chocolate. I use burst skills a lot and I have a Sigil of Intelligence for a guaranteed crit on eviscerate when swapping back to axe. Warhorn is an enormous help with my lack of mobility between axe and hammer so I imagine you’ll do really well combining it with sword. It’s also just a fun and unique play style.

Your build concepts show good intuition and it’s crazy how similar the warhorn build is to mine. As a warhorn user with stances and SoR I can fully vouch for the warhorn + boon runes. They’re a pretty sweet package! You’ll find yourself appreciating the permanent swiftness and the vigor helps a lot as a warrior. The boon duration also helps your Signet of Rage to where the Signet Mastery trait isn’t even necessary. The warhorn is an amazing offhand weapon that, when traited, synergizes extremely well with Empowered since you’ll always be running with several boons at once, not to mention the ones you get when converting conditions applied to you. Those can not be ignored or underestimated.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quick_Breathing

Due to the sheer amount of vulerability thrown around in wvw I find myself having protection throughout most fights I encounter. You also obtain a hard counter boon to whatever condition it is you’re dealing with usually so it’s a favorable setup regardless.

I think warhorn helps smooth the gaps in a warrior profile and saves you from needing to take many traits and utilities such as Restorative Strength, Dogged March, Shake It Off, or – God forbid – Warriors Sprint. Instead, you get the freedom to use them as added insurance or to simply choose other traits and abilities to extend your potential in combat.

With warhorn I greatly recommend staying 15 points into Discipline as you’ll find yourself needing – or even just wanting – to swap to warhorn often to transform conditions.

By the way, you may already be aware of this but it’s worth repeating that the CC clearing the warhorn 4 applies occurs before it converts conditions when traited, so you get to almost wipe the slate if you’re getting CC’d on top of other things like bleeds, etc..

I agree about the shield, btw. The warhorn doesn’t provide “hard” utility like the shield but you can make up for that by switching out Shake It Off with Endure Pain (In fact, SIO can be ignored entirely with your build suggestion). Endure Pain is not as flexible as block but it does save you when you need it and combines with the warhorn skills really nicely. You lose out on a stun by skipping shield but you also obtain a blast finisher on warhorn 5 that shouldn’t be ignored, especially if you find water, ethereal, or light fields. Speaking of which, warhorn beats shield hands down when it comes to group play. A traited warhorn applies all its abilities to your team mates around you and that includes converting conditions. People will love you and it makes travel feel effortless for everyone.

continued…

PsionicDingo.2065:

Did this all come to light because of bunkers?

This is what I assumed as well. I wouldn’t be against the change if they take the damage away from the pet and invest it directly in the ranger, otherwise they’re just reducing our DPS. The bunker build is admittedly overbearingly strong on account of how much DPS the pets represent in the class equation. I’m sorry guys, but you shouldn’t be able to spec for pure bunker survival, enjoy our wealth of evasions and insane mobility, and still get massive player-finishing DPS in the same package. However, if that is a problem with the ranger, then it’s only on account of how much is fundamentally wrong with the pets themselves. They account for 50% and quite likely more of our total potential DPS in spite of the fact that in PvE they’re worthless half the time due to aggressive and overwhelming AoE. They’re dead for an entire minute and a few of our class functions such as condition pulling put the pets in harm as well. But who cares about dungeons, right??? I’m being sarcastic but truthfully it only makes us terrible situational DPS and nothing more. These problems aren’t an issue in SPvP or roaming in W3, however. Pets in this element are formidable opponents who are often hard to counter, especially when the ranger is stacking control conditions. Basically, there has never been a good reason outside of dungeons or W3 zerging to invest in the ranger itself for direct damage output – especially when the developers themselves stated that as rangers we’re forced to play around our class mechanic. “Bonding with our pets” and all that sort of nonsense. But it means that the ranger itself suffers with insignificance in gameplay.

Simply put, there are overwhelming diminishing returns and crappy coefficients with power that it makes it practically worthless for the ranger to spec into damage. It’s a losing battle to try and shift the damage output to the ranger side of the class. Believe me, I’ve tried. We can spec for condition damage and duration and stack cripples, poison, and bleeding while our pets go for the kill for us. It’s that or nothing. What else is there? Trapping? Just a variation of the same build except perhaps the only one where the ranger we play actually gets to command a larger portion of the damage in a fight. Anyways, it’s ridiculous but that’s how they wanted the game for us rangers… and yet now they’re finally nerfing the pet damage. Can you make up your minds, ANet?

Hopefully they do indeed review the overall balance of the class and adjust the perimeters and traits as necessary to bring more player-directed output to the ranger itself. The class sorely needs it and it would go a long way towards giving a sense of purpose and significance to the action behind the mechanics that the player gets to ACTUALLY CONTROL. We shouldn’t simply be forced into a build that sets up opponents for our pets to take down. However… this is Anet after all. Keep your fingers crossed but don’t get your hopes up either. They do good some of the time (greatsword balancing + lightning reflexes cooldown reduction) but it’s like Russian roulette. Who knows what is going to happen. :-[

Likewise. I’m on Tarnished Coast and I can confirm that it’s bugged at 3/5 testing complete with three cows alive.

If they’re adding a new secondary effect to Signet of Might upon activation then they may as well do the same for the other ones. Make Healing Signet give Protection for 8s or some such length. It’d at least provide a real opportunity for warriors to decide on what serves them better in any given moment and would also greatly help the particular kind of builds that like using this signet (tanky builds, shout warriors, support/sustain, etc.).

