The Never Ending Repertoire of Ranger Builds
Salt of the Earth {SALT} Crystal Desert© ~~Dragon Rank~~
April 15th patch dropped. Rangers pets were bugged. They were doing massive damage 7-12k auto attacks and were also squishy, they could be 1 shotted by simple aoe. Well, 1 day later Anet patched the 12k auto attacks, but never fixed the toughness of the pets.
8 days later our pets are dying to enemies in 1vs1 situations. Please investigate.
Forgot to mention: I’ve been playing since beta. Ranger is my main and this bug alone is driving me away from this game.
Seems this is the issue. Not 100% certain if it affects the pet in PvE, or if its an increase in the PvP damage from NPCs, or a combination of both, but it still needs to be addressed.
It’s funny, when our pets are auto attacking for 10k hits, they’ll patch that quickly(next day), but when they die in 1-2 hits, they don’t address the issue at all…
April 15th patch dropped. Rangers pets were bugged. They were doing massive damage 7-12k auto attacks and were also squishy, they could be 1 shotted by simple aoe. Well, 1 day later Anet patched the 12k auto attacks, but never fixed the toughness of the pets.
8 days later our pets are dying to enemies in 1vs1 situations. Please investigate.
Forgot to mention: I’ve been playing since beta. Ranger is my main and this bug alone is driving me away from this game.
clicking on ur links, i get msgs like these “http://alturl.com/tffej” and when i click on those, they say “Oops! Internet explorer couldn’t find …” so idk lol
Try now.
hey, idk if im doing something wrong but all of the links in ur sig are broken
Not sure, they are working for me.
why are you using “spotter”? it doesn’t give you any precision only your allies wouldn’t it be better to raise your lb dps with “eagle eye” or give yourself some aoe with “piercing arrows”. Seems like a wasted ttrait to me if you plan on killing people solo
First post I’ve seen by you so I’m assuming you’re new to the Ranger class? Either way, Spotter affects the trait wielder, even solo.
I have a feeling that this issue may become forgotten like the SB arrow speed debacle. I certainly hope it doesn’t, but have a feeling it will.
The SB speed wasn’t forgotten, they said the change was done on purpose, this change however is NOT in the patch notes at all and has not been mentioned by the devs in anyway.
Yeah, it took them a while to admit it. After constant push from the community.
The original concept was to bomb your enemy’s with conditions all while dishing out a decent amount of raw damage. The WvW version allows you to bomb them with Confusion, which is a nice touch to the build. The sPvP version doesn’t have that, but adding torment from the elite. It melts glass thieves and mesmers….
With the introduction of the April 15th Feature Pack, sPvP saw a lot of changes. One of them being the Celestial Amulet. Before my Original BHB build for WvW didn’t work in sPvP because of the low stat spread on the Celestial Amulets. With this update, it is indeed strong. You can gank people with this build just like you can in WvW.
Build hase been updated slightly to reflect newer traits and compensate for laack of Perplexity runes in sPvP
Sometimes you just want to spike people and make them think WTF just happened…
You can with this build.
I’ll be adding a video of it in action in sPvP tonight(hopefully). You can check out the original two videos Volume 1 and Volume 2. What you see in these two video’s is exactly what happens to your opponents in sPvP.
Please don’t let this become the SB arrow speed debacle all over again…
I have a feeling that this issue may become forgotten like the SB arrow speed debacle. I certainly hope it doesn’t, but have a feeling it will.
Empathic Bond Changes:
Sorry but EB isn’t all that anymore.
EB used to be the “go to” or “must have” trait back in the day. Then, Anet nerfed it by reducing it to only 3 conditions removed instead of all of them. Then, Anet nerfed it again by making it no longer remove conditions if your pet is dead.
I moved away from EB when the first nerf was introduced. Then, the second was introduced(it was actually a bug fix), that sealed the deal. With this new patch there are a few new ways to remove conditions, some of us are utilizing them already(SotF, Purity Sigils)….and….some are still stuck back in Feb 26th, 2013.
