Guild Wars 2

Constructive, I’ld like clarification on why the buffs seem designed to benefit underwater farmers with a new sounds like water map out? Encouraging ranger farming?

Like GS changes.

Spirit changes insignificant.

axe 5 change woohoo random bolts of missing….Looks better shooting something I suppose.

I agree the maul damage increase is nice as well;) But the ability to block run into a whirling warrior to interupt is sweetness. And since I’ld migrated to a build using it love it.

Change to axe 5 meh random bolts shooting out is uncontrollable benefit. Stood off the nose of a 3 golem set and hit 1 of them once. Due to bugs with the HOTM ranger theif necro aggro wasn’t able to get a clean test if it’s old deflect bounceback was working. If not that change would be a nerf to effectiveness IMHO. Otherwise insignificant change due to uncontrollability.

With stone spirit you go from getting 6 protection buffs of 3 second duration to 7 over the full life of the spirit. 18 to 21 seconds. or protection 30% of spirit life. Storm spirit indeed has an @ 10 second from expiration of previous boon to new boon exclusion.

Storm spirit – you can now get 7 10 second swiftness boons at 50% or 70 seconds of swiftness. Exclusion time may start when boon applies. (nature of the 5 second duration buff on you enables the extra boon I believe) – at 35% can get 7 but more often I get 6 or 60 seconds of swiftness.

Frost spirit – Appears to have no CD between added damage chance at 35% I can get strings of bonus damage for 2-4 times in a row as well as dorughts of such. So at 50% that spirit becomes a 5% damage boost.

Sun spirit – able to get 7 3 second procs now. at 35% you get 6-7 (no improvement) well minimal. It appears to have the same 10 second from proc of negative effect CD.

You can test yourself by getting a Balanced SB from the HOTM vendor – stripping armor and amulet to minimize damage done and shoot heavy golems for 100% of the uptime of spirits. Count your procs…

Benefit of improvement highly negligible measured on any single charachter. In a group of 20…..

Tested survival of spirits as well indeed seems unchanged.

•Fixed a bug that caused many piercing, boomerang, and bouncing projectiles (those that hit more than 1 target) to continually increase in damage the more targets they hit.

testing my river drake he no longer 1 shots the light and (occasionaly medium) armored golems. Which he used to be capable of with a single f2. MOAB doesn’t do quite as well now. Still well for ranger damage…

As you are only using stone for the passive and focusing on maximizing damage during haste periods I’ld think that utility skill is changeable.

For Damage – Sick-em to be timed with a swap sickem QZ period or SOTH for those pets that when summoned predictably spike early.

For mobility survivability keeping your target pinned down for consistent pet damage application – muddy terrain.

35 extra toughness really isn’t anything if your not at least using the 6 second invuln on the pet regularly.

Pretty much outside the condition builds I’ve found beastmastery/self heal monster pet builds that work and builds armoring stating in the vein you describe here. They are functional not OP. Key really is durable enough to work with our damage envelope and balancing those two factors.

Lysico.4906:

Ok thanks..

Though the dodge roll is only blind/poison so not that great..

Appreciate the feedback

Signet of renewal
Empathic Bond (30 WS)
Healing Spring
Bear pet

Armor Runes –
melandru’s -25% duration is nice for blunting overall impact
Shout rune will get good if they make shout utilities better

Weapon rune
Sigil of Purity

DalzK.9086:

If you stand in the circle and spam shortbow 1 – does that stack with the regen you get from the circle?

Never tested but doubt it. Your arrow isn’t passing through you…..And I find GS is a far better weapon to stand in the circle with.

I did do some testing with things like Axe4 to see if I could boomerang it back to me and no go on those tests…

Sounds like LB1 has been silently improved from when I tested it. Must retest. I was getting in the neighborhood of 17 second kill times up to double sb1 kill times with longbow 1. Only 5,3,2 let me outpace SB 1 when I tested a good time back.

Rhyse.8176:

Forgot to address the greatsword- it’s prbably my favorite melee weapon in the game. It’s got a perfect mix of offense, mobility, and defense. 4 is one of the best blocks in the game, doing both decent damage and an interrupt, and 3 is one of the best gap closers with very long range and short cooldown. GS’s one downside is no burst, but combined with the control the weapon brings it makes a very good attrition-type, wear the other guy down kind of weapon.

Both types of swords combine extremely well with traps- if you’re in melee range anyway, dropping them at your feet will always set off the trap. You can get a lot of extra damage or utility that way.

Your pet is your burst.

Getting 100% uptime on the regen from spring requires both the +33% trait and +15% to boons on armor. go +20% regen and get a bit over 100% uptime.

In terms of pure healing capacity between signet, 30 beastmastery trait and regen(which is of course strippable) you can have over +500 healing coming in continuosly in a ranger self heal build. Over half of it in danger of boon removal however.

