Guild Wars 2

I’ma go on record as saying SotF never becomes PvP meta without further buffs. It’s in too weird of a line.

I was actually wondering if he ran the traits he did because he didn’t know there was an internal cooldown on the new BM healing skill. He played so well (even killing shad 1v1 ) that I can’t really believe my own hypothesis.

I just find his build confusing.

His playstyle was really awkward to me as well, it was like he only pressed a button when he cognitively knew he wanted to. He often waited briefly to see what his opponent did, rather than just reacting instinctively. Or it felt like that to me, I don’t know.

I don’t use LB to “kite”, I use the CC to take as much health as possible off until we inevitably get in to melee range. (On the other hand, many classes such as engies or necros choose to stay at range, and they find out too late that the range, damage, and CC doesn’t favor them.) I don’t really buy that you can stay at SB range either. I run a SB in PvP and I do a decent job kiting, but I’m getting the hell whacked out of me at the same time.

For me, I don’t want more damage, I want more layers. I’m running full glass cannon; I can already kill, I need other options.

You won’t outright kill with damage too many people before they attack you.

Also, although I consider it my primary weapon in that if possible I switch to it, I only use LB as support in most cases. Edit to add, LB is just plain superior when fighting thieves. SB offers almost nothing while skills 2-5 on a LB offer pure thief fighting abilities.

Out of those 3 I would definitely take VI. As you said, protection is never a bad thing. That trait has saved my booty so many times (it triggers before the damage happens.)

If you’re going to take a spirit, you might consider dropping entangle and the trait strength of spirit for spirits unbound and spirit of nature. Having a spirit that doesn’t move in the vast openess of WvW roaming I think will be disappointment.

On the other hand, I’d probably take muddy terrain and call it a day. That’s an incredibly strong skill, especially when you have friends, and it’s a survival skill to boot.

I think your condi duration is messed up. You need to hit the next full second tick for it to do anything. You could get (over) 100% bleed duration by switching to krait runes and using a sigil of agony. (Or go for burning, whatever works out the best once you factor in what you want to do with equipment.)

Do you get swiftness from your buddies?

Forzani.2584:

Maybe look up the word ‘anal’ in your magical wiki.

#missthepoint

I don’t care about the point, I’m not even really reading the thread. I just found it ironic that you’re talking about eschewing what the masses believe and then use a common myth that the masses believe.

I get incredibly annoyed when people say Ben Franklin discovered electricity. They had kitten BATTERIES before Franklin did any experiments.

Or even worse when they think he invented electricity. Jay Leno did one of those joke walk arounds once 20 years ago or so where he asked someone what Ben Franklin invented and then laughed when the person didn’t know “Franklin invented electricity.”

Forzani.2584:

The “masses” also thought the world was flat.

That’s a myth.

Wiki article because I don’t feel like finding a real source or remembering all the historical details. : 3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

Letting someone bleed out is risk vs reward. Losing track of that mesmer with mass invisibility or a thief with shadow refuge isn’t hard. Now instead of you winning the point, it’s 2v1.

“I doth claimeth the windmill, for I am strong of body and flesh.”

What the general strategy is (there are very few options that people typically choose from) and where you are going. If you have some unusual or specific build you could mention that. For example if you’re a guardian going mid, no need to announce you’re a bunker.

I really don’t see /rank accomplishing anything other than making your team immediately hostile to each other.

Chokolata.1870:

I think its time to bring back the old beastmaster spec.

Niah was like a weird hybrid BM. He played really well he just didn’t have much team support.

Maybe I should leave it alone, but Ragnar’s complete overdramatization is what harms rangers and the game as whole. You can’t theory craft an ideal solution to every single problem. So Spirit of Nature is interruptable? Great, they need take time out of a team fight to use an interrupt on it that they could have used on anything else. Meanwhile the spirit is healing the entire party the whole time. This is an elite skill. It’s not a utility skill. Putting down a healing spring in a team fight is a big deal. It cleanses condis from your friends on pulses, it gives them a water field to either leap through or blast, it heals, it gives regen, it covers an entire point.

You can’t just dismiss everything a solid build brings because you think the meta might be changing. Regen doesn’t work in a power meta? If you fail to kill someone (and that is target’s responsibility, let’s assume they aren’t completely defenseless), Durz’s build will get them back to full health in a matter of seconds, without them even needing their heal skill off cool down. That’s important.

Every action you save your team or cause the enemy team to take is a net plus. You win the match because your team composition and player skill cumulatively won it. YOU win the match, not the theorycrafting that everything you could possibly do is useless trolololo. It’s enraging.

/rant

Also I need some sleep and possibly a glass of wine.