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
(spvp). after about (edit) 12 hours of testing in mid-high level team arenas with and without friends or coordination, i have to say 30/0/10/30/0 is a “solid” build that makes me excited once again to play my ranger. it has potential as counter to other glass in organized team play. and i dont give ranger praise lightly. RTW allows us to bomb from significantly further than 1200 and every arrow connects. combined with GS i can honestly say that rangers can snipe better than GS mesmers. kiting is also a joy now with the buffed LR, but it needs to also cleanse chill. i feel LR should have a 15-20s cooldown (traited) to make kiting feel just right, and eliminate need for s-keying, which is usually a very embarrassing death. alternatively, give rangers normal move speed while s-keying?
survival of the fittest also brought QZ back for me. casting QZ makes a big difference for me now. with RTW arrows, i can outrange and put serious pressure not only on other glass, but also bunkers. im blowing people up with air + fire sigils. there is often an awkward silence and possibly a blank stare when someone eats about 4500 from one arrow followed by 2500, 2500, dead. again, i dont say this lightly. it’s simply what’s happening. GS 3>5>2 with quickness is a boss combo, especially if you do it out of stealth after Hunter’s Shot. i can fly across the arena and crush someone who’s low.
responsive pets are responsive. this means a little more burst and a little more control. wolf and raven for me, but you can also do hound, spider, and possibly a few others. 50-60% of pets remain too situational or just trash.
MT + Entangle will guarantee kills for any good team if timed well.
i feel ANet did a poor job with the new runes. most of them are still garbage, while others are too good (Strength for d/d eles, lol.) with this build i find myself choosing various power runes, Pack being my favourite for the extra precision. Scholar my second choice, albeit situational.
im also disappointed that weapons did not receive any love. SB is less than garbage for power builds because it truly hits like a wet noodle with zerker ammy. sword is underwhelming for power builds because #1 spam still takes too long and will get you killed (unlike GS 3, 5, 2). axes are quite bad. dagger is too situational for power builds.
anyway, thats my little review and im looking forward to taking this into wvw application.
Your build is gaining a reputation. He(BLU42) mentions a guy from Arkham(hard to make out)? But, looking at your guild tag I think he’s referring to you. Congrats on the build.
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Sorry let me rephrase…Rtw increases applied dps on FLEEING targets. Correct. Arrows don’t drop off out of range as the target moves away.
I know MT is a great skill on paper but its cast time makes it extremely unreliable from my experience. In fast paced fights I just never seem to get it off in time. I generally don’t have the luxury of using point blank to combo into MT.
It’s not an issue with MT but an issue with lack of you using the skill, as you use it you learn how to lead with it so you’ll be able to catch em in it.
Very very very rarely do I actually start casting the skill UNDER the target, it’s normally off to the side or something so they run into it.
Definitely this. It also has some very nice lockdown/control potential for teamfights.
I’ll try practicing with it some more. You’re assuming I don’t lead with it but I very much do. Problem is people are constantly blocking, dodging, leaping, etc. Cast time is too long for fast paced play. Gonna have a hard time giving up SoH while roaming.
Have you guys thought of any power build dueling specs with 30 SotF? Or hybrid even, it may be interesting seeing the possibilities…
This is working extremely well in WvW for 1vs1 and/or group fights. On the Shortbow, use Battle and Purity Sigils. With 45% Boon duration and constant pet and weapon swapping grants you with 12-15 stacks of might – on your own – throughout the fight.
Actually, I know what it was. I’ve been using dual birds for the last 3 months with the same names. Chillyourass and Blindyourass. When I tried to use Blind Your kitten or Chill Your kitten , it wouldn’t let me, and I assumed it was due to not allowing spaces.
I could be wrong…I will admit. But I don’t recall being able to. Have we always been able to add spaces in our pets names?
I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere so I’ll mention it here. You can now add spaces in your pets name. Before you April 15th you couldn’t.
Edit: False alarm. Read 4th post down.
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
Gonna have to agree with Xsorus on this one.
