(edited by AnariiUK.7409)
I briefly mentioned it on the qT DPS benchmarks thread on reddit. Pretty much using the above build (I use full viper’s with Geomancy / Earth sigils) using traps on cooldown and quickdrawing the appropriate skills. You can reach ~34k DPS with full condi-infusions.
Even condi-druid is extremely powerful, you can explode the red-guardian on VG together with an Engineer. 25-might + 5 GoTL and that guy dies extremely quickly.
Condi ranger should be perfectly fine in fractals, it’s solid respectable damage. People who want healing in fractals need to stop. It’s a crutch and it wasn’t there pre-HoT when fractals were more challenging, you don’t need it now.
The Meta ruins this though, and ruins classes. I hate being expected to heal.
Condition damage druid is meta for high-level fractals. Healing would be considered off-meta.
Your primary job is to buff allies while doing respectable condition damage. You can daze trash mobs and contribute to break bars with Pink Moa’s F2 / Lunar impact / Glyph of Equality.
has this changed in the last 8 months?
It hasn’t changed but there was some misinformation about heals not being subgroup prioritised floating about.
Healing prioritisation in raids works as follows:
Top priority
1. Players within your subsquad sorted by proximity to the centerpoint of the healing ability. (It doesn’t prioritise the caster of the skill any higher than other players within the same subgroup).
2. Players in other subsquads sorted by proximity to the centerpoint of the healing ability.
3. Pets / Minions / Clones.
4. Allied NPC’s.
Lowest priority
If a player is at 100% HP when a heal is allocated to them, then that heal overflows using the same prioritisation rules. Interestingly, buffs attached to heals (i.e Grace of the land) will still be applied to the person who the heal was originally allocated to.
Heals do not prioritise low HP targets (i.e 10%) over high HP targets (i.e 90%). It’s all done through proximity and subsquads.
Toadheart made a really comprehensive gearing guide for Druid’s which might be of interest.
Most relevant to your question she suggests a Shaman’s hybrid healer build which offers slightly higher damage than power based heal sets (Magi’s/Zealot’s). Unfortunately you’re stuck with the extra Vitality as there’s not an ideal stat set out there currently for condition healers.
Overall, the main disadvantage of going for a condition based healer set over a power based one is that you lose the +10% Outgoing healing modifiers from your rice balls food and monk runes on the armour (You can still take transference on a staff). You’ll still be able to heal fine, but it might be tricky if you’re the solo druid in an inexperienced group.
Are you guys holding down f5 for a short period when transforming? That seems to be instantly cancelling the transform for me.
We had the same issue just now. I believe it’s the necro minions, which are now absorbing his projectiles. Our necro switched to blood magic without any minions and the reflect issues stopped happening.
Just to clarify, [KING] weren’t responsible for the masterwork raid clear. That honor goes to the fine folks over in [IvT].
Regarding WP’s points though, I can sympathise that many aren’t happy with the strict requirements of the LFG currently. It’s worth keeping in mind though that raids were never really intended for pick-up groups, and were designed with organised squads in mind. Given the difficulty of the encounters, it’s not unreasonable that groups set strict requirements in order to try an ensure a smooth run.
For anyone who’s struggling to meet the requirements, I’d strongly recommend not to fake your way in to PUGs using chat codes or the likes. It will be painfully obvious if you’re inexperienced. Instead, why not sign up to one of the awesome training guilds that are listed either here or on reddit? Feel free to send me a PM if you ever need some tips or help with it also.
The whole 10-man vs 5-man argument is interesting, and honestly I’d love to see some challenging 5-man content in the game.
Power druid is decent in that it brings reasonable/low damage, a ton of buffs, high healing (with staff) and very good projectile destruct/reflect capabilities. Which is extremely important for fractals.
Condi druid on the other hand brings higher damage, particularly if you’re making use of epidemic bounces. It does however lose out on the projectile destruction/reflect that the power builds bring and has less healing overall due to the loss of staff.
Between these two I’d first focus on condi-druid for T4 fractals, but it’s worth working on a power set too so you can switch for projectile heavy fractals.
I’m not convinced that Magi’s druid is worth it for T4 fractals, the healing would almost certainly be overkill. That said, it would make T4 fractals almost foolproof.
I’ve been met with nothing but dissapointment, hell one of them even had requirment of eternal title/vale guardian kill to even get in. How the hell is that correct?