Machiners.1297:

Experiment with those 2 Bows in the mists with the Golems.

My conclusion:
Ideal position for LB (far away) kills the Golem at the same rate/little slower than the SB in an unideal position (from the front, so no bleed; everything untraited, no additional bonus in anything). The skills 2 and 3 on LB don’t make the Golem die faster than autoattack(only a tiny bit). The 2nd skill is only better than autoattack if there is a combofield as the chance of activating a combofield is higher. The 3rd skill is good if you are in a group as everyone gets something from that.

Overall i must say that the Skills on LB are much more fun/useful/interesting than on the SB, but when you are going full on dmg (doesn’t even have to be conditiondmg) you are better served with the SB. Unless that extra range is really important for you.

But i hope you/someone can back this up. Try it out yourself

Ideal position = 1100 range, over 1200 autoattack isn’t automatic have to spam 1 to get it to trigger in deadtime.

Damage – Longbow can burst in a power crit build for 7-8 seconds more damage that SB san’s utilities(even using SB from behind). However the amount of damage done while sufficient to drop the ehavily armored golem won’t drop most players unless they built incompetently, likewise it’s dependent on the target staying in barrage. Combo is 5,3,2 – It kills the golem on average .5 – .75 seconds faster than a SB in an identical power crit build. If you are under 1200 range and miss your combo animation timing you ate least get an autoattack filler damage(reason for ideal range listed above). You get the damage equivalency because barrage leaves over half it’s damage in the air when the animation finishes, enabling 4 for additional vulnerability(For ther est of that damage) and then 2 to have the barrage and rapid fire hitting at the same time with a large vulnerability on the target.

Mainly Longbow is a control weapon with a brief damage spurt under ideal conditions that matches/slightly exceeds SB during this spurt. Much as a SB user shouldn’t ignore power a longbow user does benefit from condition damage as a damage add on the back end of it’s attacks armor bypasser…

Still it’s a control weapon and horrible the second a target is inside 1000 unless you are knocking back to barrage 4 2. It has it’s place.

The autoattack not working between 1200-1500 at least last I tested is a huge DPS downside if you don’t spam 1.

Durzlla.6295:

Arrys.7145:

Durzlla.6295:

Arrys.7145:

Durzlla.6295:

Forzani.2584:

Durzlla.6295:

Forzani.2584:

…increases pet attributes with each kill. Pet deactivates = bond reset

So this trait discourages pet swapping ? …which negates Zephyrs Speed and Mighty Swap ?

It’s quite amazing actually… my shark with 25 stacks of masters bond ends up with… well lets just say his power goes over 3k and everything unlucky enough to meet him underwater dies very quickly….

Now for my land pets (which it’s MUCH more common for me to get to 25 stacks on due to the whole, more of the game is above water sort of thing =( ) my wolf AND drake (both have the same power) 2218 power, this causes both of them (keep in mind all of the drakes attacks are AoE) to deal a significant amount of damage.

In PvP masters bond becomes all the more lethal, MULTIPLE times in tPvP have i just threw the Sick’Em! shout on some poor roamer just to see a few seconds later “Wilson has killed <insert player name here>” and then once the stacks get going your pet becomes nothing short of a god, especially since a lot of people are to stupid to target the pet with masters bond that is critting their face for ~3k or more per hit(pre Sick’Em!) And don’t even get me started on the cats… lets just say, a cat with 25 stacks of mastersbond is not something you want to come across in 1v1 let alone if the rangers there…

PS: With full stack of masters bond pets end up stronger then most players (this is assuming you have 30pts in beast mastery as well) in PvP it’s VERY easy to get to 25 stacks as long as YOU ARE NOT DYING because they will almost never focus your pet, which makes them quickly spiral out of control and by the time they realize your pet, it already has 20 stacks and that’s far to late for them to bring it down in anything short of a 2v1.

Reading your response gives me the impression that you have Masters Bond on both land pets …which I thought was impossible due to the mechanics of the skill ?

Nah i swap pets (like any good ranger should) however i just don’t swap them until i ABSOLUTELY NEED TO, i also can do simple addition to find out how much my masters bond will buff them. That, and i’ve played enough with it to realize how hard my pets hit (omg the damage lightning breathe causes with masters bond is orgasmic…)

OK Well lightning breath with 30 BM is pretty orgasmic anyways. I’m thinking you like running into mesmers so as to get your stacks to 25. Never tried running BM that way in Tpvp and minion classes are the only way I can see to predictably climb that high. So guessing your use means they count. 30 BM by itself makes the pet a beast particularly cats which get past their squishyness.

I’m so going to have to try this with a survivability build. Might have to name a cat Reaper Drone.