Edit: awge, you’re right, downing regen spirit ranger is not easy, and you have teammates. You don’t need to last for more than maybe 2 minutes tops, and with protection, regen, healing, evades, Nature Spirit, etc., you should be more than capable of surviving. Often times I’ll just kill the FPA outright, but those are bad players because they didn’t leave. Note that ALL of that defense is passive except the evades. Alternatively you can support the team at mid.

One more thing before I finally finishing ranting, look how far Niah went with a build most of us here are probably a bit confused about. He played sword well and beat most of Europe. Imagine if he had more team support (wouldn’t have made much difference in the final match, but whatever.)

And yet you’re willing to live with people thinking 9k on a 4.5 second channel is an acceptable damage skill or configuration? I demand ritual suicide from you.

Ragnar.3916:

snip

Well there’s your problem. Pure spirits were obsolete long before the latest patch. I run a regen spirit build which has permanent AoE swiftness and permanent AoE regen. As a pure spirit ranger, ya you die to pretty much everything 1v1. As a regen spirit ranger, you don’t to anything ever. Very solid team support or home defender.

Like I said, whatever the meta changes to, a regen spirit ranger is a very solid build.

Not sure where you got low mobility on rangers either, swords + AoE swiftness are very good for the minimal distances you travel.

Aridia.3042:

Think about it for a minute. Putting ice on LB is working under the assumption that the person won’t dodge your initial 1k range shot, they won’t have aegis, or that your sigil will actually proc. It’s not worth it.

Using only SoI as your CC is ridiculous, that would never work for kiting.

My LB build (and many others I’m sure, it’s nothing interesting) is built around CC. It works without the SoI, so adding it in is just an added benefit. The ghost poppers are an interesting food for a pure bow ranger, but I need vitality food because eventually I wind up in melee. Either the opponent is good and I can’t lock them down enough, or I’m winning and want to switch to melee to finish them off.

If ghost pepper poppers are super cheap I might pick some up when facing necros though. I never melee those or I asplode.

I guess my point is, I want to have several layers of defense. More damage is rarely the answer. I already have plenty, and if that damage doesn’t do the trick, I want several other options.

Sol.4310:

I’ve not made post in a while, but I just wanted to say it’s nice idea Durzlla but healing is worthless.

There just to much raw damage + condition damage to make healing on that type of scale worth while, your better of aiming for X amount of damage and mitigate incoming damage. But let’s be honest Ranger’s got replaced last patch we don’t have anything useful anymore apart from Spirit Elite.

I totally disagree. It’s not just AoE healing a spirit ranger brings, it’s group protection, group burning, group swiftness, lots of AoE condi removal, aoe CC from a multitude of sources, a cluttered targeting environment, AoE revive, group regen, and all on top of their own reasonable condi tank damage.

Whatever the meta changes in to, regen spirit rangers are still a very solid build.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Yup, but if we assume we hit more targets – we get more points for participating in kills – and if all goes well – you can go and cap them.
If your party fails to win the fight – you simply pack you bags, leave them there because you have a huge range and start assaulting another point with the same scenario.

You are practically an aspirant for 3 top stats with this method. The only one that is not favorable is the resurrection one.

Why do you care what your personal points are?

I thought water spirit’s effect was only once every ten seconds?

Edit: NM, that’s actually pretty substantial if you have high healing power. Definitely going to try WS out next match.

Prysin.8542:

may i ask how you reach 420 hp/second AOE healing?

Because my calculations for my WvW gear, tipping at 1600 healing power, reaches only 360~ish from shout regen….

I may be running a similar build at the moment. Sigil of Water, Rune of the water, Nature’s Voice, HS, and Spirit of Nature. Moas also have an AoE heal.

I guess if you wanted you could add in the new Invigorating Bond, but your traits would be stretched pretty thin.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. 9k over 4.5 seconds is extremely low, especially when you factor in all the tank builds in WvW that make it not even be 9k.

Belzebu.3912:

That 9k damage is an all-in trick, if the target dodge/block you’ll cause an even worse damage for a good while.

He’ll cause better damage because he’ll be using a GS. And that’s 9k over 4.5 second. Against a warrior that’s probably about 1k damage per second, which is on par with the damage a condi ranger would get out of the power-portion of a shortbow autoattack.

shadowpass.4236:

aaaand, this is for wvw btw, not pve

I thought that was the case. You mention opening with maul and then switching to RF, but you’re way better off damage wise sticking in GS. With those same modifiers you can do respectable damage. 9k is only 2k per second, and it won’t even hit that high in WvW. My full glass cannon can rapid fire a warrior for like 10k, which he’s outhealsigged by the time I’m done using the skill (slight exaggeration, but not much!)