Their guild, their requirements. I’d imagine a training guild looking for eternal titles is one which is hoping to push onwards into wing 2/3. They could have been teaching wing 1 for months already, so they’re looking for members which don’t require further teaching there.
I have no issue with fluidity in my builds I have many I’ve grown to feel comfortable with to take on various requirments. I just refuse to be a complete clone but still this isn’t good enough. If more of something else is needed I have frequently expressed fluidity in changing things up a bit but with my own flair not just copy/paste an exact one online but this for pretty much everyone is not good enough.
The builds you see online are excellent starting points for players that are new to raiding. Once you become more experienced and knowledgable then you’ll start to understand what changes can be made to benefit a specific group or help at a certain boss. Adding your own flair to a build is meaningless unless you can provide solid justification as to why you’ve changed that particular thing.
I’m happy to discuss builds with you if you’d be interested in providing what you’re currently using. Sometimes, players such as yourself have excellent justification for running off-meta builds and it’s just a matter of communicating that to the raid leader that can make the difference.
I get that it’s challenging content and I have no difficulty with challenging content. PvE is for the most part easy as hell and I rarely die. The problem is people exclude you without even giving you the chance to prove it.
Training guilds usually get more applications than they can possibly accept, so it’s always a matter of choosing the applicants that give the best first impressions.
I’ve been involved with numerous teaching guilds and honestly I have nothing but positive things to say about the majority of them. Many require no prior experience, and are often happy to let you join with exotics providing you have a good attitude and are willing to learn.
I like to play my own way and dislike being nothing but a meta clone, and in most cases my own playstyle and builds outperform the meta because I understand my proffesions more than the average joe who just copy/pastes a build and thinks they are good to go.
I understand what your saying here, but a mentality like this won’t get you far if you’re applying to a teaching group. They need players who are willing to function as part of a team, who will listen and adapt to whatever the situation calls for. You’re not being a clone by adopting something similar to the meta, rather you’re taking into consideration the experience and knowledge of players who have cleared the content hundreds of times and have figured out the most reliable ways to do things. I’d argue that it’s more elitist to simply assume that your way is the best way without providing any justification for your cause. After all, please keep in mind that the raids are extremely difficult for learning groups to clear, and it can be extremely demotivating to have just one person within a group that is unable to adapt.
Strange, I just tested out my dreamthistle GS and the blade is correctly dissapearing when my character sheathes the sword.
-snip-
I too have been told that Magi/Cleric is the proper “pure healing” stats, partly because of the increase to vitality and toughness (can’t heal if you’re downed) while still having some power and precision. However, you make a good point that with Zealot you can get more power without losing that much healing. The question is does that hold for other healing skills, since the multiplier varies from skill to skill? I’ve heard that the healing from staff and CA are less dependent on the HP stat than other heals are, so it may be consistent, I don’t know.
The same math applied to the other main healing skills (Ancestral grace and Lunar impact) yields 6% and 4.6% increase in their respective healing between Zealot’s / Magi’s armour. So the exact improvement does vary.
It’s also worth adding that Magi’s would very slightly increase your regen ticks from ~305 to 330, a difference that might become substantial over time.
The survivability aspect of Magi’s is definitely a positive thing, but once you’re used to the encounters it becomes very difficult to die on any kind of healing druid since your heals will nearly always prioritise to yourself in any of the main raid comps (4-4-2 or 7-2-1) due to the subgroup prioritisation.
But perhaps we’re overthinking it, in reality they are both fantastic sets to have for their healing capabilities.
To directly answer your question, Magi’s/Clerics is the best gear in the game for pure healing, but I’d argue that it’s very wasteful.
Overall I agree with Justine, percentage modifiers are far more important than stacking healing power.
For the sake of argument we can compare Zealot’s with Magi’s with normal % modifiers in place:
Monk runes = 10%
Transference sigil = 10%
Rice balls = 10%
Natural Mender = 20%
Zealots = 439 Power, 315 Precision, 315 Healing power + 175 Healing power from runes.
Magis = 315 Vitality, 315 Precision, 439 Healing power + 175 Healing power from runes.
Under these conditions, one pulse of your main healing skill (Rejuvenating tides) will heal allies for:
Zealots = (810 + (0.35 * 490)) * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 1568 HP
Magis = (810 + (0.35 * 614)) * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 1637 HP
A difference of only ~4%
So the question is, are you willing to give up 439 power for such a minor increase in healing? The vitality is also a factor to consider as it can be useful while learning the bosses.
