Guild Wars 2

This is an important discussion, I’m going to add it to jub’s thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/STICKY-PLS-Compilation-of-Good-Builds-Posts/first#post1757202

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

well nice waste of laurels you should rather buy ascended accesory

Yeah, well, Dina is a little rough with the phrasology there but a good ammy for either pve or a good ammy for wvw is what you should be after. My plan is once I get a few ammys, I’m going for the rings and accessories. Remember, pristine relics can be spent on rings and stuff too in FOTM.

I thought they fixed that to make it such that you get exotics? But realitically, laurels are best spent on ascended items aince those are ao hard to achieve compared to exotics. It’s not the end of the world, if you want ascended faster play fractals. We’ve all made this kind of mistake before. Always think carefully before committing to spend those kinds of resources. (If it makes you feel better I bought the “wrong” ascended rings for what I was trying to do a while back).

KrisHQ.4719:

Spirits are still incredibly bad.
Yesterday i noticed a guy in tPvP using the Sun Spirit, and my first thought was “Why would he do that?”
Then i remembered a build recently posted on the ranger forum using LB and Sun Spirit.

He had absolutely no chance. I run a BM Sword/Dagger x GS build, and i basically evaded everything and killed him with full hp. Dont think he even got me burning once.
And then i thought to myself “Why… Just.. Why would he do that?”
So yeah. Might be a fun build to run in PvE or Hot-joins, but i dont really think Spirits can be viable in any way competitively.

Though, the elite can be good if timed correctly but due to its insanely long casting time it is difficult.

The best tpvp team in the game ran a powernecro focused build where they protected a glass cannon necro who got their kills. GW2 is a team game. Power necro would never work in hotjoin. But with a great team, they were unstoppable.

Also, for another counterexample, a berserker thief should never lose to me, right? As a hybrid/ranged ranger you should always lose that fight 1v1. But I have beaten theives before. That doesn’t make me conclude, based on a victory, that theives are useless. Maybe you played someone who was still learning the profession. If it was me, I would have blocked you silly cat, knocked it back, condition damaged it to death, and the. i would have went toe to toe with you.

They only balance professions with tpvp. They conform pve (which includes instances like dungeons) to professions rather than the other way around. Right now, in pvp, I do not run full BM. But in dungeons I always do. Why? It’s easy to land pet hits on bosses and pets hit so hard, in particular the cats for a zerk build. Not that you always run cats. But a BM/melee build is what you want for DPS (cof path 1)—it’s risky but the payoff is worth it. You can run different builds—more pvp kind of builds— but that’s best for open world or the better, newer reworked dungeons. TA for example, I do not run full GC. But I do max out BM because those pet hits are so nice.

Hey guys. I happen to be on JQ and a friend of durz’s. I am not really denied groups in dungeons in general but dungeons are hard so sometimes it doesn’t work out so well. That being said, dungeons can be cleared with amy group makeup. My best recommendation is that when you find a group that runs smoothly take advantage of it and try to run with them regularly. Try to work together as a team—voip is best. That being said, I’ve pugged many, many dungeons without any of that. Sometimes it doesn’t go well! :p Unfortunately, elitist players are everywhere though. Most people I know, in fact, would never EVER consider playing ranger. So it’s the misperception you have against you in dungeons. That means you have to be that much better.

Know the fights. Know what mobs to kill in what order and how to approach them. Do they have knockback? TA hounds? Better have a stun break; are you kiting said hounds? Better use RaO for stability or shared anguish + stability training. Lots of zerk melee in the group? You better throw on your healing gear and being the healing spring and blast heals.

You have to be the MacGuver / Indiana Jones. As a ranger, to overcome stereotypes, you will be given less forgiveness for mistakes so you need to know the fights and your utilities and what you bring very well and be able to think on your feet. You need to keep those pets up. A ranger with dead pets is awfully embarrassing—but you have to learn somehow! Good luck on your server change; I recommend guesting a lot and exoring guilds. Your guild will mean more to you than your server.