Rym, Sigil of Night works in dungeons because they are permanently set at night. WvW has a day night cycle as well.

Edit: to Kilger below, I think GC RF hits guards for like 12 or 15k IIRC (burnt out on tourney so I haven’t been in in a while.) I only use that as an opener to melee range, but admittedly they are nearly dead after that.

Kilger.5490:

Its definately tanky but damage is meh. Rapid fire is a long channel, dont get swayed by the big number at the end.

You can rapid fire those tentacle things at the jade maw for like 25k, and that’s STILL bad damage.

geogyf.5087:

Try a Ranger in Zerk Groups and see how fast they kick you.

They didn’t kick you because you were a ranger, they kicked you because you weren’t using the dungeon running build. That’s like me getting mad at a “casual relaxed only” group for wanting to kill all the mobs.

Interesting. I might list that as “inconclusive” then. I’ve always had a gut feeling both warriors and rangers did more damage than guardians, but that may very well be because most guardians are not very good and/or not damage oriented players.

Might be an excuse to dust off my guardian and try out the latest builds.

TurtleDragon.3108:

They also are not top 4 dps.

Are you sure? I know this keeps coming up, but I’m having a hard time picturing them being far from the top. For single target, in no particular order you would have thief, ele, ranger, warrior, guardian in the mix and engy mesmer and necro I don’t see being in the picture. Out of those top 5 I don’t know enough about the non-ranger ‘best possible DPS’ builds to compare, but DnT is always saying rangers are roughly on par with warriors.

I’ve never seen any “perfect damage” comparisons between all the professions. Does one exist?

Arrow Storm.4618:

The comments on this thread are borderline unnecessary. What if OP wants a good balance between tankiness and damage?
All you guys have done is criticize and make OP feel like kitten for sharing his build with everyone.

It’s a shame that this forum deems any damage below a certain point as “0 damage”..

No one has been rude to him that I’ve seen. And yes, 9k over 4.5 seconds might as well be zero damage. Warriors do what is it, 13k DPS?

Where were you planning on using this? If it was for PvE, that’s off-the-chart horribly bad, terribad, pathetic damage.

If you meant for WvW, it’s a confusing idea. Being tanky is only benefiting you if you’re going to take damage. The idea of a LB is to not get hit at all. Now, that’s not a realistic goal in WvW because people will close the gap on you; a thief will close it before you even get in to LB range. So now you have no range, are durable and have a weapon and armor stats that do extremely small amounts of damage. Better conclusion for a tanky power ranger? Use melee, which does far more damage than a LB.

One final note, those damage modifiers are mostly the ones used in the 1h sword PvE meta, so it’s not unique to rapid fire. Sword autoattacks hit for 2 or 3k.

Howler is pretty cheap, and is useful in every single aspect of the game (WvW, dungeons, fractals, openworld, PvP… um, personal story?) It annoys the hell out of me with the repetitive noise, but you can stop it by autoattacking the air once. And it’s quite nice looking. Might be the best looking Legendary IMO.

There are also living krait working along side risen krait (I suspect another bug). You can see some in the PS mission where you destroying the shipment of bodies heading to Orr. I can’t for the life of me find the name of that mission.

99.9% of people in dungeons have done them tons of times and are now just speed clearing them for the rewards. You have two options: make your own LFG that explains your situation (low level, not speed clearing the dungeon, etc.) or just wait till you’re level 80 and geared.

Speaking of which, this thread will get you started on how rangers typically build themselves:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first#post3868491

Oops, I mis-remembered the CD. The “effect recharge” is the CD. I believe the (6s) refers to how long the affect lasts in your boons.

FS has no internal cooldown. The other spirits have a 10 second cooldown.

I just stumbled across this post on reddit, which I think is relevant to the “what is meta” discussion. Theorize, share, test, discuss, don’t just make up your own build and think it’s rock solid.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

The only post in the ranger forum (at this point) is an interesting example of why multiple people critiquing builds is so helpful. I won’t even pretend to know enough about game mechanics to talk about this, I just think most people should drop their egos and collaborate to make a better meta.

“The only no-no on our forum is stating something is a fact and not providing evidence for it. We want an exchange of ideas, and that can sometimes include heated debate, but what we don’t want are arguments based around opinions and empty claims.”

I think you’re going to be disappointed running a condi build in a zerker meta. Your condis don’t have preference over anyone elses, and all professions randomly poop out condis left and right. Not to mention many things will be dead before your condis could have even taken affect.