Well in all sPvP and tPvP players (and minions) count as 5, clones/illusions & turrets count as 1 last I checked so its actually really easy to get up, an drake breathe + 25 MB + sig of hunt active + GS 5 = death to everything on my capture point

Exactly what I needed to know, thanks. I tend to use a stationary attackable as my breath anchor if one is available. So a guardian standing on a node;), turret, melee minion on me where I can control position. Have to Name him MOAB and the cat Reaper Drone for this excercise however.

If you run axe +warhorn with RaO up you can make them eat a lightning breathe (or get off the point) that’ll deal almost 5k damage per hit, I’ve downed a bunker instantly with this and they learn fear, after they get hit by the first they don’t get hit by any others, but my god do they book it when they see the drake charging up lol.

I’ve been working on a max health return cleric amulet concept that I may try and work this into. It needed a big damage source and masters bond would give it that from what you describe. Does sort of adjust the build however from extra self survivability to consistent pet DPS application. Gonna start my adjusting from here I think adjusting for more defense if needed. GS does an excellent job of letting you stack regen in Healing spring.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBhODbkoqvuwSwC0SQ0FwUcIF9egea1e/hRlxVf8qC;TsAgzCroEz0loLrYOxkitiYExmEA

Gonna miss the control of my longbow when the drake is out.

Durzlla.6295:

Arrys.7145:

Durzlla.6295:

Forzani.2584:

Durzlla.6295:

Forzani.2584:

…increases pet attributes with each kill. Pet deactivates = bond reset

So this trait discourages pet swapping ? …which negates Zephyrs Speed and Mighty Swap ?

It’s quite amazing actually… my shark with 25 stacks of masters bond ends up with… well lets just say his power goes over 3k and everything unlucky enough to meet him underwater dies very quickly….

Now for my land pets (which it’s MUCH more common for me to get to 25 stacks on due to the whole, more of the game is above water sort of thing =( ) my wolf AND drake (both have the same power) 2218 power, this causes both of them (keep in mind all of the drakes attacks are AoE) to deal a significant amount of damage.

In PvP masters bond becomes all the more lethal, MULTIPLE times in tPvP have i just threw the Sick’Em! shout on some poor roamer just to see a few seconds later “Wilson has killed <insert player name here>” and then once the stacks get going your pet becomes nothing short of a god, especially since a lot of people are to stupid to target the pet with masters bond that is critting their face for ~3k or more per hit(pre Sick’Em!) And don’t even get me started on the cats… lets just say, a cat with 25 stacks of mastersbond is not something you want to come across in 1v1 let alone if the rangers there…

PS: With full stack of masters bond pets end up stronger then most players (this is assuming you have 30pts in beast mastery as well) in PvP it’s VERY easy to get to 25 stacks as long as YOU ARE NOT DYING because they will almost never focus your pet, which makes them quickly spiral out of control and by the time they realize your pet, it already has 20 stacks and that’s far to late for them to bring it down in anything short of a 2v1.

Reading your response gives me the impression that you have Masters Bond on both land pets …which I thought was impossible due to the mechanics of the skill ?

Nah i swap pets (like any good ranger should) however i just don’t swap them until i ABSOLUTELY NEED TO, i also can do simple addition to find out how much my masters bond will buff them. That, and i’ve played enough with it to realize how hard my pets hit (omg the damage lightning breathe causes with masters bond is orgasmic…)

OK Well lightning breath with 30 BM is pretty orgasmic anyways. I’m thinking you like running into mesmers so as to get your stacks to 25. Never tried running BM that way in Tpvp and minion classes are the only way I can see to predictably climb that high. So guessing your use means they count. 30 BM by itself makes the pet a beast particularly cats which get past their squishyness.

I’m so going to have to try this with a survivability build. Might have to name a cat Reaper Drone.

Well in all sPvP and tPvP players (and minions) count as 5, clones/illusions & turrets count as 1 last I checked so its actually really easy to get up, an drake breathe + 25 MB + sig of hunt active + GS 5 = death to everything on my capture point

Exactly what I needed to know, thanks. I tend to use a stationary attackable as my breath anchor if one is available. So a guardian standing on a node;), turret, melee minion on me where I can control position. Have to Name him MOAB and the cat Reaper Drone for this excercise however.

Absolem.2941:

Loki.4871:

Absolem.2941:

Should Warriors really be better at using Bows than a ranger?

Yes. The warrior is supposed to be the best with weapons. The ranger is a ‘jack of all trades’ in Anet’s own words, so like for like the ranger should be inferior in a straight up slogging match. Ranger =/= ‘ranged combat’ it gets the name from it wandering (or ‘ranging’) the wilderness.
Besides, the ranger gets pets, which compensates.

K so back to my original question. What exactly does Ranger do that Warrior doesn’t do better?