Ah guys don’t spend gold on carrion! Run citadel of flame and get the cool flame carrion armor (power vit condi) and the best part is you make gold while you run it. You’ll want to spend that gold on good condition damage runes, perhaps runes of the adventurer like durzilla suggests. CoF path 1 is currently the most popular dungeon in the game. Get guildies to run it with you or find a pick up group on gw2lfg.com (third party group finding site).

Also, seetoo thanks for the advice. This is a good reason for rangers to spend rank points on siege mastery.

I’m not a shill, just a huge fan with too much time to burn. I’m a player, message me in game sometime and let’s play SAB together or something. But yeah, just like Terkov said, I spend a lot of time here trying to help people learn about this profession. I’m one of, what, three or four people in my guild that runs primarily ranger. I want more people to play it and it’s pretty disappointing to see this thread at the top of the page over and over and over again. For months. Over and over. This thread has been resurrected so many times. And there’s no discussion, no point. The devs left a log time ago and the discussion quickly devolved. Everyone knows about these problems, it’s all people have talked about with this profession. "Rangers getting improvements" was the number 1 post on r/guildwars2 yesterday because it was an april fools joke.

I don’t want to argue because you make good points, right? That would be cool for sure, no doubt. How do you reconcile that with the current design of species specific story arcs? And how do you reconcile that with pvp players who don’t like pve and only wvw or spvp? I mean, in the case of spvp, I know you get all the pets immediately. But if the pets grew and changed over time, the enemy wouldn’t be able to spot you, see that you’re running spiders, then think “nope, condition damage, I’m out of here”. In all honesty I think weapons should be easier to recognize. For example, if I see a sceptor / dagger elementalist, I know I have to dodge on the initial blast or else I’ll be in a world of pain.

Or maybe I misunderstood that part and pet skills wouldn’t necessarily change over time?

Anyhow, the big problem is the self imposed constraint that they must treat pve, wvw, and spvp as similarly as possible to prevent players from needing to massively change their style of play when moving from one to the other. From a business perspective, this saves cost and headaches so I think it’s a smart decision. So you have to live within that box with your ideas somehow. Maybe you can articulate them in such a way as to make it work?

Infernia.9847:

I ended up with the same 10pts in wilderness survival. I am going to miss my protection on dodge roll but there is no where to eek out that last 5 pts for it.
Now to figure out if gearing with a mix of carrion/rabid will help to keep them alive longer with added toughness. Or if that’s even worth it.

That’s great, I’m glad you like it. Folks have been pining for a decent longbow build besides 30/30/x/x/x and durzilla was smart enough to realize you need sun spirit to do the longbow / condition / power build. I hope more longbow players see this because it has certainly brought longbow back into my rotation and I literally had not used it for months!

Ryan.8367:

“THE REASON why I care so much is that this could, if it works like I think with longbow, be the most OP condition removal in the game. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to cleanse ALL conditions within 1200 yards? Yeah, the pet would instantly die, but that’s a good trade off for cleaning the entire freaking army.”

And could you imagine how fast they would fix that?

Yeah, you’re right. I feel dumb now. So, logically, we can conclude that weapon range does not equal “nearby”. Then what is nearby? 600 yards? 300 yards?

There’s a lot of neat ideas to build off but consider this: no other peofession has to go hunt down some object in the world to unlock the full potential. So the more work you make it for rangers, the more likely you’ll get in a situation where they’re missing out on their full potential just because they haven’t had the time to do the pet story mission or whatever. This game has plenty of timesinks.