Please correct me if my math is wrong! It’s a topic I’m really interested in discussing.
It depends so much on how safe you want to play it and the availability of certain classes. The ideal comp is likely 4-4-2 or 5-4-1 (w/ Chronotank) since you can make use of DPS druids and uniform buffing to maximise your damage.
The squad with 7 people in one group is a safer 7-2-1 comp that can accomodate a healer down in group 3. This is advantageous as it allows a Druid’s (Or Ele) heals to reach the chronotank, which is often an issue in 4-4-2 comps due to the way heals are subgroup prioritised. You also only need a single warrior / druid if people don’t enjoy those classes. The resulting DPS is lower though.
Boons / heals are always subgroup prioritised, with any extras overflowing to other players via proximity.
I consider it an exploit and really hope it’s fixed soon.
It completely trivialises the entire encounter, thanks to the way the mechanics have been designed to work together. I agree that the orbs should just pierce through allied pets/minions without dropping the gravity well.
Are you using Druid runes by any chance? I’ve heard there’s a bug where the bonus 175 healing power you gain completely disappears upon wipe. The vitality of these runes is currently bugged also. No word of a fix for it though.
I’d strongly recommend you pick up a set of Monk runes instead, as they offer arguably better healing without any of the bugs.
Agreed, I think it’s a very positive thing that the first encounter of W3 is so accessible. Hopefully new groups that beat the encounter will decide to continue on to KC, as I feel that he’s also a very accessible encounter.
It’s nearly always worth it to enter CA form, even if it’s just for buffing. If nobody needs heals then just enter CA and use skill number 4, letting it channel for the full duration before cancelling the transform.
You can’t equip two different glyphs into the same slot. But each glyph has two forms, celestial and non-celestial. The wiki has the icons for Empowerment (Celestial) and Tides (Celestial) mixed up so that explains the confusion.
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QZ + SotP + SotW + LB5 + LB2 + Axe4 + Axe5 -> there is your burst.
@ everyone: Feel free to prove me wrong and provide some actual numbers of other classes’ solo dps/burst/whatever for a comparison. For now i only know about the test from qT, where they only used support focused druid builds with raid settings/full buffs.
I’m bored so I did some quick testing on this. Using the first output from the 1mil HP golem as a measure of “burst” DPS. I slotted the above skills for druid but everything else was the same as the power glyph buffer for raids. For Ele as comparison I took the raid ready D/Wh build and precasted air overload.
Druid (All buffs / boons) – 27,574 DPS
Ele (All buffs / boons) – 49,206 DPS
Druid (Only self applied buffs) – 12,924 DPS
Ele (Only self applied buffs) – 13,012 DPS
Ele (Only quickness applied) – 14,452 DPS
Conclusions, our power burst damage is competitive without boons but quickly falls off when you start to add the many damage multipliers available. Realistically Druid is pretty high in terms of burst damage, as shown by the KC burn phases.
Don’t read too much into these as they were just quick “1-shot” attempts, but it’s an interesting topic.
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I believe all good druids should carry three sets with them, namely a power set, condi set and healing set. The healing set is a good one to start with as it will get you more confident with druid mechanics. You can then work towards the other sets if you enjoy the class.
That said, I’d recommend Zealot’s stats with monk runes for your healing armour as it offers a very good balance between personal DPS and healing potential. You can then take full berserker weapons / trinkets with the usual runes. One additional option might be a Zealot’s staff with a sigil of transference if you feel you need extra healing.
There’s an argument to be made for Magi’s stats, but I personally feel it boils down to giving up your personal DPS for extra survivability. Which is unnecessary in all of the current raid boss fights.
Fully agree with everything that Tragic mentioned above.
I would like to add that power builds are often brought to cover fury downtime in a group also. This is because of the clarion bond trait proccing on pet swap. You also have the option to run an offhand warhorn if there are literally no other sources of fury, however it’s usually better to just ask the ele’s to heatsink every once in a while.
“Rotation isn’t realistic, nor are the buffs applied.”
So basically the 30k number isn’t right.
From the link:
“Rotation isn’t realistic, nor are the buffs applied. I just wanted to see how far the damage could go if I went for every selfish personal DPS increase.
The result is decent but not extravagant, sadly :/”Not what I call a ringing endorsement.
