I think in peoples minds there’s a fine line between OP and knowing a weakness in a build. For example, I went into a random dueling arena to pass some time and noticed a Warrior was owning everyone. As a Ranger, usually Warriors are one of the easiest classes to duel for me. So I dueled and got schooled by him. My first thought was what did this new patch change for the warrior to be so OP. Then after watching him duel a few more people, studying his moves and stuns, I dueled him again and won….very easily. I later read on the warriors forum of this new Skull breaker build and realized that he was using this new build. The major changes I had to make to adapt to this new “OP” build was…..dodge at the right time…that’s it! Time my dodges perfectly and this new “OP” build was cake.
The moral of the story is that the new Skull breaker build doesn’t need a nerf, it was just a l2p issue for me.
@ Prysin: Haha, I can’t wait to try out the new Torment runes. I’ve been farming non stop at the Pavilion to stock up on gold.
@ Xsorus: I saw your post on Pain inverter and makes me wish I had an Asura. Did you mean to have Pain inverter selected? Right now the link has Techno Babble as your third util slot. Either way, you are going to have loads of fun with this build.
With the introduction of new runes and sigils, has anyone come up with any new builds? Or improved upon a current build? I’m interested in the new Torment runes because they look to be viable for a crit/bleed build.
You do realize that those spirits have health, right? And since they have health, they can die, right? And when they die, you are now fighting a Ranger with 0 skills in his utility slots.
Yeah, I need to fix the Sigils. The Orrian Runes are pretty sweet to. With Sword main hand instead of Axe + the Orrian runes, it gives you an almost 100% up time of poison on the enemy.
Yeah, this build does some major damage. I’ve been running around with this build and I’m liking it. Granted I normally run a Hybrid BM build so I’m used to having lots of regen and this build doesn’t quite have the same regen abilities. But if you look at those numbers above, you can tell that this is a great build.
Now the key here is to utilize Stealth on Hunters Shot. You have to time your hits just right to put the pressure on your enemy. It took me a little practice but once I got the hang of it I was dropping players left and right. You can get around 12-18 stacks of bleeds on an enemy within seconds. On top of your 7K burst from Rapid Fire. Basically, your rotation is: Opening with Barrage > Point Blank Shot > Activate Sharpening Stone > Rapid Fire > Hunters Shot for Stealth > Get your distance again and repeat skills 4 > 2 > 3. If things get within melee then switch to Axe/Warhorn. Your bleeds can be applied with Hunter’s Call.
Let me know what you guys think. If anyone’s interested, I can record some videos of it in action.
For someone who played a Ranger so long you haven’t a clue.
Cripple for 2.5 seconds and 3 stacks of bleed – 20 second cooldown.
Chill for 1.25 seconds – 24 second cooldown
Let me fix this for you, bud.
Cripple for 2 seconds and 3 stacks of bleed – 20 second cooldown.
Chill for 1 second – 5 second duration for a potential 5 second Chill – 24 second cooldown.
Reduces movement speed by -66% and skill recharge rate by -66%
Grants a combo: Ice Field
– Frost Aura reduces 10% damage for 4 seconds and inflicts a 1 second Chill when attacked.
Frost trap looks a lot better to me for a non traited Trap build.
THERE’S JUST NO EXCITEMENT ABOUT THIS CLASS! I literally do nothing but strafe in circles auto attacking things until they eventually die from boredom. This class doesn’t provide any real pressure because there’s no burst to speak of. It doesn’t provide any real peeling because the snares/stuns aren’t very long lasting. It can’t push because the skills are mostly all single target.
This class desperately needs some real burst attacks to provide pressure on the enemy. It needs to have a viable option outside of condition damage and regen builds because these builds are only effective because condition damage is a 1 stat function. If they ever get around to balancing conditions in this game, the Ranger will have nothing left.
Just from reading these two paragraphs, I can’t seem to figure out why you chose Ranger as a profession. A thief would have fulfilled your desires if your looking for burst.
I have a feeling this build would work very well with the new celestial armor . What would the total per stat be with full celestial trinkets, weapons and armor ?? 450 ish ?? 500ish ??
Hmm, I’m sorry if you have issues retal, or lack of toughness or keeping yourself alive in ZvZ situations. I certainly don’t. Being a Ranger since day 1 as well has made me sorta like a ninja. Especially in the middle of a group of guardians and eles. You are looking for aoe? Good luck on a ranger unless you roll traps. L
You asked what’s the best possible way a ranger can help in a ZvZ or GvG situation. Well, I’d like to see you come up with a better build. My suggestion allows major DPS distribution from a distance, best healing field, 10% damage increase for you and everyone else, MASSIVE condition removal for you and everyone around you, revive capabilities while you are dealing massive damage and the ability to root a group of enemy’s.