I’ve just really grown into ranger as it is, ya know? I’ve learned to like it. That being said, you have some nice ideas here. Ideas are a framework to build off. These ideas have general support so maybe in the future we’ll see some kind of implementation of this as the devs continue strengthening the core game. But they have a long list of priorities that focus on a changing world—a truly dynamic world. That’s ambitious enough without repeating profession developing work that really, I’m guessing, was finished before the last beta weekend. I believe core mechanics and profession design are close to where ANET wants them and I wouldn’t count on huge chanes any time soon. Pet mechanics are being evaluated all the time—that much we do know, but pet fixes have been coming in painfully slow (seriously, can you guys fix the porcine class yet? Pleeeeease)

akosierin.4973:

what you hear from people saying that rangers are crap prolly plays a berserker warrior and only plays cof p1 and used to seeing 18k plus hundred blades dmg..

rangers arent as bad as people say, yes, they got they’re downside like any other class.. but if you enjoy playing it and you find a very nice play style you can feel you’re not wasting your time..

i play my ranger with a GS and frankly speaking i enjoy doing a more sustained dmg than high burst one..

and one more thing, people say that engies are on par with suckyness << (non existing word but pretty much you get it) with ranger.. i know one engie from our guild that can own thieves warrs and guards.. so it proves that OPness~ isnt solely based on class

I have a heck of a time solo’ing a good condition/bunker engi or theif with ANY of my best spvp builds. Is it your opinion that

A) i need practice
B) rangers should not solo condition bunkers or zerk theives

It appears this game is balanced more around teams than 1v1, no?

GAME BREAKING: Spirit of Nature does NOT revie fallen allies in wvw as it is supposed to. It does not do anything. Something changed in a recent patch to break it.

I am not trolling. You seem to think signet of renewal (SoR) pulls conditions to you and the pet and gave me a way to test that. But we’ve already got the answer to that particular question from an earlier post you may have skimmed. Let me explain.

I always though signet of beastmaster (SoBM) would make it so conditions ALSO within range of the ranger get pulled.

In other words, without SoBM, SoR ONLY pulls conditions from players NEARBY the pet. With SoBM, on the other hand, I always thought, based on the wording of the tooltip, that SoR would then pull conditions from players NOT ONLY nearby pet BUT ALSO nearby player.

Does that make sense? One of the first replies to this thread already established that SoR and SoBM DOES NOT pull conditions to the player. It is a question of the meanig of “nearby”. So if I have longbow, does conditions in 1200 range of player (plus pet range if it doesn’t overlap) go to the pet? Or is “nearby” some kind of term that just means 600 yards?

ANET confirmation would be great. Their skills and skill interactions are awfully buggy and usuallu ambiguous so the INTENT isn’t even clear from the tooltip.

THE REASON why I care so much is that this could, if it works like I think with longbow, be the most OP condition removal in the game. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to cleanse ALL conditions within 1200 yards? Yeah, the pet would instantly die, but that’s a good trade off for cleaning the entire freaking army.

If it regenerates it’s due to signet of the wild. You used to be able to heal pets but if they died next to a player, it was hard to choose priority over the pet to heal the player so ANET changed it shortly after launch. I personally liked it that way too. To be honest, a dead pet should lay dead and not run back. I hate that. What if I’m stealthed? TOO BAD EVERYONE CAN SEE YOU. Which reaaaaally bugs me.

Infernia.9847:

I hope someone does come up with a nice spirit build for WvW. I was just toying around with different combos in gw2buildcraft to see if I could make something fun with spirits. Does regeneration or healing apply to a spirit (healing spring etc). I have never used one.

But we do need to find out if the elite skill ‘spirit of nature’ still works in WvW. Some were reporting it was bugged recently.

EDIT: Forgot to ask did u go 30/0/X/30/X – (X = where I am having difficulty deciding where to put the remaining points )

Fantasic guess. I traited full marksmanship for eagle eye / piercing arrows, with 10 in wilderness survival and 30 in nature magic. Like durzilla, I was using carrion armor and superior rune of the adventurer, along with a sigil of doom on longbow and a sigil of corruption on greatsword (you will end up in melee eventually, no doubt). With stacks of corruption people really start hurting, I mean, ~1400 condition damage and ~3200 attack along with spiders for venom / range / immobilize…it’s fun, let’s just leave it at that.