There’s nothing unrealistic about his rotation, it’s the regular condi-druid rotation just with traps being spammed on cooldown. While I do agree that the applied buffs are unrealistic, the same buffs have been applied for the Revenant / Guardian numbers that I quoted above. It’s a common misconception that a selfish ranger does very little DPS so having an actual benchmark helps to stop the spread of misinformation.
But yeah, numbers aside you’ve convinced me that perhaps the power builds could use a little help and buffs to greatsword would be a great way to do that. My main concern would be that as you buff the power specs, condition builds quickly become useless as they lack the utility (Pulls, reflects, fury etc) that the power builds bring. I already bring power builds on 4/6 of the current raid fights simply for that reason.
Increasing the cd of Maul to make it look better with quick draw is exactly what I’m against. A weapon shouldn’t be tied to a grandmaster to be useful.
The issue with Maul right now is that you need to cast it 3 times on each weapon swap. For example: Switch -> QD Maul, Auto, Maul, Auto, Maul -> Switch. This leaves no time to enter CA form, making the longbow rapid-fire alternative much more appealing. Spacing them out but increasing the damage would make it much more usable I feel.
And you bring 2 druids only because the squad system limits buffs to 5 people. If we ever got to the point where buffs affected 10 people, Tempests would be punting the second druid/warrior out most likely.
I think this is healthy for the game as a whole. Boons affecting 10 players would mean that you’d only have a small number of slots allocated for “buffers / utility” then the rest filled with maximum DPS. Since there’s always going to be one particular class that shines at DPS for a certain fight, that class gets stacked and you end up with less diversity overall. We already see this happening with Ele’s at gorseval.
Given those benchmarks, do you think a single traitline change away from druid would bring up the highest DPS recording, 20.2k, up by 9.8k DPS as you say?
The condi Druid rotations have been optimised quite a lot since Subi recorded those videos. The raid ready SB + A/T druid peaks out at roughly 23k DPS. But yes, the change of traits / utilities to be more selfish really does seem to add the remaining 7k DPS.
Are you happy that our greatsword is so bad, that autoattacking in melee suboptimal range with the longbow in between rapid fires is preferable to a s+a/GS rotation?
Greatsword is the one weapon which I feel could use a slight buff, but certainly not to the extent that you mention in your OP (+80% on autos, +50% for maul). I would perhaps increase the damage of maul but also increase it’s CD, such that the skill has better synergy with quick draw. The weapon is overall far more defensive than main hand sword, so should never exceed it in DPS.
I’m not sure how you can be pleased with a state of PvE where tempests are being brought in spades, and if not that daredevils or engineers instead.
Tempests, Warriors and Druid’s are currently brought in spades. Ranger is meta in both 5 and 10 man comps. Buffing the class further will just make life harder for the classes that are actually struggling to get raid spots right now (Engineers, Guardians etc).
The QoL changes to hornet sting and SB #3 would be very welcome, anything to help upkeep the steady focus modifier under real raid situations is great. The recent change to staff auto queuing made ancestral grace really good for dodging with too.
That said I think most of the proposed damage buffs are unneeded, and would make ranger extremely overpowered from a PvE perspective.
Yes, because I don’t know of any raid that allows a ranger to no trait druid and come in as a DPS ranger instead, who does about 12-14k less DPS than a reveneant or guardian, which aren’t even DPS classes by your twisted logic but who still provide massive group support.
That simply isn’t true. Full DPS “Selfish” Ranger damage is around 30k DPS currently. The highest Revenant DPS I’ve seen is also around 30k, and Guardian I believe is slightly behind (28-29k).
The reason raid groups are generally unaccepting of base rangers isn’t because of their personal damage potential, but more because they have so much more potential when buffing the group as a whole. I’d take extremely powerful unique buffs over more personal damage anyday.
I mean look at the sorry state of revenants in raids right now. The one unique thing they brought to a group (Facet of Nature) is quickly being made redundant due to the rise in commander’s geared chronos. They rarely have a spot anymore.
Similarly, the main appeal of Guardian (Protection) is made completely redundant by the Druid slotting one simple utility skill (Stone spirit).
Meanwhile us Druids have 2 reserved spots in most organised raid groups. Personally I think the other classes need the buffs, not us.
Quickness does help tremendously, and is nearly always assumed for raids. That said it should still be doable without quickness.
Barrage will not always be off cooldown when you switch to your longbow. In those cases there’s plenty of time to jump into CA form between your rapid fires.
For a “buffing” rotation you’d normally quick draw rapid fire, barrage, enter CA form and cast rejuvenating tides followed by a seed of life then exit the transform as quickly as possible. Your weapon swap should come off cooldown just as you’re firing the second rapid fire.