My name is Stawker. I am not actually an elementalist like my sig suggests :p I have been playing nothing but Ranger since day 1. I am the leader of [RET] an organized WvW guild (30 or so per night) that has been around since October 2012. For all those months, everyone in my guild, my server, and the GW2 community in general has pretty much ignored rangers as a class. They claim we are useless, that we are walking loot bags.
My challenge to the Ranger community is to prove them wrong. I am currently working on a build that emphasizes the few things that rangers do offer. What I have come up with has worked pretty well so far. I wont be releasing that build to the public right now cuz its not complete yet.
So, Rangers, post a build, post tips, videos, ideas, anything. How can rangers maximize our effectiveness in organized GuildvsGuilds or WorldvsWorld? Maybe you guys will teach me something I dont know yet that will help with my build completion.
Ill start with a few things we offer to get this going.
1. Fire Field
2. Best Water Field in game
3. We can immobilize 20 people at once
4. We can cripple entire zergs
5. We have an ability that (when traited) removes all condition from 10 allies within 1200 range
6. We have Blast Finishers on drakes, and a whirl finisher on axe 5
7. We have a very hard hitting AoE on longbow
8. We have access to tons of projectile finishers
9. 1500 Range
Now. Enough QQ to Anet. They dont read these forums anyways. Lets become useful in WvW by working together to emphasize our strengths
Hey there Stawker, I can ease your search and give you the most affective build a Ranger can offer in a ZvZ situation. A full Valk setup with Longbow and Shortbow. 30/30/0/10/0 with at least piercing arrows. Healing Spring, Frost Spirit, Search and Rescue, signet of Renewal and Entangle. Stay in the middle of the Zerg. That’s it.
Celestial actually gives more stats in sum then any other gear type
I’ve been testing a full Celestial+Divinity sets in the Mists. Yes it does give more total stats than any other gear, but the end result is rather meh. You’re ok-to-good at everything (instead of average), but not really great at anything. There’s no single strength or strategy you can rely on as your forte, your trump card when you really need to do burst damage.
I think to really take advantage of it, you’re going to have to mix it with a few runes or accessory pieces which focus on either power, crits, or condition damage – your choice (or I suppose healing if you want a more support build).
Yeah, it is extreme crap in sPvP. But in PvE, it’s a completely different story. It’s like night and day….at least with a full set of trinkets.
what do rangers bring to pve that another class can’t do better?
DPS…
Well if my calculations are correct, a true/full zerker ranger can hit an average of 1.5k damage per shortbow auto attack. Each auto attack has a .5 second cast time. So that’s 3k damage per second. Add in piercing arrows trait and you are doing 3k – 9k+ of damage per second. That’s not including damage from your pets when they are alive….which is extremely easy to do with ranged pets or the slew of conditions you can lay down via utilities and sigils on your weapons..
Not the highest, but definitely higher than some classes.
I have read countless threads in regards to Legendary’s and sigils swapping. All of them state that you can in fact change the sigil while keeping the Legendary status of your weapon. What I am wondering is if the (Ice) status that’s on the stock Frosfang whether or not that stays after changing the sigil. Does anyone know?
Celestial Armor Set
140 Power
140 Precision
140 Toughness
140 Vitality
140 Healing Power
140 Condition Damage
19% Critical Damage
18% Magic Find
Apoth Armor Set
224 Toughness
224 Condition Damage
315 Healing Power
So in the end you get 84 less Condition Damage, 84 less Toughness and 175 less Healing Power. But you gain a slew of other stats. The loss of Healing power is kind iffy for my build imo, but for other builds with already high Healing Power it may not be a big deal.
All it takes is having the Poison condition on you and your TU is now 700HP per tick instead of 900HP and Heal as One becomes 6.5K instead of 9K. That is if you use heal while you have Poison applied. But it all comes down to personal preference and build variation imo.
True but doesn’t the same go for healing spring? if you have multiple conditions on you you might have your initial heal reduced to a tiny 3,5 k heal or similar since it only cleanses 1 condition per pulse now, while with troll unguent you will never have the entire heal affected by poison only a few ticks at most before it’s removed.
Healing Spring has a base Heal amount and a passive Regen heal amount. The base Heal affects the Ranger and his pet only. The Spring itself if anyone is standing in it receives a Regen boon that lasts 3.5 seconds. If you stand in the Spring for the whole duration(15 seconds) you will receive 6 Regen stacks total at 2.5 second ticks.
Ahh so for an ally got get the 6,700 they have to stand in it for the whole duration? so if they just get one batch of it (4 seconds with my boon duration) how much do they get of the 6700?