Ever since Durzilla posted that nice longbow/sun spirit condition damage build, I’ve been playing around a lot with spirits. You can trait nature magic instead of wilderness survival like he did, right? That actually gives similar stats with the +5% to power. But the cool thing is spirits unbound because then you’re not stuck by the spirit—particularly useful in wvw since motion is so key. It’s pretty fun loading arrows with burning, poison, weakness, vulnerability, sharpening stone bleeds and with a single barrage (from eagle eye range) I can easily drop half a dozen conditions on 5 people and they often hit the dirt shortly after. So it’s fun and actually really good ranged/ backline support for an army doing siege or a tower protecting the door. This build works for what it’s meant to do. I have obtained over 50 badges in just a couple hours of casual play in T1 so I’m not just trying to lie to you guys about ranged condition damage. It’s really good.

Now I came here to ask about boons on spirits. While testing, I found that when someone nearby granted might, my spirit also got a stack. This leads to several questions.

1) How does might on spirit affect my damage? Is it just like having another stack of might on myself?

2) Does fortifying bond work with spirts?

Please, don’t let this thread devolve into “spirits suck” because A) that’s not the point of the discussion and try it yourself, it’s effective and fun. I’m not saying all spirits are good but sun spirit and the spirit elite definitely have their place in current meta.

Then I would quit GW2 and buy League of Legends that very day. What was the question again?

Indoles.1467:

I used to run a power ranger (quickness nerf ended that). Just built a trap ranger with just over 1500 conditioin damage (not fully geared with no ascended) and I dominate people in wvw in both small and large fights. The aoe and cc on the traps rips almost every profession apart and the constant evades+reapplication of conditions ensure your damage will be dealt while you stay pretty safe. I personally, find it a kitten near OP build in every situation. In zergvzerg, i run flame/frost/spike for heavy cc and damage. in small groups i run flame/viper/spike for higher damage. If the kitten hits the fan, entangle at the proper moment decimates solo players and groups alike (Don’t blow it too early! Make sure they can’t evade it before casting and don’t be blinded when casted.).

Yeah the build is pretty sick.

Indoles.1467:

Chopps.5047:

Indoles.1467:

Signet of the Beastmaster does not affect the Signet of Renewal skill whatsoever. I have tested this extensively. It does not pull all conditions to you and your pet nor does it pull all conditions to you and then from you to your pet, it simply does the same thing as untraited. Considering rangers already have a hard time with conditions, I’m glad if traited it doesn’t pull them all to you.

Awesome, someone who’s done extensive testing. I have a couple questions for you. First, none of what you wrote contradicts the idea that signet of the beastmaster affects the range of SoR, right? Because normally SoR procs for everything nearby the pet (which is why you want to be near the pet when you use this if you’re cleansing yourself). In theory, if signet of beastmaster is traited, SoR should act for whoever is then nearby BOTH the ranger AND the pet. That’s what I was hoping to find out. You guys have made the rest pretty clear at this point.

Then, the next logical question is “what is meant by the tooltip wording ‘nearby’”? Is that a standard term, indicating 600 or 900 yards or something? Or does “nearby” mean within range of the current weapon? Because then you could use eagle eye and longbow to cleanse a wide area.

Have you tested these things?

Yes, SoR has about a 600 unit radius around only the pet, so it needs to be pretty close. Second, a simple test you can do yourself. Get your pet killed and hit SoR with SotB traited while near other players that have conditions (easily tested in wvw). You would think with a dead pet you would pull all conditions from nearby allies to yourself and essentially doom yourself (Signet of Stone still gives the player 6s of 0 damage from physical attacks while the pet is dead). What you instead find is that you in fact have a 60s stun breaker when your pet is dead, nothing more.

So, traiting it for a support ranger build is worthless because you gain no benefit from traiting for this skill. Another issue with a support build that uses the pet to cleanse conditions from allies is that positioning the pet is near impossible without guard, resulting in issues with cleansing certain targets when desired.

No not at all. It won’t work with a dead pet. I believe the way it is supposed to function is that all conditions “nearby” both you and the pet (regardless of whether pet is at max range or right next to you) get pulled to the pet if and only if the pet is alive. You need to do more testing. If I get a chance I will and I will post with my results.

