Guild Wars 2

Every class that uses it has a pretty standard build for it except a lot of reapers don’t use it.

GS is anets favorite weapon, so if you can equip one, chances are it’s an excellent choice. Mesmer, warrior, ranger, guardian.

Druid isn’t really a healer in PvP.

Anyway, OP, you could try staff + GS with crusader amulet. It’s a decap build that can still hold points, and sounds like what you’re playing now. The druid line is typically 1-2-3 for traits. Glyph of equality, glyph of tides and then whatever else you want.

You’ll probably want BM line for WHaO and RaO.

Edit. This is pretty stock:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqANsgVsCmsCctgl/A7JN8DOawn136dd51lBCAl8s0A-TpQ9AA7+DQZAA

Did something massive change in the matching making process? I have about 8 hours of this, but the UI only records the last 10 matches. According to the PvP leaderboards before they got taken down, my ranked win percentage was about 65%, and my lifetime average is about 55%.

Very unpleasant.

Oh further info, I have not been farming rank, I only play solo Q for 99.9% of my games.

Why are you running dual LB? You have no traits or sigils that benefit from that.

Is this thread from a year ago?

If you die you have to restart. It will say you’re still eligible, but you’re not.

Justine.6351:

Yeah people are talking about thieves that want to fight. The ones OP is talking about are the ones who NEVER want to die.

That’s true of any profession. Apothecary condi rangers have been trolling people for years. There is one ranger on YB who I believe posts here that just hangs out by the sentry near red keep, and jumps into the water when things get bad enough. I’ve seen like 7 people chasing him in circles, dying 1 by 1.

If someone wants to fight, they are usually vulnerable to something or other, or at least should be. If they want to troll, don’t play the game.

I think the eye were the gem store Glint eyes. I haven’t made a human necro, but on the other races it’s just paint.

Also the heritage armor is very easy to get from GW1. You only need 6 points, which if you own GW1 you probably already have.

Tragic Positive.9356:

The metabattle even suggest Wilderness Knowledge without any Survival skills.
A build rated 4,75+. I lost faith in Ranger players every since and I never ask for help from anyone regarding the class.
Why would I when I realize I know the class better than most of the hardcore elitists?

Metabattle is probably written by non-_ profession players, and many of the builds are just copied directly from the pro league.

This forum, however, is a wealth of info on ranger minutia, and the combined knowledge of about 40 of the best posters covers literally everything there is to know about ranger, far more than even the devs know. So I don’t trust metabattle other than for a head start on a profession I don’t know how to play, but I do trust the profession forums.

That’s an opinion is it not?

If you really want some “data”, bring up photos of fashion models you find attractive and measure the ratio of head to body.

Edit: Oops, I misunderstood, ignore. I’ll leave my answer in case it’s useful for something else.

There is a WvW infusion that is so cheap it’s almost literally free, if you’re just looking for the extra +5 power/condi/whatever. Head to your borderland and check in with the laurel merchant. 5 laurels and 125 badges of honor.

I put that on every single piece of ascended gear I ever get.

When leveling just use whatever you can get your hands on (buy new karma gear from hearts whenever you can, karma is basically used for nothing but that). When you’re level 80, things split out into what kind of content you want to do (raids, WvW, etc.) and you’ll have different questions then.

General rule of thumb for leveling and PvE, damage is always good.

Sounds reasonable, no nerfs mentioned (for a change!!). And the broken PvP builds from other professions have nerfs mentioned. They made the thief buff sound scary.

Ashkew.6584:

Aside the discussion about the ways we do counter thiefs/stealth.
Do you think every proffession has the right to counter stealth?

Countering stealth might be the wrong way to phrase it. I think every profession should be able to be killed if they want to fight (PvP I’m looking at you.) And without being that great at much but ranger, I think every profession can kill a thief even that brings tons of stealth.

Shirk.6421:

I run Skirmishing, BM, Druid. Quickdraw, Taunt, Druidic Clarity, Celestial Shadow and Ancient Seeds and it works great for me. The only problem I have right now are good condi-Revs but I just have to get used to their movement.

Ya I am settling on something similar, I could never fit WS in. Quickdraw is very powerful, especially paired with primal echoes. It’s very easy to get and hold decaps with so much CC. I tag with staff then swap to LB for the double PBS, then swap to staff for interrupt and double staff 4, or double up on staff 3 or 5 if things are going badly. I’m also really preferring wolf bristleback for that instead of SS bristleback.

It is SO much CC spam I hope anet doesn’t nerf it because bad players aren’t seeing the glaring weaknesses of that type of setup. If you let me kill you, I’m going to kill you. And I get obliterated by aware condi reapers.

What I meant is there is a telegraph on their stealth skills. They can renew stealth once their in it maybe, but once they come out, they need to do something like put down a black powder and leap in it several times. When they do that, you can CC them while visible, or AoE CC them as they leap in it again. So all of the methods I list will work to prevent their stealth.