This is my case with Poison Master:
I love running spiders/sword/dagger and can easily apply and re-apply perma poison. The extra poison damage (equivalent of 1 stack of bleed) is definitely not worth it.Empathic Bond should never kill your pet; 3 conditions hardly puts any pressure on the pet.
If you are running dual spiders, then there is no reason to take Poison Master.( I edited my OP to further reflect my thoughts)
But in my case I’m running dual birds, so my pets are hitting 2-4k hits, while dropping blindness, chill and 10 seconds of poison on my enemy’s.
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
Better get in and run some tourny’s before they hotfix it.
It is a problem I have had when using SoR. Especially since you often will want to pet swap after using the signet, so swapping to make you pet be next to you before using the signet is not really an ideal solution either.
Its mostly a problem if your pet is ranged and you are melee, or vice versa, but I dont use SoR much anymore so…
This thread has become quite heated I see. I can see some value in poison master, and there are certainly alternative condition removal options (especially now with SotF). Personally my preference for EB really ony comes from my love of trap builds, which whilst fun, do back you into a corner utility, rune and even sigil wise. EB is just the best solution to condition removal for traps, IMO, but in another setup I could surely see myself taking Poison Master over EB (make not Bark Skin though :P but I couldnt say without trying it).
This thread was never about “You need to take Poison Master over EB”. It’s just that some people took it that way…. Idk…
But you are right, there are certain builds that will benefit from this trait, while other builds, it simply won’t work.
I was one of the first Rangers to theorycraft a Celestial build for 1vs1 and Zerg play. At first people were critical of it. Then, a couple months later you started seeing builds pop up….many builds. This will be one of those traits people will use, and like it. They’ll find ways to implement and utilize the high poison uptime, while not being pigeon holed into one weapon set. Even you, Xsorus, will one day post a build with this trait implemented, and I will bump this thread reminding you of your criticism.
Ranger #1 says, “Ouch, I’ve just been inflicted with Immobilize, Chill, Weakness, Fear, 15 Stacks of Bleeding, 5 stacks of Torment and 4 stacks of Confusion. My Empathic Bond will save me!”
Ranger #2 sits and watches as only 3 conditions are removed after 9 seconds pass.
Ranger #1 says, “Help me Ranger #2!”
Ranger #2 Pop’s SoR, removes the remaining four conditions off of Ranger #1 + the 3 additional conditions that were added during that long 9 second RNG Empathic Bond to kick in.
Later after that match, Ranger #1 secretly tries out a different spec, dropping EB and picking SoR -he never looks back.
The End.
So what part of you need all the condition removal you can get doesn’t click with you?
This would be a relevant question if at any point during this thread I mentioned that a Ranger could have too much condition removal.
I don’t have a problem with conditions. You might, but I don’t. And, if I did have an issue with mad conditions being thrown at me, EB wouldn’t do anything that SoR couldn’t do. And if SoR wasn’t enough, then I would of died anyways.
Ranger 1 would most likely be running EB with SoR if he had half a brain…Ranger 2 sounds like a genius right up until he uses in SoR, and is instantly hit with a boatload of conditions again, and realizes that using SoR to remove Condition Burst is useful, but relying solely on SoR for your condition removal is downright moronic.
Nah, Ranger #1 would be running Spirit, because that’s what the forums tell them to do.
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
Ranger #1 says, “Ouch, I’ve just been inflicted with Immobilize, Chill, Weakness, Fear, 15 Stacks of Bleeding, 5 stacks of Torment and 4 stacks of Confusion. My Empathic Bond will save me!”
Ranger #2 sits and watches as only 3 conditions are removed after 9 seconds pass.
Ranger #1 says, “Help me Ranger #2!”
Ranger #2 Pop’s SoR, removes the remaining four conditions off of Ranger #1 + the 3 additional conditions that were added during that long 9 second RNG Empathic Bond to kick in.
Later after that match, Ranger #1 secretly tries out a different spec, dropping EB and picking SoR -he never looks back.
The End.
More dmg is a bad thing if you have to sacrifice a lot of survivability….