Not sure but warrior bored me so I play ranger. And we drop combo fields better. Just wish we had a blast finisher somewhere to go with em until then steal a warriors banner….

Durzlla.6295:

Forzani.2584:

Durzlla.6295:

Forzani.2584:

…increases pet attributes with each kill. Pet deactivates = bond reset

So this trait discourages pet swapping ? …which negates Zephyrs Speed and Mighty Swap ?

It’s quite amazing actually… my shark with 25 stacks of masters bond ends up with… well lets just say his power goes over 3k and everything unlucky enough to meet him underwater dies very quickly….

Now for my land pets (which it’s MUCH more common for me to get to 25 stacks on due to the whole, more of the game is above water sort of thing =( ) my wolf AND drake (both have the same power) 2218 power, this causes both of them (keep in mind all of the drakes attacks are AoE) to deal a significant amount of damage.

In PvP masters bond becomes all the more lethal, MULTIPLE times in tPvP have i just threw the Sick’Em! shout on some poor roamer just to see a few seconds later “Wilson has killed <insert player name here>” and then once the stacks get going your pet becomes nothing short of a god, especially since a lot of people are to stupid to target the pet with masters bond that is critting their face for ~3k or more per hit(pre Sick’Em!) And don’t even get me started on the cats… lets just say, a cat with 25 stacks of mastersbond is not something you want to come across in 1v1 let alone if the rangers there…

PS: With full stack of masters bond pets end up stronger then most players (this is assuming you have 30pts in beast mastery as well) in PvP it’s VERY easy to get to 25 stacks as long as YOU ARE NOT DYING because they will almost never focus your pet, which makes them quickly spiral out of control and by the time they realize your pet, it already has 20 stacks and that’s far to late for them to bring it down in anything short of a 2v1.

Reading your response gives me the impression that you have Masters Bond on both land pets …which I thought was impossible due to the mechanics of the skill ?

Nah i swap pets (like any good ranger should) however i just don’t swap them until i ABSOLUTELY NEED TO, i also can do simple addition to find out how much my masters bond will buff them. That, and i’ve played enough with it to realize how hard my pets hit (omg the damage lightning breathe causes with masters bond is orgasmic…)

OK Well lightning breath with 30 BM is pretty orgasmic anyways. I’m thinking you like running into mesmers so as to get your stacks to 25. Never tried running BM that way in Tpvp and minion classes are the only way I can see to predictably climb that high. So guessing your use means they count. 30 BM by itself makes the pet a beast particularly cats which get past their squishyness.

I’m so going to have to try this with a survivability build. Might have to name a cat Reaper Drone.

Sword is IMHO the illusion of controlled mobility with some built in defensives. GS is actual mobility under your control, a passive defense in your 1 chain and an active defense with KB in your 4 plus a daze stun(2 interupts). Which do you want.

Any class that writes to defend against me don’t travel alone on a MMO forum has started the countdown to nerf;).

Many years of gaming experience tells me so.

Obsidian.1328:

Well that is plain suxors! So unless the little regen “icon” is up, something that is regenerating is not considered regenerating??

Moving to bugs/glitches forums…

Thank you guys btw

Ungeunt doesn’t appear to be considered a boon. Notice it’s icon appears where your signet symbols do not in the removable and extendable boons line. It’s like a powerful temporary signet.

Regeneration can be debuffed ungeunt I don’t believe can.

SOTW isn’t duration based.

In reference to bugged ranger regeneration-like abilities. The 30 beastmastery trait [Natural Healing] which also benefits you the ranger(Not clea rin tooltip) appears to be a fixed value. 133 health. However if you take the trait pets heal for more it’s value per tic will jump to 169 per tic(Sometimes still see 133’s). Your pet will get the same 125 per tic either way.

So with just a cleric amulet and 300 beastmastery you can have 169 a tic (Improved Natural healing), 135 SOTW and regen at 283 a tic Or + 587 per round of tics.

Can improve the regen number a bit more along with the sotw. But Natural healing for me shows either 133 or 169. Thinking natural healing is definitely bugged somehow or bad tooltips on it and the pets heal for more.

[quote=647560;darqwonders.5308:]

My experiencewas wrong see savoths next post and argo’s follow up on stacking priority. With a clerics rune and 30 in beastmastery it caps at something like 295ish a tic up from 155ish base at 80. THis is hard to control test as heals don’t report in the combat log for some unfathomable reason.

You can determine the value of your tic of regeneration from healing spring by dividing the Total regeneration number by 18.03 and rounding(It’s probably 18.025…. but my calcualtor was set to round to 2 decimals and horshoes and hand grenades works for me. Base duration is 6 applications of 3 seconds. First regen being applied at second 0 last at second 15 which creates the base duration total of 18 seconds plus .03 apaprently. Tooltip doesn’t account for you extending duration or didn’t as of @2 weeks ago when I measured my numbers on it In HOTM.