Example, you see BP go down after he does a pistol sneak attack or whatever, you hilt bash him. He uses hide in shadows and you glyph of equality interrupt it. Another blinding powder goes down but your LB swap is on CD so he stealths before you can stop him. However you know he’s leaping into the same BP to increase his stealth, so you glyph of tides him away from it. He’s about to lose his stealth so he puts down a SR, but you were expecting that and wolf fear him out of it.

We have the tools. Watch for BP and stop them. You can fear them, taunt them, knock them back, pull them in, knock them down, stun them, daze them. You can taunt them out of stealth. You can fear them out of SR. You can channel-follow them in stealth. Now add in the sic ’em you talked about and that thief is going to have a tough time.

You aren’t going to stop them with a single LB 4 any more than you’re going to stop a druid with a single backstab.

WS on a druid gets weird for me. You need BM for the swiftness and cool down on RaO, yet you’re also traited for TU and entangle. You could take natural stride, but then you’re looking at untraited glyphs, and those glyphs are very powerful.

You could make due with just the weapon movement and tail wind or something I suppose.

I’m loving hydromancy now. That little extra time saved with the instant roots makes a much bigger difference than you’d think, and multiple roots on recharge is amazing for small skirmish fights.

Skill recharge on CA would go a hell of a long way to making it less ridiculous and super easy to balance. It’s no different than the skill recharges on our other mechanic, pet F2s.

Once you’re level 80, the experience fills in your masteries, i.e. gliding, autoloot, and so on. Look at your hero panel and see how you can spend them (and earn them.)

Have you moved on to the HoT maps? If not, select the HoT story in your story journal, and you can begin playing the new content.

Those are some really interesting ideas Lugh. How does hydromancy interact with multiple dazed opponents? The closest get the roots?

Eval.2371:

• 3 different ways to access stealth

5 in PvP, 6 if you count water.

Celestial shadow, forage, smoke cloud, hunter’s shot, dark water, and rune of the trapper. You could throw rune of infiltration in there if you want to get even more silly

/pedantic

Tragic Positive.9356:

In this meta where Conditions rule and you can’t get out of CC chain even with 5 stability and 3 stun-breaks -

Ya mesmers are obnoxious, but I can’t imagine they don’t get toned down next update.

I’ve been toying around with Lyssa runes plus Glyph of Unity, which cures 7 condis and damages the CCers on a good CD. It’s such an awkward skill though…

This is an awesome PvP trait that I think doesn’t get enough attention because of the competition in that tier. In addition to an up to 5 target instant, on-demand interrupt that also triggers ancient seeds, you get the reduced CD on staff. Staff skills are already amazing support for both you and your team, and the reduced CD bumps up your map movement and healing capabilities dramatically.

In wanting to find a use for it, I have a few things I’ve been trying. I’ve got a sigil of generosity and a sigil of purity on my staff. It’s random which is not ideal, but the goal here is to simply cull conditions before they get out of hand. This works mainly because of lack of other good options, and either one can be removed for an understandably wanted sigil of energy. Layer 2, I already love Lyssa runes, so for some steady and heavy condi removal on demand, this is an easy choice. It pairs well with generosity as well. Finally, a look at the enemy team comp changes SoS to SoR or vice versa. Note that SoR also double as another stun breaker against something like a druid that is spamming CC and lacks huge power spike.

Thoughts? I have a new baby and don’t have the sheer number of games under my belt I’d like to get a good grasp on every druid nuance, however I am really loving the bump up in utility you get from this.

Make balance way too hard. WvW.

Dungeons back.

Morryk.7829:

OK, I’ve been working the last two days pretty much non-stop. I’m very interested in the LB / Staff build, however I still don’t quite know what my build should be. Or my playstyle, druid’s class mechanic is weird.

Cele amulet. Cele LB doesn’t hit like maurader, but it’s enough that you can’t be ignored while plussing from halfway across the map, and cele druid with any weapons can hold a point.

I personally like quick draw with it. You can get off 2 ~5k RFs plus sigils (or 2 skills 3, 4, or 5 depending on what makes sense.) Combine that with a combat pet swap to bristleback quickness F2 and you have a very dangerous ranged spike. The only concern is not shooting blindly into reflects, which has been very over-dramatized in this thread. Consider a preemptive staff 5 to protect yourself if you’re fighting from range. And then don’t forget you get quickdraw on the staff as well, #3 works well for that.

Spotter doesn’t have much to compete with, it’s either that or hidden barbs. With spotter, Lyssa runes, and fury you get to 60% crit off the top of my head. Or go with hidden barbs and sigil of earth on staff, etc. Whatever makes sense with your rune and sigil choices.

The rest of the build is just normal druid stuff, probably the 2 CC gylphs and SoS. The class mechanic is indeed weird. Use it as emergency healing/condi removal for you and your team and otherwise don’t worry about it. That’s what makes druid very durable, is having basically 2 heal buttons (and then staff 5 into staff 3 for water field combo, and etc.)

Edit: CA also triggers a quickdraw “weapon swap”.

Yes there are trait buffs that don’t show. Swiftness and superspeed are speed boons that show. There are also tons of movement skills like thief shortbow 5 that speed you up.