Sacrificing a lot of survivability by not taking EB? Lol…
Or bark skin, yes. You’re essentially trading either of those for 125 damage per second. Since you can already easily get 100% poison uptime
Just curious…. But how do you plan on having 100% poison uptime? You’re using Sword/dagger, sweet, so are you only using that ONE weapon set? No? Then your poison will be dropping off. Are you playing against enemies with condi removal? That poison will be dropping off.
And it’s hardly a “huge survivability trade” as you keep seeming to think, itsfinished is CLEARLY using a pet oriented build (how else would birds hit for 4k?) *this means him taking EB is not only a DPS decrease due to chill, cripple and weakness being transferred to the pet, but its ALSO clearing his pets might stacks when he’s forced to swap due to the pet being dissolved by conditions. *
Also, poison mastery increases the damage by a pretty significant margin, it makes the poison you apply from serpent strike + stalkers strike (assuming no other condi duration is boosting it) by 2k damage, that’s nothing to scoff at, especially since poison master makes it no matter how much they beg, or cleanse, or plead they will NEVER be free from your poison.
And if you don’t see how strong that is I have no more to say to you, because you’ll never understand a good trait when you see it.
hey you know what is also a DPS decrease? Being Dead because you lack condition removal
Condi’s roll off the pro rangers
Sword/Dagger is 21 seconds of Poison Alone
At no point should you ever run Poison Master over EB….EB itself is one of our best Condition Removal abilities, and it isn’t good enough against most Condition Builds.. dropping it for the equiv of 1 bleed stack and something you should be applying most of the time anyway with ease is just silly.
So you drop 21 seconds of Poison on them then they use a condi cleanse. That 21 seconds becomes…nothing.
That’d be a problem.. if Sword/Dagger wasn’t on insanely low cooldowns in the first place
Also I swap my pet every 16 seconds….Chances of killing my pet in those 16 seconds with conditions very slim
The whole point is you would be able to take other weapon sets besides the traditional sets while still being able to apply poison regularly. Which has opened up a lot of build choices for me.
oh, So you’re going to take Greatsword/Longbow then and sport Poison master.. since those are the only two weapons that don’t have it..
Axe MH and OH, Torch, Warhorn…
More dmg is a bad thing if you have to sacrifice a lot of survivability….
Sacrificing a lot of survivability by not taking EB? Lol…
Or bark skin, yes. You’re essentially trading either of those for 125 damage per second. Since you can already easily get 100% poison uptime
Just curious…. But how do you plan on having 100% poison uptime? You’re using Sword/dagger, sweet, so are you only using that ONE weapon set? No? Then your poison will be dropping off. Are you playing against enemies with condi removal? That poison will be dropping off.
And it’s hardly a “huge survivability trade” as you keep seeming to think, itsfinished is CLEARLY using a pet oriented build (how else would birds hit for 4k?) this means him taking EB is not only a DPS decrease due to chill, cripple and weakness being transferred to the pet, but its ALSO clearing his pets might stacks when he’s forced to swap due to the pet being dissolved by conditions.
Also, poison mastery increases the damage by a pretty significant margin, it makes the poison you apply from serpent strike + stalkers strike (assuming no other condi duration is boosting it) by 2k damage, that’s nothing to scoff at, especially since poison master makes it no matter how much they beg, or cleanse, or plead they will NEVER be free from your poison.
And if you don’t see how strong that is I have no more to say to you, because you’ll never understand a good trait when you see it.
Thanks Durzlla, I’m at work so its hard to type out full scenarios.
@everyoneelse: I don’t want people to think this is the new “go to” trait. As it seems to benefit certain build types. It’s simply the perfect trait for my current setup I run.
Sword/Dagger is 21 seconds of Poison Alone
At no point should you ever run Poison Master over EB….EB itself is one of our best Condition Removal abilities, and it isn’t good enough against most Condition Builds.. dropping it for the equiv of 1 bleed stack and something you should be applying most of the time anyway with ease is just silly.
So you drop 21 seconds of Poison on them then they use a condi cleanse. That 21 seconds becomes…nothing.