Mr. Hrouda, thanks again for posting. Guys, go easy on the complaints. It’s very extreme. Patience and practice if you’re so passionate about ranger. No need to cut each other down, especially Hrouda since he’s coming from a completely different perspective.

TogoChubb.3984:

Sansar.1302:

I have 3 ranger at the moment a condition\trapp spec with sb/sword warhorn
Beast master bunker gs /sword dagger
and a mele hybrid build that i find very entertaining and semi viable.

Most rangers i talk with that is unnhappy with rangers use them as pure range class.
but the short bow and long bow dont synergise any well.
I belive a buff Long bow must be done rely carfull as it have ok burst, if traited a good knock back and good area dmg,
It needs a buff of some sort to be viable in spvp/tpvp but i cant se any thing that will help without being op.

Inn my oppinion a realy strong Spvp/Tpvp class, and ok in WvW
cant rely comment on PvE as i only did what i needed to get to 80 and got most of my gear from trading gems 4 gold.

I almost only play tornaments these days.

The longbow has a terrible fire rate with the exception of #2, and max damage is achieved at a distance that projectiles can be sidestepped with ease without quickness to make up for poor fire rate. The #4 skill should be an instant cast shot b/c in WvW it is interrupted almost every time. The longbow almost has no protection b/c it is a slow and laborious at getting shots off and is too prone to interruption.

The short bow is still viable in WvW simply b/c of the quick fire rate and immediate fire of the #5 skill. I still don’t really understand poison as the #2 condition but that skill is useless anyway unless you are at point blank range. The #2 skill should become an AoE bullseye target attack which would help with two things. First of all it would help the condition become more of an asset and secondly would give a defense against invisibility since there is no way to hit a target that has gone into stealth with the SB. In addition unless you have started the #2 skill (which will continue to track people in stealth) on the LB you can’t hit enemies in stealth either. Barrage is way to slow to kill a thief in stealth so please don’t retort with that.

Overall the bows biggest weaknesses are in their defensive standpoints are severely lacking in almost all aspects. They are completely offensive and the LB due to low fire rate, slow projectile speed, and good damage is at a long distance it has a hard time standing on its on as a main weapon of choice. Since the LB without quickness misses more than it hits a moving target is not an option for me anymore so I have completely moved to GS/SB. As stated earlier I hate being forced into a weapon but I can’t see a better weapon for the ranger atm then the GS.

Nah, Sansar is right in that longbow isn’t terrible (especially with piercing arrows and eagle eye) and that it doesn’t synergize well with shortbow. I know you’re passionate but if you don’t see that you need to explore more successful ranger builds. I get your poi t about defensive however I should add that melee weapons have some built in defense because you’re at melee range. I’m not sure defense with bows makes sense.

Yeah, on necro night my guild is up to their ears in bags. Piercing arrows and barrage (or traps) helps a lot for tagging but, yeah. Necros.

Indoles.1467:

Signet of the Beastmaster does not affect the Signet of Renewal skill whatsoever. I have tested this extensively. It does not pull all conditions to you and your pet nor does it pull all conditions to you and then from you to your pet, it simply does the same thing as untraited. Considering rangers already have a hard time with conditions, I’m glad if traited it doesn’t pull them all to you.

Awesome, someone who’s done extensive testing. I have a couple questions for you. First, none of what you wrote contradicts the idea that signet of the beastmaster affects the range of SoR, right? Because normally SoR procs for everything nearby the pet (which is why you want to be near the pet when you use this if you’re cleansing yourself). In theory, if signet of beastmaster is traited, SoR should act for whoever is then nearby BOTH the ranger AND the pet. That’s what I was hoping to find out. You guys have made the rest pretty clear at this point.

Then, the next logical question is “what is meant by the tooltip wording ‘nearby’”? Is that a standard term, indicating 600 or 900 yards or something? Or does “nearby” mean within range of the current weapon? Because then you could use eagle eye and longbow to cleanse a wide area.

Have you tested these things?

Better start saving laurels/relics if you want to run this build because good luck paying for the trinkets.