Edit: Speed is one of the most important things in PvP so you won’t find many people moving at base speed.

Fluffball.8307:

All the players want it, none of the devs do.

Surprised to not see ranger shortbow anywhere in the thread.

Grinding the levels may make you hate coming back… You’re probably looking at like 40 hours (guessing) if you don’t have any boosters saved up.

It’s worth looking through your bank for XP boosters, level up tomes, XP scrolls, etc. You can get some astounding XP via boosters. If you don’t have any, do the WvW dailies every day. When you open the reward, it automatically activates an XP booster. You also regularly get full level up tomes from PvP, which won’t be the fastest way to level but it may be the most enjoyable if you like PvP.

Stronghold has different requirements. The conquest meta is to just stall indefinitely, which is why super glass builds don’t work. The druid LB build has a lot more sustain for contesting points (and keeping all 3 points contested for the entire duration of the game, ending in a 0-0 score.)

If I recall correctly, in week 1 of the pro league, Final Form (euratien’s team) used 2 LB druids to win their game. I think anyway, that was a long time ago and I haven’t been able to catch any other of the pro matches due to RL.

I agree, I don’t really understand the absolute devotion everyone has to durability runes. I think there are a lot of other excellent choices.

IMO crusader or soldiers with remorseless are better for this. With cele I would want staff LB or torch with lyssa rune, entangle, sharpened edges, and quickdraw. (I think I just repeated jcbroe’s post.)

I want it to look like this. The flower, not the panties. Well either is fine I guess.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Tier 6 bag is the only thing that is consistently worth buying.

I think the ascended crafting mats are worth more money now. T6 is still good to have though.

The PUGs for Arah are horribly toxic, but that’s mainly because you have to actually know the mechanics or you fail miserably (as your newbie group found out.)

If no group of 4 offers to guide you through, you can still join a PUG as long as you carefully read this and put some honest effort into knowing the mechanics. Arah is actually extremely easy in that case and you can do it on the first try.

Edit: There is another approach you could try with the PUGs, tell them it’s your first time but you’ve studied the fights on that website. If you get a good group of people, that will make them happy to help you rather than rage the first time you die.

jcbroe.4329:

not just with the underlying classism that all of the “top players” have (no joke, the players whose names you know in PvP hate your class and think you’re a bad player that isn’t worth their time when they see the class you play is a ranger/druid).

Ya this is painfully true and I think tied for messed up pet AI for number 1 reason why anet hates ranger so badly. When the devs are queuing for games with people who spend significant portions of their GW2 time ranting about how stupid rangers are, that’s a problem.

Weapon chests give you a specific stat, but you can easily change it to what you want in the mystic forge. Hold on to any random ascended drops you wind up getting, you’ll find a use for it sooner or later.

ArchonWing.9480:

Ok that makes more sense. And now I’m sorta annoyed because I wanted to make some. :p

Never fear, that’s when the conversion in the MF is the easy way to go.

ArchonWing.9480:

Also, in response to having the materials already, that’s not necessarily true that it didn’t cost anything. Even if it dropped for you, you could have just sold it instead of using it to make the armor.

You can’t sell the particular ascended mats needed for viper’s. The cost is either free if you play the content that drops them a lot, or massive time grind if you don’t.

It depends on what you call DPS. I don’t only consider pure glass to be DPS, but if you’re referring to it as an organized 5-man team role, then ok.

Zerk druid with staff also works for WvW or duels, I’m sure it would be a great “for-fun” spec in PvP.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m also basing my statement about its cost being more from what others have stated. I haven’t ran through the costs personally so someone is free to correct it if it’s wrong.

The worst part of viper’s is the non-traeable ascended mats that are hard to come by. But if you have them, you can’t sell them so you might as well use them.

Not zerker ranger. But LB as a weapon does well when paired with druid and staff. You can 1v1 extremely well and both weapons are good for team fights from the margins.

Ayrilana.1396:

A good example of something not worth buying (the materials to craft it) would be ascended viper’s armor. You’re better off doing the mystic forge stat conversion to get it.

That depends on how much of the ascended stuff you’ve accumulated. I had so much I had to start throwing it away, so I made a few viper’s pieces out of it. It cost me zero to craft 3 pieces of armor because I already had the mats.

I don’t see a problem with buying anything with badges of honor. Those things are completely free. I have like 15k or something, and I buy siege with them all the time (or at least I did before WvW died.)

Ya I wouldn’t recommend zerk ranger anymore; I never liked it for PvP even before HoT. But non-glass druid (there are several amulets to try) with LB works.

DH is very lackluster in PvP. Have you tried druid at all? You can definitely make LB work with staff.

Crapgame.6519:

Bunker Druid in sPvP? I must not see them but then again it could just be me…and I’ve personally not found anything reasonable so just go back to pew pew / stronghold and let it rip.

Druid almost by default is a bunker. You’re not recognizing what the other players are doing, but they’re almost certainly running a bunker, which are most of the druid meta builds. Also note that LB is actually a weapon a lot of druids are running without using a glass build, so you may just be mistaking what they are doing.