That’d be a problem.. if Sword/Dagger wasn’t on insanely low cooldowns in the first place
Also I swap my pet every 16 seconds….Chances of killing my pet in those 16 seconds with conditions very slim
The whole point is you would be able to take other weapon sets besides the traditional sets while still being able to apply poison regularly. Which has opened up a lot of build choices for me.
Sword/Dagger is 21 seconds of Poison Alone
At no point should you ever run Poison Master over EB….EB itself is one of our best Condition Removal abilities, and it isn’t good enough against most Condition Builds.. dropping it for the equiv of 1 bleed stack and something you should be applying most of the time anyway with ease is just silly.
So you drop 21 seconds of Poison on them then they use a condi cleanse. That 21 seconds becomes…nothing.
EB is a like a 2 sided blade. It can help remove conditions(randomy) at the expense of killing your pet. And, as you know first hand, when your pet is dead, so are you.
More dmg is a bad thing if you have to sacrifice a lot of survivability….
Sacrificing a lot of survivability by not taking EB? Lol…
Or bark skin, yes. You’re essentially trading either of those for 125 damage per second. Since you can already easily get 100% poison uptime
For case of argument, lets say I’m running sword/dagger + axe torch. Dual birds. How can I achieve 90%+ poison uptime with this combination?
Answer: You can’t.
Unless you are running Poison Master.
More dmg is a bad thing if you have to sacrifice a lot of survivability….
Sacrificing a lot of survivability by not taking EB? Lol…
Damage is damage. If you can do more damage, how is that a bad thing?
Poison does two things: Actively ticks for a certain amount + it reduces healing by 33%
One could argue that on top of the active poison ticks, reduced healing could be considered ‘passive damage’. So the argument of “1 bleed tick” isn’t technically true.
“Poison Master: When swapping pets, your pet’s first attack will inflict poison. Poison you apply deals 50% extra damage.”
Sigil of Doom doesn’t provide 50% extra damage to poison. I’m not saying I’m going to drop EB for PM, but 50% extra damage is nothing to sneeze at. I wonder if that actually also applies to poison inflicted by the pet; probably not, but that would make it even more interesting.
So +125 DPS on your poison. Aka 1 bleed stack. Wow very sneeze much lel
You do know that poison reduces healing by 33%? You see Poison Master as an extra bleed. I see Poison Master as starting a skirmish and my opponent has the Poison Gambit(Queens Jubilee).
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
All I know is last night during testing, every opponent that I targeted, had Poison on him at least 90%+ of the time. Rangers using TU were dropping, Heal Signet warriors were dropping. As soon as a mesmer came out of stealth my pet was hitting them with instant poison. Even 100% Bunker Guardians/Warriors were going down faster than before.
Poison Master isn’t going to work for every build. I certainly hope people don’t think that. In my case, the build I use for tourny’s, works extremely well.
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
Ok. So then in your case, why sacrifice 50% less incoming dmg under 25% health for perma poison? When you can achieve the same thing with a sigil. Because you can’t get bark skin on a sigil
You can’t achieve 90%+ uptime of poison on your opponent with a sigil like you can with Poison Master.
Then we go back to my original point. Why get rid of some of our best condi clear when you could sacrifice just 1 sigil. Yes you have other cleanse options, but youve got other poison options as well
Personal preference?
In my experience, using EB results in me having to swap my pet more frequently in hopes that it doesn’t die due to condition overload. Keep in mind that when you are fighting an engi or necro or any class really that has lots of AOE condi burst, chances are your pet is getting hit with that AOE condi burst PLUS having the condi’s that were just applied to you being transfered to him doubling condition durations.
Like I said, I used to use EB religiously, but after switching to Bark Skin, I never looked back. My pet is alive longer so that equals more damage, and my damage is reduce by 50% below 25% health.
But then youre not using poison master, youre using bark skin. This has basically turned into a condi removal as a ranger thread
I wasn’t complete on my description. I meant to say I was using Bark Skin over EB before the patch, but now Poison Master.