For cases where you want to heal, I’d actually recommend consuming quickdraw on barrage, then using rapid fire before entering your CA form. You can then stay in CA form a little longer to use a healing rotation (Something like #3,#4,#2 etc) then cast barrage a second time upon exiting the form.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to enter CA form on your sword/axe set. It’s not a rule set in stone and the healing is often much more important to prioritise. After all if we want pure DPS we’d be much better off bringing the condition set instead.
The bandit camp rewards are actually autolooted during the final cage cutscene (Assuming you were alive at the end of the fight). As a result nobody actually “sees” the rewards on their screen as they are already in their inventory. Could this be what happened?
If you’re able to remember how many legendary insights you had before the pact camp, you should have +1 now.
General rule is that for open-world PvE anything goes. That said, since GW2 is a game all about avoiding damage through evasion and movement, you shouldn’t really need defensive stats (Toughness, vitality etc). This is especially true for ranger, as your pet can do quite a lot of tanking for you. I would recommend focusing on high power DPS through stats like power, precision and ferocity.
Staple power ranger build is currently using berserker’s armour with sword/axe & longbow as weapons. Superior rune of the Scholar is always a nice option for armour and will remain best in slot if you ever move on to fractals or raids. Same goes for sigil of force / sigil of air on the weapons.
Trait-wise the Marksmanship (3-2-1) and Skirmishing (2-1-1) traitlines are always good choices as they contain powerful damage modifiers and buffs for the group (Also quickdraw which is a super overpowered trait for ranger usage!). The final traitline is up to you, but generally Druid is a very good choice once you have the elite-specialisation fully unlocked.
The go-to pet right now is pretty much the tiger, as it offers high damage and constant fury application. Other pets have fun applications in organised content, such as using the smokescale to provide group stealth. Tankier pets like the bears can also be used to “cheese” certain open world champions by letting the pet take all of the hits.
Hope that all makes sense!
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I have somewhat the opposite experience lately, with condi-druids being in large demand for most experienced groups. Typically groups are running 2 druids for a 5-4-1 split by example.
Engineer on the other hand is frowned upon at nearly all encounters now that the slick-shoes change has removed their utility at Gorseval and Sloth. The main issue being that they bring comparable damage to min-maxed Druid/Necro builds (~30000 dps at best) but require a ton more personal skill to be able to reach those numbers. Druid can of course opt to bring game changing buffs at the cost of slight personal DPS too.
Try to educate the group on what you’re bringing as a whole. In reality you’re bringing top-tier condi DPS already (~18-20k), healing, a ton of buffs which allow the other condi sources to tick even higher (Spotter, Fury, Sun spirit, GoTL etc) and a metric ton of breakbar utility (SB#5, Lunar impact, electric wyvern skill/F2).
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You got good points but so has he. Indeed, trying harder is the only option he has. But I understand his complaint, since I’m in the exact same place as he is. My main is a thief. I geared it to the max. It’s the class I love and enjoy playing. Yet, since we’re not a demanded class, I can spend hours till I find a LFG that will take me. Yes, I’m Eternal. Yes, I’m at 166. Yes, I hate the fact that I have to spend hours in the LFG window to find a raid spot. I still do it, but I don’t enjoy it, at all.
A little unrelated to the topic of this thread, but have you considered using your gear from thief to almost fully gear a power based druid? You’d have the armour, trinkets and a berserker staff ready to go. So you’d just need a sword and an axe and you’re good to go.
Understandably it might not be a class you enjoy as much as thief, but you’ll hopefully have much better luck searching for groups as it’s pretty standard to bring at least two DPS druids these days.
A little disheartened at this change. Besides being an awesome dungeon, Aetherpath always had a certain allure simply due to that miniscule chance that you’d come out a thousand gold richer than you came in with.
Now there’s no reason to look forward to that final chest.
Ah well, it’s still the best dungeon in the game!
Personally, I find that sacrificing some dps for further healing is wiser when dealing with pugs, so I will leave the build I use here as well
Fully agree! Don’t be afraid to switch out for more healing depending on the groups requirements. Razor’s build works extremely well for when more healing/fury is required as the regen from warhorn can get you back into CA form as soon as possible.
Underwhelming in PvP perhaps, but for raiding/high end PvE it’s part of the strongest build available to rangers right now.