It’s real easy to test by going to HOTM grabbing the amulets unspeccing and going and letting a weak hitter like the ranger beat on you. You revive at the location and track the green tic value divide them into the total regen heal value reported in the tooltip and find you get 18.03….. Would be alot easier if healing reported to the combat log.

With 26K health proccing a 5s protection on a 5.2K hit is a relative rarity.

Runes of Battle seem to be currently bugged.

You went with the Moa for fury undoubtedly consider swapping to a soldier rune with a precision gem.

This increases atk and armor dropping 2k Health and 20% base crit%.

And consider moving 5 points in WS to beastmastery(You don’t seem to plan on using GS) and 5 from Nature. I was underwhelmed by evasive purity when I tested it. You’ll have boons up alot keeping the 5% damage boost makes sense to me.

You aren’t using the GS so IMHO the benefit of the 20% CD advantage is less in WS. And I honestly don’t end up blinded alot and posion is really short.

As your idea is max dodge an energy on swap offhand + air on weapon is nice. At 25% base you have enough to proc it every 10 seconds aprticularly using the MOA for fury. And obviously with your existing amulet choice you do as well. The extra energy is an emergency dodge while regen tics.

Remember to use that 2 second on dodge protection to activate a utility before dodging again. Maximizes the benefit of the traited vigor on heal which improves regen time.

Your pet’s will do better if you get them a few points in this build and the quicker swap is more haste.

Obsidian.1328:

Can anyone confirm that the 33% regen time-increase trait applies to TU? I have it traited, but I coulda swore it was still 10 seconds long. :/

33% does not apply to ungeunt just to regeneration boons. If your not in a build relying on regneration no reason to have that trait. Ungeunts status as a different type of regeneration means it stacks with regenerations simultaneously rather than by duration however.

I agree Savoth. While it’s easy enough to divide the regen by 18.025 or 18.03 to figure out how much you get per tic it is easily confusing.

Healing Springs bonus is traited it gets better, AOE vigor every 3 seconds and if you trait for 33% regen increase plus additional boon increase from runes and have a style that fights in the spirng you can have 100% heal uptime at cap about 297(from) from healing spring regen’s. If you have also added the signet and the 30 beastmastery talent(Which unfortunately doesn’t seem to benefit from healing) you can run alot of incoming healing every second. Which you need as that setup has low overall health pool.

Troll Ungeunt is solo work if youa re somewhat durable. Healing spring is group and perhaps if you skimped on condition removal need the vigor. Heal as one – glass cannon builds that won’t reliably live 10 seconds and need a quick refresh to kill before dying.

Sparks you have your numbers wrong. The 2340 isn’t over 3 seconds it’s over 18.25 seconds if you catch every 3 second refresh of the regeneration buff.

So your total healing value over 3 seconds is actually the total healing value of your healing spring over 18 seconds. It’s easy to test in HOTM as you can let one of the classes kill you slowly and measure the heals precisely.

poolman.7245:

Arrys: very well said. I find it interesting that people like you go out on your own, learn on your own until you actualy understand and draw same conculsions as some of your other smart players and do so through the use of self trial and error. The fact that you explain so well proves it. I’m the same way.

What server do you play on? I’m looking for a good guild and want to create the dreamteam for paid PvP.

Play on blackgate. Understanding a games systems doesn’t equal a member of a dream team;). Dream team players will play the Best classes to create a chance to win, understand the game well, have far better reaction times than me. As a game evolves they are instantly in the next best class to win.

I play a class I enjoy playing, like to understand how it works, but I’ld rather play the style I want than a WTFPWN spec of a style I don’t. Plus I lack the necessary time to maximize my implementation skillset in game. I’ld classify myself as an average player simply because I’ve seen how good really good guildies are. I’ll be at the right place at the right time assuming I’m not testing some crazy theory however;).

Elite level players in my guild seem to have stopped playing waiting on paid tournaments perhaps. Missed a few weeks when it happened but we have a hisotry of a game hitting or missing early in the guild. This one seems to ahve missed critical mass was not maintained. Having HOTM that lets me run incredibly backwards specs to figure out why they are backwards has kept my interest.

ZeroArmada.9426:

Anthrage.2519:

Runes of the Undead hm? I took a look at the Afflicted runes, those are very nice

If going torch offhand and considering flame trap a case can also be made for elementatlist runes. +20% duration fire/frost in a power(165)/condition(57) rune. Gives up about 50 damage a large tick on a flame trap in exhange for another large tick plus adds to your power direct damage which isn’t unimportant to condition builds as that flows to your pets damage as well as your weapons damage.

frost flame is more of a small group skirmish focus whereas undead and associated traps more of a 1v1 IMHO. Dropping a bonfire in the area of a warrior for example results in some nice blast finishers. and 66% snare plus 66% CD increase over 6 seconds is a significant performance decrease across multiple targets if focusing on a team activity. Weak vs say a thief steal/backstab 1v1 however. Of course standing inside a bonfire on a flame trap is a bit of a deterrent.