Arghore.8340:

I recently switched from Axe+Warhorn&Torch to include a sword it goes with the torch… and thus run Axe+Warhorn, Sword&Torch …. this seems to work quite well, though i did switch off the auto attack … The Axe Warhorn combo is used to be midrange and more ‘support’ while the sword+torch is to just get in there and bash around.

I would say it works just fine, but then again, what do you want to do? this is all written from a PvE perspective and may not be worth the pixels it’s displayed with when it comes to WvW or sPvP …

I like building a flame aura with a swoop out of bonfire. If anyone comes up with a good flame aura might stacking build, post it because I’ve been wondering about that for a while. It seems like ranger has access to two flame fields (although one is a trap and has to be triggered by an enemy) and two leaps. You could hornets sting, for example, drop bonfire, and then monarchs leap back into battle with a flame aura. I could imagine many stacks of might forming in a chaotic wvw fight so the build would probably call for high toughness and vitality and involve boon duration and utilities like protect me.

Xsorus.2507:

Blackbird.4382:

So a condition/trap build is the way to go these days?

Solo Roaming Conditions usually better, for zerging, go power build.

That’s good advice. Just to add to that, I would characterize that regen/apothecary build along with zerging, even though you’re not hitting hard, you’re healing support. It’s also interesting to run a cat beastmaster build solo, wouldn’t you say xsorsus? You could deal conditions while your pet dealt solid physical damage, in theory. This is in terms of roaming / solo.

Xsorus.2507:

Go buy it from the vendors in Cursed shore, you’ll need to put carrion jewels on the jewelry but other then that, all you need is weapons, which you can use Carrion

Crest of the rabid is the “rabid” version of jewels fwiw.

Yeah any transformation resets the master’s bond which sucks. Even if you have the same pet equipped when you go underwater the stacks mysteriously disappear. It’s completely lame and broken and I’ve submitted numerous error reporta about it to no avail.

I suppose one could make the case that gaming is a waste of time in general. Regardless, I will tell you what I tell everyone: roll a few different classes and stick with the playstyle you like.

Xsorus.2507:

Why would you buy Rabid Armor from TA when you can buy a full set of it + jewelry from Karma Merchants in Cursed Shore.

I wasn’t aware the venders sold karma armor with rabid stats. In general, I like the look of TA armor and was pretty hardcore into dungeons runs with ranger for a long time so I had the tokens. The only set I haven’t finished is basically Arah and that’s because I’ve been buying weapons instead with tokens.

I see more ranger melee in pve than I do in pvp. In pvp, sword/greatsword tend to be used more for their utility skills. Very few players in the meta run some kind of zerker melee build and when they do it’s thief or warrior, not ranger. I can imagine some kind of team strategy where a zerker player does the killing but is protected by the team who also CC and apply conditions for him. But yeah, solo, unless you’re playing a thief, I just don’t recommend a pure damage melee spec in pvp. You’ll get mopped across the floor.

But in pve you’ll get the most damage out of zerk/melee. My pve build is generally 20/20/0/0/30 with zerk gear and ranger runes with sword/warhorn and honed axes (dual) with cats (stalker/jaguar) but sometimes I’ll go 20/5/15/0/30 with shortbow instead of axes, like in any dungeon that’s challenging (arah or TA come to mind). In arah, you’re going to want some toughness so maybe swap out zerk trinkets for knights during the lupi fight because you will probably die a lot, especially if you don’t practice a lot or if you’re new.

I do pretty well, in general. But if you’re into dungeons, the consensus is that ranger might not be your class. Unless you’re really into the mechanic of ranger, you might have more fun using another profession in pve for the time being, at least until ANET reworks the dungeon content. That said, any dungeon is currently easy enough (with practice) such that any team composition can win.

Lert, I think it’s interesting that you never cite condition damage numbers anywhere in your post. Do you think it is inconsequential? If you don’t have high condition damage, stacks of bleed don’t matter, they just look cool (numbers flying off).