I think what you may actually be looking for is party support using utilities, such as Stone Spirit (let’s say you drew a group of 3 thieves and a mesmer, you may want Stone Spirit.) Axe reflects, firefields, even weakness… there are all sort of opportunities depending on the fight. Clever use of utilities in fractals will let you help your party out without immediately starting out down ~20% of their damage.

a t s e.9614:

DId u just say ranger takes skill? Much auto-attack such passive spirit

What do you consider skill? All classes are at their best just pushing buttons at the appropriate times. I think GW2 requires experience (know when to push the button) and intelligence (know why you have set your character up the way it is) more than anything else. I’m not sure I can think of an example on any class other than PvP/WvW that requires “skill”. Perhaps jumping the lasers in CoE.

Anywho, not to speak for turtle, I think what he meant is that staying alive and contributing to the group on eles or rangers requires far more awareness and game-understanding than it does on a healsig warrior.

Tyeme.6589:

Rangers should not be considered a “free kill” in PvP or the unwanted/auto kick class in dungeons.

I get that people are frustrated, but let’s not pretend that almost all high level PvP teams aren’t running with at least one ranger, and that rangers don’t bring massive damage boosts to dungeon speed clears. Start from somewhere that isn’t hyperbole.

On topic, I wonder if reverting pets back to how they originally were isn’t a viable band-aid. Way more damage, far less health. When the game first came out, the majority of PvE noobie rangers couldn’t keep their pets alive, and they apparently were too dangerous in PvP. Now rangers can easily keep their pets alive and people are more knowledgeable about how to mitigate pet damage in PvP. Sort of like how hundred blades used to be considered OP and should now probably be reverted, maybe pets need a revert. More skill used, more gained.

To be fair, about once every 3 months I’ll see a LFG that says “heavies only”. That isn’t meta though, I’m not even sure what they’re trying accomplish.

This would have been funnier if there weren’t a few traits that actually made sense.

It has always said that. It doesn’t have one. If they ever fix it, it will be devastating for rangers.

The meta is what it is because tens of thousands of people have discussed and tested it. It can never stagnate. Optimal builds are theorycrafted, tested, posted to the forums to be reviewed, refined.

PUGging CoF1 is not the place for you to decide running a mainhand axe is the new meta build.

As for people thinking warriors are the best source of damage, I haven’t heard that one in months. I don’t know what to tell you if you’re playing with people like that, but probably find a new group if you want a fast smooth run. Kinda weird you’d post that on a ranger forum.

It does for PvP, as well as the fact most champs or dungeon bosses (or human heavies) have massive tells. In many cases you actually need to delay using the skill because the boss tell is so massive.

You can’t use sword 2 as an instant dodge roll like dagger 4. You can use it just fine for evades though.

Every time this comes up I point out that in zergs, you don’t need faster arrows. In roaming you don’t need piercing arrows.

A few weeks ago Lion’s Arch was attacked and destroyed. The fish is gone from there; you’ll have to find it at one of the other locations on the wiki.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Last I checked he ran MF-specced bearbow, I dunno what he uses now that they took MF out.

On the livestream he did talking about rangers, he said he prefers a meta-esque build. Panther was his favorite pet, he only uses berserker gear with scholar runes. He said you should resist the tempation to use things like sharpening stone or bearbow, etc.

He may have been pandering to us since there was talk about him showing off a bearbow, but anyway. That’s what he said.

Adonai.5071:

There is no meta (imo currently meta is most used to gather subscribers on youtube or to feed hungry egos) the real meta is a skilled player that knows what the situation requires.

Usually the only place people care what build you’re running is in a dungeon run, where the goal is to get the reward as fast as possible. In that situation, I hope you take your own advice and run the dungeon running meta build, or make groups that specifically say “I don’t care about speed” in the LFG.

Edit: Actually in PvP I care what you run as well. You can be the best player ever, but if you’re running your own messed up build, it makes the experience miserable for all of your team mates.

Basically, if you’re in a party with someone else, please run the meta. Doing your own thing or screwing around with guildies who have said they don’t mind, do whatever makes you happy.

Paladin Jeff.9210:

Two more questions is the 4/5/0/5/0 with the skills good for solo? What changes would you make in skills for solo?

It’s the best PvE build for almost any content, even solo, because its entire focus is having the best possible DPS. I usually take signet of the hunt and flame trap for just tootin’ around the countryside. Even on a berserker, flame trap is a really good aoe with a very short cool down and a firefield for your warhorn.

14% party wide damage boost not available anywhere else. Best waterfield in the game. 100% fury uptime. Etc. We need education more than buffs.

WvW zergs get complicated.

Yes, it is very strong in several dungeon paths. Also notice they have spotter and FS up.

Axe is not a typical offhand because of mesmers and guardians, but it does exist when needed.