I wonder what you gain by taking SB in your condi weapon set. Evade? no. Really short stun? Probably not. I believe that on second set taking a dagger instead to just replace the torch would be more valuable than the shortbow. The shortbow’s auto attack (power wise) is one of the worst in game (not even sur that it reach the necro’s scepter auto attack) and doesn’t even bleed it’s foes reliably. Come on, even the bleed duration is laughable, this is really a cheap reward for all the trouble asked.
NB.: Before they nerfed SB range and auto attack speed, the Shortbow was a good power weapon (just due to it’s auto attack). Now, condition wise or power wise it’s the same : disappointing.
The ~6s of bleeding from flanked autoattacks plus extra bleeding from sharpened edges combined with the insanely high attack speed of the shortbow with quickness is easily enough to upkeep around 30+ bleed stacks. Poison volley is also a very nice burst application of poison when used in melee.
The evade and stun are just nice extras.
I’m pretty sure that goes to Axe+Torch when it comes to straight up Condition damage.
I thought so too, but after doing some testing you can achieve higher condition damage over time when using a shortbow + Axe/Torch on swap. Assuming you have alacrity and can flank the boss. The reason for this is that you can double cast bonfire on the A/T set then switch back to SB to minimise condition downtime.
dude that the bigfest pile of crap ive read in a long time. its a general consensus that shortbow is just underwhelming in its current state.
i never understood the reasons behind the nerf in the range… they are two very different weapons, only just because they are build for two different kind of builds.
most vets here ive already pointed out: the sb doesnt need much of a rework, just some buffs to become the ranged condi weapon its skills seem to point to.
Underwhelming in PvP perhaps, but for raiding/high end PvE it’s part of the strongest build available to rangers right now.
I view it as a close/mid range skirmishing weapon that rewards you being able to quickly circle strafe to reposition around an enemy or boss. Removing the flanking requirement on crossfire would just make it another brainless long-range weapon.
You’ll likely want to use different builds for each encounter, as they play out slightly differently.
Slothasor
If you’re the single druid and responsible for healing I recommend the following traits:
Marksmanship (3-2-1) – Skirmishing (1-1-1) – Druid (2-2-1)
Use Sword/Axe with Staff on swap.
Utilities – Glyph of Rejuvenation, Glyph of empowerment, Search and Rescue, Frost sprit, Glyph of unity.
Armour – Personally I use Zealot’s with Monk runes for healing, once more confident you can try out Berserker w/ Scholar runes.
Main aim is to keep the melee stack healthy and buffed, you can use Sublime conversion (Staff #5) as a short projectile block when the Mesmer or Guard have reflect downtime. After dodging his shake attack I like to spam glyphs / CA #2 directly underneath him to help cleanse allies conditions. Use Search and Rescue sparingly to pull downed people out of the harmful poison.
You can take “Protect me!” as an AOE stun break if you’re having trouble with the fear after he wakes up. Perhaps swap frost spirit for this, as the spirit tends to fall behind as the group moves.
With multiple Druids, you’ll probably want to take the A/T condition build.
Bandit trio
Super super easy fight, just go maximum damage / buffing potential with either Sword/Axe – Longbow or the A/T condition build.
Not much to say about tactics, just roam with the zerg and burst down each of the bosses as they spawn.
Matthias
Same traits and gear setup as Slothasor. You can also try out Nature magic (2-1-1) running stone/frost spirit for permanent protection + extra might, however this is not needed if there’s a guardian in the group. Search and rescue is fantastic for pulling downed people out of well of profanes, you can also pull downed corruption people directly to the fountain which cleanses them.
One nice trick is to use Sublime Conversion to absorb the projectiles from his leap attack (And explosion in the abomination phase).
It really depends on how the ranger was utilising the shortbow.
It’s a little ironic as Shortbow + Axe/Torch is the highest damage single-target setup that’s possible on ranger right now, especially since at mossman / bloomhunger you should have little issue shooting them in the back.
On the other hand, if the ranger was sitting at range on the other side of the arena shooting Mossman with a shortbow I can somewhat understand why that might annoy some people. The ranger would be doing next to no damage, not doing his/her job (Buffing allies) and risk moving Mossman around; which just makes the fight harder and more stressful for everyone else.
That isn’t even the highest damage elementalist build, as he brings a focus for swirling winds instead of warhorn. All things considered, realistic tempest DPS (25-30k) is roughly double that of well-played condi-druid damage (10-16k).