It is my opinion that Rangers are better at DoTing in pvp settings, but believe what you want. Traps are unblockable. And this build does 1500 condition damage or more with crystal/pizza and with stacks of corruption I’ve got up to 1950 condition damage. The greatsword is used to stun and apply bleeds, the constant poison is used to mitigate enemy healing, and the burning just plain old hurts. At this point, a full entangle—not impossible to achieve in the wvw setting—does almost 30,000 damage. I have had tons of solo success with it too, from 2v1s to camp capping. It’s a solid, all around build. If you’re going for conditions, why care about power? Ya know? Condition damage hurts big time. And this build is great for teamplay too because the traps pulse.

The best thing about it is you can get rabid armor from TA, buy the super cheap runes of undead (superior) and get your rabid trinkets with karma from Orr. You can’t really lose even if you just want to test the build in wvw because TA is a cool dungeon that negates a lot of the cheese that goes on in CoF. I feel useful in TA.

I heard it still works in dungeons. Any confirmation from other players would be great. Right now we have 3 people confirming that SoN does not revive in wvw.

I disagree with quickness hurts DPS so much because I do a lot of damage and haven’t been running quickening zephyr in weeks now. But, I’m running condi specs and usually run Shared Anguish if I feel like I need a stun break.

I’m trying to think…where is quickening zephyr good? The best use I can think of is to get off faster stomps (you’re about to stomp, someone CCs you, you stun break and finish the stomp with quickness). Maybe ranger, being so good at the downed state, is very good at

1) resurrecting teammate

2) staying alive from down state

3) stomping

Therefore, I imagine a ranger in a competitive, high level spvp environment, might get the job of finishing. I mean, just with 5 in BM I get every single stomp in wvw, no questions asked, so that’s the thought that sort of motivated this idea.

Is anyone familiar with high level / professional tpvp play? Are rangers stomp masters of stomp?

Ah, I see. I like the name! Have you thought about inviting gasmask or durzilla? They’re quite knowledgeable on the pvp side and given that gasmask abhors a longbow yet durzilla swears by it, you get an interesting conflict of opinion.

Then there’s Valroth who recently posted a solid hybrid beastmaster build on reddit/youtube (great video quality, Valroth).

That’s about all I know in terms of popular players on youtube and/or respectable commentators around these forums, at least on the pvp side of the house.

No, I like putting 20 in markasmanship for eagle eye. You’re breaking durzilla’s recent longbow/condition damage build, ya know.

Geff.1930:

I saw it with my own eyes. It was a little over 1.3k per tick. The burning was from a guardian.

Bleeding does similar or more damage.

Someone said it was impossible but maybe that person had might? Was that factored in?

NibriAyid.3680:

I had the same thing happen to me but much earlier, and not related to the quickness nerf. Ranger is my first character, and the only reason I play it nowadays is for guild missions since that character has the most map completion… I do open world and instanced PvE.
Mesmer replaces Ranger for instanced PvE: About a month after Fractals was released, I ran through it with guildies once with a Ranger, and another time with a Mesmer. The difference was amazing in what options I had with the Mesmer – swapping around my slot skills gives me options in dungeons that aren’t available to a Ranger even if I re-traited.
Guardian replaces Ranger for open PvE: It happened again for general PvE, when I slaughtered mobs with a GS guardian with a lot less thought (to the point engaging 4-5 trash mobs was boring unless they had blocking or knockdown).

That said, the OP’s idea to try out the other professions holds no matter what. Even if you’re a speed clear Warrior or similarly rated build in the current meta, rolling an alt is great just to see what others do. It’s a little less important than in GW1 where Warriors were wondering why their Monk buddy couldn’t heal them when they ate a boss attack while using their Frenzy or Healing signet, but it’s still useful for grouping or facing others in PvP.

It’s pretty much a consensus that ranger is the best open world profession so if you’re going to make the case that guardian is better somehow besides that argument. I am not afraid of anything in pve with ranger but leveling guardian and mesmer has been terribly painful. Are you crafting to 80 or playing to 80?

miss sin alot.4730:

hey when r they going too fix abilities to cast barrage and traps ? i cant been like this for 3 weeks now???