At 6700, one tick should get them around 319 Hp per tick for 3.5 seconds, so around 1117HP or so.
ok its making more sense now, so with mine being 4 seconds it should be around 1300hp? over 4 ..then you can run through it again for another pop of it.
im really happy to get this figured out. and it still seems more viable then TU for a group/support build like mine.
a huge thank you to the community for the rapid replies to get the answers needed!
Jaxx of GRIM
-Darkhaven-
It seems that the added regen from Healing Spring does not hold much value added for this build, since perma regen is essentially maintained through shouts. Sure a team mate could be out of range for the shout and miss the regen, but that means they are probably out of range for HS.
The water field is nice, but doesn’t add reliable added healing for the ranger, need a leap through it. It seems mainly beneficial for team mates, but marginally so.
The burst heal is nice, but not nearly as good as Heal as One, which heals for more and has a much shorter recast timer. The greatest benefit of HS to both ranger and team mates for the long condition removal.
I see your point about Heal as One. It does have more of an on demand burst heal. But the thing is I have been using Healing Spring for a long time and am able to time my Sword #2 leaps so that I can get 2 leaps per spring which is 4k additional HP on top of the 9k-10k of healing it provides through burst and Regens.
All it takes is having the Poison condition on you and your TU is now 700HP per tick instead of 900HP and Heal as One becomes 6.5K instead of 9K. That is if you use heal while you have Poison applied. But it all comes down to personal preference and build variation imo.
Ahh, Celestial Armor. I for one can’t wait to try it out. But I have a feeling that running 100% Celestial will take away that BM feel I have with my current build. I’ll crunch the numbers and theory craft before I buy. Although switching only the leggings and pauldron may be a viable option for my current build.
But just so everyone knows, I’m in no way opposed to running from an open world roaming duel. Any player should do what they need to to survive. My question is more geared toward an organized duel. Like, with a bow before hand. Almost like a mutual agreement of a fight to the death!
I’m curious about what the average thief thinks in regards to resetting or running from a duel when they start losing. Do you guys believe that the duel is still a stalemate? Or do you run away with your head held high? Or do you in fact run away knowing that you lost? The intention of this thread is for me to simply understand what goes through a thieves head when they hit 15% HP, SR then run away or reset a duel. It happens a lot.
Healing Spring has a base Heal amount and a passive Regen heal amount. The base Heal affects the Ranger and his pet only. The Spring itself if anyone is standing in it receives a Regen boon that lasts 3.5 seconds. If you stand in the Spring for the whole duration(15 seconds) you will receive 6 Regen stacks total at 2.5 second ticks.
Ahh so for an ally got get the 6,700 they have to stand in it for the whole duration? so if they just get one batch of it (4 seconds with my boon duration) how much do they get of the 6700?
At 6700, one tick should get them around 319 Hp per tick for 3.5 seconds, so around 1117HP or so.
ok its making more sense now, so with mine being 4 seconds it should be around 1300hp? over 4 ..then you can run through it again for another pop of it.
im really happy to get this figured out. and it still seems more viable then TU for a group/support build like mine.
a huge thank you to the community for the rapid replies to get the answers needed!
Jaxx of GRIM
-Darkhaven-
Yeah, I’m a big fan of Healing Spring as well. The only time I run TU is when I’m running Runes of Dwayna and/or for under water battles.
Healing Spring has a base Heal amount and a passive Regen heal amount. The base Heal affects the Ranger and his pet only. The Spring itself if anyone is standing in it receives a Regen boon that lasts 3.5 seconds. If you stand in the Spring for the whole duration(15 seconds) you will receive 6 Regen stacks total at 2.5 second ticks.
Ahh so for an ally got get the 6,700 they have to stand in it for the whole duration? so if they just get one batch of it (4 seconds with my boon duration) how much do they get of the 6700?
At 6700, one tick should get them around 319 Hp per tick for 3.5 seconds, so around 1117HP or so.
Healing Spring has a base Heal amount and a passive Regen heal amount. The base Heal affects the Ranger and his pet only. The Spring itself if anyone is standing in it receives a Regen boon that lasts 3.5 seconds. If you stand in the Spring for the whole duration(15 seconds) you will receive 6 Regen stacks total at 2.5 second ticks.
nice video, still would love to see how you fare against good thief tho.
Well, every time I face a “good thief”, the fight either drags out and nobody wins or whoever makes a drastic mistake loses. As for all the other thieves out there they are just fodder.
The video below is me fighting a good P/D thief post patch. He knew how and when to use CaD on my pet. I rarely run into roaming thieves who are as skilled as this thief.
I used to run Shortbow instead of Axe/Warhorn before the patch but since SB was nerfed to 900 range I decided to switch it up for something with the same range but with added Fury up time. Also it gave me the ability to run 2 proc’ing sigils.
I’m going to try to get footage of 1vs1 with some Engi’s, Ele’s and Mesmers so people can get an idea of how this build works against all the classes. The only problem is I rarely come across roaming Engi’s. But we’ll see.