I don’t play either regularly consider these rough outlines. Maybe someone who does will weigh in.

The 15Khp. 3000 armor version
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV3PIIaPyk5PP7hic0j+C8CA;TgAAzCroay0koJbTumkNB

Mandatory is the 30 skirmishing to extend trap condition duration (Doubles a flame traps big damage) – which in my book = mandatory A knight rune for slightly more HP.

the 22KHP version – this one sacrifices 600 toughness for a larger health pool. Again 30 skirmishing mandatory for reason above. Wilderness survival is your condiiton points and since your loading up on traps and haste probably condition removal from 30 WS. (can play without that and without 30 by using Healing Spring)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV3PIIaPyk5PP7hic0j+C8CA;TgAgyCroay0koJbTumkNB
It caries higher base damage(Better pet damage as a result) but crits substantially less than the 15K HP version. Conditions don’t crit so thats a are you using rune procs question. It also having less toughness gets less benefit from undead runes perhaps people use others. I seem to see more 22K hp videos out than the 15-16KHP.

I don’t play these alot so there may be some subtleties I missed.

Pretty much your a damage delivery system in either build.

I’ve also seen 30 skirm support trap builds running shaman amulet and I think dwayna runes.

Weapons Energy(Your either squishy with 22K HP or slighly harder with 15 you need energy on swap for dodge on the offhand at least.

Nope not overlooked. I love offhand axe in round 1 of tpvp matches because the sniper nests are plentiful and it works with either a power build or trap dropper on the node (Keep best and mine 2nd in particular).

Defensive works well with combo fields and damge reflection when under concentrated fire from multiple spawns charachters. And when your hard to get to people like to light you up with projectiles. batter up…

Sort of depends what your building for. And what flexibility/survivability you want.

Pet’s properly used can inflict some serious pain/advantages for you.

Survivability is Wilderness survival – toughness – I pretty much won’t play in PvP below 2800 defense – Thief and warrior blindsides.

Wilderness Survival is also our traitable + condition damage line – necessary to maximize trap damage.

Non glass cannon and any build wanting survivability condition damage maximization is in this line to some extent for me.

Skirmishing -
Trap enhancements and Crit/bonus damage on crit(What do ranger runes give you) precision and crit damage. Power builds maximize damage with crit, condition trap builds need 30 skirmishing to extend duration of traps maximizing damage.

Marksmanship – If going glass cannon power you can use this line to generate survivability from signets plus damage in association with the skirmish line.

Beast mastery – at least 5 for the haste on pet swap – often 15 to reduce pet swap CD. Rarely 30 for a durability build. Main challenge to using 30 beastmastery is IMHO regneration scaling and rune choices in PvP. + heal runes lack vitality and crit options. and 16K health 3200 or 3000 defense with a 290 regen can be pretty vulnerable.

Nature Magic – Spirits have survivability issues proc benefits not what they should be from them it’s either to convert Vitality to power extend duration range or at 15 points share buffs you get with pets +HP. Line is lackluster but you need vitality to handle condition damage as our removal options are over time predominantly and toughness doesn’t help against those. (I get mine mainly by modifying soldier amulets)

Armor Runes and Amulets -
Amulet design in particular for PvP makes you make certain choices. I have no option to make a 2600ish defense 24K+ health +heal build. If I did such a build would be very very strong and encourage a 30 beastmastery build potentially. I’m forced to 16K health with combined regens doing 290ish +133ish every second and 3K armor 2500ish atk. Fising spirits should also enhance this option.

Options for significant vitality and toughness + power is 1 amulet soldier(base stats on this gear in PvP has the largest impact on ones performance IMHO).

At least partly because spirits aren’t fully worth it in terms of added benefits putting alot of points in that line to design around rune design is a poor return on investment.

Finally I can build a 30 Skirm, 20 WS build that can play as power or condition or power/condition damage with good survivability by simply swapping amulets and armor and weapons. It can also go glass cannon with another swap but does lack the survivability of a marksmanship glass cannon with signets.

Without going into builds those are the reasons I tend to end up in the lines you mention.

Because knockbacks interupt channeled abilities. And several channeled abilities hurt ALOT. 100blades, whirling axe etc….

Of course if the attacker put stability up this doesn’t help but when they didn’t GS has a defense that lets you hold your ground rather than dodging away….

Knockback = push=interupt…. And your leap is your highest DD move.

