Guild Wars 2

Makes me really really happy! Thank you.

InsaneQR.7412:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNUQRAnf8fnUqAlrgVsCurAUtglCB7JBEtCAwb1x6alZAU6eAn45HFB-TxSFABIcgAEZ/BDeCA4o8bUlgAcAFm18n2HggO0/kwJBgF1fIFwn7sA-e

This is my PvE build for the jungle. It has good condition dmg good healing power and vitality. Because of the runes you are pretty fast in CAF and this goves you the most sustain you want. The utilities are there to compete with a lot of enemies at once and it has good cc too.

If you want to change to condition this is a good balanced build and worked very well for me.

I run a very similar build on my condi druid, although I used Carrion to have a bit more power but still a confortable extra of vitality. But its not the Vitality that keeps me safe, insteads its the many interupts combined with the aoe. Usually even if I go down I’m soon up again because of the rally. So I can definitly recommand something like this.

Recently I have made a (boon) power ranger with full zerker stuff and I must admit it plays even a bit smoother than my condi druid, simply because of the damage output. (But I do miss the many interrupts)

So there is no denying Tragic Positivs golden rule.

very nice summary @Tragic Positiv

Hi mistsim, thanks for posting your builds. I find it always interesting to see some what other people do.

I have a question however: When I use the Skirmishing trait line and aim for a bleed build, I always use Sharpened Edges. Since there is no cool down on it and you hit rather fast with SB, I always imagine that is adds significant bleeds. I see that there is no sense in taking it, if you only have 4% preceision as in your first build. But in the second build you are close to 50%, so theoretically every second shot would add a bleed. Is the cd reduction on traps and the addition of cripple worth taking Trapper’s Expertise instead?

I really mean that as a question and not necessairely as a critique. I just went with my intuition…

Edit: Yeah, I just read Sharpened Edges again, and you have only a 66% chance on hit, so what does that make? About every third shot? … but still, isn’t it enough to be worth taking?

Thanks for the post Tragic Positiv.
I was afraid that some irony would come along, but it didn’t (did it?).

Edit: I just wanted to add here, that I am rather happy with the changes as well!

Daddicus.6128:

…
Against bosses and very large mobs, though, glass-cannons become an exploit. The GC charges in, deals a large amount of damage, dies, and then waypoints and runs back to combat to repeat the process.
…

I don’t mind people who play like that so much. Personally I don’t enjoy running forth and back between waypoint and mobs, so I take care to stay alive whenever possible, thus investing a few points in vitality or thoughness.
I find pepole that burst some damage, then get hit and killed and wait&cry for a rez, instead of using a nearby waypoint way more annoying.

Annoying or not, I don’t call this an exploid. Its a personal preference on how to play.

I don’t know why for some it works without problems and for others it seems bugged. I remember that on quiet a few attempts the updrafts were simiply not visible and couldn’t be used. It felt like a awefull gamble, always hoping that in the next phase you’d be able to access the updrafts. I’m sure practise helps, but I’m also very sure that it is at least partly bugged.

Being able to disable the gliding function would be great.

I love gliding, but it can be a pain (and, admittingly a life saver) when doing JPs.

+1 Jocksy

I mainly do PvE, used to do WvW as well, but not anymore. In PvE Entangle is great, be it to gather mobs to do aoe, or giving you a short break to retreat. Strengh of the Pack is my ‘I-dont-know-what-elite-I-should-take’ ability. Its always handy to have burst or stab ready.

Just wanted to say thanks

ah… I’m happy now

thanks for sharing the news…

For PvE i currently run Carrion armour and Rampager trinkets. My thoughs behind it were:

• that I wanted a crit rate close to 50% (because crits bleed and stuff). It might be, that it would be smarter to set higher prio to condition damage instead.
• I wanted to test the build (its origins were posted here some times ago) and I didn’t want to spend a lot of gold. Carrion was cheap and I had a few ascended Rampager trinkets anyway.
• Because the build uses the ancient seeds from the druid line, the enemy should be stunned/dazed/knocked down as often as possible anyway. This has the nice side effect, that a enemy that fullfills this condition is likely not to harm you in that moment. So, only having the vitality boost from Carrion armor is enough for me, to get by farly well. I dont feel very squishy too it.

I post the build here for reference. It was very quickly done, I don’t remember pecisely which runes/sigils I used, so I put something likely in. Also I change a few of the traits when the situation requires it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAnfVnEqAlrglsAWsCUtgFDBjJAM6aAwZ1xaatpDcCaBnE0UOD-TxRAABXqEMI1f+S5HAPAge2fgiTAwf6BAA-e

edit I really love playing this build (How could I forget to mention it?!) ;-)
edit 2 Swapped staff to shortbow in the build. I was really not carefull…

(Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say how awesome I think you are, to put together a thieves only raid. Good luck and fun!! <3)

Justine.6351:

The reason I was against it being moved from a soft cc like immobilize to a hard cc. Also its annoying every time I see IMMUNE pop-up cause stability is everywhere now. What’s more embarrassing is that it won’t setup for an ancient seeds proc, which would be an immobilize ironically.