Haven’t had a chance yet to show my build in action. I made a thread about it a while back and am finally getting some videos made. One thing I like about this build is since I have a base 25% crit chance I seem to crit a lot. Especially since I have a high up time of Fury with the Warhorn. Both weapon sets have Sup sigil of Blood in them so not only am I getting great health regen from the standard BM setup, but if you look closely Ill randomly get 550+ health restores from the sigils on crit. Also my damage is excellent when I crit thanks to the 62% critical damage. All that is bonus damage because I’m still running with 1k condition damage on top of 2.3k power.
Increase arrow speed about 10-15%. Change longbow #3 to a skill like Pin Down(warrior longbow #5 skill), but make it have a cast timer like kill shot so its hard to land. That would at least give us a chance to chain skills.
Maybe make Barrage have a 25% faster cast timer -or- allow us to move while casting it.
With those three changes it would be a lot more viable imo.
Bumping this greet build. Played against him, with what I thought was an awesome build.. and was completely crushed. I would highly recommend this.
Thanks for the bump, Pööka. I hope you are having a blast with this build. I am going to add a video of my 1vs1, 1vs2 and 1vs3 post patch skirmishes soon. It’s just that I have been so busy farming non stop for my Legendary Frostfang….I’m about 150g away :/(Updated: Frostfang is mine! Working on Incinerator).
Unfortunately I don’t think people realize how powerful Celestial trinkets are in PVE/WvW. Most people have Apoth Ascended/trinkets already so it would be a grind to get the Celestial trinkets. Anyways, if anyone is interested or has questions, feel free to ask away.
Alright, another night of testing in the books…and this one was a doozie!
I had changed things up a bit from the OP link and tried out Apoth Armor with Earth runes, trying to take advantage of the magnetic aura, after testing thoroughly ive deducted that it isnt the way to go.
But now i did find an amazing way to keep prot up, and gained a new trick up my sleeve!
I went back to my Original Settlers Armor ,and tried out Rune of the Grove…and WOW! what fun! the protection uptime is nice and the 50% on hit to root is amazing! (cool down is a lil long..but it is super powerful so i get it) people running stood no chance at all! hit em and BANG! root! ..if they got out id hit em with entangle and it was a short evening from there!
Im going to do some more testing with ideas but at this point i think its safe to say that the OP setup with Altruism is amazing for group based play, and im still working on a super viable armor/rune setup for solo roamers.
thanks again for reading!
Jaxx of GRIM
-Darkhaven-
I thought there would have been a “sexy time” in there somewhere.
For all that is following this thread and is currently running this build and is on FA or Dragonband, would anyone want to setup a friendly duel behind the Windmill? I’m on Crystal Dessert and would love to see this build in action.
Anyone from Maguuma or Yaks Bend that’s following this thread and spec wanna meet behind the windmill? Need to know if this build is better than the one I’m currently running.
iv’e leveled a ranger all the way to level 80, unlocked every single utility skill but not once have i seen a skill that gives a lone ranger stealth, i know theres guard for his pet.
iv’e been doing some wvw and in a couple cases ive seen rangers going invisible, and in a few cases them instantly teleporting to another location (now i know its obvious the teleporting ones are hacking)
and again iv’e seen a rangers dead pet revive the ranger from downed state, you couldn’t do anything to the pet because its downed and the pet is out healing what i could muster since iv’e been mostly playing as a healing guardian. and since underwater combat doesn’t have a stomp option i couldn’t do anything but watch as he got away.
but whats going on there? is it hacking or just hidden knowledge about the ranger i dont know about?
Aside from the porting, its hidden knowledge you don’t know about.
I noticed that the description when you mouse over the crates in the gem store are longer than the descriptions on the dropped crates from enemy’s indicating that they are two different items with separate item codes. Does that mean they are technically two separate items? If so, do they have different drop rates? I suppose if anyone has a crate from an enemy and a crate from the gem store could see if they do stack.
Or you can stay down on the beach and farm skelks. 10-15g/ hour if you sell your mats
Shh…you’re not supposed to tell everybody. Last night on the overflow server the beach was so packed with farmers. It was getting hard to tag ever Skelk.
I like hopping on other servers BLs and soloing all the supply camps I can. Granted that there isn’t much difficulty involved. but I still find it entertaining for the whole behind enemy lines field.
That and having those supply camps does contribute points, while making groups drop from other battlefields to return to theirs trying to intercept an attack.
You’re on Crystal Dessert, right? I don’t know if you like to roam by yourself or if you prefer a companion but hit me up you ever want to tag along. I have been focusing on SC for the events and crate drops every night so I haven’t been in WvW for a while. But I am always willing to change up the pace from farming.