A way to get fury reliably from another places other than warhorn on a decent CD. (Main impediment to me for using axe/axe)

Moving while whirling would be helpful as well.

And you get a RND KD to boot. Really good pets in survivable melee power toughness builds.

Axe/axe is strong in power builds situationally. Against a team with GS and axe warriors not so much…. But if you hit B and see a bunch of projectile attackers it’s great.

axe4 – is better than WH4 – multi target good damage not easily avoidable (in a power build.)

WH for me is all about needing the fury to burst damage generate procs. I build power toughness vit in power builds and will have between 4 and 17% base crit. I need that 20% to proc nullification or condition removal every 10 seconds reliably as well as up damage. If the proc’s off crit weren’t so beneficial (Removing a warriors might stack is so sweet) I could forego the horn more.

Gunk – ethereal field + rnd Condition
Venom Sac – Poison Field plus what is it 10 second of poison
Plus
Scale – 10 sec bleed, 20 sec poison, 10 sec weakness

I’ll take those over a controlled charge any day of the week.

Petsunder [Guard} on a node should prevent flipping and/or capture the node.

This would enable the ranger to take advantage of the sniper hides around nodes forcing a sole attacker/defender to decide deal with pet while ranger rips me from the flank, or go to the flank to deal with ranger while the pet potentially flips the node…

It would let the ranger use their movement survivability without losing a node guaranteed by sacrificing the pet’s damage and benefits as they did.

Think of traits as flexible. Sometimes piercing is advantageous, against single targets the extra range. Sometimes you want access to the active effects of signet othertimes it can be irrelevant to you(WVW defense). So switch up on the fly out of combat.

If you are going max damage marks/skirmish and playing PvP you’ll need a survival trait. Which is either 30 in marks and a signet, or a shout and your pet likely dying.

Don’t think of Longbow how cheshire does. barrage is control but also more.

Barrage is frontloaded cast back loaded damage. In PvP it’ll force a target to burn endurance to get out (If they dodge twice they are swallowing your damage for a bit) or slowly move through it but retaining dodge to avoid incoming damage. It also snares to let a melee pet get on target. Want to keep a node defended you stand in the barrage etc…

Most importantly when the cast animation is over over half the damage remains airborn and you can hit your next attack which is 3(vulnerability) followed immediately by 2. In effect you’ll have rapid shot and barrage damage simultaneously on a target you kept in the barrage zone. This is your longbows burst, engineer keeping targets in the barrage with your pet or being max power consider the lashtail devourer(rending barbs-basically a pet verison rapid fire to add additional damage in this phase) that will add a whole extra damage stack in the burst phase from range. Also can apply poisons on it’s auto attack to minimize the heal repsonse. (As a ranged higher toughness pet it also tends to be around for your shout use)

As target reaches you knockback with LB 4 for max distance(or preferably elevation change) and weapon swap(LB is on CD). Pet keeps harassing use your second set ranged or utilities. If they are ranged damage you might prefer them in close.

An armor and amulet switch can be a huge change in survivability or DPS output carry one.

I believe in adapting on the fly as the game lets you do it.

Mammoth.1975:

Wow there are a lot of players on this forum who don’t have teams. I wonder what would happen if they started talking to each other.

If you don’t have a consistent schedule you don’t really get the option of doing the team thing. Simply the way things work.

A team requires 5 players with consistent playtimes that can depend on each other being around. So perhaps a couple alternates.

Gotta agree with you on this one. 50% would be to much I think. The layered damage of a 5,3,2 would be awesome however;)….

I came around this corner and all of a sudden arrows were falling aorund me and I was dead before I even saw the ranger, nerf rangers plz kthks…..

But it would be fun for a few days…

Well swiftness spirit is quite good.

I suspect the direct damage bonus might be as expected as well but didn’t have a stability weapon to test with.

I think when they nerfed them they added an exclusion on top of an existing exclusion however.

I did some testing with the protection buff last week. Essentially I shot golems for the full 60 seconds of the spirit rather than counting shots.

I got the protection buff on average 6 times every 60 second period.

I got the swiftness buff 4-5 times for 40-50 seconds total.

What I noticed is there seems to be 2 exclusions.

1) It won’t reproc when the effect is already in place.
2) It won’t reproc in the same 5 second spirit buff active window. (Impact on short boons not long)

I didn’t do enough testing to be absolutely certain of that, but that seemed to be the rule.

For something with a long boon(swiftness 10 seconds) got great coverage had reporcs happening the moment the boon dropped.

Protection I never got the proc until 3ish seconds after the boon dropped.

Never stacked either boon and tested with LB, SB and axe(Which all had consistent total proc numbers over 60 seconds).

The numbers above were traited +15%.