You resurrected this awful thread to post that? Is this an april fool’s joke?

Taym.8326:

Chopps.5047:

Taym.8326:

The ability is not an aoe stun break either, the stun break is for the ranger (and can be used out of range from the pet), the condition draw is only from the pet.

I’ve used it to break stun in TA after team members get knocked down…unless I’m crazy and am remembering wrong.

Might want to check on the duration of the stun, many are short durations so it may have worn off at the same time you clicked the ability. The only thing the ability removes for other players is the Conditions. Like I said the stun break effect is done even out of range from the companion, or when it is deceased. I don’t think one ability will have two separate blast radius’ from two separate sources (pet and player) and two different types. Although maybe in the future some of our “pet dependent” utilities will be reworked to work something like that and if the pet and player aoe’s overlap a 3rd effect happens. Would be neat, but anyway not in game atm.

Oh ok cool ty for the information.

Me too, in addition, I’d like to see a range increase on Hilt Bash to aid in stunning a running foe.

Lert.6287:

0-30-30-5-5 isn’t really meant to be for condition build. It works way better with knight set and trinkets with berserkers jewel on them. Other way you finish with ~15-16k hp and 2.3k toughness.
Weapons: Shortbow, sword&warhorn.
Even after patch greatsword isn’t really more viable than sword.

How not? There’s tons of bleed on crit in the game, not that thats what the build does. That’s the build gasmask used in spvp, believe me, it is for conditions. Remember: most of your stats come from armor, not traits.

I should mention that you get rabid trinkets from a karma vender in Orr (can’t recall which…Dwyana?) or you can use laurels or pristine relics on rabid ascended gear, which has almost the same stats, maybe 10% increase per trinket.

I would suggest 0/30/30/5/5, rabid gear from TA, and run spike trap, viper’s nest, and flame trap. If you’re running around solo’g camps, replace flame trap with signet of hunt while you run. If someone follows you, drop spike trap and run away. Use superior rune of the undead and get the gear from twilight arbor and this is one of the cheapest builds around. Use greatsword and another weapon of your choice (usually sword/dagger). This build, with tuning crystal and pizza, will make you throw out so many conditions it’s sick. It’s sort of a cheese build but hey it’s powerful. You can usually dominate because a lot of people run berserker type specs in wvw since that’s what they have for pve. Be sure to use the greatsword leap Swoop for motion.

Use durzilla’s deep range condition damage build if you like bows, my build in pve, or xsorsus et al. for beastmaster builds. Use valroth’s guide for a hybrid build or gasmasks approach for a trap build. What playstyle are you interested in and I’ll give you the build with citations. All these builds have been extensively play tested by your truly and I can vouch for them.

Right now, to leave you with something concrete, read durzilla’s “shoot to maim boys” thread (should be easy to find since its relatively new on here). It’s easy because you can get carrion armor from CoF and the condition damage from range is sick! I’ve loaded my arrows and longbow with spider venom poison, superior sigil of doom, bleeding from sharpening stone trait/utility, and burning from sun spirit and I have instantly downed at least 5 players with a single barrage—I did that last night, it was a great moment. Read the post, he probably won’t suggest spiders or (gasp) Spirits Unbound like I was running (which I feel is a slight improvement over durzillas build in the circumstance of wvw) but ya its good dude. It works great.

naphack.9346:

needs spirit of nature.

As far as I know—due to limited testing last night—spirit of nature is bugged and does not revive fallen allies. Have you seen this behavior? It has been confirmed by two people to bug in wvw although one person reportedly had it work in a dungeon.

Xsorus.2507:

I suggested Michael Vicks should be the title ;o)

You’re just asking for trouble! On a more serious note, I challenge you to focus your discussion on traits besides wilderness surviva/beastmastery and even give durzilla’s carrion build a test run. It’s pretty effective to load your arrows with conditions from afar. But, yeah, obviously you’re known for wilderness survival / beastmastery. Rock on my man.