My adjustment would be 1/2sec daze&1sec immobilize. Chop recharge down to 20sec.

I wouldn’t say not to a shorter CD, but I am more annoyed that it doesn’t proc ancient seeds. From the tooltips, it really should and thus I consider it a bug.

Spike Trap set a trap that bleeds and launched foes and further down: Knockdown: 1 sec

Ancient Seeds stricking a stunned, dazed, knocked down or launchend foe summons roots to entangle them.

I am glad this happens.

Wanted to write much more, but in the end, this is my opinion and it doesn’t need any further explonations or justifications.

Tragic Positive.9356:

[…]
A friend of mine was able to code a program that recognizes and learns people’s faces. In 2 months. Anet still isn’t able to fix their problems for 3 and more years now, new bugs are being brought into our class and the only thing they are serious about is nerfing it.
And my patience has a limit, too.

I think you can’t compare like that. Coding something like that face regogniction was a homework assignment in the very first week of a course called machine learning I did. In it alone, it is not that difficult.
When people talk about how the devs are unable to do so-call simple things right, I think they often forget the complexity of a game like gw2. I’m not working in the game industry myself, but even in the smaller apps I work on, unforeseen dependencies can become tedious very fast. Things that seem really simple to us, might be really complicated to implement in the current system.

I would like to add here, that there are quiet a few things, that I am unhappy with as well and I would expect Anet to do something about it, but a comparison like the one above is really not saying much at all.

As for hope: I try to always expect the worst and hope for the best

I also take a little pride in successfully playing a class, that is (through its bugs) a little bit more challenging than other classes. (I understand that the problem of balancing is more important in PvP, which I rarely play.)

I like it. Of course I would like it even more, if it were my druid standing there

My compliments to the artist.

Edit: It would be really cool, if you’d post a screen shot of your druid along

Hi Guys, again I’m gonna go slightly off-topic, because I’m slightly stunned.

Here I have learned, that it is actually possible, to make very powerfull strikes, if you time your skills. Anyway, a hit with 44k damage earns my awe. So, I also think 36k to be pretty neat. But what robs me of my speech is, that you are actually talking about dps, not a single/a few hit(s).

Do you really mean 36k dps, as in 36000 damage per second? It’s not a burst, but something you can keep up?

Edit: I might add, that don’t know other classes very well, having only a ranger/druid and a engi that I actively play.

Haha, I like your post and I agree. Yesterday I travelled to Divinity’s Reach for the first time and was greatly underwhelmed.

I like the present boxes (with skritts) that you can find in old Tyria though.

Wow, thanks man @Crux Marionn

I feel almost tempted to try some PvP after looking through your build. I see some very nice synergies with the boons in that build and the mechanics you posted. So if in the near futur you see a noop ranger runing around in PvP, it might be me, trying to be you

As for damage, such builds are usually not used in PVE, is it? Anyone know why? I mean the damage sounds great. Is it, that it is to bursty? Or that it is better to forego all the defensive stuff on this build for even more offensive (talking about the old zerker tale)?

I think too, that SotW doesn’t count as transformation and therefore should not break CAF.
The description of the Signet doesn’t use the wording transform, but instead grow larger. Also on the wiki page about transform tells you, that a transformation usually changes your skill set. That is true for being transformed into a moa or for shrowd of necro as well as our CAF but certainly not for SotW.

If the information of wiki and the skill description can be trusted, I think it is clear, that leaving CAF when useing SofW is a bug.

o.O really?
Consider me stunned. Or dazed. Or anything like that. For the next may be 10 min.

I’ll have to do the math on that one day…
:) Ty for confirming this to me

So 19k really means 19000 damage? Not 1900? Damage, as in the white number you see on your screen when you hit something? You see that number in the combat log?
I am really confused.

I’m rather new to the bleed and condi build with my druid, but I experienced too, that ancient seeds doesn’t hit nearly as often as I would think it should.
I played on the HoT maps and there are a lot of monsters that (rightfully?) are rather immune to many of the conditions that should trigger ancient seed. So in my case it is probably not a bug.

I intend to run some tests in the PvP lobby the find out more, but it will have to wait for now. If I’ll find anything interessting, I’ll be sure to post it here.

ehm, it might be a bit off-topic, but I get really confused when people talk about damage numbers. What is 19K, or 44K for that matter? I always though K stands for kilo which would be a prefix meaning thousend. But you can’t be seriously talking about 19000 or even 44000 damage?! If you are, I’m seriously doing something very wrong, because I have never ever ever handed out an attack that comes even a teeny bit close to that. o.O

Zephyron.7081:

[..]
Great storyline too! I truly enjoyed this experience and I hope the coming living season 3 will be just as good. I hope the story gets darker and darker with more characters dying off (except Rytlock).
[..]