I think it is proccing on a 35% chance, I think there are some exclusions to be figured out when it can’t proc. My testing wasn’t enough to be certain what those were. And seeing as they are on the fix list I wasn’t going to take the teim to design something.

Deleted my main ranger to start an asura, Find the statue beneficial using the games snipi9ng locations in PvP. So 2 pigs from the getgo siamoth and boar basically. PvE they work very well.

Their f2 is bloody good if you’ve reached the point the game has slowed down for you. AKA managing a pick-up use is in the cards wihtout any real effort.

Long dazes AOE 3 second fear plasma!….

The ability using pet swapping to start a fight with 2 abilities(That would be 30 second CD’s as utilities) awaiting pick up without any functional delay.

Haven’t tried them in pvp yet but can see definite possibilities in bunkier builds with advance setup similar to what an engineer does with med kit.

Really appreciate Durzlla’s post of their abilities as my testing of them missed many of their benefits.

Roll ranger. Currently they have limitations but they aren’t horrible… If it’s the style of play you enjoy it will be the class for you.

I’ve tried just about everything, for all the rangers weaknesses which are more isolated per build than overarching. That is you can develop builds to address specific issues and have fun accepting those builds will also have weaknesses.

Your definitely not the OP class, some fixes are definitely needed but we also know changes are en route. One thing I don’t think you can expect is for pets not to remain an important part of the class. And while they have issues they aren’t completely unusable or without benefits.

Marksman as a line wouldn’t work. Why TPVP you could have a max power max condition build swappable by changing amulets and armor and traits in a 30 0 30 0 10 build. It’ld be silly. Best of all worlds offensively. What am I facing lets go traps not that lets go power. (We’ld all be the same spec)

Placing them in wilderness survival – you’ld forsake your defensives.

Spirit line – ok perhaps some potential if they synergized the traits with spirits. AKA thrown traps and radius expanding spirit radius, mobile spirits also extending trap condition duration.

beastmastery – no spot really

skirmishing – the + crit is beneficial to weapon damage does trigger “damage” components of traps proccing traits.

The handy thing of this game is switching on the fly out of combat. 1v1 unguent.

healing spring as a vigor generator(If in the right trait line) + aoe heal + combo finisher potential(particularly around a class with alot of blast finishers) =.

And you can switch quickly.

Umm in my experience our traps do crit, rather the damage component does. Just went and reconfirmed previous testing.

Flame trap – the 3 duration tics can each crit and trigger and trigger sharpened edges if they do.

Vipers next also has the 3x damage small tics they can also crit triggering sharpened edges.

Spike trap only has a 1x damage so 1 chance to crit.

They didn’t make it completely nonsensical actually. SB’s speed in particular adds back a good amount of damage lost in power when using a rabid amulet.

They didn’t make it completley non sensical thats why condition builds are 1 that works. I understand you don’t like it but they clearly did think about it.

Dam when I tested I got the same items because I must have tested the same pet and wasn’t using condition items as it was different days….

Setting up on a node you could set up quite a bunker given a bit of time.

Carbonights.9432:

How does the regen for this skill actually pan out? Is the number listed next to the regen the total amount it would heal if someone sat in the Healing Spring for the entire duration?

Divide the total heal shown by like 18.03 and that is the value per tic. In short it’s the full value the regen will heal if you catch every regen refresh(Which is @ every 3.25 seconds which means you can dodge in and out theoretically but timing must be precise).

It does not include the additional amount of healing you will get if you trait for the +33% regen duration.

Krojack I’ve noticed that but never tested it. Simple test stopwatch and go to the mists.

See which kills faster over about 10 kills on the golems while in the exact same spec. I’m sort of partial to devourer and leopard as I like to abuse elevation as much as possible and both of those pets arent circle pathing to my targets unlike birds which can’t fly off ledges lacking a leap.

What type of class were you trying to damage them with? Where you fighting at a stationary location where they may have had spirits stashed away? Hard part is keeping protection up reliably of what you described IMHO. 2 seconds on dodge really isn’t that much. So quite possibly the armor rune choice for that.

In heal power toughness builds from memory I’ve been able to generate

regen @ 290 HPS
Troll Unguent – 8XX per second or is it 9XX
Spirit – 4XX
Signet of the wild(requiring 30 in marks) – around 100 HPS as I recall.

So keeping a regen and signet you can generate in the 300-400 HPS in a max heal build if you can keep regen up. If you were chipping against that in a bunker engineer build stalemate.

I’ve found several durable builds but not a 1 that’s universally immortal they all had weaknesses to exploit.

I found I had better survivability ignoring healing in toughness power vitality builds however.

If you have 3kish defense troll unguent even with little to no plus healing does wonders against most opponents.

I also never really tried the condition variants. kitten Jim rangers use longbows….