Then we go back to my original point. Why get rid of some of our best condi clear when you could sacrifice just 1 sigil. Yes you have other cleanse options, but youve got other poison options as well
Personal preference?
In my experience, using EB results in me having to swap my pet more frequently in hopes that it doesn’t die due to condition overload. Keep in mind that when you are fighting an engi or necro or any class really that has lots of AOE condi burst, chances are your pet is getting hit with that AOE condi burst PLUS having the condi’s that were just applied to you being transfered to him doubling condition durations.
Like I said, I used to use EB religiously, but after switching to Bark Skin, I never looked back. My pet is alive longer so that equals more damage, and my damage is reduce by 50% below 25% health.
Fortifying Bond is huge in tournaments. Before the patch I was able to maintain 15 stacks of might during a skirmish. Add Fortifying Bond to that and my dual birds hit for 4k.
You’re making a lot of assumptions. I simply listed other means of condi removal other than EB. Doesn’t mean I’m using them.
I don’t need EB. In fact I hardy have trouble with conditions. If I get 2vs1 by two condi builds, if I can’t escape using sword 2, then I’m toast….even if I had EB slotted.
Or Survival of the Fittest?
Yeah, I try to time my pet swap right after using SoR. All conditions gone and my pet is at full health.
@Carpboy, I’m a little confused at why you think I’m only using SoR for condi removal. I never posted a build or what runes and sigils I’m using…
I use it for its active. 100% condi clear for me and 4 other players on.
But then you have nothing for the next 60 seconds. Thats nowhere near enough. And your pet still dies
Actually, my pet rarely dies due to NOT using EB and traiting Fortifying Bond.
I use it for its active. 100% condi clear for me and 4 other players on.
I haven’t used Emp Bond in a long time because I slot SoR. Before I would run EB religiously, and because of that my pet was dying a lot faster than if EB wasn’t slotted, so I started using Barksin and never looked back.
Also, you don’t have to run the traditional weapon set to achieve high Poison uptime anymore. Nor do you have to run spiders either.
So you can run a condi GS build? Nice!
Why would you run a GS condi build?
Exactly. Why would you run anything other than SB/Sw/t/axe/d. Nothing else’s makes sense for a condi build so youre comment “you don’t have to run the traditional weapon set to achieve high poison uptime” makes 0 sense
I was trying to drive my point across with that question.
Poison does two things: damage and heal reduction. Heal reduction requires 0 condition damage to be effective.
Have you tried it yet? The amount of constant poison pressure on your enemy is priceless…
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
Also, you don’t have to run the traditional weapon set to achieve high Poison uptime anymore. Nor do you have to run spiders either.
So you can run a condi GS build? Nice!
Why would you run a GS condi build?
Also, you don’t have to run the traditional weapon set to achieve high Poison uptime anymore. Nor do you have to run spiders either.
Calling it right now, one of the better traits out of the 6. My favorite so far.
Edit: Keep in mind that I run dual birds, so Poison Master allows me ditch spiders. giving me the ability to have a near 90% uptime of poison application on my enemy, while my birds do 2-4k auto attacks, dropping blindness and chill as well.
(edited by ItIsFinished.9462)
Obviously Rangers…
Hi,
Ranger is my latest 80 and love the idea of this build and am wandering if it still works (i don’t know much about how patches since may have changed it).
thanks.
Hey ceejay, everything still works. Take note that tomorrow Perplexity Runes are changing a little bit. But with the minimal amount of interrupts the Ranger can dish, it won’t hinder this build at all.
Keep in mind this build isn’t like the common regen/beast master build. If you get focused, you’ll go down. This build is more about catching people off guard and spiking them down from a distance. Good luck!
Being “Unparalleled Archers” we should be able to do some cool things with our arrows. Spirit Arrows, Arrows with Elements on them etc.
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so it spreads a random condition the target is suffering from, to other targets it passes through? if so, It would have to have an decent ICD to not be incredibly OP. Cool concept though.
It would grab 1, 3 or all conditions(balance issues) from the first target, then distribute those condition(s) to any other target it passes through.
Would this be to OP?
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