I’m not through with PS of HoT yet, but already I started to care less and less for dying characters. There you go, being the hero and all in search for some dude who is in trouble, and he lives just long enough to tell you (more or less) usefull stuff and dies.
I then, identifying with my character, feel that I’ve just failed. Even more, if the characters dying are not just some random dudes, but known to your character. I think that this can be a powerfull element in a story, but only if it is not overused. If your wish is granted and characters are dying off on a regular basis, I will not be able to care anymore for any of them and thus the story will become irrelevant for me.
But hey, there are other things to do aside from PS. If I’m looking for a great story, I dont do that in a MMO, but in a book or may be in a movie

Takoyakii.2146:

Yeah, Mordy definitely succeed claimimg gw2 .
It’s full of " whines" now…

Don’t know if I agree, but I like that quote!

Frostfang.5109:

[…] So why is it that solar beam only hits 3, (apparently counting allias as targets too, again correct me if I’m wrong)? […]

As far as I know you heal max 3 allies and damage max 3 enemies, so a total of 6 targets. (Someone back me up?).

It might be, however, that it doesn’t show on UI (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/solar-beam-doesn-t-hit-anything/5820212)

I love the many many green numbers that pop up <3
(Im playing a druid)

I really like the role of buffing and healing. I don’t need to do damage myself to enjoy playing. But I have to agree with you on one thing: Buffing and healing instead of dealing direct damage is a major setback on loot.
My guild is too small and casual to run raids anytime soon (if at all), so I like to bring my support druid to the open world content. Yesterday I was running with a train in Cursed Shore. I know, on such runs a Healer is not needed, but it can make it more enjoyable for those that focus on damage. The price however is, as surely many of you know, that you miss out on loot quiet a lot. I get more silver and bronze on events than gold, and I miss a lot of loot from trash mobs. So in the end, I have to decide, whether I prefer playing a support-heal-buff-dudu (which I like a lot) or getting decent loot (which I also like a lot).

oh, great! I hope reddit is right, can anyone confirm this?
Can’t wait to have my zoo around again. <3

I’d love it too, if we had the option to make them mobile again (not least because of fluff), but I suppose it’s ok, the way they are now.

Funny though, they didn’t mention anything in the patch notes…

Edit: typos all over the place…

Are the spirits really fixed?
Or… was that irony?

I can’t check at the moment, but since nothing was mentioned in the notes, I assumed that spirits still prioritize minions.

I tend to use more glyphs but it is very situational. Though my trinkets are all bezerker, my armor is currently still cleric, but since I’m not running in Raids anytime soon, toughness instead of vitality is not such a big issue, I think. As far as the traits go I have exactly the same

So thank you, for posting you build. It gives me the feeling I’m not doing it totally wrong.

I count myself to those (few or many) who generally read and don’t write here. Giving an opinion or sharing ones experience usually ends in insults that come in a wide variety of subtlety. The freedom of opinion is always rated so very important. I don’t disagree with that, but I would like people to be more responsible with their opinion. Call me a flower-hippy, a brainless optimist or what ever, but I prefer people to be happy and uninsulted. Happy people are nice people. I like being around nice people and I like playing with nice people.

I have not read much in other profession forums, because since HoT, I’m in love with my druid and very much obsessed with it (agreed, there have been lots of ups and downs recently). But I have the impression that the other profession formus are not quite as whiny as we are, and not as aggressive (frustrated?) as we are. Who knows, may be ArenaNet did screw up big time with the druid. But I don’t think so. Although the recent patches have been very, very tiring and I wished they could have handled it better, I trust that they are doing their best and eventually it’s gonna be ok.

Before HoT I was madly in love with my condi engi. That insane damage, even tough I hadn’t mastered the perfect rotation fully yet! My ranger in comparison, my very first character, running in ascended bezerker-glass-canon-meta-build, was just meh.
Then HoT came out. The scrapper really didn’t suit me. Listening to the people here, scrapper is probably way better than druid, but I just… I don’t like it. Doesn’t mean it’s bad though.
But I enjoy playing my druid, I feel useful and still capable of doing stuff myself. I’m also frustrated with many things that have been discussed here: Why do we need a target for auto-attack on staff? Couldn’t we have a teeny bit more offensive/cc available on staff? Losing all AF when downed is so so bad! I can spec to be BM and still, I’ll never be the master of my beast, because it does what it wants and not what I want. I’d love playing shortsword, but it has gotten me killed so often because of the leap. I was super excited when we were able to generate AF with SofW and super sad when it didn’t work anymore. And yes, I too have jumped from cliffs just to generate AF after that. I have recrafted my armor with runes or exchanged them altogether time and again because of the recent patches. And still, my druid gives me more joy than frustration. Were it different, I simply wouldn’t play her.

Naming all those issues/bugs that have been discussed over the last few weeks is important. But to me, keeping it respectful and sensible in this forum, towards each other and towards the developers of ArenaNet, is at least as important.

Thank you so much! I was getting really frustrated with Axemaster Gwyllion, finding no way to avoid being downed again and again. I’ll spread the news to other unknowing players like me ;)