As already mentioned though, our utility to the group is in the form of unique buffs and damage modifiers which if applied to the correct people can easily account for a deficit in personal damage. It just so happens that while doing this buffing we’re also pumping out a ton of passive heals, so that’s nice too!
Reading through this thread I’d like to remind everyone that a Raid LFG is in the works and should provide an excellent opportunity for those that are struggling to find groups.
I’ve had gear ready to go for the last 2 months (ALL ASCENDED) but I am still yet to find 9 other people who want to start a raid.
I often find myself standing there spamming map chat and posting LFG but I never get anything, people want experienced raiders, not people trying to start one.
Sorry to hear that you’re struggling to get some experience. Have you tried having a look into some of the Raid LFG guilds that have started up recently? Many of them are constantly teaching new people the ropes and getting them up to speed.
Maybe something like this:
Perma Burn, High Might, +45% Damage Increased, Heals.
If it’s for raiding I would shy away from trying to bring a little bit of everything, let your friends handle buffs like might while you focus on spreading around the awesome ranger exclusive buffs.
- You’re focusing a lot on burning, but you’ll only have about 2 stacks of burning from the sun-spirit. At 100 condition damage that’s not going to do a great deal of damage. Why not instead focus on powering up your physical hits, since your main weapon (Sword) is a hard hitting melee weapon?
- Why take Moment of Clarity over Steady Focus? – You only have one daze skill (Lunar impact) and you’ll be using that mainly as a heal rather than a CC.
- Again if you’re raiding you might want to use different trinkets, as high toughness (~1500) will likely mean that you’ll be tanking and healing at the same time.
- Lastly I’m sure your teammates would appreciate some Spotter, it’s just too awesome of a buff to say no to.
All that said, if you’re just running open world content then anything is fine. But being prepared to justify your decisions in a raid environment will potentially save you some headaches down the line.
I respectfully disagree.
For many people (Myself included), raids are the progression that’s on offer in this game. It’s content that I can return to, week after week and constantly learn new things or try new strategies while having a ton of fun with my guild. It speaks volumes to the quality of the current raid wing that many of my friends are still clearing Spirit Vale almost daily, often without any rewards; simply for the thrill of a challenging hunt.
Certainly I can sympathise with those who are not interested in raiding, understandably a huge portion of players just want to relax and unwind. But what really disheartens me is the level of toxicity that’s arising from certain players who want something, but aren’t willing to put in the time and effort to earn it.
Interesting to see that there’s another swinging boy hidden within Sprit Vale. Supposedly there were three hidden within the game, but I’ve only seen two myself (WvW hidden cat room, and above LA exit).
What do you find looks bad about the builds listed on Metabattle?
For Vale Guardian the offensive healer build listed on Metabattle works very well if the group needs a large amount of healing. Personally I use a Zealot’s staff with a transference sigil for when things get out of hand. If the healing is still too low, switch out the armour for Zealot’s and use a rune which augments your healing (i.e Monk runes).
Once you’re more confident, I’d recommend switching out for a full condition set. Shortbow works wonders when running greens and you can proc quickdraw double bonfire once you return to the boss.
For Gorseval the healing requirements are lower, so I’d generally recommend just bringing the Axe/Torch condition setup. Make sure you’re in CA form when his breakbar is active or expect a few dead elementalists though!
For Sabetha I’d recommend the same condition setup. If you’re given the role of range-tank just bait out the flak shots using shortbow then head melee to drop glyphs / bonfire. You’ll have plenty of time to get in and out again before she fires the next flak shot.
(edited by AnariiUK.7409)
Have to say I fully agree, there’s a lot of doom and gloom about regarding the class. But Druid has finally brought me back to Ranger and I couldn’t be happier.
From a raiding perspective, I’d say Druid right now has the largest number of viable options/builds available when compared to any of the other nine classes; so you’re never stuck playing the same thing for too long.
I experienced this first hand when joining for my very first Chak Gerent attempt.
Basically I was in a party with a friend who was highly familiar with the mechanics and was going to guide me through. Unfortunately the commander decided to repeatedly spam us both with squad invites before publicly calling us out in map chat for “Leeching” and “Afking” during the event. A very bad introduction to the awesome TD meta event.
Fully agree with everything you’ve listed in this thread.
Quick Draw – Consumed by interrupted skills.