It’d give these kind of warriors a very direct and no-nonsense way of obtaining protection that is sorely needed to promote build diversity and help alleviate the downtime that comes from losing your regeneration for a crappy burst heal. I think this would be a win-win and other players would have more to consider when approaching a warrior.

Hello fellow Necromancers! I posted this over in the Bugs forum but I figured it would be smart to run this problem by you guys first and see if there is a workaround or something I’m overlooking.

Alright, so here’s the deal: I have a Necromancer who is built for Chilling. I use:

2x Superior Runes of Svanir (+25 Toughness, +20% Frozen Duration)

2x Superior Runes of the Ice (+25 Vitality, +20% Frozen Duration)

2x Superior Runes of Grenth (+25 Condition Damage, +20% Frozen Duration)

along with a Focus and Dagger sometimes, both of which have:

Major Sigil of Chilling (+20% Frozen Duration – is this still applicable btw? I use it for that bug effect and realize that it’s meant to be 5% but the tooltip reports it as 20%…)

So altogether I should have stacked +80% Chill/Frozen Duration. I also have the Chilling Darkness trait. However, none of my Chills are lasting longer than a total of 30% or 40% which leads me to believe that only one of the Rune bonuses is stacking with my offhand Sigil. Spinal Shivers is lasting less than 7s, Well of Darkness Blind pulses are applying Chills that last hardly more than a second, and my Staff Slot 2 skill is applying chills that barely scrape by 5s. I realize that this last skill doesn’t benefit from the Focus Sigil but I should still be seeing at least a 60% improvement, right?

Is there something wrong with my setup or do these runes not stack anymore? I’ve tried removing my gear and reequipping it (as that is a bug I discovered with Boon Runes sometimes not working…) but the durations are the same. Also the tool tips for Chill abilities don’t change either. I imagine that’s a bug as well but who knows.

Should I use different runes or food for Condition Duration bonuses or is there some sort of bug with Chill Runes I’m unaware of that is hurting my build?

My Necromancer runs a 0/20/20/30/0 build with Staff, Wells, and Daggers/Dagger+Focus Offhand btw.

Thanks everyone.

Hello there, I have a Necromancer who is built for Chilling. I use:

2x Superior Runes of Svanir (+25 Toughness, +20% Frozen Duration)

2x Superior Runes of the Ice (+25 Vitality, +20% Frozen Duration)

2x Superior Runes of Grenth (+25 Condition Damage, +20% Frozen Duration)

along with a Focus which has:

Major Sigil of Chilling (+20% Frozen Duration – which in itself is a bug!)

So altogether I should have stacked +80% Chill/Frozen Duration (gotta update these tooltips, guys). However, my slot 5 skill, Spinal Shivers, which applies a 5 second Chill by default, is lasting just shy of 7 seconds, leading me to believe that the chill duration bonus is only being extended by the offhand Sigil and one of the set bonuses for a total bonus of 30%. My Necromancer also has a Staff whose slot 3 skill, Chillblains, is having its 4s Chill effect extended by roughly a second, where it should at least be getting two more seconds due to a 60% bonus without the Focus Sigil applied to it. Chills applied by Blind using the Chilling Darkness trait are hardly applying Chill that lasts longer than a second as well.

Also, the tooltips for the Chill skills don’t update to reflect the additional chilling bonus, further mystifying the issue and making it difficult to determine exactly what could be causing this problem.

I’m not sure if this is intentional or not considering that condition duration Runes simply did not work at all prior to the recent March 26th patch, but I would appreciate it if the team at ANet investigated it or if other community members who have experience with these runes could give me input. Thanks everyone.

I would love to know if the Stalwart’s Boots from the PVP set can be found in PVE. However, from what I’ve seen and the efforts I went through I think it’s impossible. The lv.71 personal story reward “Stalwart’s Boots” share only the name with that set and are in fact just the beginner medium boots. If I had to make a guess I’d say that they were meant to share the skin but the model didn’t get properly linked and so the story reward took to the default appearance making it a rather boring and pointless choice. Of course, I don’t know for certain but it would be nice to have a better means of finding this stuff so us medium armor wearers (ranger here) can diversify a bit!

Garmr.5672:

Pet fixes are great and thank you, but I’d really like to see a way to “perma” stow my pets and give myself an uptick in DPS by doing so. Some situations I just do not want my pet out. Also, if we can make it so the pet doesn’t pop out on damage, fall or otherwise, that would be fantastic. Thanks for the attention Jon.

Jon, first let me say thank you for all the attention you’ve been giving the Ranger class. These improvements, however small they may be so far, are still highly appreciated and don’t go unnoticed by all of us who play Ranger as our main. However, like the user I quoted, I would also love it if you gave our pets the ability to be “permanently” stowed and not trigger on damage. Just something, whether it’s a key bind or otherwise, that could allow us to call upon the pet manually without worrying about it appearing in bad situations, would be excellent, which leads me to the next point…

Please continue to consider what’s possible with giving the pet better survivability in dungeons and especially when dealing with AoE damage. I’m certainly not one to tell you what you should do, but focusing some of your valuable (and admittedly stretched) attention on this sore spot would help us immensely in maintaining usefulness in groups!

One more thing, from me at least: look into allowing our pets f2 skills to trigger faster. I understand balancing issues, but pet f2 utilization is a tricky problem especially when the pets move or they’re facing an enemy, and making it execute faster would improve the usability of the pet’s unique skill substantially. I’ve seen other rangers voice their concerns with this as well, but it would make my day at least.

Thanks again!