This is especially problematic when using the current Axe/Torch build within raids. Basically there’s a point where the only thing you can do is auto-attack using axe until your weapon swap is ready, the perfect downtime to fill with CAF right? Unfortunately you need to be extra careful that you don’t cancel Rejuvenating Tides or Lunar impact early by leaving CAF or you’ll be unable to proc Quick draw for Bonfire; leaving it on full 20s cooldown.
Glyph of Rejuvenation – Inconsistent Cast Times.
The GoTL proc from Verdant Etching is also applied much slower, regardless of if you’re in CAF or not.
Ancestral Grace doesn’t like terrain.
Agreed that Gorseval is the biggest culprit for this, usually I will end up locked in the wisp animation for much longer than I’d like and get hit by a stomp directly after it ends.
As an aside I’d like to see Ancestral Grace cancel the staff autoattack, as right now it queues up until the current auto is finished then activates, leading to a rather clunky pause.
From my PvE perspective, Druid is quite possibly the best thing that has happened to the Ranger class since launch. We now have two entirely new unique buffs in the form of GoE and GotL, alongside the existing spotter and frost/sun spirit combination. Buffs which single-handedly have pushed Druid into the limelight when it comes to desirability for raiding.
If anything I feel the class is being held back by this notion of being a “dedicated healer” as I see countless Druids (Myself included) opting to create a pure healing set specifically for those players that just don’t seem to want to avoid damage on their own. If healing and babysitting players isn’t your thing (I very much understand if that’s the case) then I strongly recommend grabbing either a full Berserker DPS set, or a Viper’s condition set and advertising yourself as a DPS/Support class rather than a healer.
Both Berserker’s and Viper’s Druids will have around 8-15k DPS while entering CA form on cooldown to spread GotL. Comparatively a Berserker’s Auramancer Elementalist can achieve around 15-25k given that they lose the fire traitline and Signet of Fire. By spreading your unique buffs around the group you can easily make up that difference.
TL;DR, try looking at Druid from a Support perspective rather than that of a dedicated healer, you might find that that play style appeals to you more.
Power ranger is “somewhat” viable for VG, doing reasonable damage while running the green circles. I would however recommend bringing sword/axe instead of greatsword just so you can squeeze out that little extra damage when you’re at melee (Between circles / split phases). The main problem here is that groups can and will replace you with another class that brings better damage/utility if things start to get rough.
That said, even though you mention that you don’t enjoy playing Druid I’d strongly recommend that you give it a try. Full berserker gear is fine for a Druid and the gameplay is very similar to the longbow – S/A ranger build, just pop into CA form to buff everyone with Grace of the land. A Druid in the right hands is incredibly good for overall group damage and is desirable for all three of the current raid bosses.
Yes you’ll have higher individual responsibility on Druid, but in turn you’ll be a much more valued member of a group.
It seems logical that the boxes will rise in price on the TP to an equilibrium point slightly less than the perceived value of a encryption key + the average return from the boxes. If they increased past that point, people will stop buying them and undercutting will take place.
I gained exactly 408 gold from 900 boxes yesterday (Just counting the sellable junk items) which is around 45 silver liquid currency per box. If you buy keys for 20s and the boxes for 17s (Current price) you’re only looking at around 8s per box. To me that sounds about right, considering you’re limited to 30 keys per day at that price.
Past that, the increasing cost of keys likely disincentivizes the mass opening of boxes from the TP, which is fine as most regular players will be only be getting ~30 boxes per day from the dailies.
(edited by AnariiUK.7409)
I love the idea of incentivising the low-manning of dungeons, as I think it’s one the most enjoyable things to do currently in the game. That said, having 5x reward for solo runs seems a little too good, particularly as solo runs are usually only a little bit slower than full party runs due to a large amount of time being spent running between bosses.
Also as you say, dungeons right now seem to be full of two main types of people: experienced players going for dungeoneer and completely new players going for dungeon master. If you add something like this to the game, those experienced players will just disappear into solo instances and never show their faces on the LFG again, because let’s be honest; who wants to have to carry clueless newbies through a dungeon when you can do it yourself easily and take their reward?
Even if I have a group of 5-experienced players, we’d probably agree to just each solo the dungeon to gain a total of 25x the normal daily reward. Or even worse, just 5 man it to the end and drop out leaving one person to get the full clear, then repeat 4 more times for each member. You’ve basically cheated the daily limit to gain 5x the usual amount in just a single day.
It might work, but I think it’d take quite a large effort from Arenanet to ensure it’s not exploitable and/or damaging to lower level players, something they clearly aren’t willing to do.